Roman Caesars. They have been gone for centuries, and yet they are still among us. They come back in movies, novels, comic and political debates.

Letting alone Jesus and several saints nobody was portrayed or sculpted so often. Likenesses of ancient autocrats, worn away with age, inspired modern artists, thus hugely contributing to the full bloom of portrait painting.

Gallery of monsters

As a young man Julius Caesar cohabited with a king of Bithynia, Nicomedes. Octavian, being a toddler, disappeared form the cradle at night. He was found in the morning on top a high tower, admiring the sunrise. Tiberius had most of his relatives killed, and Caligula recognized himself god. Galba was a pathological miser, Claudius and Vitellius were gluttons whereas Domitian ordered all philosophers be expelled from Rome. And this is but the tip of the pyramid of facts, gossips and myths. Its main constructor was Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, the author of a collection of biographies of the first twelve emperors.

Out of this dozen only one emperor died of natural causes, the rest (if the historian is to be credited) died by one’s own or someone else’s hand. It is hard to regret them. Even Octavian, so eagerly appealing to traditional Roman virtues was actually a hypocrite who had blood of perfectly innocent people on his hands. And what to say about others. Nero might have not burned Rome but till the end of time he will remain a fool having committed matricide.

“The Twelve Caesars”, an ancient bestseller, lost the palm in the Middle Ages in favor of the Bible and “The Golden Legend” but in the small circle of those able to read they still enjoyed popularity – the number of preserved manuscripts testifies to it. Petrarca had as many as three copies. And to think that the Suetonian opus magnum survived only by miracle. Only one exemplar survived the time of turmoil which followed the fall of the Latin empire, in Tours, France. It lack the original prologue and the beginning of the first chapter. The invention of the print, and translations popularized the “The Twelve Caesars” to a tremendous degree, confirming by the way the rule that scandals always sell better than scientific books.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Today’s historians are not very keen on Suetonius. They consider him a “detailer” of narrow horizons who aped the Greeks as it was they who invented the literary genre called “lives of famous people”. They cannot get over the fact that only fragments of Tacit’s works, of whom they have a higher opinion, have been preserved.

Suetonius was no senator but he had influential friends. Hired in Hadrian’s chancellery for some time had access to the imperial archives. He then can be regarded as a well-informed man. And that he was superstitious, indifferent to chronology and sometimes couldn’t sort the wheat from the chaff and facts form rumors. That’s what his times were like. “The Twelve Caesars” are and will remain a fundamental source of information about events from before 20 centuries. They formed our notion about first Roman dynasties. We owe them lots of anecdotes, for instance about a die that “has been cast” or money that does not stink. Embarrassing legacy

As luck would have it Mary Beard’s book “Twelve Caesars” hit the bookstore counters along with the new (finally worth exhibiting in a home library) edition of Suetonius’s work. The author teaches classical philology at Cambridge, but whoever has had “Pompeii”, “SPQR” or “The Parthenon” in their hands knows that instead of a boring academic lecture on iconography, a journey to the land of erudition awaits them. Beard does analyze images of Roman autocrats, but, as she admits, the true content of her work is “a history of discovery, misidentification, hope, disappointment, controversy, interpretation and reinterpretation”.

The topic is a river, because portraits of Suetonius’ (anti)heroes were and still are ubiquitous, the memory of Julius Caesar is sustained by films about Asterix, the British drink “Augustus” beer, Nero appears in advertisements for matches and boxer shorts. Let us add that the tradition of presenting emperors as scoundrels who have been corrupted to the core by absolute power is relatively recent. The black legend was perpetuated in novels (“I, Claudius”) and movies (“Gladiator”, the BBC series “I, Claudius”). Historians skeptical of the revelations in “The Twelve Caesars” have long pointed out that even when terror reigned at the capital, the empire flourished. Octavian and his successors, seeing the inefficiency of the republic, reached for a political solution proven by the Hellenes in the form of a monarchy, in which power (as long as it is possible) remains in the family.

The policy of conquest and the consolidation of one-man rule greatly impressed modern European dynasties. Besides, posing as a Roman emperor added prestige. The Saxon rulers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth didn’t take the names of Augustus by accident. Henry VIII of England spent a fortune on huge tapestries illustrating Julius Caesar’s career. Louis XIV or Jan III Sobieski had themselves portrays in Roman armors. Napoleon even allowed to be sculpted naked as it befitted a ruler deified in his lifetime but horrified with the effect he forbade public display of the statue.

Even in the 19th century, the images of politicians, soldiers, poets and philosophers referred to ancient patterns. It is enough to mention the monument of Prince Józef Poniatowski before the presidential palace in Warsaw, immortalized in the pose and clothes of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

However, over time a problem arose. The autocrats of centuries ago became negative reference points. Leaders declaring attachment to republican and democratic values as well as pacifism found themselves in a real trouble. The Roman costume, instead of the rule of law, began to be associated with tyranny and imperialism. The prime ministers and presidents, who all too often had to struggle with being accused of caesarism and watching caricatures of the “new” Caligula or Nero in the newspapers, were not at all amused. The pseudo-antique mania of grandeur was finally discredited by the trinity of dictators. Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin had similar tastes: they liked imperial, scaled-up architecture and crude realism.

He was an emperor, now he’s nobody

Beard follows in the footsteps of Suetonius, so Julius Caesar, a self-made propaganda genius, also opens the gallery. He issued coins with his own likeness in bulk, he wanted his statue to stand in every temple of the empire. He achieved his goal, but posthumously. The name of the conqueror of the Gauls became synonymous with the ruler of Rome, and the portraits of his successors, reproduced in thousands of copies, could be found literally everywhere. They were created with the use of marble, gold, silver, bronze, wood, wax, paint and even dough (tins were discovered which allow to bake desserts in the shape of the ruler’s face). Of this mass production, about 1% has survived, enough to fill museums and private collections.

The most famous collection is in the Hall of the Emperors in the Capitoline Museums, which for two centuries was a must-see for tourists visiting the Eternal City. Equipped with a cheat sheet from Suetonius, as if hypnotized, they stared at 67 marble busts (in the beginning there were 84). No one knows how many modern hybrids and forgeries there are among them. It is known that already in antiquity they were often retouched and reworked due to the change of ruler. Misidentifications are a nightmare of archeology. Discoverers of ancient artifacts notoriously confused the emperors by not being able to read Latin inscriptions correctly. Even experts have trouble distinguishing the original from the Renaissance copy, because the tools and techniques of sculpture changed only in the eighteenth century, and the Italians were masters of counterfeits.

The Julio-Claudian dynasty causes the most trouble. Today’s Octavian Augustus may turn out to be Germanicus tomorrow and Caligula the day after tomorrow. The creator of the Principate system ruled for over 40 years, while his public image was always youthful, even pharaonic. August’s inhumanly calm face served as an avatar behind which the clever comedian was hiding (while dying, he asked for applause for a well-played role in the theater of life). No wonder that the successors wanted to be like him, even in the hairstyle.

The busts and heads of Caesars are usually unsigned, and comparisons with faces on coins can be misleading. As a result, the likenesses of emperors for centuries considered canonical, today raise so much doubt that they are labeled “unknown Roman”. The portrait of a ruler made from nature, which is the prototype of the statues found wherever a Roman legionnaire set foot, is the Holy Grail of Mediterranean archaeology. It’s quite possible that we already have it, but we can't recognize it.

Even more anonymous are the images of the principes’ mothers, wives and sisters. By the way, their influence on the policy of the empire is overestimated. It is significant that no Roman historian wrote a letter of empresses, and artists who wanted to create such a set (even for symmetry) had to rely on their own imagination. Of course, it would be a sin to ignore such expressive figures as the debauched Messalina or the sinister Agrippina the Younger, and they became the favorite heroines of painters and writers inspired by the work of Suetonius.

A chair with Caligula

In the 19th century, students of the Academy of Fine Arts were tortured, having to draw plaster casts of the heads of Caesars, especially Vitellius. In 1847, Parisian painters applying for a scholarship were given the theme of a lynching committed against the unfortunate ruler. Why this popularity? An antique bust of an obese man was found in Rome, matching Suetonius’ description so well that it was thought to be a portrait of Nero’s revelling companion, who reigned only a few months and left a bad memory. The head of the fat man fascinated artists (it can be seen, among others, in “The Last Supper” by Veronese) as well as amateurs of physiognomy and phrenology, pseudo-sciences drawing conclusions about character and intelligence from the shape of the skull, nose or ears. Today it is believed that the sculpture was created a hundred years after the death of Vitellius and has no connection with him.

Portraits of the characters from “The Twelve Caesars” in the modern era began to decorate the interiors of houses, first of influential and rich people, then of ordinary townspeople. Paintings and graphics were most often placed in dining rooms (did they improve appetite?). The countenances of the sole rulers were decorated with tableware, wallpaper and packaging of goods. Craftsmen, wanting to meet the growing demand, flooded the market with cheap, and thus shoddy heads and figurines. A 16th-century Saxon elector ordered a set of chairs with images of emperors. Beard wonders who he put in Caligula’s place. Three centuries later, an Italian ceramic company produced the faience busts that today are scattered around the world.

Alterations were sometimes made to the Suetonian dozen, adding female characters (usually Cleopatra) or replacing the wicked emperors with respectable rulers (such as Hadrian or Marcus Aurelius). The Church also played a part in promoting pagan autocrats. In the 15th century, in a Carthusian monastery near Pavia, half-meter medallions with the likenesses of emperors appeared on the façade, among which an unknown author included the king of the Huns, Attila. Aix-la-Chapelle Cathedral is in possession of a crucifix in which Octavian's cameo was inserted. In turn, the medieval goldsmith incorporated coins with the likeness of Nero into the chalice from Nitra. The figure of the first persecutor of Christians also decorates the door of the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome and the stained glass window of Poitiers Cathedral. In the latter case, a small blue devil sits on Nero’s back.

Sarcophagus for the president

The pattern for modern images of emperors was usually drawn from numismatics, found even in countries that had never known Roman rule. Medals and coins, usually passed by museum visitors indifferently, were once objects of desire for collectors such as Michelangelo. In the Middle Ages, they were used to decorate book bindings. Mary Beard’s book provides many graceful examples of the posthumous popularity of scoundrels who ruled the civilized world two thousand years ago. A chain with twelve portraits of emperors in lapis lazuli, set in gold and pearls, was recently recovered from the sunken Spanish ship of the Grand Armada. No mistake, it adorned the neck of a noble officer.

For those illustrating the work of Suetonius, the model was the imaginary group of 11 Caesars (without Domitian) created by the prince of painters, Titian. Its first owner was Federico Gonzaga from Mantua. This ambitious ruler, who inherited a collection of antique sculptures from his predecessors, dreamed of a chamber that would glorify Roman emperors and their relatives from ceiling to floor. The work was supervised by a student of Raphael. The Camerino dei Cesari was the object of admiration throughout Europe (the Duke of Bavaria had it copied in his own residence as quickly as possible), but less than a hundred years later the Gonzags got into such trouble that they had to sell Federico’s collection. Most were bought by the English king. Titian’s paintings went through London to Madrid, where they were lost in a fire. We know them only from more or less skillful copies, such as a series of engravings produced in mass editions by the Flemish engraver Aegidius Sadeler. In this version, they were accompanied by Latin poems, bluntly evaluating the characters and achievements of the divine Julius and his successors. An interesting thing, considering the fact that the graphics were commissioned by Emperor Ferdinand II Habsburg, who claims to be the heir to the tradition of Roman emperors.

The book opens with an anecdote about the alleged sarcophagus of Alexander Severus, bought in the 19th century in Lebanon by the commander of an American squadron in the Mediterranean Sea. Commander Elliot proposed to bury one of the distinguished compatriots, preferably the president of the USA, in it. The latter, of course, refused. Currently, the marble artifact sits in a warehouse in Maryland, accompanied by old cars and street signs. Sic transit gloria mundi. It is possible that the progressing loss of knowledge of Latin and classical education will make other relics of Roman civilization foreign and indifferent to us.

– Wiesław Chełminiak
– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists