{"id":3220,"date":"2020-10-26T05:56:21","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T05:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/colosseum.info\/?p=3220"},"modified":"2020-10-26T07:32:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T07:32:26","slug":"colossus-of-nero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colosseum.info\/fr\/colossus-of-nero\/","title":{"rendered":"Colossus of Nero"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Colossus of Nero \u2013 Megalomania or Fake News?<\/b><\/p>\n

The Colosseum is the MOST visited attraction in Rome, originally called the <\/span>Flavian Amphitheatre<\/b>; yet <\/span>Colosseum<\/b> (COLOSSEUM TAB) is a nickname from the middle ages<\/b> recalling not the size of the gladiatorial arena but of an entirely different monument – a gigantic bronze statue so-called <\/span>The Colossus of Nero<\/b>.\u00a0 Ancient writers tell of an enormous bronze statue commissioned by the narcissistic and crazed young emperor Nero for the entrance of his party palace the \u2018<\/span>Domus Aurea\u2019(AROME\/DAUREATAB<\/b> (, built after the \u2018Great Fire\u2019 of 64 AD.\u00a0 Tradition has it that the statue was of the emperor Nero posing as the sun god Sol, an attempt by Nero to grasp divine status while still living.\u00a0 There are many stories about the statue, its size, the face and what happened to it.\u00a0 Several emperors changed the face of the statue, adding their own likeness or removing that of an earlier emperor.\u00a0 Yet despite its association with an apparently crazed and despotic ruler the statue endured for at least three hundred years!<\/span><\/p>\n

Colossal statues known as Colossi were known in Greece; the Parthenon on the sacred acropolis in Athens had a chryselephantine (ivory and gold) statue of Palas Athena inside the main temple area.\u00a0 It was only a matter of time for the Romans to follow suit. Large statues of the emperor were not new, but a statue <\/span>eighteen times life-size<\/b> in a precious material was unheard of and such a large statue of the emperor as a God was sheer madness.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fake News?<\/b><\/p>\n

Television, books and tour guides tell the incredibly juicy story of Nero that goes something like this:\u00a0 He set fire to the city of Rome in 64 AD so that he could steal public land in the centre of the city.\u00a0 He built a private pleasure palace on that land complete with an enormous statue of himself.\u00a0 He then blamed it on the Christians and executed them in the circus martyring the famous saints Peter and Paul in the process.\u00a0 But as with all things in history if we dig a little deeper it is a bit more complicated than that.\u00a0 The sources we have are various histories, written at different times after Nero\u2019s death; some more reliable than others.\u00a0 Specifics like dates and concrete facts are missing, the sources do not even agree on the height, the likeness or when it was completed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pliny the Elder tells us the artist Zenodorus (otherwise unknown to us), who was famed for his skill at producing colossal statues, was brought from Gaul by Nero to create the statue.\u00a0 When the statue was commissioned and how long it took is not recorded.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How big was the Colossus of Nero?<\/b><\/p>\n

Our three main sources are Pliny, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, all writing at different times and they do not agree.\u00a0 Pliny tells us he visited Zenodorus\u2019 workshop and so perhaps is the most reliable. \u201c<\/span>Summoned to Rome by Nero, he made a colossus 106\u00bd feet tall<\/b>\u201d; the text is corrupted, some claim it reads <\/span>119 feet<\/b>, or it may have been copied wrongly by later writers.\u00a0 Suetonius tells us it was <\/span>120-foot-tall<\/b> and Cassius Dio writing over a hundred years later tells us <\/span>one hundred feet high<\/b>.\u00a0 The statue wore a crown with rays (of sun) coming out of it \u2013 was this included in the height of the colossus?<\/span><\/p>\n

Over fifty years later Hadrian placed the statue on a marble covered base next to the <\/span>Flavian Amphitheatre<\/b>. So, the colossus was somewhere between 106ft and 120 ft with or without its crown and base.\u00a0 We have the added problem that the length of the Roman Foot is variously measured today.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1828, archaeologists unearthed a brick faced, rectangular base measuring 17.60 x 14.75 m, with a height of 2.25 m, originally covered with marble revetments. It was visible until 1933, when it was sheared off and paved over by the <\/span>Via dei Fori Imperiali<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nero never saw himself!<\/b><\/p>\n

We have no idea when work on the Colossus began, was it after the fire when Nero\u2019s plans came to mind?\u00a0 If so, then the earliest can be 64 AD.\u00a0 We imagine that Nero basked in the shadow of a colossal version of himself but that cannot actually have been possible.\u00a0 The timescale required to produce other bronze statues of a similar size was at least nine years, perhaps even eleven if the statue was 120ft high.\u00a0 In which case <\/span>Nero would never have seen his likeness in bronze because he died only four years after the fire<\/b>!\u00a0 Cassius Dio says the statue was actually finished and erected under Vespasian.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Was the Colossus of Nero or the sun god Sol?<\/b><\/p>\n

After his death, Nero\u2019s works were rapidly undone or covered over and his name suffered \u2018<\/span>damnatio<\/span><\/i> memoriae\u2019<\/span><\/i> literally <\/span>damnation in memory<\/b>.\u00a0 This removal from official record meant that the face or heads of statues were hacked off and inscriptions scrubbed out! \u00a0 If his statue was no way near finished by the time of his death surely it couldn\u2019t have been of him.\u00a0 Pliny says it was \u201cintended originally to represent the emperor, but dedicated to the Sun-god after the crimes of Nero were condemned\u201d.\u00a0 Cassius Dio reports \u201cit has the face of Nero, according to some, or Titus, according to others\u201d.\u00a0 Not even Suetonius, (who liked salacious details) is clear when he says \u201cin the likeness of Nero\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

One scholar argues that it wasn\u2019t of Nero at all<\/b>, but of Sol or Helios from the very beginning.\u00a0 Nero often used solar imagery which referred to his victories in the east and a coming Golden Age of imperial prosperity; between 64-66 AD a coin was released of Nero with a radiant crown.\u00a0 <\/span>Is it possible that the colossus was of the sun God Sol that just looked a bit like the emperor?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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