Rome burns. Nero fiddles. Christianity rises. And moviegoers turned out in throngs for this years-in-the-making film colossus boasting eight Oscar nomination (including Best Picture) Robert Taylor plays the Legion commander whose love for a Christian slave girl (Deborah Kerr) crosses the divide between Empire and a sect with higher loyalty. Presiding over all is Nero (Peter Ustinov). He is Caesar, madman, murderer an imperial ruler of the spectacular and spectacularly doomed, glory that was Rome.