Art under the Roman Empire:

AD 14-337

Lecture 2

N e r o

R.R.R. Smith

Nero’s palaces

Nero’s palace on Esquiline hill(= Domus Aurea?)

Cut marble (opus sectile) flooring from Nero’s Palatine palace (beneath Flavian Palace)

(Palatine Museum)

Caius (Caligula) (Worcester, Mass) Claudius, wearing corona civica (Copenhagen)

1 2

3 4

Nero’s four portrait types on coins

From Velleia (Parma)

(Louvre)

Nero, AD 51

Nero Type 1, as 12-yr-old boyAD 49-54, pre-accession

Capite velato (Palatine)

(Capitoline)

Nero, Type II, aged 16-20Accession portrait, AD 54-9

Nero and his mother AgrippinaAureus, AD 54

Nero-Triptolemos and Agrippina-Demeter-Ceres. Cameo (Cabinet des Medailles, Paris) Nero and Agrippina, his mother (1)

Cologne Cameo.

Nero and Agrippina, his mother (2): provincial reception

Relief from Sebasteion at Aphrodisias

Bronze Nero Type 2, from River Alde in Suffolk, near Camulodunum [Colchester], (British Museum)

Nero Type 2, provincial reception, west & east

Marble Nero Type 2, bust for insertion in an armoured statue, from Stratonikeia in Caria (Izmir)

River Alde in Suffolk, near Camulodunum

Nero Type 2, provincial reception, west & east

Stratonikeia

Capitoline)

Nero, Type 3, AD 59-64, aged 21-26Type 3 head, from Palatine (Terme)

Nancy cameo: Nero on eagle, with Victory, aegis, cornucopia

Nero’s new coin designs, AD 64-68

(All bronze sestertii)

Decursio

CONG . DAT. POP. Congiarium

ADLOCUT.COH. adlocutio

(Worcester, Mass) (Munich)

Nero, Type 4, AD 64-68

Gilded bronze, Ex-Guttman (Atlanta)

Nero’s colossus

3rd-c coin

Sol on denarius of Vespasian

Altar of Eumolpos (Florence)Dedicated to Sol, by slave in charge of furniture in Nero’s Golden House

Necklace from Kharga Oasis (Egypt), with Nero Type 4 pendant

Mirror cover from Gaul, decorated with a coin of Nero Type 4

Charioteer herm portrait from Sanctuary of Hercules Cubans in Trastevere (Terme)

(Louvre)

coma in anulos

coma in gradus

(Vienna)

Seneca (Berlin) M. Vilonius Varro (Copenhagen)