Domitian ruled the Roman Empire from 81 to 96 A.D. This period is often seen as a Golden Age. Yet today, almost nobody knows his name and in antiquity, he was mainly known as a tyrant and a bad emperor. So bad that he had to be erased from history.
International allure
Almost 2000 years after his death, the exhibition 'God on Earth' takes a close look at his turbulent life story, from his childhood on Pomegranate Street in Rome to his rise to the top and his merciless fall. Archaeological masterpieces, spectacular animations, films, and wall-sized views of Domitian's Rome will introduce visitors to this 'forgotten emperor' in a quest to discover who he was as a politician, a general, a lover, and a self-proclaimed 'god on earth'. The exhibition is a project of international stature with more than 275 masterpieces from 25 museum collections and private collections from home and abroad, including the Musei Capitolini (Rome), the Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Naples), the Musée du Louvre (Paris), the British Museum (London), J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, California) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).
Book
RICH researchers Dr Nathalie de Haan and Prof Eric Moormann are - together with Claire Stocks (Newcastle University, affiliated researcher RICH) and Aurora Raimondi Cominesi (RMO, PhD Radboud University 2019) - guest curators of the exhibition. De Haan and Moormann also wrote a book about the emperor, which has the same name as the exhibition: 'God op aarde. Keizer Domitianus' ('God on Earth. Emperor Domitian'). In it, they describe how recent research has nuanced the image of Domitian as a tyrant and cruel despot. Not to rehabilitate him, but to better understand how power was shaped in the first century.