ROMAN IMPERIAL PROFILES.*
To comprehend in one collection all, or almost all, the known portraits of Roman Emperors, Empresses, and other Imperial personages, from the fall of the Republic to the fall of the Western Empire, was an ingenious idea, and its realisation has resulted in a most interesting work. Mr. Lee has given us no less than a hundred and fifty-eight lithographs, carefully executed from coins and medals, which allow us to study and compare the likenesses of nearly every one of those famous men and women, the plagues and saviours of sopiety, who, under the most terrible process of natural selection which history records, succeeded in arriving at or around the throne of the world during the first four centuries of the Christian era. Sprung from every station and nearly every race of man- kind—consulars, legionaries, nobles, peasants, Italians, Spaniards, Illyrians, Dacians, Syrians, Africans, Arabs—exhibiting every variety and extreme of good and evil, lofty virtue and shameless vice, tyrants, philosophers, debauchees, gracious matrons, harlot- priestesses, the Augusti and Augustin of old Rome present a tableau of human nature in its grandest and vilest, most impose- ing and most astounding aspects, that never has been paralleled, and never can be paralleled. It is but natural to nourish the desire, and to a certain extent the hope of being able to trace in the linearnenb3 of such extraordinary personages some index or reflection of the frivolous or mighty minds, the unslaked passions, or generous emOtions, which once were the pride or the abhor- rence, the protection or the scourge, of the civilised universe. And to a certain extent, the Imperial profiles satisfy such expec- tations. Vigorous manhood, bold or subtle counsels, courage, intelligence, and indomitable will continually recur among the men ; while not less physical perfections, and not inferior, if more refined, powers of intellect are the frequent characteristics of their mates. At first sight, indeed, hasty observation might be tempted to discern a paradox in the conclusions which seem to be revealed by the comparison of sets of features, whose owners are usually distinguished by reputations far other than what might be gathered from their countenances. Whoever should try to found an explanation of the diverse lives and reigns of Titus, delight of mankind, and the savage and saturnine Domitian, upon any corresponding diversity of facial types, would, we apprehend, be sorely inclined to guess that, of two faces nearly identical, the cruel, hooked nose, broad jaw, and stern brow of the philan- thropist brother ought, if anything, to have belonged to the tyrant. Domitian, in fact, appears to have been but a Titus with a narrower forehead. Similarly, an indefinable expression of hardness and cynicism, whose precise seat it is difficult to seize, alone differentiates the clear-cut, handsome face of the de- testable Caracalla from Caracalla's image, his virtuous cousin, Alexander Severus, the protector of the sage Ulpian, and the reviver, till assassination cut him short, of the Antonin° reign of justice and humanity. Perhaps, however, the most remarkable rapprochement maybe obtained by the juxtaposition of the profiles of Tiberius, of odious memory, and of Constantine the Great. Of the two Beta of noble aquiline features, that of the sensual monster of Caprte,a, in Suetonius's account, is decidedly the less animal, if perhaps also the less strong. Perhaps, too, the testimony of countenances is in this case a trustworthy aid to historical justice. Tiberius was probably much less vile than that inveterate back- biter Suetonius paints him ; while, on the other hand; the rash murderer of Crispus and calculating executioner of the vanquished Licinius might have cut a very different figure in history, had he found no biographer save Julian the Apostate.
What is spoken of as the typically Cmsarian profile, namely, besides the massive forehead, the eagle nose, clenched, strong jaw, and prominent chin, is tolerably common among both the men and women who, although springing from a score of differ- ent bloods, reached the summits of the Roman world. Mark
• Roman Imperial Profiles: being a Series of Lithographic Profiles, enlarged from Coins. Arranged by John Edward Lee, F.S,A., P.O.E. London: Longmans, groan, and Co. 1874. Antony ; his wife, Octavia, Augustus's sister, divorced for love of Cleopatra ; Livia, Tiberius, Agrippa, the Agrippinas, Drusus, Germanicus, Nero, Popptea, Galba, 0 tho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Domitia, Nerve, Trajan, the Faustinas, and a large number of their successors, have faces of this kind. One of the finest specimens is Nero, who, indeed, looks half a high king of men, and half a splendid brute. On the other hand, both Cesar and Augustus seem on their medals to have ap- proached the Grecian type. The Dalmatian, Pannonian, and Illyrian peasant-emperors, who may be said to close the line of the Pagan princes, Diocletian, MaYimianus Hercules, &c., have larger heads than their more distinguished predecessors ; but though not without a look of decided power—notably Maxentius, whose death, at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, gave the West to Constantine—they present a marked declension from the Ire-, peral type. In Constantine, however, as has been observed, a bolder Tiberius seems to come to life again. It is curious to note, generally, that the second and third-class Emperors and Cmsars, and above all, the beaten pretenders and disinherited heirs-apparent, abound in irregular countenances. There is quite a crop of snub-nosed Prince Imperials who never came to anything. One of the most suggestive faces of the collection is that of Didius Julianus, the rich "city man," who bought the title of " Emperor " from the soldiers who murdered Pertinax. He quite looks the silly, pomp- ous, good-natured, credulous creature who imagined that he would be allowed to keep his bargain ; and a glance at his wife and daughter—for they, too, hastened to have themselves MI- mortalised on coinage—lets us know what were the domestic influences which urged him to spend his money on acquiring the lead of good society. Mrs. Didius—we beg her pardon, the Empress Manlia Scantilla—was as certainly at the bottom of her foolish husband's ruin as a vulgar, aspiring, not ill-natured, viragoish set of features can be trusted to indicate. Two faces which arrest attention as in some way recalling each other, though separated by an interval of two centuries, are those of the philosophic emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Julian the Apostate. There are engravings of both of these in their early manhood, as well as in their ripened age, if indeed Julian, struck down by the Persian arrow in his thirty-second year, can be said to have reached maturity. In the earlier likenesses especially, Marcus Aurelius has much the advantage over the anachronistic restorer of Paganism, in a certain brilliant onwardness and openness of gaze, which somehow makes one fancy that had he lived in the fourth century instead of the second, he would not have com- mitted the blunder of the reactionary Julian. In the later cuts, the faces have grown much more alike, and are stamped with a pensive gentleness which is very taking. Marcus Aurelius, we know, was the tenderest of husbands and fathers, as well as the most affectionate of friends. "Every morning I pray the Gods for my dear Faustina " is one of his expressions which perpetually recurs. And no less is it certain that Julian was capable of the most unselfish attachments, and seems to have excited corre- sponding sentiments. Yet both these princes were persecutors of Christianity.
We should wish to linger over the likenesses of the ladies of the Imperial, lines. They form a singular and striking aggregate, frequently presenting the union of voluptuous beauty and im- perial dignity and grace. The first Empress of all, Livia, with her ample braids of hair, proudly handsome features, and volup- tuously moulded chin, is the type of many of her successors, re- minding us of the mingled wisdom and witchery which caused her to be consulted by Augustus in every weighty business, and which drew from austere old Tacitus himself the flattering detraction that she had made herself more agreeable than would have been considered becoming in a gentlewoman of the old school,—"comis ultra quam antiquis feminis probatum." One of the most re- markable groups is presented by those Syriac women—Julia Domna, Julia Mmsa, Julia Scemias, and Julia Mamma —who, during the first half of the third century, rose to the tragic splen- dours of the Imperial purple, and imposed their sons, and even their bastards, their coiffures, and their divinities, on the Roman world. For intellectual force and intellectual craft, for vile- ness and for nobleness, these faces are worth studying. Right at the very extremity of the imperial lines, Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, is almost the reproduction of Livia Augusta, and yet Helena had been a Bithynian peasant-maid. As in the case of their lords, the Imperial dames do not by any means uniformly correspond with their received reputa- tion. Nobody would set down Julia, daughter of Augustus and wife of Tiberius, for the abandoned adulteress who well-nigh broke her father's heart, and was probably the provoking cause of the worst traits of her husband. She looks, on the con- trary, if becomingly sensuous, the very reverse of sensual, and even rather reserved and demure. The beautiful Agrippina, too, looks clever as well as fair, and nob at all like the poisoner of Claudius and the mother of Nero. Lucille, too, daughter of the virtuous Marcus Aurelius and his beloved Faustina, seems the very image of a bright and happy English girl, with softly rounded features and wavy, sunny hair, and yet sweet Lucille lies under the uncomplimentary suspicion of having poisoned her husband, and been anxious to serve her brother in a similar fashion. Considering, however, that the brother was the abomin- able Commodus, perhaps there is some extenuation for Lucille, and deceptive appearances can less than ever be exclusively attributed to the feminine nature, when we gaze on Commodus, and remember what manner of life and reign was his. Even in the cold profile of a medal, Commodus, the accursed and abhorred, looks all that he appeared to his adoring subjects on the day that the son of Marcus Aurelius was borne in his corona- tion-triumph through the acclaiming streets of Rome, and when all men, and all women too, were never tired of admiring, as Herodian tells us, "that figure so happily proportioned, that gracious and manly countenance, that calm and brilliant regard, those fair and curling lccks that shone in the sunlight, and seemed to be powdered with gold."
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