While scholarly consensus has been that Nero should be identified with the various Antichrist figures in the bible (i.e. In my book, I explore how images of Nero were exploited and manipulated according to the demands of context, with a particular focus on Nero’s place in Christian history as the Antichrist. To Wilde in 1883, the emperor was the embodiment of the limitless artistic freedoms that any decadent would hope for, whereas, to Renan in 1873, Nero had been the first beast in Revelation and would appear at the time of the apocalypse to help bring about the end times. This is what I find so fascinating about Nero. But, as Wilde was well aware, ten years before his visit to the Parisian barber, the famous French intellectual, Ernest Renan (whose works Wilde knew and admired), had resurrected a far more sinister idea about Nero that had been prevalent amongst early Christians of late antiquity, that ‘the name for Nero has been found Nero shall be the Anti Christ.’ It was Nero who trampled on the boundaries of acceptable Roman elite male behaviour when he acted in public on stage, and Nero who built himself a Golden House from the ruins of a fire-ravaged Rome. Wilde imitated Nero to confirm his own rebellious spirit to his friends and acquaintances, and what better way to achieve this than by evoking one of Rome’s most rebellious emperors. Looking for a way to outrage bourgeoise society, he chose a bust of Nero from the Louvre to serve as the model for his new look.
In the Spring of 1883, Oscar Wilde went to Paris to get his hair cut.
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