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.

Roman Emperors - Part 6

Elagabalus

Did you know there was a transgender Roman emperor?  Meet Elagabalus.

In 217 AD, the tyrannical emperor Caracalla was assassinated.  Caracalla's scheming aunt, Julia Maesa, convinced the soldiers of the Third Legion, who were loyal to Caracalla, that her grandson, Elagabalus, was Caracalla's illegitimate child (he wasn't).  They defeated and deposed Caracalla's short-lived successor, and in 218 AD, Elagabalus was declared emperor.  He was 14 years old.

His reign was noted for sex scandals and religious controversy, resulting in a reputation as one of the worst emperors, but some modern historians consider him not evil but just incompetent.  At age 14, he was too immature to be given absolute power over the Roman world.

I like to think that the bust above, now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, is a good likeness.  It's from c. 221 AD, when he was 17 years old, and it shows a youth just starting to grow his first mustache.

No complete statues of Elagabalus have survived (you'll see why later).  The statue above is said to have once been a statue of Elagabalus, but the head had been replaced by that of the next emperor.  I photoshopped the head of Elagabalus onto the statue to show how it might have looked originally.

So, what was so bad about Elagabalus?  He outraged religious Romans by replacing the head god Jupiter with a Syrian god Elagabal.  The god's name then became attached to the young emperor, whose original name was Varius Avitus Bassianus.  He married a Vestal Virgin (a priestess of the goddess Vesta), which was sacrilege; tradition held that a non-virginal Vestal Virgin should be buried alive.

The contemporary historian Cassius Dio (a juicy source, though probably not reliable) refers to Elagabalus as "she" and says that she married a man, a chariot driver named Hierocles, calling herself Hierocles' queen, and offering huge sums to any physician who could provide her with a vagina.  Of course, transgender surgery didn't exist in those days.  Another contemporary source, the Historia Augusta, says that Elagabalus appointed officials based on the size of their penis.  Must have been an interesting civil service exam!  We don't know if these accounts are true or not, but it's possible that Elagabalus was the first (and only) transgender emperor.

It didn't last long.  In 222 AD, at the age of 18, Elagabalus was assassinated, and the Roman Senate ordered all images and records of him (or her) to be destroyed.

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.

Roman Emperors - Part 4

 Hadrian and Roman Gay Sex

Hadrian was emperor from 117 to 138 AD.  He is viewed as one of the good emperors.  He is probably best known as the builder of Hadrian's Wall at the northern edge of the Roman province of  Britannia (Britain).  Hadrian also consolidated the empire, abandoning Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), which he viewed as nothing but trouble, a decision that today strikes us as wise.  Among his many building projects was the Pantheon in Rome, the best-preserved ancient Roman building, whose concrete dome was the largest dome in the world for 1700 years until it was surpassed by modern iron and steel structures.

This is Hadrian portrayed as Mars, the god of war.  Note that he has a beard.  Previously, all emperors were clean-shaven.  Apparently Hadrian set a new style, because all the emperors for the next hundred years had beards, too.

(Statue of Hadrian, 117-125 AD, Capitoline Museums, Rome)

We can't talk about Hadrian without his lover, Antinous, a youth from Bithynia, a Greek-speaking province in what is now Turkey.  The Romans and Greeks did not have the concept of gay and straight.  It was perfectly acceptable for a man to have a wife (as Hadrian did, though the marriage was childless and apparently loveless) and also take a youth as a lover.  More about this below.

(Antinous, 130-138 AD, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark)

Antinous was clearly the love of Hadrian's life.  When Antinous drowned in the Nile during a visit to Egypt, Hadrian was distraught and ordered that a temple be built to Antinous as a god.

(Antinous, 130-140 AD, Altes Museum,  Berlin.  The snake is symbolic, indicating that the statue is a protective spirit.)

Hundreds of statues and busts of Antinous have survived.  This one, dating from 130-138 AD, is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Cheshire, England.

Another view of that same statue.  I'm guessing that Hadrian liked this view of Antinous.

We close with a few words about Roman same-sex practices.  This is the Warren Cup, a Roman silver drinking cup from c. 10 AD.  It depicts a bearded man fucking a beardless youth while someone, perhaps a servant, spies on them from behind a door.  Is this porn?  If so, it's very high-class porn.  The British Museum bought the Warren Cup in 1999 for £1.8 million ($2.9 million).

As I mentioned before, the Romans didn't have our concept of gay and straight.  They didn't even have words for homosexual and heterosexual.  A Roman man was free to engage in what we would call gay sex without reproach as long as (1) he was the top and (2) the bottom was his social inferior.  For the Romans, it wasn't about gay versus straight.  It was about who dominated whom.

Roman Emperors - Part 3

 Titus to Trajan

Today is the Ides of March, when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC to prevent him from becoming Emperor.  We've already covered Caesar and his immediate successors in part 1 of this series.  Today we present some more nude Roman emperors.

Titus was the 10th emperor, the son of the emperor Vespatian.  Before becoming emperor, Titus won renown as a military commander in the Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans.  Titus besieged and captured Jerusalem in 70 AD and destroyed the Second Temple, the Jews' holiest site, which to this day has never been rebuilt.  We may think of this as a bad thing, but to the Romans, it was cause for celebration, and the Arch of Titus in Rome still stands, commemorating Titus' victory over the Jews.

Titus only ruled for two years before dying of a fever.  This statue of Titus, dating from 79-81 AD, is in the Vatican Museums.

Titus was succeeded by his brother Domitian.  His contemporaries portrayed him as a cruel tyrant, but some modern historians say that, although he was an autocrat, he nevertheless ruled Rome well for 15 years.

This statue depicts Domitian as a prince, before he became Emperor.  It dates from 70-80 AD and is in the Glyptothek museum in Munich, Germany.

Domitian was assassinated in 96 AD, succeeded by Nerva, who ruled for only a year, who in turn was succeeded by his son ...

Trajan (above).  Trajan had a long and successful rule.  Through military conquest, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, but he also implemented projects for extensive public building and social welfare for the poor, resulting in his reputation as one of the good emperors.

This statue of Trajan in the Altes Museum, Berlin, dates from the early second century.

Finally, we have this modern statue called Trajan and the She-Wolf in Bucharest, Romania, made by sculptor Vasile Gorduz in 2012.  It commemorates the Roman heritage of Romania, because Trajan added Dacia (now Romania) to the Roman empire.  To this day Romanians speak a language based on Latin, like Italian or Spanish, and the very name of their country proclaims that they are Roman.

The she-wolf is an emblem of Rome because of the legend that Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus, were suckled as infants by a she-wolf.  The statue drew immediate criticism and ridicule, partly because Trajan is nude (although, as we know, there's a fine old tradition of nude statues), partly because the wolf seems to be levitating, unsupported by Trajan's hands, and partly because of the strange snake-like thing coming out of the wolf's neck.  What can I say?  It's art, and it's not often that anyone celebrates a Roman emperor these days.

Roman Emperors - Part 2

 Nero to Vespatian

Nero, the 5th Roman emperor, reigned from 54 to 68 AD.  Considered one of the worst emperors, he is famous for having "fiddled while Rome burned."  Technically that can't be true (the violin was not invented yet), but Nero did sing and play the lyre, giving public concerts that were said to be so bad that some people feigned death to avoid attending them.

Contemporary writings about Nero were far from impartial, so it's hard to separate fact from fiction, but their accounts of his sex life were lurid.  In addition to marrying three wives (not simultaneously), Nero married two men: first the youth Porus, whom he castrated and treated as his wife, and later the freed slave Doryphorus, in which case Nero played the part of the bride.  Marriage between men was not legal, but as emperor, he could do whatever he pleased.

(Statue of Nero in the Aphrodisias Museum in Turkey)

After the fire that destroyed Rome, Nero built a huge palace with a 100-foot-tall bronze statue of himself called the Colossus of Nero.  The statue is long gone, but this is a tiny picture of it carved into an amethyst gem.

A later emperor moved the statue, using 24 elephants, next to what we call the Colosseum, which is named after the Colossus statue.  This is an artist's conception of what it looked like.  The thing he's holding is supposed to be a rudder, not an umbrella.  The statue was altered to represent the Roman sun god Sol Invictus, hence the rays coming out of its head.  Does that remind you of the Statue of Liberty?  It should.  Both statues were modeled after the even more ancient Colossus of Rhodes, a representation of the Greek sun god Helios and one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

After Nero's death, men vied for power, resulting in the Year of the Four Emperors in 69 AD.  This is the 7th emperor, Otho, who reigned for 3 months before committing suicide after losing a battle to the 8th emperor, who reigned for 8 months before being murdered by ...

(Statue of Otho, Louvre museum)

Vespatian, the 9th emperor and final winner.  Sculptors generally tried to make the heads of these statues a realistic likeness, but the bodies were an idealized muscular form, as is obvious in this statue, where the head and the body clearly don't go together.

(Statue of Vespatian, Baia Archaeological Museum, Italy)

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.