How Tall Was Augustus (Octavian)?
Saturday June 20, 2009
Augustus. From The Hundred Greatest Men, 1885.
In her new history of the late Roman Republic, Cleopatra and Antony, Diana Preston comments that Octavian was sensitive about his short stature.
Octavian was probably no more than five feet six or seven inches tall, according to Suetonius -- short by Roman standards....Though generally negligent about his appearance, Octavian was sensitive about his height and had his footgear made with 'rather thick soles to make him look taller.'"The relevant section from Suetonius says Octavian was quinque pedum et dodrantis fuisse, a nice round, approximate figure that translates to 5 3/4 feet tall. That makes Octavian 5'9, but those 69 inches are measured in (shorter) Roman feet. Using Wikipedia's conversion figures, my calculation puts Octavian's height at 5.58 (just under 67 inches or just under 5'7, as Preston wrote). Is that short by Roman standards? I really don't know, but it appears to be very average. An article I referred to once before (The Biological Standard of Living in Europe During the Last Two Millennia) -- available as a PDF file -- says the average male height in the 1st century A.D. was 170.5 cm. That's 5.59, which would make Octavian's shortness probably invisible to the untrained eye. Roman males were shorter than their contemporaries in northern Europe, so the average figure from the PDF would include not only relatively short Romans, but also tall Celts.
Do you have any further information on the height of Octavian or the average height of Roman males at the time of Octavian? If so, please post it in the comments.
Comments
Well, in the passage from Suetonius you cite, it does say staturam brevem.
That Suetonius and Octavian/Augustus thought Octavian/Augustus short seems clear. What’s the comparison, though? If 5 and 3/4 feet was considered short, what was considered tall? What average? Was Octavian/Augustus considered short because, like a god he was supposed to be tall, while anything average or short of tall was too short for his status or was it short compared with an absolute?
I don’t understand how 5′7 is average and short at the same time.
I think the ‘tamen’ is the clue. There is a contrast between what Iulus Marathus said (that Octavian was 5 3/4 feet tall) and the staturam brevem. In other words, Suetonius is saying that Iulus Marathus was wrong about Octavian’s height.
That could work.
I don’t know how tall Octavian was but I do have a brass rubbing I did in a country church near Cambridge about 1967. Supposedly live-size and over the coffin buried in the church floor, the knight (?) is 4 feet tall. One of the more famous people to be “rubbed” is Sir Roger de Trumpington, but don’t believe this is he. Ed
Several skeletons found and studied in Europe suggested that the average roman soldier was 5′ 2″ and the “barbarians” they fought were an average of 5′ 8″. With these facts, it would suggest that Octavian was actually tall for his era.
Vegetius wrote a height of 6 Pedes 1.7m or 5 ‘ 10″ was the desired height for a legionary. As far as military evidence left behind by the Romans the height of 6 pedes seems exaggerated. Examples of lorica segmentata found in England show that many soldiers from this era were roughly the size of modern 13 to 15 year olds. On the other hand remains of a legionary found in Holland suggested the man may have been as tall as 6 ‘ 2″, it is likely he was recruited from local tribes though. Like anything to do with antiquity it is a all up to speculation. I would assume 5′3″ to 5′5″ to be the mean height for the average Roman.
Considering social class would probably be germane to this discussion. While today there are still small average height differences between people who grow up in high versus low socioeconomic households, in earlier time periods there were much larger differences, mostly due to varying access to proper nutrition. For instance, excavations from Greece in the Mycenean period point to an average male stature of 1.72m (almost 5′8″) for noblemen and 1.67m for commoners (5′5.5″). (Angel) In economic historian Gregory Clarke’s book, “A Farewell to Alms,” he points out that the average height for 18th and 19th century English noblemen and gentry was about 1.74m (5′8.5″), while the poorer classes averaged only about 1.69m (5′6.5″). From the work of Koepke, Baten, and Bisel, among others, it appears that ancient Roman (Italian) males averaged around 1.68m (5′6″). However, the upper classes would probably have averaged considerably taller. Hence, it is perfectly possible for Augustus to have been about average height for the under-nourished plebian majority, but still be shorter than the majority of the males in Rome’s political upper class.
As a side note, there is much talk about tall Celts, short romans, etc. However, if you actually look at the evidence, while there are differences, they amount to no more than a couple of cm and only the Germans are significantly taller than other peoples. Looking at the the literature (Koepke & Baten, Angel, Bisel, Steckel, Murphy), Ancient Western Mediterraneans (Italians and Iberians) appear to have averaged around 1.68m. Celts (Gauls and Britains), despite the comments about their extreme height, were only about 1.7m. The Classical Greeks were about 1.7m. Hellenistic Greeks about 1.72m. In Roman times they were about 1.69m, as were the Egyptians and the populations of Asia Minor and the Levant. The Germans appear to have averaged about 1.72 or 1.73m. The Scytho-Sarmatian Steppe peoples were around 1.69m.
That makes sense. Thanks for the details and names.
he was about 5′ 6″, that’s what mt tour guide said when we went to Rome.