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Abstract: Physiognomic Disability in Literary, Statuarial, and Numismatic Depictions of Claudius

 Dr. Dan Mills, Georgia Institute of Technology

Physiognomic Disability in Literary, Statuarial, and Numismatic Depictions of Claudius


Physiognomy, the ancient science of reading an individual’s outer appearance as a manifestation of their personality and psychological makeup, has garnered significant attention by scholars and critics, with several studies exploring physiognomy’s prevalence in the ancient world. Physiognomy was an integral part of ancient psychological theory in both the pagan world and in Judaism and early Christianity. In this essay I argue that Roman Emperor, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, has been subject to characterization based on physiognomic theories from the earliest depictions in ancient literary texts, statuary, and numismatics to Robert Graves’ twovolume fictionalized depiction and Derek Jacobi’s famous depiction in the BBC miniseries based on Graves’ books. Unlike other physiognomic characterizations of Roman emperors, however, those of Claudius have incorporated his physical disabilities into the physiognomical depictions. Through the perspective of Robert Garland (2010) and disability studies theorist, Tobin Siebers (2008; 2010), Claudius becomes a pagan foil for the numerous physiognomic descriptions found in the New Testament. Depictions of Claudius’ disability physiognomically, therefore, represents an anomaly both from the perspective of Julio-Claudian rule of Rome as well as in the context of Second Sophistic thought that influenced many of the writers of the New Testament. As Josiah Osgood (2011) has argued, depictions of Claudius have been subject to changing trends in historiography beginning with ancient texts and continuing through modern depictions. This paper builds on scholarship about physiognomy by focusing specifically on Claudius’ impairments and their ubiquitous treatment by ancient biographers to posit what I would like to call “physiognomic disability.”

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