Look at this blank silhouette right here. What would it look like if you could actually
see Julius Caesar's face? Throughout history, the way we think about
leaders is tied to the way that they look. From Hitler to Gandhi to Stalin, we're looking
at their mustache, their mustache and their mustache.
It's even true today. Who can separate their impression of Donald Trump from his hair,
or Joseph Biden from his teeth? But Julius Caesar, one of the greatest leaders
in all of history, is kind of a mystery. So today, I'm gonna see if I can fill in that
silhouette. With a face. There are so many different busts of Caesar,
and they are of wildly varying historical accuracy. That's what makes our job difficult.
Obviously, there weren't photographs around in the time of Caesar. The same is true of
the paintings that were done of Caesar hundreds of years, maybe even more than 1,000 years
after he was born. They have some of the features that we notice
from those busts, but they also are kind of different. And so it's really tough to guess
at what he might look like. There are already a lot of reconstructions that exist. Some
claim to use machine learning. But really, they're just kind of building off of various
busts that they've chosen as models. Others have drawings like this freak show right here,
sick. I guarantee you, Julius Caesar did not look like this. But all these reconstructions,
they are based off busts or coins or writings. I'm going to be using this technology called
metahumans. “I am a metahuman, the next generation of
digital human powered by Unreal Engine.” So I'm going to be tweaking it, messing around
with it, trying to match it to what we know about Julius Caesar.
And while the result won't be photographically accurate, I think that it can compile a lot
of the best information we have about how Caesar looked.
Alright, so as you can see, I've already been messing around a little trying to get that
sweet Caesar flavor. Wallace is probably my best one. So far. Vincent over here was when
I wanted to do what Teddy Roosevelt would actually look like. But I decided to pivot
to somebody that you can check it with photos on.
So yeah, let's make a new metahuman. What you do with metahumans is you kind of have
a starting point, you pick somebody who's going to be a good base for your metahuman.
That naturally brings us to the question of Caesar's race and his age, we're going to
be doing a portrait of Caesar later in life. So I'm looking for somebody who's kind of
in their 50s, so I can age them a bit with the program.
We know a bit about Caesar’s lineage, though there's a lot of myths thrown in there, too,
apparently, was descended from like Venus, the goddess, which is not something we can
verify. But I can tell you on all the existing portrayals of him, and all the texts that
he was fair skinned, and he was basically what we would describe today as white, rather
than being African or Asian. And so that's why I'm going to choose that as my opening
model. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop the animation that's running puts him into an
idle pose. So now it's time to really get down to things, and I'm going to be relying
on Suetonius. Suetonius is a very famous Roman historian
who wrote early in the Roman Empire, and he's kind of considered one of the most reliable
sources. When it comes to the early Roman emperors. His writing is really what we rely
on because he started every section with a physical description of the Emperor's.
I don’t want to throw the whole classics academic field under the bus here. But if
I was doing something about the 1900s, and only had one source, I wouldn't consider it
reliable at all. But in this case, we have this one written source of Suetonius, who
is considered reliable by a lot of scholars of Julius Caesar. And we're going to be combining
that with a bust too and also some coins. So anyway, Suetonius says that Caesar was
active all his life, and he had kind of fair skin. So I'm going to give Cesar little bit
of fair skin here, do that on this texture slider.
Because he is there was active in all his campaigns, I'm gonna add a little more texture
to his skin, which kind of reads his age. I also like what I'm seeing in this one in
the neck rolls over here, because on the coins and on the bust, Caesar has these distinctive
neck rolls that appear in a few different places. So I like that this guy already has
that. For this. I'm going to quote from a paper that is all about portraits of Julius
Caesar, and he kind of encapsulates what Suetonius says.
It says that Caesar is tall of stature with a fair complexion, we've got that shapely
limbs, we'll make sure to get that. It talks about his mouth and his keen black eyes. So
I'll go ahead and make Caesar's eyes very dark. To me, keen black eyes implies a smaller
iris versus a larger one, more of a shrewd appearance. Now we will go into the hair on
his head. So here Suetonius is very clear, as are many other authors, all the busts,
everybody that says he had a receding hairline. And all these portraits, he has a little hair
but it's going away quickly. And he's kind of trying to hide it. This is in the text
and also in some of the coins even and the busts. Suetonius says baldness was a disfigurement
that worried him greatly. And because of it, he used to comb forward his scanty locks from
the crown of his head. And then he goes on, he says, and of all of the honors that were
voted him by senate and people, there was none that he accepted or made use of more
gladly than the privilege of wearing a laurel leaf on all occasions. So this is actually
just perfect for us. It'll let me pan up, got a beautiful receding
hairline. For our Caesar, I'm going to go ahead and make it a darker shade just because
of what we know about Caesar. And I'm also going to add some salt and pepper
because after all, we are doing an older Caesar ones who's near death. And you can see that
some of these portrayals of Caesars hair as being a bit longer on the side, but they definitely
have the receding element. It is clear from Suetonius and all the portrayals that Caesar
was clean shaven, so he's not going to get one of these beautiful boys had I mean, just
look at that. Don't you respect that Caesar so much more?
But he's pretty clean shaven. And then it also says that he was very careful about grooming
the rest of his hair too and removed all his other hair. I don't know how literally we
want to take that. But I will go ahead and give him pretty thin eyebrows. I'm also going
to give him short, sparse eyelashes. Now that we have all these basics down, it's time to
get to the more specific stuff about these representations of Caesar. Most historians
agree that the key bust of Caesar was made while Caesar was alive.
It is known as the Tusculum portrait or the Tusculum bust. Other competitive busts look
cool, but sometimes they look really different from the coins from the description that we
have from Suetonius. Like there's the Arles bust discovered in the Rhone River. It's supposed
to be a Caesar. This is like hunky Caesar. This is, this is not a realistic Caesar. This
is like Caesar after he did some roids and hung out with Gerard Butler and talked about
“300” for like three hours. So our Caesar is going to be based on that one bus that
was made during his lifetime. And that matches up with some of the description of Suetonius
and that is the Tusculum portrait goes into preview mode, he just looks so real.
That's a credit more to Unreal Engine then to his Caesarness.
I love that expression. I found one more cool angle of the bust that
I want to compare. Okay, I feel like we're definitely nailing the skull shape the somewhat
unusual skull shape. We're getting there on the nose.
His lips just start as full. There we go. I've needed that for a while.
That upper lip is skinny. Fill out that lower lip.
See on the ears. Make the ear bigger. Make a chin, I feel like the chin needs to
be a little bigger too...that's looking a lot better. That is very helpful to have this
additional reference. See what that looks like from the front? Oh gosh, he's scary.
But that is looking like our Caesar. And when you put them into preview mode, you can really
convince yourself that this is a real person that this is Julius Caesar right here. And
it's completely an illusion, but it is so alluring to think of it. The cool thing is,
is that it has different lighting settings. So you can see what it would look like indoor
indoor lighting setting. That’s really cool. There’s studio lighting
like this. There's an outdoor lighting scenario, which
I think it really makes it look weird and oddly real and he looks so scary. What's cool
is that you can even change the lights. So awesome.
So dramatic. I love it. So sick. So why is this not just a party trick? Well,
it is kind of just a party trick. So why even bother?
Well, I think that it helps us relate to these historical characters in a more vivid way
than we otherwise would. And even the research process can teach us something about how Julius
Caesar really acted. After all, he has Suetonius make fun of him
for wearing a laurel on his head, for having a comb over. Now, that might not match up
with the picture that we've created. But it does tell us something about Caesar, about
how people treated Caesar and how people in that society treated combovers. Pretty much
the same way we do today. And that's really interesting. Filling in that silhouette on
history. It doesn't have to be with certainty, it can be with more questions, it can be with
new curiosity. And sometimes if we allow ourselves, it can be with a pretty awesome picture.
Aw, Caesar’s smiling. I just want to sneak in here the night before
publication to say thank you for watching, I really appreciate it. I've got a ton of
references down in the description of this video. I didn't go too deep into them in this
video, but there are a lot of papers out there that I was able to pore over to try to make
this portrait of Caesar more and more realistic. If you think you can do a better job please
do, I want to see it. And I want to hear about it, because I believe it. I'm not an artist.
I'm somebody who just got a chance to play with a really fun program. Finally, I wanted
to read a couple of comments from the last video that I posted, which was all about my
career as a fake scientist. One of them that's really funny is from Jonathan Musser. It says
“I went whole hog on the dolphin free cranberries one Thanksgiving, since it's my job to make
the cranberry sauce. my in laws were so confused, great times.”
Love hearing that. And then David Perrino said, “I love your emails, my colleagues
love your emails, we are real scientists and celebrate each and every one of your posts.”
How awesome is that? I'm super grateful for it. If you were able to watch this video,
normally I do personal and history type stuff on here. It'd be great if you subscribe and
join me for the next one. Or if you left a note on this video to help pump up the algorithm.
Alright, thank you so much for watching and letting me sneak in at the end. And, hey,
like Caesar, keep smiling. Alright, bye.