
Photoreal Roman Emperor Project - pier0
https://medium.com/@voshart/photoreal-roman-emperor-project-236be7f06c8f
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ralfd
Quite a bit "dark-washed". Aurelius was likely from the Balkans/Dacia, maybe
even descended from Roman settlers, Carus was probably from southern Gaul.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carus)

Vespasian and Domitian were Italian nobles. Tacitus (who was Italian too) and
Florianus were half-brothers, so they should be similar.

Marcus Aurelius family comes from Spain, and his mother was a noble Roman
woman...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domitia_Calvilla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domitia_Calvilla)
...and his father's mother was a Roman woman too.

It is all just speculation but compare it to this artistic rendition:

[https://i.redd.it/92np45xeap521.jpg](https://i.redd.it/92np45xeap521.jpg)

Actually what irks me is his son Commodus: This is not how blonde people, even
with a tan, even black haired Italians with a tan and narcistically coloring
their hair with gold glitter, look like.

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ralfd
I meant with first Aurelius = Aurelian

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian)

> "The ancient sources do not agree on his place of birth, although he was
> generally accepted as being a native of Illyricum"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyricum_(Roman_province)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyricum_\(Roman_province\))

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mc32
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24172603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24172603)

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drclau
This is awesome. While listening to The History of Rome podcast, I went to
Wikipedia to see whatever type of media there’s to see how the people looked
like. For the old times, it’s of course statues, and sometimes only coins. For
the late emperors there are paintings too, but fairly unrealistic.

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thdrdt
Is it a coincidence George Clooney's face looks the same as a lot of those
renders?

Now I wonder if this has to do with the learning set or that those face types
are very common.

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kevinpet
Those emperors paid a lot of sestertii to make sure their bust came out
looking like George Clooney.

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Igelau
I really want to believe that that's what Nero looked like. I'm pretty sure he
tried to get me to prop him up for a keg stand at a college party.

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ddalex
Augustus looks likes Daniel Craig, a bit.

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OJFord
Not a coincidence, this article doesn't seem to mention it, but in the Times
(London) write-up it states the training data was similar-looking celebrities,
and names Craig for Augustus.

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sakopov
Nero looked like Ramzan Kadyrov (the present Chechen leader). Both are also
quite deranged. This is a pretty spectacular project!

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waynecochran
And he had a "neck beard."

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forgot_account
My physical education teacher in High School was the spitting image of Trajan
(this was late 90s). We were blown away the first time we saw a picture of
Trajan in our texts. He used to call his Cadillac a "battlewagon" but after we
showed him the picture he called it a "chariot" instead. Fun memories..

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Ericson2314
Ah, so that's the what Zuck Cut is trying to reference.

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BerislavLopac
Oh, let's play the game of "who would be the best actor to play each emperor"!
A few obvious ones:

    
    
        * Gallienus: Pedro Pascal
        * Decius: Clive Owen
        * Maximinus Thrax: George Clooney
        * Augustus: Daniel Craig
    

How about the others?

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lowdose
* Quintillus: Ben Affleck

* Herennius Etruscus: Colin Farrell

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mprev
Tiberius: Tim Apple

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pluto9
There's a conspicuous number of young dudes who were emperor for a few years
or less and stopped being emperor because they died. It seems that emperorhood
is bad for one's health.

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dskrvk
Also, many of them were killed by praetorian guards. Obvious fix: disband the
praetorians. Oh wait, actually we need those to protect against assassins!

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netman21
OK, I have a question that has been bugging me for years. How do these Romans
shave? Finely stropped bronze blades that must dull immediately? Did they
pluck their whiskers?

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mtmail
Seems metal razor were invented at least 2000 years prior the Roman Empire.
"Around 3000 BC when copper tools were developed, copper razors were invented.
The idea of an aesthetic approach to personal hygiene may have begun at this
time, though Egyptian priests may have practiced something similar to this
earlier. Alexander the Great strongly promoted shaving during his reign in the
4th century BC because he believed it looked tidier."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaving#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaving#History)

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aga98mtl
I feel like they should have used more pictures of people from central Italy
in their dataset. These images look very northern european to me.

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vondur
Well, they are using the descriptions that have come down to us from Ancient
times, and I don't know how much the Ancient Romans differ from modern Romans
in terms of their racial aspects. Italy has had a lot going on since ancient
times in terms of peoples that have migrated there.

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z3phyr
Trajan and Augustus rather look the same. Also I wonder if this would expand
to include Constantine and beyond?

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ur-whale
They almost all look the same (or at least have the same weird smirk). Is that
an artifact of the methodology or is is a problem with the training set
because all roman sculptors were trained by the same school?

