Lindsay Powell's Blog

Lindsay Powell

The Author's Notebook

A Case of Mistaken Identity?

This entry was posted on 10/2/2009 11:19 PM and is filed under Footnotes.

Last week I wrote about an interview I did with author Steven Pressfield over twitter. This week twitter brought a story from The News of Portsmouth, England. "Whatever happened to all the Neros?" (1) revealed that the curator at the Roman Palace at Fishbourne (2) and eminent professors from Bournemouth University are going to scan and reconstruct the portrait bust of a young man they usually associate with the British King Togidubnus, which was found at the site in 1964. The new hypothesis is that the bust is in fact the young Nero before he became the terrible and decadent tyrant. If the identification is right, this makes it one of the few in the world of Nero at that tender age.

At first reading I took the story at face value. Then I saw a smaller inset picture and I realised the academics have made a simple, but understandable mistake - and one that turns the new hypothesis on its head (pun not intended). I know because I am writing a biography of Nero Claudius Drusus, so I wrote to Elise Brewerton the writer of the article at The News thus:

I am writing from Austin, Texas where your story* reached me via twitter.

I know Fishbourne from the time I lived in the UK and having performed there as a visiting Ermine Street Guard member. I am also familiar with the broken portrait bust. The suggested identification of the bust as Nero is intriguing, but I must question its comparison with the bust referred to in the article and the inset picture captioned as "The head of Nero in Musee de Louvre, Paris". It most likely isn't.

The bust in the Louvre is identified as Nero Claudius Drusus (often better known as Drusus the Elder). The bust is made of Parian marble, dated to ca. 9 BC–2 AD and came from Athens:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nero_Claudius_Drusus_Louvre_Ma3515.jpg

Iam writing a biography of the life and exploits of Drusus the Elder and his wars of conquest in Germania (12BCE-9BCE) for publication by Pen and Sword Books Ltd. I have been confused myself more than once by the recurrence of the same name. There were several men bearing the name Nero Claudius Drusus within three generations: to avoid confusion, theyare labelled by historians Drusus I (or the Elder), son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla; Drusus II or Julius Caesar Drusus, son of Drusus the Elder's brother Tiberius (and the future emperor) and Vispania Agrippina; Drusus III (known as Germanicus on account of his father's victories in Germania), son of Drusus the Elder and Antonia Minor (Marcus Antonius' daughter). The full name of the boy Nero who became emperor was Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. It is very easy to be confused!

The Louvre statue bust has the high, broad forehead and narrow face characteristic of Livia's sons. Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tiberius_NyCarlsberg_Mirrored.png and http://www.nga.gov/podcasts/fullscreen/120908lect02.shtm . I accept the Fishbourne bust is of a younger man, but compare Drusus and Tiberius in their twenties to Nero in his twenties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nero_1.JPG They are quite different.

I fear that Dr Rob Symmons, curator of archaeology at Fishbourne, may be confused by the name. It would be a pity for the distinguished team of Dr Symmons and Bournemouth University lecturers Dr Miles Russell and Harry Manley to run scans on the Fishbourne head and recreate the damaged parts of the face, testing the theory that it could in fact be the emperor, when the bust they are comparing it against is a completely different Roman.

Finally, just to correct a typo: the Iron Age British client "King Togidubnes" is correctly spelled Togidubnus or Togidumnus (he used to be called Cogidubnus).