A Visual Compendium of Roman Emperors

The goal of this page is to present an illustrated list of Roman Emperors. While I was in Rome In July of 1995 the idea for this page hit me at some point in the Vatican museum. I had seen lists of emperors on the net and I figured these lists would be much more interesting if they had pictures as well. Thus, I tried to snap pics of as many emperors as I could find in various museums.

While I did quite a bit of reading before I went to Rome, and I could identify many of the more famous Roman Emperors, I ended up missing quite a few that I'm sure I had stood right next to many times. I'm very disappointed I didn't get a Caligula or a good Nero. And alas, since I have been back I have seen many photos in books of Emperors that were in some of the museums I visited but WERE NOT LABELED (Doh!) there. One such unfortunate lost opportunity was the Hercules-like bust of the Emperor Commodus in the Palazzo dei Conservatori. (See my note on picture contributions below)

Anyway, what follows is a list of the Roman emperors and whenever possible, their busts and/or any other contributions they made to Roman art or architecture. Click on the emperor's name to see his coin portrait.

This list is now essentially complete with respect to my trip to Italy in July of 1995, and you can see I'm missing quite a few emperors. If anyone out there has pictures of sculpture portraits for any emperors I do not have, I would love to have an electronic copy to post to this site. I will provide appropriate acknowledgements and sufficiently shrink and JPEG each image so that it is not posted in publication quality. I will also tag it with your name if desired (like in my pics).

All sculpture photos are Copyright 1995 Justin D. Paola. Please acknowledge any re-use of these photos.

Comments?

Please note that there are many links below to other sites with information about individual emperors. I am not responsible for the content of these pages. Before you write me with requests/complaints please make sure you are looking at one of my pages.

Roman Dictators

Coin

Scultpure

Books
Julius Caesar Portrait

Roman Emperors (27 BC - 117 AD)

Coin

Scultpure

Links & Info

Books
Augustus

(27 BC - 14 AD)
  • Portrait 1
  • Portrait 2
  • Portrait 3
  • One of his obelisks. Its inscription reads: 
    IMP * CAESAR * DIVI * F
AVGVSTVS
PONTIFEX MAXIMVS
IMP * XII * COS * XI * TRIB * POT * XIV
AEGVPTO * IN * POTESTATEM
POPVLI * ROMANI * REDACTA
SOLI * DONUM * DEDIT
Tiberius

(14 - 37)
  • Portrait 1
  • Portrait 2
Caligula

(37 - 41)
Claudius

(41 - 54)
  • As Jupiter
  • Portrait 2
  • Portrait 3
Nero

(54 - 68)
Galba

(68 - 69)

Otho

(69)

Vitellius

(69)
Vespasian

(69 - 79)
Titus

(79 - 81)
  • Portrait
Domitian

(81 - 96)
  • Portrait
Nerva

(96 - 98)
  • Portrait
Trajan

(98 - 117)
  • Portrait 1
  • Portrait 2

More Emperors...

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Justin D. Paola
Digital Image Analysis Laboratory
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZ 85721
(520) 621-4554
paola@ece.arizona.edu