What did Roman emperors really look like?
Summary
Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins explore the gap between the idealized marble portraits of Roman emperors and the detailed, often unflattering descriptions found in Suetonius’ writings. They analyze how Augustus standardized imperial imagery to project youthful perfection, contrasting this with the realistic Republican tradition and later shifts like Hadrian’s beard. The discussion also examines the difficulty of identifying emperors through surviving art, including the debate over Septimius Severus’s ethnicity and the use of painted portraits. Ultimately, the episode questions whether we c…
Topics discussed
Introduction to Exploring the Odyssey and reading tips
Suetonius' physical description of Emperor Augustus
The question: Can we recognize emperors from statues?
Augustus' image strategy and the scale of his statues
Identifying Augustus through consistent facial features
The Prima Porta statue and its Egyptian pharaoh styling
How scholars identify Augustus portraits across the empire
Centralized control of Augustan imagery and idealization
Comparing Augustus' idealized look to Republican realism
The ideology of aging: Republican vs. Imperial portraits
Suetonius' descriptions of other emperors like Galba
Suetonius as an ideological tool: marking destiny
Deconstructing the reliability of imperial images
Successors imitating Augustus' look and body types
Interchangeable bodies and heads in imperial statues
Evidence of individuality in Nero and Otho's portraits
Portraits of Livia and the concept of 'bad' portraits
Hadrian's beard as a dating aid for Roman statues
The shift to bearded emperors and philosophical ideals
Septimius Severus and the question of his ethnicity
Marble busts vs. painted portraits and damnatio memoriae
Analyzing the Fayum portrait of Septimius Severus
Conclusion: The function of imperial imagery for the public
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