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Thirty-eight girls who study Latin, Greek or Classical Civilisation in the UV (Year 11) and Sixth Form travelled to London with the Classics Department to see the much-famed Nero Exhibition.
We arrived in good time, largely thanks to the fuel crisis, which resulted in far fewer vehicles on the road. This meant we had a good hour to embrace the permanent exhibitions including some Greek and Hellenistic sculptures, the rosetta stone used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Egyptian hall with the figure of a 5,000-year-old preserved man, the Roman Britain exhibition and some added extras such as the treasures from the Anglo Saxon site Sutton Hoo.
In the afternoon we gathered for the main event. The Nero exhibition set out clearly the achievements of Nero, as well as his less attractive and cruel behaviour which included the murder of his mother. He was clearly a controversial figure in his own time but has been equally admired by many for his restructuring of the senate and giving more prominence to the people, whom he relentlessly wooed with chariot racing, games, gladiatorial fights and the theatre. The exhibition sought to give a more rounded view of his reign than the written sources, which were largely hostile to him. Whatever the truth, Nero was clearly a figure to be reckoned with and is therefore interesting to study.
Mrs Elizabeth Rothwell, Head of Classics