Mary Beard's latest volume, Twelve Caesars, follows on from her recent works aimed at a non-academic audience – SPQR (2015) and Civilisations: how do we look (2018) – in its focus on the relevance and impact of the Classical World. The subject of this volume is not the ‘Twelve Caesars’ themselves, but their images and the meaning that these images have held for modern audiences, ranging from the 16th Century AD to the present day. Twelve Caesars discusses the identification and mis-identification of images, how these images have been understood and used, and the wider implications of the early Emperors’ legacy in our modern world. The author masterfully combines expert knowledge and scholarly rigour with a clear and engaging writing style.
The project began with a series of lectures, the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, delivered by Mary Beard in Washington DC in Spring 2011, but it finds greater relevance at the time of publication due to the increasing scrutiny of images and their impact after Edward Colston's statue was toppled in June 2020. In the author's own words, both the images of the Emperors and ‘contested images’ today ‘provided a focus for debates on power and its discontents (and they are a useful reminder that the function of commemorative portraits is not simply celebration)’ (p.275). In this way, Twelve Caesars situates Classical forms of expression at the heart of modern debates about heritage, power, and commemoration.
Twelve Caesars is divided into eight chapters, each dealing with a particular aspect of the images of the ‘Twelve Caesars’. The book begins and ends with a striking Classical image: a sarcophagus that was once believed to have held the remains of the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus. This sarcophagus was brought back to America from Beirut by a certain Commodore Jesse Elliot in the early 1840s and offered as a resting place for Andrew Jackson. The former president balked at the autocratic image that being buried in a Roman Emperor's sarcophagus would have brought and refused in strong terms. The sarcophagus has since been labelled (and celebrated) as the ‘Tomb in Which Andrew Jackson REFUSED to be Buried’ (p.6). This story is endemic of the work as a whole: Twelve Caesars gives a well-researched and often fascinating insight into images and objects related to the ancient world and discusses the issues that they provoke.
In the second chapter, the book discusses the problems associated with positively identifying the images of the ‘Twelve Caesars’. This rigorous and thorough overview will be particularly interesting to students of the Classical World, who perhaps have not approached images from the ancient world with the same degree of scepticism. The excellently reproduced colour images allow the reader to engage well with the discussion.
The third chapter addresses the form of images, both in portraits and on coins. It shows how imperial images were emulated and even reproduced in efforts to communicate messages about power. The fourth and fifth chapters then consider the way in which the images of the ‘Twelve Caesars’, inspired by Suetonius’ biographies, were codified as a set, reproduced, and how modern versions of the images became influential in their own right. In these three chapters, Beard discusses how the interaction between ancient and modern images is a two-way process: modern interpreters imitated and reproduced ancient images to add meaning to their own works, but in the process they added layers to the subjects with which they interacted.
Chapter six identifies subversive and satirical images of the ‘Twelve Caesars’ and addresses the nuanced way in which modern receivers have used imperial images to communicate their own messages. Beard highlights a number of 19th century artists who have asked searching questions of the imperial system through their images, focusing on the vice or cruelty of the emperors or on their (often rumoured) assassinations. Of particular interest is Beard's discussion of The Death of Nero, Vasily Smirnov's four-metre-wide painting of 1887 that depicts the princeps’ ignominious end (p.231–234). The evocative painting is presented in a double page colour image and, as the author herself says, is an excellent example of how imperial images have been used to question rather than promote imperial power (p.231).
Chapter seven addresses the reception of women in the imperial hierarchy, including, amongst others, Livia, Messalina and Agrippina the Younger. Beard discusses the often-dimorphic depiction of these characters: as either models of virtue or vice. Particularly interesting are the author's thoughts regarding images of imperial women and power: she draws a number of interesting conclusions that, much like the images under discussion, have much to tell us about both the ancient and modern worlds (p.238–242).
In conclusion, this is an important book with much to say about the place of the Classical World in modern society. In an educational setting, it should be read by sixth form or undergraduate students thinking further about their subject. Whilst Twelve Caesars does not tell readers much – beyond a certain amount of background information necessary for the discussion – about the ‘Twelve Caesars’ themselves, it, more importantly, tells them why and how the ‘Twelve Caesars’ matter.
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