The dystopian world of the Roman emperor

The dystopian world of the Roman emperor

Professor Mary Beard (University of Cambridge)

This lecture explores the images of chaos that surround the Roman emperor in his court. How did Romans conceptualise autocracy? One answer is that they saw it as a dystopian world in which the natural order of things was overturned (night turned into day, representation becoming reality). I shall suggest that a more important point lies behind some of the apparently quirky anecdotes of imperial transgression, whether the emperor Elagabalus smothering his dinner guests to death with rose petals or Nero 'fiddling while Rome burns'