Some Emperors, Roman Ones

When you look at me, you probably think, "Gee, Nate Creekmore is an incredibly attractive manly man.  I bet his New Year's Resolution has nothing to do with getting in shape or going to a gym.  Heck, if anything he should strive to be less amazing.  This guy probably has no New Year's Resolution."  So you might be surprised to learn that I do, in fact, have a New Year's Resolution.

My New Year's Resolution is to finish at least a few of the many projects I started during the course of 2013.

Take, for example, my Emperors of Rome project.

I enjoy reading about the history of Ancient Rome and I had it in mind to draw the likenesses of all 72 Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Romulus Augustulus.  They were going to be caricatured head shots, tightly rendered and fully colored.  I started doing preparatory sketches (loose ink line work with ink washes), realized how much time it would take to finish the endeavor, and then banished the whole thing to the corner of my drawing table where it has been sitting ever since (although I lost a number of the sketches when my apartment flooded).

Would you care to see a few of them..?

Here's Julius Caesar.  He caused a ruckus by crossing the Rubicon River (leaving Gaul and invading Italy) with his army in 50BC.  After getting rid of all the major Republicans (folks who wanted the Roman Empire to continue as a Republic under the Senate and resented the idea of an autocracy) like Pompey and Cato, Caesar became the dictator he always wanted to be, which he enjoyed for a few brief years until he was stabbed to death by a bunch of senators (44BC).

Augustus came next but it took a while for him to get to the top.  He was Caesar's adopted heir but Mark Antony was Caesar's protege and happened to be the consul (head of the Roman state) at the time of Caesar's assassination.  They co-existed for a while and destroyed Cassius and Brutus (the leaders of the assassination plot) and Cicero (an orator and statesman who'd offended Antony).  Ultimately, the two men found themselves in direct competition and August came out on top.  He ran the show from about 30BC until his death in AD14 (If you're interested in all of this but don't actually want to read any books, the HBO show Rome offers an interesting take on The Fall of the Republic).

Tiberius, the adopted son of Augustus, came to power next and lasted from AD14 until his death in AD37.  He is mostly remembered as an aloof emperor who let the commander of his Praetorian Guard (Sejanus) run Rome while Tiberius himself hung out at his villa on Capri doing... inappropriate things.  He wasn't a popular ruler, but he was mostly able to keep the empire out of costly military ventures and, in general, things were stable.

Caligula, along with Nero and Elagabalus, is considered to be one of the most debauched Roman emperors.  The people were excited when he first became emperor because they'd liked his father (Germanicus, nephew of Tiberius), but they quickly ran out of patience with his eccentricity.  He had a little less than 3 years to act like some kind of hedonistic monster and then he was killed by a tribune from his own Praetorian Guard.  Caligula was emperor from around March of AD37 until January of AD41.  Oh, and his real name was  Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. Caligula is actually a nickname that means "little boots".  When he was a child, he spent time at his father's military camps (Germanicus was a general) and wore a little soldiers outfit, complete with a little pair of boots.

Claudius, Caligula's uncle, was persuaded *cough* by the Praetorian Guard to be the next emperor.  People regarded him as kind of a clown but he ended up being a pretty good Caesar.  He ruled from AD41 until AD54.  Robert Graves wrote a couple of very good books (fictional, but based closely on the writings of ancient historians like Suetonius and Plutarch) about his life.  And if you don't like to read, they made one of the books (I, Claudius) into a BBC television series.  Captain Jean-Luc Picard played Sejanus.

Nero was the last Julio-Claudian emperor.  You've probably already heard about him and his antics.  He began his rule in AD54 (he was the adopted son of Claudius) and ended his rule in AD68 by stabbing himself to death.  They say his last words were something like, "What a great artist the world is losing in me."  I've never seen any of his work so I can't tell you if he was any good or not.

The year following Nero's death is know as The Year of Four Caesars and that's when....

Hmmm...  I can see some of you are starting to fall asleep.  I'm a nerd for this Roman history stuff, but I'll cut things short here and save the rest for another time.  Go get some coffee, wake yourselves up, and I'll see all of you again next Monday morning with a blog post that has nothing to do with post-Republican Rome.

Cheers.