These are the proceedings of an international colloquium, organized in Lille by the research program 'Monumenta', whose subject is "the written and figured traces of the memory within the Roman world", about the staging in the Roman imperial space of the memory, from the Middle Republic to the Late Antiquity.

Collective imagination shall for ever view Nero as a corrupt tyrant, a murderer, a fire raiser. Centuries have devised an everlasting and persistent myth. The author aims precisely to decipher such mythology.

This collective approach to the study of Court ceremonies and rituals from the time of the Roman Empire to the Baroque era (early 17th century) makes a significant contribution to the study of the emergence of European court culture as a whole.