How to Read a Broken Roman Statue | The Head of Nero | Curator's Corner S6 Ep7  

Nero was a seriously seriously messed up dude. Cant imagine buying anything that could be seen as supporting such a monstrous man. "Order your Nero Brand Human-Candle making kit now! Defenseless Christians not included!"

@@knightforlorn6731 If we consider all massive slaughters done by Christians in the name of their faith, Nero should be a saint. I can't imagine anyone who really knows history supporting Christianity.

It seems less idealised than later images. It’s more realistic in style.

Great video. Meat and Potatoes for me. Part of my humble library. Roman and Greek History, Etc. If you're into “Roman” stuff Michael Curtis Ford's “Gods and Legions is the book to read. If you're into history I suggest you get Ammianus Marcellinus' History. The ass kicker here is that Marcellinus actually went to battle with Emperor Julian. The Loeb Classic is almost an adventure novel all by itself. As far as Gladiators go a couple of “definitive” books are The Way of the Gladiator by Daniel P. Mannix and Spartacus by Howard Fast. Here are books from my library. Ass kickers every one. Ammianus Marcellinus History Loeb Classical Library The Battle for Gaul by Julius Caesar Illustrated edition by Anne & Peter Wiseman. Caesar: The Civil War by Jane F. Gardner Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars by Robert Graves The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon The Way of the Gladiator by Daniel P. Mannix Spartacus by Howard Fast Julian by Gore Vidal Gods and Legions by Michael Curtis Ford The Ten Thousand by Michael Curtis Ford The Last King by Michael Curtis Ford Marius had long ago showed us that the legionary has a weapon that is the bane of the civilized world, one more formidable than the dual-edged Roman short sword, more effective than the bronze-headed javelin, of greater defensive strength than the concave bronze-sheathed shields. It is a weapon in which the legionary is trained from his first day of induction and which he uses daily, in peacetime or in war, on the march or hunkered in camp under siege from flaming missiles. And upon their arrival at The miscyra, every able-bodied Roman immediately whipped out this most fearsome of all weapons: The Legionary's shovel. Before even breaking to rest or scouting for supplies, the Roman troops had unpacked their shovels and commenced digging, and the dirt flew, and the dust rose. In the space of an afternoon, a Roman camp for thirty thousand men had been constructed just beyond range of our catapults. Before dark it had been ringed on all sides with a trench twelve feet deep and three feet across, the dirt thrown up into an embankment ten feet high inside the ring. Topped with a thick palisade of sharpened stakes. Inside, four sturdy walls were constructed of felled trees, guarded by squat log towers twenty feet high, stationed every fifty feet and surmounted by bolt-hurling field catapults. Inside, a space of a full two hundred feet was left between the walls and the tent line, a distance calculated to prevent our missiles and burning arrows from reaching the tents. This space was occupied by prisoners, cattle, plunder and supplies. Withing a few hours, the Romans had constructed a stronghold that would be the envy of a lifetime's work of many civilizations poorer then theirs. A fortress impregnable. Yet this was not a permanent stronghold they had built. This was the Roman's usual daily campsite, Every day of a legionary's working life he would dig such a trench, construct such an embankment, hew trees, and build such palisade. All to be torched at sunrise, when the legions marched off to their next encampment. Javelins, when thrown, may miss their mark entirely. Shields may cave upon impact with a Scythian battle-ax; and a sword, though reliable at close quarters, still dulled, broke upon ribs. Or shivered if struck upon armor. But the shovel...the shovel was the legionary's best friend, his most faithful protector, the one weapon that allowed him to sleep soundly at night, behind his magnificent trenches and embankments. The shovel could stop a cavalry charge cold, stymie hordes of barbarians. Rome conquered not with its brutal leaders, not with the strength of its soldiers, not with the ingeniousness of its weapons...but with the most rustic, pigheaded, inglorious, gods-bedamned tool of them all...the shovel. Michael Curtis Ford “The Last King Read one of the best books you'll ever read; Gods and Legions” The Sword of Attila by Michael Curtis Ford The Fall of Rome by Michael Curtis Ford Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield Tides of War by Steven Pressfield The Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield Thucydides: History of the Peloponesian War. Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield Alexander the Great by Paul Cartledge The Spartans by Paul Cartledge Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge The Last Legionary: Life as a Roman Soldier in Britain AD 400 by Paul Elliott Gladiator: The Roman Fighter's (Unofficial) Manual by Philip Matyzak Legionary: the Roman Soldier's Manual by Philip Matyszak On Roman Military Matters (De Re Militari) by Flavius Vegetius Renatus

Absolutely,i wish i had a teacher like him i would never had slept in the lectures.

Agreed!

@gergely sz - Would you expect the British Museum to hire curators who weren’t incredibly knowledgeable??

@@Lityerses You slept in lectures bc you had no intellectual curiosity, which isn’t the fault of your teachers. I read so many comments by people who don’t take responsibility for their own learning, and who somehow think that education should be a floor show….then, if they aren’t entertained enough, they feel they’ve been wronged. Honestly, we’ve all had to endure subjects and teachers we didn’t much like, but that isn’t an excuse for not learning.

@@voraciousreader3341 I see your point and you are right but not on my case because i did not sleep on all the lectures,i slept on the ones that i felt useless.It is not because i have no intellectual curiosty if it was the case i wouldn't spent hours online in search of lectures,i have studied Roman,Egyptian an Turkish history,i learned english myself and still trying to learn other languages so even though you are right on some points but not only me,many people are unlucky when it comes to the teachers you got to take this into account aswell.

Thinking about the "view from below," we usually see other adults more or less straight on, so that's how we are used to judging the proportions of a face. A statue on a plinth forces us into the position of a young child who has to look upwards to adults. Narrowing the chin reduces the perspective effect so that the face seen from below looks more like the face seen head-on. Did Roman sculptors employ subtle perspective effects like that? Probably, because we think Greek and Roman masons or architects did when they built their temples with the columns tapering or leaning slightly.

@JONATHAN SUTCLIFFE That salad needs some mayonnaise.

@@faithlesshound5621 The precision of the temples proves the architects play on perspective. Nero was a funny looking imp in his earlier sculptings. The Romans liked their realism to the point of including warts and big ears on some sculptures but Octavian's likenesses always seemed too perfect.

@@brianpeck4035 Perhaps Nero lacked Cromwell's self-confidence, when he asked to be painted "warts and all." Octavian had to be perfect as Augustus, even before he became a god, whereas Alexander could have his deaf ear hinted at in his sculptures.

He presumably took some pride in that too. Didn't object to being shown as very rotund

@@tpower1912 My understanding (that could maybe be a complete misunderstanding) is that in some societies it was a sign that one was healthy and wealthy enough to afford enough food to be overweight.

Fat. The word everyone is looking for is "fat."

@@r0bw00d Mmmm...I believe you are quite right. He was a big boy at the end there - his neck was incredibly wide in comparison to his head, and I'm sure that can't have been good for his health. I suspect Nero was a snorer.

Yeah, he chunked up pretty quick. Those plovers eggs or whatever he lived on must have been rich.

I find it more interesting that very likely both statues had a similar fate. The head of Augustus did not ended up in Meroe because of the influence of the Romans, it was quite the opposite. The queen of Kush started an invasion of Roman Egypt where this head then was looted. Back in their capital Meroe they buried the head beneath the staircase of a temple.

🤣

QUID? ME FATIGO?

hahahaha Bush jr did as well

I’m not Greek, nor Italian, and impartial to the subject. But there is more, as in older, history, than “the Romans”. Pheidias (Phidias, ~465BC .. ~425BC) competed with his pupil-gone-independent Alkamenes when Athens-city asked both to come up with their respective versions of a statue portraying goddess Athena. It had to be placed on a tall column. At ground level, Alkamenes’s statue looked beautifully perfect and Pheidias’s version had all sorts of deformations. Placed on a column, though, Pheidias’s version won and this story got passed on. Many clever inventions are older than we think and a higher form of intelligence may have been required even to survive in that age, than is today with all modern luxuries. When we read about Plato’s “Cave” metaphor, that was his way of saying the masses lacked deep knowledge and consciousness, then we could say that modernity has replaced the cave by a TV or computer display. Yes, everything flows but there is little change.

@@jpdj2715 As I said, the Romans may have nicked it from the Greeks. And they seem to have been very aware of earlier science and technology: Babylonian maths, for example. Yes, as you said, lots of things appear to go back much further than we at first think.

Especially for those of us who will never go to the British museum. Thanks

Lucky you

What is he Chinese?

@@Mynipplesmychoice German or Austrian, I assume by his name you fucking fool

@@Mukkki alright so I’m guessing your Chinese by your reaction… do u know karate?

@@Mukkki cause I just got my yellow belt

He talks about the Iceni revolt. I wonder how much imperial tax revenue was going to the Vitellian camp, which controlled northern Gaul, and how much of it was disrupted by this event.

Nero is one the greatest actors of all time, how can u be so disrespectful?take it back and say your sorry

he so obviously liked nam-nam

I agree. The end titles nearly blew my eardrums out.

Can’t say I am as convinced. That looks like every image of Claudius I have seen and not one of the images of Nero.

@@genadearagon8977 Look at the ones when Nero was very young -- he looked a whole lot like Claudius, only with a sort of knob on his chin. I wish the curator had explained how they decided it was Nero.

Mary Beard and others have said that stock body sculptures were kept in readiness for changes in leaders, so that they would only have to produce a head when the old ruler died and his inheritor took over. This later applied to the portraiture of kings, with the most famous example being portraits of the Sun King, Louis XIV; body doubles were hired for the painters to complete the figures and complex clothing and robe, which meant that Louis only had to sit for his face and head to be painted. There are other examples, of course.

@@voraciousreader3341 I’ve worked, on a few film productions, as a stand-in. Curious to learn that I was part of a long standing tradition of stand-ins from the classical age.