Roman Emperors - Part 7

 Severus Alexander to Diocletian

There aren't nude statues of every Roman emperor.  Some of them left no statues at all.  Most emperors were depicted clothed in a toga or in battle armor.  However, gods and mythical heroes, such as Hercules, were conventionally depicted nude.  Depicting an emperor nude was a flattering representation, because it implied: this man is like a god or hero.

Severus Alexander (above) ruled after the transgender emperor Elagabalus, who we saw last time.  He was Elagabalus' cousin; they had the same scheming grandmother, Julia Maesa.  As Elagabalus became increasingly unpopular, Julia persuaded him to officially declare his cousin Severus Alexander as his heir and successor.  Then, in 222 AD, she arranged for Elagabalus, her own grandson, to be assassinated, whereupon her other grandson, Severus Alexander, became Emperor.  Like Elagabalus, he was only 14 years old when he became emperor, but he seems to have behaved moderately and listened to good advice, and he ruled for 13 years.  The statue above, dating from 225 AD, is the one that is believed to have originally been a statue of Elagabalus, but the head us now that of Severus Alexander.

Severus Alexander was assassinated in 235 AD, ushering in a time called the crisis of the third century, a veritable Game of Thrones.  There were 26 emperors and co-emperors in 49 years, almost all of whom were murdered after ruling for a few years, a few months, or in some cases, a couple of weeks.  Pupienus (above) ruled for 3 months in 238 AD.  The statue is in the Louvre.

Decius, depicted above as Mars, the god of war, ruled for less than 2 years and was killed in battle with the Goths.  The statue is in the Capitoline Museums, Rome.

Trebonianus Gallus ruled for 2 years from 251-253 AD.  The statue is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.  It is odd in two ways: the head is obviously too small for the body (presumably the body originally had a different head), and unlike all the other heroic nude statues in which the body is an idealized muscular form, this body looks rather stout.  Be that as it may, this is the last nude statue of a Roman emperor.

The crisis of the third century was ended in 284 AD by the emperor Diocletian, who finally brought stability.  Diocletian ruled for 20 years.  He wasn't murdered; he voluntarily abdicated in 305 AD and retired to a huge palace in what is now Split, Croatia.

Although we have no nude statues of Diocletian, he built the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, which were decorated with many nude statues, including the one above, depicting Ganymede and the eagle, now in the National Museum of Rome.  According to Greek myth, Zeus, the head god, fell in love with the beautiful youth Ganymede.  Zeus visited Ganymede in the form of an eagle and carried him off to Mt. Olympus, where Ganymede became Zeus' cup bearer and boy toy.

A year after Diocletian abdicated, the emperor Constantine began his 30-year reign.  Constantine converted to Christianity, and all later emperors were Christian.  Nude statues that evoked images of pagan gods or heroes became a thing of the past.  So, this is the end of our series on naked Roman emperors.