Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to The Modern by Mary Beard

Abstract

Reviewed by: Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to The Modern by Mary Beard Mikayla Barreiro Mary Beard, Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to The Modern ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 392 pp., 260 ills. Mary Beard's books have long graced the shelves of both professional and amateur historians; now, room must be made for her latest triumph. Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern takes readers on a delightful journey through artistic representations of Rome's emperors (and, occasionally, its empresses). Beard has curated an exhibit of imperial imagery across time and medium, with 260 vibrant images integrated across 286 pages of body text. She has also, somehow, meticulously researched every piece included, providing those interested with a thorough introduction to these works. Meanwhile, her tight prose clarifies important historical facts for nonacademic readers, without losing the overall flow. Beard has so perfectly balanced her two audiences that this book could be read at the beach, then cited in a dissertation. While Beard mainly leads readers through the enchanting—and sometimes strange—history of imperial art, she also includes a handful of key arguments. "This is a book both about emperors and about 'emperors' in quotation marks," because, as her work so frequently shows, the distinction is often insignificant (7). The book begins and ends with a Roman coffin, once on display in the National Mall, now relegated to the Smithsonian's basement. Historians have concluded that it never interred an emperor, but during the age of Andrew Jackson it was purported to have belonged to Alexander Severus. The true origins were irrelevant to what the object meant to the republican president: "a Sarcophagus made for an Emperor or King" (6). Similarly, Beard reminds readers that traits that modern scholars use to determine the accuracy of a representation were not necessarily important to historical viewers. An image that captures the personality of an emperor does not need to capture the physical appearance of a historical figure, who, in all likelihood, was scarred and misshapen by the mishaps of premodern life. Such ills of premodern life outline Beard's final and overarching argument: modern leaders depicting themselves in the guise of ancient emperors is neither inevitable nor inconsequential. The decisions made in modern artistic representations of imperial power are exactly that, decisions, and they are made for a variety of reasons and understood in a variety of ways. Beard briefly explores some of the motives and receptions of the pieces within her work, but any and all could be the subject of their own monograph. Chapter 2 digs into the topic at hand, providing a simple overview of the emperors to be discussed and their artistic representations in antiquity. Even specialists will learn something new as Beard contributes her own perspective to longstanding debates on whether certain pieces, such as the British Museum's bust of Caesar, should be classified as ancient or modern. Chapter 3 dives into the most common form of ancient representation, coinage, analyzing in particular the modern shift toward considering busts, and not coins, the "most authentic images of those faces of the Roman past" (98). Other overarching themes are present too. Beard contrasts Petrarch and Charles I of England's perceptions of the meaning of ancient coins, and discusses why in the early modern era "Roman emperors ceased to be portrayed as if they were modern rulers, and modern rulers started to be portrayed as if they were Roman emperors" (113). Memory, interpretation, and fact are all fluid in art, granting these imperial representations new and powerful meanings time and time again. [End Page 233] Chapters 4 and 5 delve into the titular "twelve emperors," presenting first their roots in Suetonius, and then deconstructing how the concept of "twelve emperors" was more important than there ever actually being twelve—or at the very least the same twelve—such people. Images could shift and change until "the face of the Roman emperors was now … copies of copies" (182; Beard's italics). The actual historical people were insignificant compared to the idea of these people. Still, even the idea of these people was fluid...