Claudius images

CLAUDIUS Larger than life size bronze statue of Claudius found in situ in 1741 in the Augusteum at Herculaneum, now in the Naples Archaeological Museum. The Augusteum was the area dedicated to the imperial cult, and occupied a porticoed square in the heart of Herculaneum’s public area, right on the main street. The dedicatory inscription found with the statue dates it to 48 CE. Claudius is depicted as a heroic nude, along the lines of Polykleitos’ famous Doryphoros. Apparently his Claudius’ mother referred to him as ‘a monster of a man, not finished by Nature, but only begun’ (Suetonius, Claudius 3), and Suetonius, whose information may well derive from the imperial archives, describes him like this (Claudius 30): ‘Tall but not slender, with an attractive face, becoming white hair, and a full neck. But when he walked, his weak knees gave way under him and he had many disagreeable traits […] he would foam at the mouth and trickle at the nose; he stammered besides and his head was very shaky at all times.’ Not much sign of that in the imperial iconography. INSCRIPTION FROM THE ARCH OF CLAUDIUS, ROME The inscription tells us that the arch of Claudius in Rome was set up by the Senate and People of Rome because [Claudius] received the formal submission of eleven Kings of the Britons, overcome without any loss, and because he was the first to bring barbarian peoples across the Ocean under the sway of the Roman people. CLAUDIUS SUBDUES BRITANNIA This graphic illustration of the conquest of Britain adorned the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias in Asia Minor. Claudius, heroically nude apart from his helmet, cloak, sword-belt and scabbard, is delivering the coup de grace to a slumped woman modelled on an Amazon, but personifying Britain, as the Greek inscription makes clear: Tiberios Klaudios Kaisar – Bretannia. Sebasteion-Sevgi Gönül Gallery, Aphrodisias.