 Let's take a tour of the Palace of Nero, the Golden House, the portion that's preserved on the Esquiline Hill on the occasion of a new exhibit on the goddess Isis and her relationship to the Emperor Nero. Very close to the Colosseum, where there once was the stagnum of Nero, we're turning towards the Esquiline Hill where we have the remains of the Domus Aurea underneath the Baths of Trajan. So we see this corridor, this is where we enter now, we're entering through a series of rooms that leads us into the Domus Aurea. So these remains of 142 rooms constructed by Severus and Keler for the Emperor Nero between 64 and 68 are actually today underneath the remains of the massive sprawling complex, the Baths of Trajan that is going to be dedicated in 109 AD. The Emperor Nero is the Emperor from 54 to 68. He's succeeding his adoptive father, Claudius, who was the Emperor from 41 to 54. The story goes in antiquity that his last wife, Agrippina, Nero's mother, actually poisoned him. As part of the exhibition, we could admire the entire cast of characters. Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, was a tutor to a young Nero. But there's another tutor who isn't preserved in a statue that we know existed, and his name was Catamon of Alexandria. He was the head of the Library of Alexandria, he was an Ambassador in Rome at the time of Claudius, and actually became a tutor of Nero himself. And it's one of the ways that the current exhibit tries to associate then the life of Nero in his contact with the cults of the Egyptian gods, including Isis. But let's be very clear, for centuries in the Republic, the cult of Isis was present. Now outside the Primerium, but she does get a temple in the campus. Precious by the time of the Triumvirs, and by the Imperial Period, it's a massive temple. The cult of Isis was not always appreciated. There is a moment, under Tiberius, according to Eusefus, that a certain equestrian, Decius Mundus, wanted to seduce a Roman matron Paulina. So he bribed the priests of the cult of Isis, where Paulina was a worshiper, that he could actually appear wearing a mask of Anubis, a jackal mask, to be the personification of the God of the Dead, to entice her to make love with him. And after the fact, he publicly boasted how he had seduced Paulina. That led to Paulina talking to her husband, who talked to the Emperor, who was furious. The Isis priests were crucified, and the cult statues were thrown into the Tiber. Now, there have been these statues of Egyptian gods, fished out of the Tiber River, that approximately date to the time of Tiberius. Now, whether they were actually tied to that episode, recorded by Eusefus, or they were just destroyed in the Christian era, we'll never know, but it's a tantalizing piece of archaeology that's on display in the new Isis exhibit inside the Domus Aurea. Essentially though, Isis and the Egyptian gods were well recognized and accepted within the culture of the Roman people. The fire of 64 was devastating in Rome, and as a result, look at all that destruction, so much damage to the city, it allowed Nero to build an even greater palace than what he had previously constructed, the Domus transitoria on the Palatine Hill. Now he's allowed to build something grander. He calls it the Domus Aurea, and it includes the Palatine Hill, it includes the Valley of the Colosseum, a portion of the Cayenne Hill, and over to the Opium which is part of the Esquiline Hill. Here is a reconstruction of those major portions, it extended at least 100 acres, maybe more. With this archaeological plan, we can see these same areas, the Esquiline Hill, the Cayenne Hill where large and infam was constructed, butting up against the terrace wall of the Temple of Claudius Complex, here's the Palatine Hill, and then what we have is a new structure on the Palatine Hill, and over here we have the location of the Colossus of Nero. I'm going to stand where X marks the spot on the Valiant Hill, where today we have the Temple of Venus in Rome, and show you these locations where they are today. When we talk about the Domus Aurea, we're talking about a huge area, and from this vantage point on the Valiant Hill, I can give you some perspective. So where you have the Arch of Titus in the distance, that is where the Colossus of Nero once stood. If we pan over here, that cover tent, that very well might be the revolving dining room of Nero's Golden House, which you also know was located on the Palatine Hill, that investigation and excavation is still ongoing. Moving over here to the Valley of the Colosseum, of course there was no Colosseum, and we can look down and see a circle of the grass, which is the Metasudans, and a Guston, so pre-Neronian fountain was located there. That's the remains of the one from the Mission, so after Nero, but the truncated walls that are lined up around again of the grass by the Metasudans would have been pavilions built by Nero around his stag notes, or his large pool. There is no pool anymore because the water was drained out and the Colosseum was constructed on that location, and beyond it, on the Askeline Hill, we have the famous remains of Domo Zaudia, which is currently under restoration that you can visit on the weekends, and new discoveries are being made there all the time. So this way you get a grand idea of the extent of this 100 plus acre sprawling villa complex that belonged to Nero, from the Palatine Hill and the Colossal Statue, the Vestibule, the Stagnum, and other large structures that we call the Domo Zaudia today, all the way behind the Colosseum on the Coalipio part of the Askeline Hill. Moving over to the Askeline Hill portion, there have been documented 142 rooms constructed between 64 and 68, and the builders, the constructors, were Severus and Kellair, known for their ingenious designs and engineering. Now what made this area so famous was the extensive use of gold leaf, and the ceilings were stuccoed and faced with semi-precious stones, even ivory veneers, even mosaics, and the ceiling height was around 10 meters, and all the walls were frescoed, some of the important rooms were entirely lined with marble veneer, and the 4th style wall painting was led under the direction of a certain famulis or fabulis according to the ancient sources. So let's go inside, and what we'll do is we'll go through a corridor, part of the substructure walls built by Trajan to sustain the baths overhead, and we'll immediately proceed into the magnificent Octagonal Hall, which has skylights, which has a beautiful dome of concrete, this is on the way to creating the Pantheon, but much earlier, and you have that domed space roofing over 5 separate dining areas, and one of them had a magnificent fountain, you can see the slide where the water would flow down into. Today it's the location for the new exhibition, which is magnificent and gives us a chance to explore the relationship between Nero and Isis. We can't forget to look up, and when we look at the dome, there are a whole series of regular holes going through it, it was for holding some sort of magnificent decoration, we don't know what it was, but it was something impressive, because all the walls down below, we can tell were once lined with marble, and right here we can admire an Egyptianizing version of Nero himself, this is found from outside of Rome, but it does underline the fact that Nero was also the new Pharaoh of Egypt, and he would also depict himself as an Egyptian. Let's proceed on now to the room known as that of Achilles on Skiiros. We have a beautifully preserved amount of fresco in this ceiling, this was another dining room area, the walls still have stucco remained, it was once lined with marble, but this ceiling, the precision, the quality, to this we want to attach the name Fumulus or Fabulus. We continue to make our way through a series of rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea, and sometimes you see amazing amounts of ceiling work, the frescoes well preserved. Here's a corridor that was actually an exterior, or an outdoor space originally of the Domus Aurea right here, and we have all of this fresco work framed with stucco preserved today underneath the vaulting for sustaining the baths of Trajan above. And marvelous things have been recovered from the excavations of the Domus Aurea, including the L'Aquan statue, but within these circumstances in these rooms of the Domus Aurea today we can explore so many statues of the Cult of Isis. We're now making our way to this very long underground portico, the Cryptoporticus, and this is, we think, the star attraction of the entire exhibit, because you have all of these recently cleaned frescoes around this somewhat utilitarian space, this Cryptoportico, but due to recent cleaning, we now see that there's a whole series of images related to the veneration of Isis, and so what they've done in this space is give you an opportunity to admire those newly cleaned portions of this wall, and they juxtapose it with statuary depicting the same figures, the Sphinx, Isis, Anubis. It's a great opportunity also to then understand the architecture and the incredible spaces, the large spaces of the Domus Aurea. Here we have the Sphinxes, here we have these Egyptianizing figures, and what's it all really have to do with the veneration of Isis? Is it the painters from Alexandria, that they are worshipers of Isis? Is this somehow tapping into the personal views and beliefs of Nero? We have lots of questions, but what we do have today is a beautiful opportunity to admire this artwork that was otherwise obscured, covered by layers of dirt, layers of neglect. It's a great opportunity to get closer to the refinements, so it's along this corridor that we have these motifs and these frameworks and these figures repeating section after section after section, and we have an idyllic scene, a landscape scene in the center of each portion of the wall. Within the remains of these rooms of the Domus Aurea, we can admire so many artifacts that tie to the cult of Isis. This is from the Palace of the Emperors on the Palatine Hill. Here we have a beautiful representation of Domitian as a pharaoh. Here we have the famous Tomb of Riberius on the Via Apia, and we have one of the members of the family is a worshiper of Isis. And here is the Systrom, that rattle that a worshiper of Isis would hold. And here are countless amulets and all kinds of decorations found from excavations in Pompeii. So here you have an incredible opportunity to both familiarize yourself with the incredible architecture and design of the Domus Aurea, and also become more familiar with the cult of Isis and her relationship with Nero of Rome. Thanks for watching Ancient Rome Live. This is your host, Darius Aurea. Please sign up for our newsletter. We give free lectures throughout the month, and we have our master class at the end of each month. Make sure you sign up for the newsletter to get the free links. And we'll see you in Rome.