Through close examination of the emperor Augustus and his Julio-Claudian successors, this subject investigates how Roman emperors used art, architecture, coinage, and other media to create and project an image of themselves, how the surviving literary sources from the Roman period reinforced or subverted that image, and how both phenomena have contributed to post-classical perceptions of Roman emperors. Also considers works of Suetonius and Tacitus, and modern representations of the emperors such as those found in the films I, Claudius, Quo Vadis, and HBO's Rome series.