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The Antonines modeled their portraits after Hadrian, and emphasized (fictional) familial resemblances to him by having themselves portrayed as never-aging, bearded adults . Continued development in Roman portrait styles was spurred by the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180 A.D.) and his son Commodus (r. 177–192 A.D.), whose portraits feature new levels of psychological ...
- Saint Julian
Roberto Longhi. "Qualità e industria in Taddeo Gaddi, I."...
- Saint Julian
- Origins of Rome
- The Early Republic
- Military Expansion
- Internal Struggles in The Late Republic
- Julius Caesar’s Rise
- From Caesar to Augustus
- Age of The Roman Emperors
- Decline and Disintegration
- Roman Architecture
As legend has it, Rome was founded in 753 B.C.by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars, the god of war. Left to drown in a basket on the Tiber by a king of nearby Alba Longa and rescued by a she-wolf, the twins lived to defeat that king and found their own city on the river’s banks in 753 B.C. After killing his brother, Romulus became the first king...
The power of the monarch passed to two annually elected magistrates called consuls. They also served as commanders in chief of the army. The magistrates, though elected by the people, were drawn largely from the Senate, which was dominated by the patricians, or the descendants of the original senators from the time of Romulus. Politics in the early...
During the early republic, the Roman state grew exponentially in both size and power. Though the Gauls sacked and burned Rome in 390 B.C., the Romans rebounded under the leadership of the military hero Camillus, eventually gaining control of the entire Italian peninsula by 264 B.C. Rome then fought a series of wars known as the Punic Warswith Carth...
Rome’s complex political institutions began to crumble under the weight of the growing empire, ushering in an era of internal turmoil and violence. The gap between rich and poor widened as wealthy landowners drove small farmers from public land, while access to government was increasingly limited to the more privileged classes. Attempts to address ...
When the victorious Pompey returned to Rome, he formed an uneasy alliance known as the First Triumvirate with the wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus (who suppressed a slave rebellion led by Spartacus in 71 B.C.) and another rising star in Roman politics: Gaius Julius Caesar. After earning military glory in Spain, Caesar returned to Rome to vie for the...
Less than a year later, Julius Caesar was murdered on the ides of March (March 15, 44 B.C.) by a group of his enemies (led by the republican nobles Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius). Consul Mark Antony and Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted heir, Octavian, joined forces to crush Brutus and Cassius and divided power in Rome with ex-consul Lepid...
Augustus’ rule restored morale in Rome after a century of discord and corruption and ushered in the famous pax Romana–two full centuries of peace and prosperity. He instituted various social reforms, won numerous military victories and allowed Roman literature, art, architecture and religion to flourish. Augustus ruled for 56 years, supported by hi...
The decadence and incompetence of Commodus (180-192) brought the golden age of the Roman emperors to a disappointing end. His death at the hands of his own ministers sparked another period of civil war, from which Lucius Septimius Severus (193-211) emerged victorious. During the third century Rome suffered from a cycle of near-constant conflict. A ...
Roman architecture and engineering innovations have had a lasting impact on the modern world. Roman aqueducts, first developed in 312 B.C., enabled the rise of cities by transporting water to urban areas, improving public health and sanitation. Some Roman aqueducts transported water up to 60 miles from its source and the Fountain of Trevi in Rome s...
Abstract. Ancient Roman portrait statues and reliefs survive in enormous quantity. Nearly every region of the ancient empire produced such representations of individuals, in a variety of local idioms. The functions of these portraits ranged from the deeply personal to the broadly public, and they served goals as diverse as commemorating the ...
The birth of Rome. According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus, son of the Roman god of war, Mars. The myth states a threatened local King ordered Romulus, and his twin brother Remus, to be abandoned on the bank of the river Tiber. Although infants, the pair survived on the site that would become Rome, thanks to the kindness from ...
- Caligula - Caligula. In 1979’s Caligula, the title character is portrayed by the British actor Malcolm McDowell. Caligula is depicted as an insane, perverted, tyrannical monster.
- Commodus - Gladiator. Commodus had some big shoes to fill when he inherited the throne from his father Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD at the age of 18. Sadly, just as he was portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, Commodus wasn’t interested in ruling the empire with the same stoicism and level-headedness as his father.
- Julius Caesar - Various. Julius Caesar has been portrayed on film numerous times over the years. He first made an appearance in the 1917 film Julius Caesar and has been depicted many times since, most notably in 1963’s Cleopatra and 1964’s Carry On Cleo, where he was portrayed by Rex Harrison and Kenneth Williams respectively.
- Marcus Aurelius - Gladiator. Portrayed by Richard Harris in Gladiator as a world-weary old man who is eventually smothered to death by his son Commodus, Marcus Aurelius is regarded as one of Rome’s greatest emperors.
Apr 24, 2023 · First, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD devastated both Pompeii and Herculaneum, and then the great fire of Rome in 80AD, which destroyed much of the great city. The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, painting by John Martin. (Public domain) Titus died in 81 AD from a fever, making his rule a short one.
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Nov 23, 2022 · Expectations of how emperors ought to be described and portrayed continued to differ regionally, medially and between social groups, even when typically imperial modes of representation, with diadem, purple cloak and standardised facial features solidified. Very few typically imperial features, the diadem excepted, were unique to the emperor.
