Roman Emperors - Part 1

 Caesar to Claudius

The Romans, like the Greeks, were not prudish about the human body.  Citizens lounged and socialized naked in communal public baths, separated by sex.  Sculptors represented mythical heroes and gods as nude statues.  Roman emperors would certainly not have appeared nude in public, but it was considered entirely proper to make nude statues of them, putting them artistically into the same category as heroes and gods.

Julius Caesar was not an emperor, but he belongs in this group.  He was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC by a group of senators who feared he was planning to become emperor.  This statue of Caesar in the Louvre museum in Paris was made sometime between 27 BC and 14 AD.

After Caesar's assassination, civil war erupted for control of Rome, and the winner was Caesar's nephew and adopted son Octavian, who proclaimed himself the first Roman emperor under the name Augustus Caesar.  This statue in the Louvre dates from the 1st century BC.

The next emperor, Tiberius, left no nude statues that we could find, but this equestrian statue in the British Museum is thought by some to be the third emperor, Caligula.  Caligula has gone down in history as one of the worst emperors, evil and possibly insane.  It's hard to reconcile that reputation with this handsome youth.

This statue of the fourth emperor, Claudius, dates from 48 AD and was found in Herculaneum, a city which was buried by the same eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii.  Claudius was afflicted by a limp and almost certainly did not have the muscular body of this statue.  The heads of these statues are thought to be realistic representations even if the bodies are idealized heroic forms.

More Roman emperors to come.