Ruins of Emperor Nero’s Theater Discovered Near Vatican | Hacker News Reader

Ruins of Emperor Nero’s Theater Discovered Near Vatican

scientificamerican.com

87 pointsdiodorus38 comments

"No one was allowed to leave the theatre during his recitals, however pressing the reason. We read of women in the audience giving birth, and of men being so bored with listening and applauding that they furtively dropped down from the wall at the rear, since the gates were kept barred, or shammed dead and were carried away for burial." - Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

Is there any chance that this was anti-Nero propaganda, with only a passing familiarity with reality?

Yes, there's a decent chance. Lots of the crazier stories about the "bad" emperors are exaggerations or wholesale fabrications.

On the other hand, we do have eccentric dictators today/last century, reasonable to assume that there were some nutjob dictators thousands of years ago.

like enjoying beachfront holidays while Maui burns?

or watching football while Iraq is invaded under fake WMD assertions to provide someone has a bigger swinging d*ck than his father?

or flying to golfing holidays even though parabolic antennas and drones mean they aren't safe from eavesdropping any more...

antiquated habits and shows of power and privilege are a terrible combination

Just so it's clear to me, since it's been a few days, exactly at what point in time will it be OK for people to enjoy beachfront holidays[1] again?

[1] In parts of the world that aren't actively trying to rebuild from a horrible disaster and are thus closed to tourists and other gawkers.

I was more thinking along the lines of Saddam Hossein having someone write a copy of the Qur'an using his blood, but sure.

The worst emperors of Rome did so many horrific things that some of the stories about them are bound to be embellished.

Not only it is possibile, it is very much plausible.

The anti Nero propaganda is one of those things that are forever stuck in our collective imaginary, even though most of it has been proven false by scholars.

Nero was notoriously "not loved", to use an euphemism, by his contemporary ruling class.

Sometimes for good reasons, most of the times just because he wasn't on their side.

I've been to a few off-Broadway productions which made me want to feign death to get out of them too. Granted Suetonius wasn't exactly a fan, but I'm guessing Nero's narcissism and fecklessness was pretty well developed without anyone needing to propagandize it.

I'm pretty sure that even 2000 years later I can detect some "embellishment" of the story; even back then I think exceptionally pregnant and almost in labor women would just skip the theater.

Unless he forced people to attend at spear-point.

I mean, it happens today as well, and I'm pretty sure without any spears.

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/drama-as-mum-gives-birth...

He was many decades after Nero, so the motivation wasn't there. More likely to be just exaggeration for the purposes of entertainment (or just repeating an oft told tale that gets bigger with time).

Now I get the character of Vice Principal Nero in the Series of Unfortunate Events a little bit better.

There has been some more recent arguments that Nero wasn't all that terrible, but more so disinterested in the job. Coupled with two facts that the article mentions (upper class Romans despised him for acting below his station; Christians despised him for putting them to death), it is no wonder all the records of his reign are incredibly negative. The people who hated him wrote the history. This is not to say he was a morally "good" person, but he also doesn't appear to been the tyrant he is made out to be.

Both "Nero: Emperor and Court"[0] as well as "Rome is Burning"[1] are great reads on the topic

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Nero-Emperor-John-F-Drinkwater/dp/110...

[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172316/ro...

He was also the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, who traced a (mostly adopted) line of authority back to Julius Caesar.

Nero’s eventual successors, the Flavian Dynasty (who had no connection to the first emperors) had plenty of reason to delegitimise him, as a means of legitimising themselves.

Off topic: I'm reminded of "Nero Burning ROM," the CD burning software. Clever name, that.

Nero Burning ROM still seems to be available from its original developer, Nero AG: https://www.nero.com/eng/products/nero-burning-rom/

The modern packaging doesn't show the iconic "coliseum on fire" icon, but I'm pretty sure it will be in there somewhere once you install it. :)

Iirc NBR was thoroughly enshittified with time.

Very clever. Definitely didn't occur to me when I was in middle school at the time!

> Christians despised him for putting them to death

Burned alive slowly after being dipped in wax/oil if I recall correctly.

Nero was analogous to the head of ISIS when you consider how crucification was used to maintain the power structure.

Crucifixion ist still done in Saoudi Arabia...

Yep, but ISIS used it about 1 to 2 orders more. Interesting talk by Rome historian Tom Holland on YouTube about it.

so are they still going to go through with building the hotel? The article cheerfully skips that part. Makes you wonder how any construction at all is possible in a 3000-year-old city, probably every inch of it was a part of something significant at some point...

Yes, they are going to continue the restructuring of the hotel (it is not a new building, it is the historical Palazzo della Rovere/Palazzo dei Penitenzieri), the remains were found in a courtyard, some 5 m under ground level, it wasn't (even before the discovery) intended to make new buildings in that area.

The idea is now to document everything, take all statues, columns and smaller manufacts to either one of the various museums in Rome or a new museum in the same palace (which is a very large building, only a part of which is actually the future hotel) and then re-bury the whole thing, keeping at least part of it accessible to visitors.

The discovery is recent (july 2023 if I recall correctly) so it will take a few months to have more details about the project.

Thank you, this is exactly the kind of detail I came here to find out.

I have no sources but Turkey suffers from this problem a lot, and the solution is that the construction crews pretend they saw nothing and complete their contract

I've have read comments similar to yours before, and unfortunately I could not find a source.

I do, however, remember that those comments were related to that time when digging a tunnel for a high-speed train in Istanbul uncovered important shipwrecks. As the article puts it, "The excavators, attempting to avoid traces of Istanbul’s human history, had ended up finding an extra five thousand years of it".

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig

Used to be the same in Italy too, I expect it's still the case in many towns and cities - but this is Rome, a stone throw from the Vatican; you can't get away with that sort of behavior in those places anymore.

Besides, this is a momentous discovery that will accrue a lot of political capital for the palace owners - precisely because they didn't spoil such treasure. Had it been some random Roman house with a couple of mosaics, things would have probably been a bit different.

Now that you mention it, it's no wonder the construction sector in Turkey is known for off the books dealings...

That's just the regular corruption in the country. They also make tofu-dreg style buildings and that has nothing to do with historical preservation

This happens in southern California all the time with fossils and such too.

> Makes you wonder how any construction at all is possible in a 3000-year-old city

You build up rather than out

Also just happened in Israel recently:

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/israel-megiddo-mosaic-outcr...

Another interesting creation related to Nero was his rotating dining room - it must have been a pretty fantastic sight!

https://interestingengineering.com/culture/ancient-engineeri...

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gisdyTBMNyQ an entire rotating house

The remains of a corrupt and decadent regime found in Vatican.

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