Mary Beard's favourite objects from Nero: the man behind the myth | #BritishMuseumTours

Hello I'm Mary Beard and I'm glad you can join me to explore some of my favorite things in the

British Museum exhibition Nero: The man behind the myth. I'm standing here in the first main

section of the show. As you come into it you pass a full-length statue of a young boy, about 12 or

13 years old, clad in a toga. He is actually the young Nero and he's an important reminder to us

that Nero, well he wasn't 13 when he came to the throne but he was not much more. He was about 16.

He was in other words a boy emperor. As you come around the corner you come and meet his family

and very important amongst his family are the women of the imperial house

and perhaps most important of all is Nero's mother, Agrippina. She was the last wife

of the emperor Claudius who was Nero's predecessor on the throne and it is always said that Agrippina

wangled Nero onto the throne in preference to the legitimate natural children of Claudius himself.

She was the power behind the throne. Here you see her looking actually very beautiful. This

absolutely gorgeous miniature lustrous green stone portrait of Agrippina. A very nice symbol of

the way imperial women get represented in all kinds of materials and all kinds of shapes and

sizes. Here Agrippina looks out at you all green, but there's one statue here which I think is quite

easy to walk past, and it's actually a statue of Messalina who was the previous wife of the

emperor Claudius before Agrippina and she's rather special, and I want to show you a bit about her.

Meet Messalina behind me. Now Messalina's no direct relation of Nero at all but she is the last

but one wife of the emperor Claudius and she was followed by Agrippina, Nero's mother. What you see

is a very stately lady and I think for some people that's a bit of a surprise because what roman

writers said about Messalina was frankly terrible. She was supposed to be well, adulterous is putting

it mildly and she was finally killed off by her husband Claudius after one of her more lurid

escapades, and then he married Agrippina. But she doesn't look here as anything but a perfect roman

wife. She's clad in her stola, she is cradling her child who must be Britannicus, Claudius's son.

And it was poor little Britannicus who Nero kind of bypassed on his way to the throne.

She's perfection. She is the wife of Claudius the Roman emperor and the perfect mother. I have to

say little Britannicus does look a bit odd but I think that's because he was quite heavily restored

later. But there's a secret to this statue which you might not spot

instantly because actually the Roman sculptor has based this very closely on a famous 4th century BC

statue, that's 500 years earlier, showing the goddess Peace holding her child little Wealth.

So he he's taken the template of this famous statue and turned it into Messalina. Now I

think what's interesting about that is that it's showing you, it's underlining how these

empresses whatever stories you read about them in the scurrilous roman texts they could be

seen as not just perfect mums but pretty much close to the divine. Messalina here stands for

peace, wealth and prosperity. She doesn't stand for adultery. And the same is going to go for

Agrippina, Nero's mum. This is Agrippina Nero's mom, full size. Now her reputation is about as bad

as Messalina's. She's supposed to have schemed her son Nero onto the Roman throne partly by murdering

Claudius with a bowl of poisoned mushrooms. She is said to have had extreme influence

over Nero when he was still a young ruler; Such extreme influence that there were rumors that they

had an incestuous relationship. And pretty soon Nero is supposed to have got so fed up with mum,