Who were the celebrities of the ancient world?

Like today, they were more often than not the athletes, actors, musicians, and authors.

The uber rich, the politically powerful.

Antiquity is similar to today, with one key exception.

The gladiator, actor, and musician were usually slaves, the lowest class of the ancient world.

Besides those forced to perform, there were indeed other celebrities.

The billionaires, the politically powerful senators, and of course, the imperial family.

We'll explore their lives and learn how each emperor and empress became so famous that we remember their achievements and what they look like still today.

In this hall we have the true celebrity, the emperor and the empress of the Roman Empire.

They weren't just the leaders of the Roman Empire, they were also the trendsetters.

Whether it be the length of their beard or going beardless, whether it be the empress putting her hair up or letting it go down or having it braided, they were the people that everyone was looking at.

Today, we have our celebrities, our actors, our famous people from athletics, but the true person everyone was looking at and wanting to be like, at least in terms of appearance, it was the emperor and the empress.

I asked my colleague, Professor Jan Gidain, what he thinks about the outsized personality of the emperor.

The emperor becomes the one and only visible person in the ancient city.

further you go.

The emperor is the center of all attention.

He's the one who controls the urban space.

He's the one who commissioned the construction of new spectacular public buildings, but he's also the one who once in a while clears the street from illegal and abusive vendors, barbers, et cetera.

As we hear from the beautiful epigrams by Marshall, for instance, let's take a look at some of the fascinating lives of the Roman emperors beginning with Hadrian.

Who was born in Spain down the street from the Pantheon, which is a true architectural masterpiece completed by Hadrian.

You have Hadrian's temple, Hadrian, the god.

Now, he is a true character and a celebrity in his own right because he was a person who was fixated with Greek culture.

His nickname was Greekling.

He ushered in something in vogue stylistically.

Here's a guy that grew a beard, the first emperor to have a beard.

Everyone else had been clean shaven.

And that trend that he started lasted for a century, affecting subsequent emperors.

In his reign, Hadrian also created celebrities, namely his lover Antinous, a slave attendant.

After his premature death, Hadrian even deified him.

The cult of Antinous took on a life of its own and became very popular.

Here he is depicted as the god of wine, Bacchus.

The emperor Marcus Aurelius is quite possibly the quintessential Roman emperor.

Both intellectual and successful general in war when Rome was threatened.

The Column of Marcus Aurelius is one of the stunning engineering feats of the Roman Empire.

Today it stands at 130 feet.

It was once much higher.

And it narrates thousands of figures of the Romans battling and defeating the Germans.

So you have the Marcomannic and Sarmatian tribes invade northern Italy, and Rome had to defeat them in the 170s.

It was a very brutal affair.

So you have narrated all the way up to the top, this incredible enterprise.

And the Romans don't always have the upper hand.

What you see is the horrors of war.

You see their women and children, and you really feel the emotion in the battles that Rome won.

Let's not forget the importance of the fame and personality of the Empress.

Here is Plotina, Trajan's wife, who was largely responsible for the ascension of Hadrian as Emperor.

Here is Matidia.

The mother of Sabina who married Hadrian.

In return, Hadrian had her, his mother in law, deified, and probably most famously, and notoriously, Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Nero, who poisoned her husband, the Emperor Claudius, and ruled the empire briefly during Nero's early years.

Gladiators were among the most famous celebrity athletes in ancient Rome.

Gladiators were either sold as slaves, Or they were free citizens entering as free agents to make money and seek out fame and glory.

It was also the owner who trained the gladiator or the elected official who financed gladiatorial games that would become noted local celebrities and benefactors, such as the case in Pompeii.

These helmets that were found in barracks in Pompeii were just dress armor for parades and pageants.

Look at this display of artistry.

and wealth of the owner of the gladiators.

In fact, what about the sponsor?

He's the one that got the most glory of all in the ancient times related to the gladiatorial games.

Here is a relief, possibly of Gnaeus, Aelius, Nigidius, Maius, who financed games and feasts in Pompeii.

He actually shows us how gladiatorial games work.

So the day before the games, you have a procession called a pompa.

And who do you have here?

You have horses, you have musicians, and of course, you have the gladiators themselves carrying their helmets, so you can recognize who they are.

A lot of these guys became famous, they became celebrities, and it's a very impressive procession, and the magistrate who's financed these games, he's in the procession as well.

The first thing that you have in the day of the games is you have men, the bestiarii, fighting against wild animals.

So you have, in this case here, bulls.

You've got bears, sometimes you've even got dogs that are participating.

Then you have the main event in the afternoon and it's the gladiators.

And we see them here in the act of fighting, falling down.

Dying, right?

There's bloodshed here.

There's drama.

There's death.

Many other marginalized people in Roman society could rise above and become famous, particularly when performing in the Roman theater.

Actors and musicians were usually owned and forced to perform, but it was their innate talent that made them stars before the eager masses.

Authors and philosophers, leading new trends in thought and lifestyle, could become social powerhouses.

And this one was truly famous because the sculptor who made it signed his name prominently.

And that's important because most sculptors in antiquity remained anonymous.

But this one is very obvious, and it says in Greek, Glykon the Athenian made this.

Where would you find a celebrity in Rome?

Well, you definitely found them in the entertainment venues.

You'd find them in the stadium, the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, and, of course, they had preferred seating.

Think about they had ringside seats.

The more important you were, then the better your position was to view the entertainment, but also to be on display, visible, consumed.

It's all about being there and seeing them.

You'd see them in the baths.

You'd see them on the streets.

That didn't walk alone.

They had an entourage.

What did fame and fortune imply in the ancient world?

It implied popularity, it implied visibility, it implied wealth, and I would say it implied also power on many different levels because we have many different types of people who became popular in ancient Rome from, you know, actors in the theater to gladiators.

to then also emperors and their entire entourage.

Let's now take a look at what the elite citizens would do with their fame and their wealth.

Look at this incredible collection.

You've got bronze statues, you've got marble statues, all came from a single villa overlooking the Bay of Naples, right outside of Herculaneum.

This was definitely the villa of somebody important.

Some scholars say it was even owned by the father in law of Julius Caesar.

But what we have here is a connoisseur, a collector, who's displaying the busts of famous people from antiquity, philosophers, rulers, kings.

And we can't identify all these figures, but we can have a conversation about them.

And that's what would happen when you were a guest at this villa, you'd have a conversation about these past figures.

It's called a villa papayati because it houses the only preserved library from antiquity.

Here we have a series of carbonized proprietary scrolls, and with AI technology today, they're being virtually unraveled.

So who was the celebrity in the ancient world?

We've seen just how much an impact the Roman emperors and the imperial family members had, and of course the wealthy, educated elite.

They were also people from the lower echelons of society, enslaved people, forced to perform in the arena and on the stage, sometimes achieving great fame, wealth, and power.

And even their freedom.