Were Roman Emperors Blonde?
Questions about the appearance of the Roman Emperors appear quite often on the web, the fact that the statues of the Emperors have survived until today makes people wonder what their aspect was, but since the paint is gone this question is sadly hard to answer.
Unfortunately, these questions are not a simple curiosity for some, the aspect of Roman Emperors has been used during the years of nazism to prove that some racial characteristics, more specifically Aryan-features (i.e. blonde hair), are the reason why some people are born to rule. It’s worth noting that Adolf Hitler himself believed that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were the racial ancestors of the Germans.
After seeing the work of Daniel Voshart, which brilliantly attempted to reconstruct the face of the Emperors, I noticed that for some descriptions he relied on a table made by a forum called TheApricity, this website is a neo-nazi board and it’s not even hidden as you can see by looking it up.
Although he was in absolutely good faith, of common agreement I decide to publish a credible analysis of the emperor phenotype based on reliable sources and debunk the table that, as I sadly noted, it has been used frequently on the web as a trustworthy source.
The scope of this article is to analyze the work of TheApricity, dismiss the false quotes, and create a reliable reference for people who will attempt to colorize statues in the future, or are just curious.
This table uses 5 sources to describe emperors from Augustus to Commodus, two are Latin sources Pliny and Suetonius, one is Sieglin, W. (1935), one is irrelevant since it is mentioned only once (but it’s also dubious) and another is a Greek source John Malalas.
- The original title of Sieglin (1935) is “Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums”, in English: “The blond hair of the Indo-Germanic peoples of antiquity”[], this is clearly a Nazi propaganda book from the same years. It isn’t an ancient source and should have never been used in the first place, it clearly shows the bad faith of the authors.
This source is invalid and must be dismissed, and since it’s taken as a credible reference for the hair color of seven Emperors the table already looks suspicious. - The other source used quite frequently is John Malalas, but as you can easily find looking up on Wikipedia, “it possesses little historical value” and it contains numerous mistakes about many historical events, hence it should not be trusted at all for trivial details as eyes and hair color.
Even if it’s merely a fiction rather than credible historiography, I’ll post a table with every description Malalas does of each emperor, but it’s just to show how easily Malalas descriptions don’t line up with the Latin sources. “The chronicle of John Malalas” (1986)
“Except for the history of Justinian and his immediate predecessors, it possesses little historical value; the author, relying on Eusebius of Caesarea and other compilers, confidently strung together myths, biblical stories, and real history.”
Note: I found the work made by H. V. Canter. of the personal appearance of the Roman Emperors the most accurate, I used it to crosscheck and verify my findings and I found it in line with the analysis I did myself if not for some missing details.
Augustus
- Eye Color: bluish grey “glauci” (Pliny XI, 54)
- Hair Color: light brown, fair, blondish “subflavum“ (Suet. Aug. 77)
Note: The translation of “subflavum” is highly controversial, the Latins use three words to describe fair hair: “aurea”, used to describe the hair of Gauls by Virgil, “flavum” and “subflavum” (less than flavum). A credible translation is light brown which is confirmed by the analysis of pigment on the original Statue. This is a good explanation of how to interpret the world “subflavum”.
Tiberius
- Eye Color: —
- Hair Color: —
Note: Pliny never uses “caesii” to describe the eye color of Tiberius, the quote is a misunderstanding. Plinius actually use caesii just a sentence before but he isn’t talking about Tiberius, later he describes the good sight of the Emperor at night but never mentions his eye color. (Pliny XI, 54)
Caligula
- Eye Color: —
- Hair Color: —
Note: In the original table, they mistranslated a full chapter with the sole purpose to show he had a blonde beard (and hair). This is the original referenced text (Sueutonius, 52 ), here Suetonius was describing Caligula’s habits of dressing up as a woman which was against the roman moral (Mos Maiorum), he isn’t describing his beard as blonde, but rather the habit of Caligula to embellish his body and his beard with gold. No eye or hair color mentioned.
Claudius
- Eye Color: —
- Hair Color: white hair (“canitieque pulchra” — Suet. Cl. 30 )
Nero
- Eye Color: grey eyes (“oculis caesis — Suet. Nero 51)
- Hair Color: light brown, fair, blondish (“subflavum” — Suet. Nero 51)
Note: “oculis caesis et hebetioribus” is also translated by some as “sunken and weak eyes" instead of “his eyes grey and dull”.
This could also be supported by Pliny (Pliny XI, 54) who never mentions Nero's eye color and instead says “Nero’s eyes were dull of sight”. I leave “grey eyes” unless I can find a credible explanation to use this other translation instead.
Note: about the translation of “subflavum” see Augustus’ note.
Galba
- Eye Color: blue eyes (“oculis caeruleis” — Suet. Gal. 21)
- Hair Color: —
Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva
- Eye Color: —
- Hair Color: —
Suetonius doesn’t mention either eye or hair color of those emperors, I also found it interesting that he spends a long time describing Domitian struggles with baldness but never mentions his hair color.
Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius
- Eye Color: —
- Hair Color: —
Lucius Verus
- Eye Color: —
- Hair Color: Blonde ( “flaventium”)
“venerabilis, dicitur sane tantam habuisse curam flaventium capillorum, ut capiti auri ramenta respergeret, quo magis coma inluminata flavesceret.” — Historiae Augustae, Verus
“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.”
Commodus
- Eye Color: —
- Hair Color: Dyed his hair blonde, added gold dust to accentuate the color.
“capillo semper fucato et auri ramentis inluminato” — Hist. Aug., Commodus
“His hair was always dyed and made lustrous by the use of gold dust”
To sum up, out of the 46 emperors for which we have a recorded physical description, as reported by H. V. Canter, only 4 can be described as having “fair hair”, of which one wasn’t naturally fair and used to dye his hair blonde (Commodus), one described as “flavium” was naturally blonde (Lucius Verus), Nero and Augustus described as “subflavum” were probably ligh brown as explained above.
John Malalas
As I said earlier the work of John Malalas is not a reliable source and should be entirely dismissed. I report Malalas’ descriptions in the table below with the sole purpose to show how his words don’t line up with the physical description of some emperors made by others, i.e. Vitellius is described by Suetonius as being abnormally tall instead Malalas describe him as average.
(Use H. V. Canter as reference for detailed emperor description from trustworthy sources)
“The chronicle of John Malalas” (1986)
Work In Progress, I will update this table later…
Note: The bad faith of TheApricity is even more self-evident, they quote Malalas only when it states that the emperors had fair features, meanwhile when it doesn’t fit their political agenda they dismiss Malalas words and instead use Sieglin, W. (1935) (the nazi propaganda book).
Note: if you are curious about the translation of blonde from ancient Greek I think you may find this answer on quora useful as it explains the problem of translating the word blond.
Conclusion
The purpose of this page was never to state that there were not blond-haired people in the ancient Rome or as the head of the empire, certainly, this is not the case; this article should be seen as an attempt to fact-check some poorly made and clearly politically motivated analysis of the appearance of the Roman Emperors.
It seems that it’s more what we don’t know than what we know of Emperors’ appearance, this can be hard for artists who want to colorize ancient statues, but it’s better to take a personal approach and make it clear than referencing to the bad work of people with a racist agenda.
Note: I will update this page if I find new compelling evidence.
