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The Tale of the Emperor's New Clothes is Not Just a Fairy Tale Emperors Did Once Go Out in Public in the Splendor of Their Own Nakedness Lex Loeb, Yahoo Contributor Network . History is not just literature that survives the past to be re-read and interperted. History is also amalgamation of other forms of evidence including archeological evidence where applicable and iconographic history that fleshes out much of the literary descriptions of ancient times visual aids to the imagination. Archeological really means the study of old stuff. It has been in practice long before all of the sceintific methodologies took over the field. The reconstruction of the remains of ancient Rome began before the Renaisance to the delight of the popes who took an interest in the ancient monuments of the almost lost city. One can visit the Vatican Museum in Rome to see one of the best collections of ancient Roman Archeological remains in existence. Earlier popes were less interest in reconstructing Rome to bask in the power and the glory of the major city that Christianity conqurered than they were in trying to unearth evidence of ancient christianity and the depth of the marks it made in what was the ancient city. Christians originally defaced ancient pagen monuments happy to burn down some of the finer carved marble statues to make lime with. The coluseum was stripped of bicks and stones till the pope ordered the preservation of what was left as it was the place where Christians were slaughtered in martardom kind of an unrecognized hallowed sacred space. The fasination with the ancient city and the ancient arts accelerated durring the renassance. Out of the earth were dug out naked marble sculptures of Roman Emperors bearing their recognizable faces. This was repeated in other parts of Europe and in the Meditaranian region. References to a colosal nude statue of Emperor Nero that stood near the coluseum don't come from archeolgoical evidence but from ancient literature and perhaps one painted image that shows the Nero statue topped by a halo of light rays similar to our present day statue of liberty. That crown may have been guilded or the whole statue may have been covered with gold leaf. The emperor comissioned this colosal sculpture himself. None of the future hiers to imperial power after Nero would have wanted to much direct association with Nero as the story goes about his demise as emperor with a sufficient lack of public support. The statue Nero commissioned of himself stood in the spot it was left standing in in what was once a private park and imperial place complex torn down to make way for the building of the colusuem after Nero's death. That it remained there as long as it did probably is like Russia's ambilalence to having a few colosal stalin statues standing because the succession to power is less about popularity but being the legitimate line of succession. The ancient Romans were .