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Nero's Poison Garden: The Emperor's Greenhouses
Few images of Nero are as vivid as the emperor dabbling in botany and pharmacology, but his greenhouses were more than a tyrant's vanity. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the gardens and hothouses of the Domus Aurea, the exotic plants that filled them, and the darker uses to which some of those plants were put. They trace the origins of the hothouse to the specularia of the Roman elite, the innovations of the gardener Gaius Matius, and the imperial obsession with out-of-season fruit. They examine the role of the horti Neronis in imperial propaganda, the infamous 'poison…
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