Photo-real portraits of Roman emperors

I have consulted my respondents and they tell me that there was only one emperor with light blonde hair, he was also light skinned and even blue eyes, but the hair was not straight, they made him some curls although it was not very thick hair, thin face towards the chin and sharp nose.


There may have been some other light brown and normal-looking emperors, as we see in the West that beige skin color. They tell me that they were not dark or super light, so I understand what the usual color is for us in the West.
 
My maternal grandfather was known for his strong jaw, still pronounced among his great-grandchildren (like my nephew), and he was 100% English, well, mixed with Danish Viking, as most of his ancestors came from the East Midlands in the Danelaw. So it is true certain features like nose or jaw can be pronounced in a line of descent, fwiw I don't think Hadrian's portrait is Arab at all, to me he looks very southern Spanish, Andalusian specifically.
 
My maternal grandfather was known for his strong jaw, still pronounced among his great-grandchildren (like my nephew), and he was 100% English, well, mixed with Danish Viking, as most of his ancestors came from the East Midlands in the Danelaw. So it is true certain features like nose or jaw can be pronounced in a line of descent, fwiw I don't think Hadrian's portrait is Arab at all, to me he looks very southern Spanish, Andalusian specifically.

If this recreation can be very Andalusian, also of any other place in Spain since the only difference between Andalusians and the rest of Spain is that Andalusians are more handsome. The recreation of Hadrian in the set of Emperors from the first post of this thread would be very atypical in Andalusia or the rest of Spain.

With the fact that the Moors were in Andalusia there is a lot of legend, clichés and mythology. I have seen people in the forums posing as Andalusian with distances with Iberia of 80. Some people believe that because the Moors were there, anything can trickle down to Andalusia and not. My own mother in 70´years when she was giving birth in Barcelona the Catalan nurse felt her and without the doctor being there she told her that she had a three-headed phenomenon and it was that my sister was born by feet. But what goes, we are very normal that yes more handsome.


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He reminded me of this Andalusian actor Dani Rovira I have even Juan Pardo a Galician singer with an Andalusian ancestor from Cádiz

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I also see this recreation very simple, it is not recognizable to me either.


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I don't know what's going on with Adriano and some reenactments.

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Some of Adriano's so exotic recreations would almost be easier to find in the United States because of its enormous diversity than in Andalusia.
 
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Suetonius never met Augustus!

... older:

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He has in both photos an extremely Frenchy face. I can imagine it with a right earring. Looking like a french rockstar. Like a fusion between Alain Delon and Bertrand Cantat.
 
He has in both photos an extremely Frenchy face. I can imagine it with a right earring. Looking like a french rockstar. Like a fusion between Alain Delon and Bertrand Cantat.

Well, Alain Delon had a Corsican grandmother...

I still don't really see it though.

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Maybe an uglier version of Stefano Casiraghi?

g


The skull shape and face shape is right but the nose is wrong.


One of the sons have a bit of it too.

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I agree with Carlos. All of the recreations of Hadrian are terrible. They all make him look like an Arab, which he didn't.
 
I don‘t understand all the fuss about blond hair and Romans. It’s a matter of fact that the majority of native Romans were not blond-haired and blue-eyed folks, but they were not as swarthy as some people want them to be, either. Referring to blond and blue-eyed Romans as Nordic is ridiculous. However, that some people pretend that it's impossible for native Romans to be naturally blond or red-haired is also absurd. I read plenty complains all over the internet that the Roman emperors were looking too “white“ or too “Northern European“ despite many of them being depicted with a beige skin tone. Anyway, what made Germanic people so remarkable in the eyes of Romans, Greeks or Arabs who encountered them is the fact that they were nearly uniformly or largely light-haired, very pale and blue-eyed people. Plus Roman sources talk about the white hair of the Germanics. So some of them were not just blond, golden- haired but had platinum, whitish blond hair too. In my opinion even the blond Romans didn‘t display this very light blond hair color. The bottom line is that blond or red-haired Romans were not very common, nevertheless they were not totally uncommon either.

Besides, there are information from ancient sources about the physical appearance,
hair and eye color of the emperors Commodus, Nero, Augustus, Lucius Verus, Caligula and General Sulla:

Plutarch's description of Sulla.

His personal appearance, in general, is given by his statues; but the gleam of his gray eyes, which was terribly sharp and powerful, was rendered even more fearful by the complexion of his face. This was covered with coarse blotches of red, interspersed with white. For this reason, they say, his surname was given him because of his complexion, and it was in allusion to this that a scurrilous jesterat Athens made the verse:—„


"Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled o'er with meal."



http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Sulla*.html


Discription of Lucius Verus:


Verus was well-proportioned in person and genial of expression. His beard was allowed to grow long, almost in the style of the barbarians; he was tall, and stately in appearance, for his forehead projected somewhat over his eyebrows.
7 He took such pride in his yellow hair, it is said, that he used to sift gold-dust on his head in order that his hair, thus brightened, might seem even yellower. 8He was somewhat halting in speech, a reckless gambler, ever of an extravagant mode of life, and in...


http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Lucius_Verus*.html


In addition to that Latin cognomes indicate that there were Italics, native Romans that were blondes or redheads.
Ahenobarbus for example, was a cognomen used by a plebeian branch of the gens Domitia in the late Roman Republic and early Empire. The name means"red-beard"(literally, "bronze-beard") in Latin. Wiki. Neros‘father was called Ahenobarbus.


The name Rufus is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning"red-head".There is another Roman family name Flavius meaning "golden"or "yellow-haired".
from Latin flavus "yellow, golden".
 
Here the reconstructed famous Augustus statue based on the remnant of the original pigmentation on the marble. On this statue Augustus looks like a ginger, redhead.


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The reconstruction of ara pacis based on original pigmentation. Here Augustus appears to have blond hair.
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/18950149581/in/photostream/

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/64/f3/0f64f38c044c9d878958aeb52c49bae8.jpg



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other members of the Royal family.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/18941929162/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/18324716044/in/photostream/


Clips in Italian about the reconstructed original colors of ara pacis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkzvQs6dRJI


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkzvQs6dRJI



Besides, I asked Latin teachers, and they said that word "subflavo" in Latin can mean light or dark blond or red. So context and further explanation are needed to know exactly whether the term sublavo means red- haired or blond.
 
Here the reconstructed famous Augustus statue based on ther remnant of the original pigmentation on the marble. On this statueAugustus looks like a ginger, redhead.


53e936cf83e24aec18b6d01fba912ce5.jpg





The reconstruction of ara pacis based on original pigmentation. Here Augustus appears to have blond hair.
18950149581


https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/18950149581/in/photostream/

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/64/f3/0f64f38c044c9d878958aeb52c49bae8.jpg



1558722749




other members of the Royal family.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/18941929162/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/18324716044/in/photostream/


Clips in Italian about the reconstructed original colors of ara pacis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkzvQs6dRJI


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkzvQs6dRJI

I think Augustus was about as subflavum as I was:

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I have always been clear that the emperors or the elite were not from northern Europe, why or how, who is going to believe something like that. What's more, I even think that some family of emperors had a lot to keep quiet about and hide about their origins and some other issues before they got to where they arrived.

On the pigmentation of the statue of Augustus, the hair had to be brown and in the statue perhaps they wanted to pay homage or identification with Mars in the person of the emperor himself, intensifying the hair towards red.
 
The romans were mostly Central European actually according to Moots paper...R1b and 30% circa steppe

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The romans were mostly Central European actually according to Moots paper...R1b and 30% circa steppe

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Ethnicity is not determined by ydna. Central Europeans are close to 50% steppe, not 30%.

My father was R1b-U152, like most men in his area. Most men in his area are from 25-30% steppe. Fwiw he also had fairish hair and green eyes. They plot right where they should, north central Italy and nowhere near Central Europeans.

Did you ever actually read the Moots paper? Two of the Republican Era Romans plot with Southern Italians, and the rest of the "Roman area" ancients of the Republic plot between Spain and Northern Italy, NOT ANYWHERE NEAR Central Europe. So stop talking nonsense on a serious site.

@Real Expert,

The topic under discussion was the photo "reconstruction" of the EMPERORS, not Sulla or the other few prominent Romans who were described as blonde. The reconstruction of the emperors is FALSE, because it is not based on contemporary reports but on a chart created by someone at theapricity who in turn got it from a report written in 1938 by some Nazi propagandist who based it on wishful thinking.

From contemporary reports only one was "blonde" as we would describe it: Lucius Verus. Three others had fairish hair, two in the early period. This was all documented above in a link to an analysis. Perhaps people should re-read it. Now please count how many of the early emperors were depicted as "blonde". CLEARLY incorrect.

Then we get one where everyone is "browned" up. Hadrian, who had a very Italian or Spanish or even Balkan looking face in modern terms winds up looking like an Arab. It's ridiculous.

This is all just proof that this "hobby" is crawling with people with agendas who couldn't do an objective analysis of something if their lives depended on it.

Fwiw, I pointed out that Sulla was famously blonde. The Claudians also were supposed to have some fair haired people among them. What people don't seem to understand is that the unusual is what is described.

Then as now there were/are some fair-haired inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, i.e. dark blonde/light brown hair. They are a minority. IT WAS NOT AND IS NOT Central Europe. I don't know how many of the ancients had light eyes. It's rarely talked about by contemporaries. Lucius' blue eyes are mentioned, as are Caesar's "black eyes". Today, blue eyes appear sometimes in southern Italy, not infrequently at all in Northern Italy.

It doesn't matter. That doesn't make someone Central European.

The definition of Southern European, which the Republican inhabitants of Rome certain were autosomally, might indeed be 20-30% steppe. No one is denying it.

As to cultural achievements, the Romans improved upon and then spread innovations which they adopted from the Near East directly, or from the Greeks who in turn had adopted them from the Near East. Sorry, nothing to do with steppe people. The language is steppe, SOME of the religion is steppe, some of the clientage part of the culture is steppe etc., but not the things which made them great.

You guys, and the Nazis, and the late 19th century anthropologists have been proved completely wrong by the science of modern genetics. This cultural appropriation has come to stop. Ancient Rome had nothing to do with Northern Europe except to try to keep it at bay.

End of story.
 
They plot close to North Italy because they had neolithic Italian EEF admixture but a great part of their ancestry was Indo-European from Central Europe.. Am I wrong?

Modern Italians are more or less the same genetically, Bergamo and Tuscan are 50-60% LN BA Europeans in Haak 2015 study..

I'm not saying that they looked like Germans

I hate nazis ;)

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The Iron age & Republican Romans do not look like central Europeans.

Honestly, don't you get tired of having to repeat the same things over and over again? I sure do.

Of course the Italics admixed with the local more "farmer" like population, but they were already admixed with the same kind of people before they arrived.

I highly doubt the arriving Italics were "pure" steppe people when they set foot on the Italian peninsula.

No one is denying they had some steppe ancestry. Everyone in Europe has some steppe ancestry. We've known that since Haak et al. The point is that the Italics and then the following Republican Era inhabitants of central Italy had nowhere near the level of steppe ancestry that Germanics of the time possessed.

The development of the Roman Empire had nothing to do with holy Germanic Aryans arriving in Italy and creating a great civilization.

I don't know why this is difficult to comprehend.
 
Ethnicity is not determined by ydna. Central Europeans are close to 50% steppe, not 30%.


@Real Expert,

The topic under discussion was the photo "reconstruction" of the EMPERORS, not Sulla or the other few prominent Romans who were described as blonde. The reconstruction of the emperors is FALSE, because it is not based on contemporary reports but on a chart created by someone at theapricity who in turn got it from a report written in 1938 by some Nazi propagandist who based it on wishful thinking........


Sorry Angela in all respect but Sueton, Pliny, Plutarch and other ancient Roman historians were not Nordicists. Plus I didn't quote the apricity site but other sites who use primary sources. Furthermore, I brought up Sulla because he was a native Roman like some Roman emperors were. Please be fair I wrote that Romans were not Nordic and mostly brunettes and nowhere did I wrote they were Central European. With that being said some could pass by their phenotype in Central Europe, like some Brits could pass in Southern Europe. It's not like that Northern and Southern Europeans belong to different races. I showed reconstructions of Augustus statue based on original colors and explained based on Latin teachers what the term subflavo means. For instance, the Ara Pacis Augustae color reconstruction was made by ITALIAN experts and not Nazis. Seriously I don't understand, what's wrong with blond- haired Romans? Why is blond hair that existed in Northern Europe and to a much lesser degree in Southern Europe prior to Nazis always connected to them?

Anyway, please stop lumping me in one group with
Nordicists. I'm not a Nordicist in any shape, form or fashion and anyone who reads my comments can see that. However, this a thread about the reconstructed looks of the emperors since we don't have their human remains, all we can do is speculate or give educated guesses. I just wanted to bring some balance into that discussion. There are people who claim all native Romans, including the emperors were brown-skinned, olive people with jet black hair and eyes who look more like Northern Africans and Middle Easterners than any Central Europeans and there are others who claim that native Romans were Nordic.
 
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IMO Light traits among Romans and present day Italians are due mostly to this Central European/Indoeuropean (Urnfield?) influx.. That's what I wanted to say


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IMO Light traits among Romans and present day Italians are due mostly to this Central European/Indoeuropean (Urnfield?) influx.. That's what I wanted to say


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Half of the ancestry of the Italics came from Central European Bell Beaker people. So the genetic connections Italics, Latins/early Romans had with Central Europe was via Beaker folks.
 
Honestly, don't you get tired of having to repeat the same things over and over again? I sure do.

Of course the Italics admixed with the local more "farmer" like population, but they were already admixed with the same kind of people before they arrived.

I highly doubt the arriving Italics were "pure" steppe people when they set foot on the Italian peninsula.

No one is denying they had some steppe ancestry. Everyone in Europe has some steppe ancestry. We've known that since Haak et al. The point is that the Italics and then the following Republican Era inhabitants of central Italy had nowhere near the level of steppe ancestry that Germanics of the time possessed.

The development of the Roman Empire had nothing to do with holy Germanic Aryans arriving in Italy and creating a great civilization.

I don't know why this is difficult to comprehend.

It is tiring, but I will keep repeating myself, and repost the same charts, excerpts, and studies, one hundred thousand times if that is what it takes to repudiate these falsehoods.
 
Sorry Angela in all respect but Sueton, Pliny, Plutarch and other ancient Roman historians were not Nordicists. Plus I didn't quote the apricity site but other sites who use primary sources. Furthermore, I brought up Sulla because he was a native Roman like some Roman emperors were. Please be fair I wrote that Romans were not Nordic and mostly brunettes and nowhere did I wrote they were Central European. With that being said some could pass by their phenotype in Central Europe, like some Brits could pass in Southern Europe. It's not like that Northern and Southern Europeans belong to different races. I showed reconstructions of Augustus statue based on original colors and explained based on Latin teachers what the term subflavo means. For instance, the Ara Pacis Augustae color reconstruction was made by ITALIAN experts and not Nazis. Seriously I don't understand, what's wrong with blond- haired Romans? Why is blond hair that existed in Northern Europe and to a much lesser degree in Southern Europe prior to Nazis always connected to them?

Anyway, please stop lumping me in one group with
Nordicists. I'm not a Nordicist in any shape, form or fashion and anyone who reads my comments can see that. However, this a thread about the reconstructed looks of the emperors since we don't have their human remains, all we can do is speculate or give educated guesses. I just wanted to bring some balance into that discussion. There are people who claim all native Romans, including the emperors were brown-skinned, olive people with jet black hair and eyes who look more like Northern Africans and Middle Easterners than any Central Europeans and there are others who claim that native Romans were Nordic.

No need to get excited. I take you at your word.

As for your last sentence (bolded), I completely agree. I said basically the same thing when I said that both sets of reconstructions were incorrect.

I brought up theapricity because one of the links above shows that the first "artist" or reconstructor used a chart created by theapricity based on a 1938 paper by some Nazi "race scientist". I didn't mean to imply that's where you got your information. The fact remains that based on the contemporary descriptions which have come down to us only two of the early emperors were described as fair, not the whole line which is so depicted.

And I myself, as I mentioned have posted here about the descriptions of Sulla, and there are some about the Claudian gens as well.

The point is that the ancient Romans were not a "fair" people as a whole, just as not even northern Italians today could be described as predominantly "fair". It's a minority trait on the Italic peninsula and apparently has been for a very long time. Neither were they Arabic looking, i.e. the depictions of Hadrian for example.

That's all.

The old stories have been proved to have been a lie, as the old stories about the Mycenaeans were fantasy.

Ancient genetics is a powerful tool for setting the record straight.

And before you think I have something against fair haired people, my beloved father and my beloved aunts and uncles were all fair, that or red haired. My mother was a dark haired, dark eyed, typical Mediterranean type, and I adored her, and I've been in love for decades with a man who if he grew a mustache and beard might have been stopped at airports in the years right after 9/11. Imo, by the chance blending of traits from both parts of his family he could pass for Iranian I think. So, I have no "favorites", no team for which I'm rooting. I'm just trying to be objective from the evidence we have, both historical and genetic.
 
The romans were mostly Central European actually according to Moots paper...R1b and 30% circa steppe

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Excuse me, but R1b and circa 30% steppe? So basically modern North Italian or modern Spaniard-like, right? And those were some of the early Italic samples, not all of them. In my opinion early Italics who arrived as far south as Latium were Bell Beaker-descending people (therefore already ~40-60% EEF themselves) who had been absorbing even more EEF people along the long journey from their initial homeland (probably IMO somewhere in the broad zone between Northeastern Italy and Austria and Hungary or thereabouts). Therefore, I'd be surprised if they were any more than 35-40% steppe from the start, which honestly makes them at most something French-like. They would also have a higher ANF:WHG ratio than most modern Central Europeans, with the possible exception of some Swiss people. And I'm talking about Proto-Italic people. The Romans from the time they were really becoming an advanced civilization under very strong Etruscan influence were probably and increasingly even more southern-shifted. That mixed origin is partly what caused Romans to have such varied looks.
 

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