TWELVE CAESARS

The renowned classicist and bestselling author of SPQR (2015) considers Rome’s first rulers as they have come down to us in marble, stone, coins, and metals.

During the time of the Roman Empire, artists churned out an avalanche of portraits of Rome’s emperors, a trend that continued after their deaths, beyond the fall of the empire, and during the centuries following up to the modern age. Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars, which later became one of “the most popular history books of the European Renaissance,” contains the only surviving physical descriptions. Many modern historians, however, consider his stories “the gossip of the palace corridors, or even outright fantasy, but…they have become inextricably part of our view of Roman emperors.” No statue from ancient times has a label; this is not the case with innumerable Roman coins minted during their reigns, but the tiny heads are little help. Beard points out that beginning in the Renaissance, rulers and wealthy patrons not only collected images of emperors and their consorts—or, more likely, a copy, fake, or image of someone else—but they also began portraying themselves as if they were Roman. A leading scholar as well as a writer of bestsellers, Beard, as always, asks important questions: What did the Caesars look like? Did the artists themselves care? Why did European plutocrats, aristocrats, and monarchs like to see themselves in togas? She leads us through the best available evidence (even if it’s not always satisfying) and delivers insightful answers in lucid prose accompanied by dazzling images. Along with a steady stream of commentary on portraits, sculptures, and prints, the author devotes long sections to artistic masterpieces, including tapestries, murals, enormous historical paintings, and Titian’s spectacular room of the Caesars (11 of them, not Suetonius’ 12), now lost.

A lively treatise on Roman art and power, deliciously opinionated and beautifully illustrated.