Roman Emperors - Part 5

 Antoninus Pius to Caracalla

Yesterday we saw the Baths of Caracalla.  Today we see some more Roman emperors leading up to Caracalla, who built those Baths.

The emperor after Hadrian was his adopted son Antoninus Pius.  Remember that the heads of these Imperial statues are realistic representations, but the bodies are idealized forms.

(Statue of Antoninus Pius in the Palazzo Altemps, Rome, 140-147 AD)

After Antoninus Pius, two of his adopted sons became co-emperors: Lucius Verus (above) and Marcus Aurelius.

(Statue of Lucius Verus in the Vatican Museums, 150-160 AD)

After seven years, Lucius Verus died, and Marcus Aurelius (above) became sole emperor.  Marcus Aurelius followed a Stoic philosophy of self-restraint, duty, and respect for others, which he wrote about in a book called Meditations.  He is sometimes called the philosopher king.

(Statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Hermitage museum, St. Petersburg, 2nd century AD)

In contrast, the next emperor, Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, was a tyrant.  Commodus scorned the philosophy of his father and was proud of his physical strength, having statues made depicting himself as Hercules (above, in the Vatican museums).  In the movie Gladiator, Russell Crowe fights the evil emperor Commodus in the Colosseum and kills him.  In real life, Commodus did actually perform as a gladiator in the Colosseum, which the Romans found disgraceful, but he wasn't killed there.  He was assassinated by being strangled in his bath.

Commodus left no heirs, so after his death men struggled for the crown in the "year of the five emperors," 193 AD.  The eventual winner was Septimius Severus, above.  This bronze statue was discovered in 1928 by a farmer plowing his field in Cyprus.  The statue was in pieces and was reassembled and restored by the Cyprus Museum, resulting in this impressive likeness.

(Statue of Septimius Severus, Cyprus Museum, Nicosia, Cyprus, 197 AD)

Septimius Severus was succeeded by his son Caracalla, one of the worst emperors, tyrannical and cruel.  In this series, I have only been including emperors with nude statues, but I make an exception for Caracalla because he built the Baths of Caracalla that I featured yesterday.

(Bust of Caracalla, Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, 212 AD)

Since I could find no nude statue of Caracalla, I'm substituting a nude statue from the Baths of Caracalla.  This is a larger than life-size statue of Hercules that was made for the Baths in 216 AD, known as the Farnese Hercules.  It is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples.