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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;clem.fandango, post: 4833654, member: 114487&quot;]With my art-historical hat on, I&#039;d say that Nero wouldn&#039;t have suffered these coins to be disseminated unless he (or his court etc) approved the messages they were conveying; he <i>could </i>have &#039;airbrushed&#039; the double chin away, if he had wanted to. Therefore his chunky form and fat body, which to us look sometimes even comical, must be serving some purpose - that of portraying messages about the years of plenty that Rome is (supposedly) enjoying, the abundance and the affluence of the empire. </p><p><br /></p><p>Nero does not <i>need</i> to be the powerful military hero, precisely because his reign is (so the message implies) secure and fruitful. It was a similar sort of message to that which some had set out to convey previously (Ptolemies and other so-called <i>tryphe-</i>kings) and exactly contrasting with the sort of late-Republican verism which had been in favour not that long prior, but now might look fusty and old-fashioned, and which, besides, were largely inaccessible to young rulers of the empire.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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