The Making of a Roman Emperor
Augustus and his Julio-Claudian successors provide the case studies for this MIT OpenCourseWare subject on how Roman emperors built and projected public images through art, architecture, and coinage. The course examines how surviving literary sources, including Suetonius and Tacitus, either reinforced or undercut that official image, and traces how these ancient representations shaped later perceptions of Roman rulers. Modern depictions get equal attention: the class looks at films like Quo Vadis and I, Claudius alongside HBO's Rome series to see how twentieth and twenty-first century media reinterpret the same emperors. Materials include MIT's course readings and syllabus structure, free to access online with no certificate offered. The focus stays on the mechanics of image-making itself, coins, statues, and propaganda, rather than on political narrative alone, making it as much a study of Roman media as of Roman history.