Virtual Event: Mary Beard at the British Museum & British School at RomeTwelve Caesars

Mary Beard joins Andrew Wallace-Hadrill to explore how Nero has been imagined and reimagined by artists through time.

For more than two millennia, portraits of the rich, powerful and famous in the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors. The image of Nero, among others, has persisted in painting and sculpture, from antiquity to the Renaissance to today, to symbolise a ruthless tyrant or hapless ruler.

But what makes the image of Nero so powerful that it has continued to be relevant and recognisable in political contexts up to the present day? And why have certain individuals sought to align themselves with Nero despite his murderous and megalomaniac reputation? Join Beard and Wallace-Hadrill for a discussion exploring these questions and themes from Beard’s latest book, Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient world to the Modern(Opens in new window).

Against a background of today’s ‘sculpture wars’ they also look back to the ways the Romans reacted to statues of leaders who had fallen from favour, and the problem of heroizing those in power. This debate will prompt us to ask: in the 21st century, what is public statuary really for? And how will today’s heroes be judged by future generations?

This event is presented in collaboration with the British School at Rome. 


Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College. She is also Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy, Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, a Fellow of the British Academy and International Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Beard has written numerous books and articles on ancient history and archaeology, including Laughter in Ancient Rome (2014), SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015) and Women and Power: A Manifesto (2017). Her forthcoming book Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern(Opens in new window) will be published in September 2021. Beard has presented many BBC documentaries on Roman history and art, from Meet the Romans (2012) to Civilisations (2018) and Shock of the Nude (2020). She currently presents the BBC Two arts series Inside Culture. As well as a DBE (2018), Beard was awarded the Wolfson History Prize (2009), the Bodley Medal (2016), the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Science (2016) and the Getty Medal (2019). 

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is the Principal Investigator of a European Research Council project on the Impact of the Ancient City in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge. He is also former Director of the British School at Rome (1995–2009) and of the Herculaneum Conservation Project (2000–2016). His publications include Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994), Rome’s Cultural Revolution (2008) and Herculaneum: Past and Future (2011). He has held visiting fellowships at Princeton University and the Getty Museum and is a frequent contributor to radio and television broadcasts, presenting series for the BBC including Building the ancient city: Athens and Rome and The other Pompeii: life and death in Herculaneum. He was awarded an OBE in 2002 for services to Anglo-Italian cultural relations. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2010 and appointed Professor of Roman Studies at the University of Cambridge in 2010.