⭐ 7 picks
Out of roughly seventy men who wore the purple, a handful became household names — for founding the empire, for ruling it well, or for disgracing it so thoroughly the memory stuck. Here are the ones history could not forget, and what fixed each in it.
Invented the office itself and held it for 41 years while calling himself merely “first citizen.”
The emperor who allegedly fiddled while Rome burned — the byword for a ruler lost in his own vanity.
Four years of cruelty and legend — the emperor said to have wanted to make his horse a consul.
The philosopher on the throne, whose private notebook — the Meditations — is still read as a guide to living.
Turned the empire Christian and moved its capital east to the city that bore his name for 1,600 years.
Pushed the empire to its greatest size; every later emperor was wished “luckier than Augustus, better than Trajan.”
The emperor who fought in the arena as a gladiator — the villain the film Gladiator made famous all over again.