Faces of the Roman Empire: From Augustus to Domitian (Image Gallery)

Image Gallery

by Arienne King
published on 17 November 2020

A series of facial reconstructions of early Roman emperors from the Julio-Claudian dynasty (27 BCE - 68 CE) to the Flavian dynasty (69-96 CE). From the peaceful reign of Augustus (27 BCE - 14 CE), Rome's first emperor, to the chaotic Year of the Five Emperors (69 CE), which culminated in the rise of the Flavian Dynasty, these were Rome's first emperors, and all helped to shape the Roman Empire for better or worse.

Part of "Appearance of the Principate", a larger series by Daniel Voshart, the photorealistic reconstructions in this collection are only best guesses at how their subjects may have appeared, based on literary and artistic evidence. Some artistic license has been taken to fill in certain details that can not be deduced from ancient sources. Made using Photoshop and Artbreeder, a neural net tool.

Augustus (Facial Reconstruction)

by Daniel Voshart
published on 22 October 2020

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Augustus (Facial Reconstruction) — View Full-Size Image

Augustus (r. 27 BCE - 14 CE; formerly known as Octavian) was Rome's first emperor, and his reign began the era of unprecedented peace known as the Pax Romana. Octavian was the adopted grand-nephew of Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE). Octavian rose to power as the unrivalled ruler of the Roman Empire after defeating his rival Mark Antony (83-30 BCE) in a civil war, and subsequently conquering Egypt. The Roman Senate gave him the title “Augustus” in 27 BCE, ushering in the beginning of the Roman Empire.

Pictured alongside the reconstruction are the busts and statuary used as references, including the Augustus of Prima Porta (top left), the Via Labicana Augustus (bottom left), and busts from the Pergamum Museum (top right), and the British Museum (bottom right).

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Images in this Gallery

Bibliography

Appearance of The Principate [Pt. II], accessed 18 Nov 2020.
Appearance of The Principate [Pt. I], accessed 18 Nov 2020.

License & Copyright

Original image by Daniel Voshart. Uploaded by Arienne King, published on 22 October 2020. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.