We have the added problem that the length of the Roman Foot is variously measured today. So, the colossus was somewhere between 106ft and 120 ft with or without its crown and base. Over fifty years later Hadrian placed the statue on a marble covered base next to the Flavian Amphitheatre. The statue wore a crown with rays (of sun) coming out of it – was this included in the height of the colossus? Suetonius tells us it was 120-foot-tall and Cassius Dio writing over a hundred years later tells us one hundred feet high. “ Summoned to Rome by Nero, he made a colossus 106½ feet tall ” the text is corrupted, some claim it reads 119 feet, or it may have been copied wrongly by later writers. Pliny tells us he visited Zenodorus’ workshop and so perhaps is the most reliable. Our three main sources are Pliny, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, all writing at different times and they do not agree. When the statue was commissioned and how long it took is not recorded. Pliny the Elder tells us the artist Zenodorus (otherwise unknown to us), who was famed for his skill at producing colossal statues, was brought from Gaul by Nero to create the statue. Specifics like dates and concrete facts are missing, the sources do not even agree on the height, the likeness or when it was completed. The sources we have are various histories, written at different times after Nero’s death some more reliable than others. But as with all things in history if we dig a little deeper it is a bit more complicated than that. He then blamed it on the Christians and executed them in the circus martyring the famous saints Peter and Paul in the process. He built a private pleasure palace on that land complete with an enormous statue of himself. Television, books and tour guides tell the incredibly juicy story of Nero that goes something like this: He set fire to the city of Rome in 64 AD so that he could steal public land in the centre of the city.
Large statues of the emperor were not new, but a statue eighteen times life-size in a precious material was unheard of and such a large statue of the emperor as a God was sheer madness. It was only a matter of time for the Romans to follow suit. Yet despite its association with an apparently crazed and despotic ruler the statue endured for at least three hundred years!Ĭolossal statues known as Colossi were known in Greece the Parthenon on the sacred acropolis in Athens had a chryselephantine (ivory and gold) statue of Palas Athena inside the main temple area. Several emperors changed the face of the statue, adding their own likeness or removing that of an earlier emperor. There are many stories about the statue, its size, the face and what happened to it. Tradition has it that the statue was of the emperor Nero posing as the sun god Sol, an attempt by Nero to grasp divine status while still living. Ancient writers tell of an enormous bronze statue commissioned by the narcissistic and crazed young emperor Nero for the entrance of his party palace the ‘ Domus Aurea’(AROME/DAUREATAB (, built after the ‘Great Fire’ of 64 AD. The Colosseum is the MOST visited attraction in Rome, originally called the Flavian Amphitheatre yet Colosseum (COLOSSEUM TAB) is a nickname from the middle ages recalling not the size of the gladiatorial arena but of an entirely different monument – a gigantic bronze statue so-called The Colossus of Nero. The Colossus of Nero – Megalomania or Fake News?
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