differing shape and character. In an empire as vast as Rome’s, re-
gional differences are to be expected. As will be discussed later, geog-
raphy also played a major role in the Middle Ages, when Western
and Eastern Christian art differed sharply.Late Empire
By the time of Marcus Aurelius, two centuries after Augustus estab-
lished the Pax Romana, Roman power was beginning to erode. It was
increasingly difficult to keep order on the frontiers, and even within
the Empire the authority of Rome was being challenged. Marcus’s
son Commodus (r. 180–192 CE), who succeeded his father, was assas-
sinated, bringing the Antonine dynasty to an end. The economy was
in decline, and the efficient imperial bureaucracy was disintegrating.
Even the official state religion was losing ground to Eastern cults,
Christianity among them, which were beginning to gain large num-
bers of converts. The Late Empire was a pivotal era in world history
during which the pagan ancient world was gradually transformed
into the Christian Middle Ages.The Severans
Civil conflict followed Commodus’s death. When it ended, an African-
born general named Septimius Severus (r. 193–211 CE) was master
of the Roman world. He succeeded in establishing a new dynasty
that ruled the Empire for nearly a half century.
SEVERAN PORTRAITURE Anxious to establish his legiti-
macy after the civil war, Septimius Severus adopted himself into the
Antonine dynasty, declaring that he was Marcus Aurelius’s son. It is not
surprising, then, that official portraits of the emperor in bronze and
marble depict him with the long hair and beard of his Antonine
“father”—whatever Severus’s true appearance may have been. That is
also how he appears in the only preserved painted portrait of an em-peror. The portrait (FIG. 10-63), discovered in Egypt and painted in
tempera (pigments in egg yolk) on wood (as were many of the mummy
portraits from Faiyum), shows Severus with his wife Julia Domna, the
daughter of a Syrian priest, and their two sons, Caracalla and Geta.
Painted imperial likenesses must have been quite common all over the
empire, but their perishable nature explains their almost total loss.
The Severan family portrait is of special interest for two reasons
beyond its survival. Severus’s hair is tinged with gray, suggesting that
his marble portraits—which, like all marble sculptures in antiquity,
were painted—also may have revealed his advancing age in this way.
(The same was very likely true of the marble likenesses of the elderly
Marcus Aurelius.) The group portrait is also notable because the face
of the emperor’s younger son, Geta, was erased. When Caracalla
(r. 211–217 CE) succeeded his father as emperor, he had his brother
murdered and the Senate damn his memory. (Caracalla also ordered
the death of his wife Plautilla.) The painted tondo (circular format,
or roundel) portrait from Egypt is an eloquent testimony to that
damnatio memoriaeand to the long arm of Roman authority. This
kind of defacement of a political rival’s portrait is not new. Thut-
mose III of Egypt, for example, destroyed Hatshepsut’s portraits
(FIG. 3-21) after her death. But the Roman government employed
damnatio memoriae as a political tool more often and more system-
atically than did any other civilization.
CARACALLA In the Severan painted tondo, Caracalla is por-
trayed as a boy with curly Antonine hair. The portraits of Caracalla as
emperor are very different. In the head illustrated here (FIG. 10-64),
the sculptor brilliantly suggested the texture of the emperor’s short
hair and close-cropped beard through deft handling of the chisel and10-63Painted portrait of Septimius Severus and his family, from
Egypt, ca. 200 ce.Tempera on wood, 1 2 diameter. Staatliche Museen,
Berlin.
The only known painted portrait of an emperor shows Septimius
Severus with gray hair. With him are his wife Julia Domna and their
two sons, but Geta’s head was removed after his damnatio memoriae.10-64Portrait of Caracalla, ca. 211–217 ce.Marble, 1 2 high.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Caracalla’s suspicious personality is brilliantly captured in this portrait.
The emperor’s brow is knotted, and he abruptly turns his head over his
left shoulder, as if he suspects danger from behind.276 Chapter 10 THE ROMAN EMPIRE1 in.1 in.