Kertész István - Híres and hírhedt Roman császárok

For five centuries, the emperors of Rome ruled over their huge empire that stretched from the Rhine to North Africa and from Britannia to the Euphrates. There were those who managed it for only a few months, others for several decades. The names of some remained in historical memory as symbols of peace (pax Augusta = Augustan peace), others, like Nero, appeared as bloodthirsty tyrants even in Hungarian literature (Kosztolányi: Nero, the bloody poet). But was Augustus really characterized only by the love of peace? We know that the senate, which granted him unlimited power, raised him to the head of the empire, first as consul, then as prince, in the midst of the threat of peaceful weapons. In the form of Nero, who was despised and deeply condemned by the Roman aristocracy - after his death - false Neros stood at the head of the disaffected eastern masses who blessed his rule, and traces of this remained in world literature as well (Feuchtwanger: The False Nero).
So what were the emperors of the Roman Empire like? Tacitus, Suetonius, the authors of the imperial biographies Historia Augusta, who can be read in Hungarian as well as the numerous works of Greek and Latin historians or the letters of Pliny the Younger, give a richly informed, but often very subjective picture of their heroes. Our book attempts to present a realistic portrait of the listed emperors through the biographies of their predecessors, Julius Caesar, then Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Traianus, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, Diocletian and Constantine, reflecting the results of modern historiography. In a larger appendix, we provide the most important data on the lives of all Roman emperors.