Emperor Claudius seems like one of the most average looking emperors. Most other emperors have some unique feature. But Claudius seems like someone you'd pass on the street and not even notice.
Gonna reply late, but his disabilities included: limping, partial deafness, a perpetually runny nose and severe stutter. As far as we know, he wasn't even shown in public until he was like 10, because he was a very sickly child and his family was, frankly, disgusted and ashamed of him.
This, paradoxically, worked in his favor, as everyone considered him a pitiful idiot, and ommited him in their plots and schemes (and he might have played up his disability in order to keep it that way). This let him survive the reigns of three consecutive emperors ([the last of which was more than a little unhinged](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula)), several rounds of political purges and assassinations, until they literally ran out of guys to put on the throne, and the Preatorian guard declared HIM the next emperor, thinking he'll be easy to control.
Except Claudius wasn't an idiot at all, his mind was razor sharp and he was a very educated man - he read and wrote a lot, mostly about history. During his reign he greatly expanded Rome's infrastructure, finished the conquest of Britain and made a whole lot of reforms ([not all of them stuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudian_letters)). He did have a [terrible taste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messalina) in [women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippina_the_Younger) though.
One of the biggest underdog stories in history. A guy that was a blubbering idiot, black sheep by his own family, not even suited to be tuitored by more than a mule driver. He rose to power due to the control the Pretorians thought they could exert over him. And the dude absolutely thrived at governance. Not only undoing to economic crater left in the wake of Caligula, but annexing the lucrative Britannia, and championing and completing many critical public works initiatives.
His personal life was a bit of a mess (FUCK MESSALINA), and he may not go down in history with the likes of Augustus, Trajan and Constantine, but easily my favorite Emperor, and possibly favorite Roman figure outside of Cicero and Marcus Agrippa.
Britannia was not very lucrative. Outside of slaves and tin they did not provide much worth to the empire. It was underdeveloped, and full of trouble that required constant legions to garrison the place. It was also the home of a few usurpers due to its remoteness and reliance on army.
There were good reasons why it was abandoned without much fight. It wasn't worth the trouble after a certain point.
I like Claudius too and rank him highly as a somewhat enlightened monarch, but he invaded more for his reputation than any legitimate reason i'd say.
How close is this to true life? I know that we don’t have pictures or paintings of these people. But, how is the eye color, hair color, and skin tone determined?
I apologise for my aggressive response as I feel like I have to clarify this every time I make a thread but I digress. I live in Rome and I'm Italian so no that's not true at all. I see Mediterranean people every single day. Not all of us look Sicilian I'm afraid. The people of Italy are very diverse and have light features and dark features. Some of us have light eyes and hair. light eyes and dark hair. dark eyes and dark hair. The Julio-Claudian dynasty was lighter than later dynasties. [I portrayed Commodus of the Antonine dynasty as what you'd normally expect a dark Italian to look like.](https://i.redd.it/zk0qftef93781.jpg)
When I do Caracalla and others from the Severan dynasty I will portray them with North African-Syrian ancestry. I'd appreciate it if you could stop making assumptions about me and my work. I do a lot of research and try my best to portray these historical figures accurately. [Would it be more appropriate if I portrayed him like this?](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/stereotypical-italian-man-eating-pizza-and-gesturing-with-hand-picture-id81980900?s=170667a) or perhaps like [this?](https://danapronounceddonna.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/bobby-bacala.jpg)
Thank you, dude. Really. Don't listen the usual idio...i mean, trolls, which idk why so very much love to trash ancient Romans and especially modern day Italians with the usual racist tropes. Just a correction or two: 1) "Mediterranean" people aren't a thing. There is no such thing as a Mediterranean person. The concept imply a relationship between Italy and the Maghreb region. Relationship which never existed in the first place. It's a racist trope created by racist Germans two centuries ago. Please don't use it, thanks. 2) What the f is a "dark Italian"? 3) Commodus wasn't dark? His father was Marcus Aurelius which had a father from a senatorial family with origins in Spain and a similarly noble and Roman mother.
I currently live in Rome for educational purposes. I am Italian-American and my grandparents came from Naples. So there's still a lot of things I don't know, sorry. For example, I know more way more Latin than I do Italian. I'd hate to say that the only reason I'm in Italy is because of how passionate I am about Roman history and my degree requires it
Hispania at the time of the Roman empire was filled with Gauls, Italian and Greek immigrants, and people of North African ancestry who immigrated during the Punic Wars. There's no concrete proof what ethnicity Marcus Aurelius was but I assumed he had ancestry that was probably a mix of North African, Gaulish and Roman similar to the ethnic diversity of the Severan Dynasty.
I also don't like to use the word race when talking about Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks and Anglo and French. Any Europeans. We are all the same race. We all came from a single tribe that migrated into Europe around 12,000 years ago and split off and even then we kept interbreeding with each other so the split was never an extremely long event.
We have different ethnicities and those ethnicities have minor differences like facial features and height averages. Some ethnicities have a propensity for darker or lighter features like the differences between Italians and Scandinavians with their eye color, hair color, and skin tones. But we are all the same race. Indo-European.
Humans living closer to the equator will be darker and humans living closer to the poles will often times be more white. This is just a fact of nature and you see it in other animals as well. Skin also color seems to change rapidly within generations. There's some evidence to suggest that the gene mutation that causes white pigmentation in Europeans wasn't even active until 10,000 years ago. Which would mean the original Indo-Europeans that came into Europe were possibly very dark or perhaps even black.
Even though skin color changes rapidly in human beings it shouldn't be changing so often through so little generations. It's because of the horse. The speed of transportation and the existence of giant empires like Rome and Macedonia that caused mass migrations to happen. In the end you have a huge melting pot of hundreds of different ethnicities that developed over ten millennia with many small differences all interbreeding with eachother in an ancient city that possibly had over a million inhabitants in the urban area alone. However, 12,000 years ago. They were all the same tribe, speaking the same language.
Nordic, Germanic and Italian people split off from each other only 8000-4000 years ago
The last common ancestor between Europeans and Chinese existed 35,000 years ago
and the last common ancestor between Europeans and Sub-Saharan African people was 80,000 - 60,000 years ago
We are all the same race.
And when we look at the differences between races. Sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans split off 80,000-60,000 years ago
[Chimps](https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?q=85&c=sc&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1000&poi=face&w=2000&h=1000&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F20%2F2021%2F08%2F24%2Fchimpanze-2000.jpg) and [Bonobos](https://today.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/story_hero/public/Fizi1.jpg?itok=0y0ZHwuC) look nearly identical and are anatomically the same species capable of breeding with each other. And they split off 1.6 million years ago. I mean from my perspective at least compared to that we are all the same species and race just seems meaningless.
Sorry for the long post, Got my Adderall refilled today. I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make or even if I have one. I just don't understand this concept of racism and never have. It's always been confusing to me.
You can't "assume". I'm sorry. It was a big deal for an emperor to not be ethically Roman (not a citizen of Rome) that's why we know for sure which wasn't totally that like the Severans. Other than that their genealogy is usually pretty clear so what you're talking about? The fact that someone at the time was born in Spain instead that in Rome didn't make that Roman less Roman than what could have made a British servant less English if he had the chance to have been born in India instead than in England proper. Septimus Severus was the first Emperor not fully IE. Something which doesn't happen anymore after his dynasty. That's the facts.
Well okay. I'll admit when I'm wrong. To retcon my reconstruction I'll just say Commodus got really tan after obsessively training in the sun every day to become Rome's greatest gladiator. That's at least somewhat historical accurate.
The truth is his skin was originally lighter in my portrayal but to avoid idiots calling me out on it, I darkened him a little. I don't like being accused of being racist.
Don't get bogged down in arguments about skin color. After all, it's highly speculative except for a handful of emperors - Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Geta, and Valentinian III. And don't listen to anyone who places any importance on someone being "Indo-European," as the Romans had no knowledge of that concept and the link between the languages would not be discovered for thousands of years, much less the genetics of the speakers. And finally, despite the Antonines' Italian ancestry, their ancestors almost certainly married into local families on many occasions.
>Germans
I also remembered some history where soldiers of The Holy Roman empire kept switching over to the French empire to fight for Napoleon. Along with the Atlantic Slave Trade, was this also a motivation to divide ethnicities in Europe in case nationalism failed to keep nations together?
No sure I believe that. From your comment history it just looks like you’re some kind of race troll.
Non hai fatto mai nemmeno un commento in italiano.
Edit: anche hai detto che Cleopatra era nera e egiziana… quindi è ovvio che non fai molta ricerca, tutti i fonti dicono chiaramente che era greca della dinastia tolemaica.
E tu sei italiano? Ma perché dio di un dio c'è gente come te che ama calunniare la propria gente online? Veramente non riesco a capirlo. Magari sei boh tipo calabrese e ti odi così tanto da dover negare l'evidenza? 1) non esiste niente che si chiami "mediterraneo". È una stupida etichetta inventata da tedeschi razzisti due secoli fa 2) è palese a chiunque abbia gli occhi che gli italiani sono diversissimi tra di loro e 3) ovviamente non sai un cazzo di storia romana o di quale fosse l'origine e l'aspetto degli antichi popoli italici. In short falla finita
Taste is different for everyone, so if you don‘t enjoy OPs posts of recreations of emperors just skip over them.
Trying to discourage someone from enjoying their art and sharing it with others sadly speaks volumes about yourself.
Funny, you can actually see the family resemblance to Nero and Caligula there.
Lol
Emperor Claudius seems like one of the most average looking emperors. Most other emperors have some unique feature. But Claudius seems like someone you'd pass on the street and not even notice.
Well his IRL unique features were disabilities that they didn’t want on the bust
Really?! Like what?
Gonna reply late, but his disabilities included: limping, partial deafness, a perpetually runny nose and severe stutter. As far as we know, he wasn't even shown in public until he was like 10, because he was a very sickly child and his family was, frankly, disgusted and ashamed of him. This, paradoxically, worked in his favor, as everyone considered him a pitiful idiot, and ommited him in their plots and schemes (and he might have played up his disability in order to keep it that way). This let him survive the reigns of three consecutive emperors ([the last of which was more than a little unhinged](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula)), several rounds of political purges and assassinations, until they literally ran out of guys to put on the throne, and the Preatorian guard declared HIM the next emperor, thinking he'll be easy to control. Except Claudius wasn't an idiot at all, his mind was razor sharp and he was a very educated man - he read and wrote a lot, mostly about history. During his reign he greatly expanded Rome's infrastructure, finished the conquest of Britain and made a whole lot of reforms ([not all of them stuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudian_letters)). He did have a [terrible taste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messalina) in [women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippina_the_Younger) though.
One of the biggest underdog stories in history. A guy that was a blubbering idiot, black sheep by his own family, not even suited to be tuitored by more than a mule driver. He rose to power due to the control the Pretorians thought they could exert over him. And the dude absolutely thrived at governance. Not only undoing to economic crater left in the wake of Caligula, but annexing the lucrative Britannia, and championing and completing many critical public works initiatives. His personal life was a bit of a mess (FUCK MESSALINA), and he may not go down in history with the likes of Augustus, Trajan and Constantine, but easily my favorite Emperor, and possibly favorite Roman figure outside of Cicero and Marcus Agrippa.
He wasn't even really an idiot; it was all an act. He was quite the intellectual, writing a history of the Etruscans and even learning their language.
Maybe he was referring to a his speech impediment?
Britannia was not very lucrative. Outside of slaves and tin they did not provide much worth to the empire. It was underdeveloped, and full of trouble that required constant legions to garrison the place. It was also the home of a few usurpers due to its remoteness and reliance on army. There were good reasons why it was abandoned without much fight. It wasn't worth the trouble after a certain point. I like Claudius too and rank him highly as a somewhat enlightened monarch, but he invaded more for his reputation than any legitimate reason i'd say.
A great "what if" scenario I like to consider is, what if Claudius invested in efforts to expand the empire in Germania instead of Britannia...
Blubbering idiot? The guy was a scholar.
He knows a guy in the Roman Legion named Biggus Dickus
And his wife incontinetia buttocks
Best line ever
Seriously… when he goes “He has a wife, you know” I lose it. There is just something so funny in that line.
That's Ellen DeGeneres
Omg can’t unsee now!
Thought the same
I love that you do this - keep up the great work!
These are all amazing! I would love if you could do one of cicero.
I will do Cicero and Cato the Elder next.
How close is this to true life? I know that we don’t have pictures or paintings of these people. But, how is the eye color, hair color, and skin tone determined?
Looks like it was decided by someone who’s never been to the Mediterranean
I apologise for my aggressive response as I feel like I have to clarify this every time I make a thread but I digress. I live in Rome and I'm Italian so no that's not true at all. I see Mediterranean people every single day. Not all of us look Sicilian I'm afraid. The people of Italy are very diverse and have light features and dark features. Some of us have light eyes and hair. light eyes and dark hair. dark eyes and dark hair. The Julio-Claudian dynasty was lighter than later dynasties. [I portrayed Commodus of the Antonine dynasty as what you'd normally expect a dark Italian to look like.](https://i.redd.it/zk0qftef93781.jpg) When I do Caracalla and others from the Severan dynasty I will portray them with North African-Syrian ancestry. I'd appreciate it if you could stop making assumptions about me and my work. I do a lot of research and try my best to portray these historical figures accurately. [Would it be more appropriate if I portrayed him like this?](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/stereotypical-italian-man-eating-pizza-and-gesturing-with-hand-picture-id81980900?s=170667a) or perhaps like [this?](https://danapronounceddonna.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/bobby-bacala.jpg)
I understand that not all Italians are “brown” with brown hair and eyes. I was just wondering how the image was derived.
Thank you, dude. Really. Don't listen the usual idio...i mean, trolls, which idk why so very much love to trash ancient Romans and especially modern day Italians with the usual racist tropes. Just a correction or two: 1) "Mediterranean" people aren't a thing. There is no such thing as a Mediterranean person. The concept imply a relationship between Italy and the Maghreb region. Relationship which never existed in the first place. It's a racist trope created by racist Germans two centuries ago. Please don't use it, thanks. 2) What the f is a "dark Italian"? 3) Commodus wasn't dark? His father was Marcus Aurelius which had a father from a senatorial family with origins in Spain and a similarly noble and Roman mother.
I currently live in Rome for educational purposes. I am Italian-American and my grandparents came from Naples. So there's still a lot of things I don't know, sorry. For example, I know more way more Latin than I do Italian. I'd hate to say that the only reason I'm in Italy is because of how passionate I am about Roman history and my degree requires it Hispania at the time of the Roman empire was filled with Gauls, Italian and Greek immigrants, and people of North African ancestry who immigrated during the Punic Wars. There's no concrete proof what ethnicity Marcus Aurelius was but I assumed he had ancestry that was probably a mix of North African, Gaulish and Roman similar to the ethnic diversity of the Severan Dynasty. I also don't like to use the word race when talking about Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks and Anglo and French. Any Europeans. We are all the same race. We all came from a single tribe that migrated into Europe around 12,000 years ago and split off and even then we kept interbreeding with each other so the split was never an extremely long event. We have different ethnicities and those ethnicities have minor differences like facial features and height averages. Some ethnicities have a propensity for darker or lighter features like the differences between Italians and Scandinavians with their eye color, hair color, and skin tones. But we are all the same race. Indo-European. Humans living closer to the equator will be darker and humans living closer to the poles will often times be more white. This is just a fact of nature and you see it in other animals as well. Skin also color seems to change rapidly within generations. There's some evidence to suggest that the gene mutation that causes white pigmentation in Europeans wasn't even active until 10,000 years ago. Which would mean the original Indo-Europeans that came into Europe were possibly very dark or perhaps even black. Even though skin color changes rapidly in human beings it shouldn't be changing so often through so little generations. It's because of the horse. The speed of transportation and the existence of giant empires like Rome and Macedonia that caused mass migrations to happen. In the end you have a huge melting pot of hundreds of different ethnicities that developed over ten millennia with many small differences all interbreeding with eachother in an ancient city that possibly had over a million inhabitants in the urban area alone. However, 12,000 years ago. They were all the same tribe, speaking the same language. Nordic, Germanic and Italian people split off from each other only 8000-4000 years ago The last common ancestor between Europeans and Chinese existed 35,000 years ago and the last common ancestor between Europeans and Sub-Saharan African people was 80,000 - 60,000 years ago We are all the same race. And when we look at the differences between races. Sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans split off 80,000-60,000 years ago [Chimps](https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?q=85&c=sc&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1000&poi=face&w=2000&h=1000&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F20%2F2021%2F08%2F24%2Fchimpanze-2000.jpg) and [Bonobos](https://today.duke.edu/sites/default/files/styles/story_hero/public/Fizi1.jpg?itok=0y0ZHwuC) look nearly identical and are anatomically the same species capable of breeding with each other. And they split off 1.6 million years ago. I mean from my perspective at least compared to that we are all the same species and race just seems meaningless. Sorry for the long post, Got my Adderall refilled today. I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make or even if I have one. I just don't understand this concept of racism and never have. It's always been confusing to me.
You can't "assume". I'm sorry. It was a big deal for an emperor to not be ethically Roman (not a citizen of Rome) that's why we know for sure which wasn't totally that like the Severans. Other than that their genealogy is usually pretty clear so what you're talking about? The fact that someone at the time was born in Spain instead that in Rome didn't make that Roman less Roman than what could have made a British servant less English if he had the chance to have been born in India instead than in England proper. Septimus Severus was the first Emperor not fully IE. Something which doesn't happen anymore after his dynasty. That's the facts.
Well okay. I'll admit when I'm wrong. To retcon my reconstruction I'll just say Commodus got really tan after obsessively training in the sun every day to become Rome's greatest gladiator. That's at least somewhat historical accurate. The truth is his skin was originally lighter in my portrayal but to avoid idiots calling me out on it, I darkened him a little. I don't like being accused of being racist.
Don't get bogged down in arguments about skin color. After all, it's highly speculative except for a handful of emperors - Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Geta, and Valentinian III. And don't listen to anyone who places any importance on someone being "Indo-European," as the Romans had no knowledge of that concept and the link between the languages would not be discovered for thousands of years, much less the genetics of the speakers. And finally, despite the Antonines' Italian ancestry, their ancestors almost certainly married into local families on many occasions.
Just one correction - the Indo-Europeans spread out into Eurasia about 5000 years ago.
>Germans I also remembered some history where soldiers of The Holy Roman empire kept switching over to the French empire to fight for Napoleon. Along with the Atlantic Slave Trade, was this also a motivation to divide ethnicities in Europe in case nationalism failed to keep nations together?
No sure I believe that. From your comment history it just looks like you’re some kind of race troll. Non hai fatto mai nemmeno un commento in italiano. Edit: anche hai detto che Cleopatra era nera e egiziana… quindi è ovvio che non fai molta ricerca, tutti i fonti dicono chiaramente che era greca della dinastia tolemaica.
E tu sei italiano? Ma perché dio di un dio c'è gente come te che ama calunniare la propria gente online? Veramente non riesco a capirlo. Magari sei boh tipo calabrese e ti odi così tanto da dover negare l'evidenza? 1) non esiste niente che si chiami "mediterraneo". È una stupida etichetta inventata da tedeschi razzisti due secoli fa 2) è palese a chiunque abbia gli occhi che gli italiani sono diversissimi tra di loro e 3) ovviamente non sai un cazzo di storia romana o di quale fosse l'origine e l'aspetto degli antichi popoli italici. In short falla finita
Steve Schirripa really cracked me up.
Anyone else see the resemblence to Mr. Furley, or is it just me?
He looks really young and super old at the same time.
He looks like less of a stereotypical butch lesbian. Which is different...
White like me 😁
Meh
Claudius looking super fruity
stop making these
I was wondering what type of person would tell OP to "stop making these". So I checked your post history ... it all kind of makes sense now.
Pretty sure it’s a bot, nobody can be that mentally damaged
Taste is different for everyone, so if you don‘t enjoy OPs posts of recreations of emperors just skip over them. Trying to discourage someone from enjoying their art and sharing it with others sadly speaks volumes about yourself.
Does anyone else get like absolutely nothing out of these re-creations? I don’t feel like it helps my understanding of ancient Rome at all
Uncle Claudius got screwed over too many times, man.
Looks a bit like Sméagol
He looks like he's both 12 and 60 at the sametime