The first historic figure is the Roman emperor
Trajan.
When I was studying Ancient Culture and Society, he was always my
favorite emperor. A seemingly good man, caught up in a difficult time.
Ironically, though he seemed to have no taste for war and fighting, he
was the Roman emperor credited with achieving the greatest expansion of
the Roman empire. His life's work has been documented on a monument in
Rome,
Trajan's Column.
There you can follow his career on what could be described as a sort of
cartoon. In some images of Trajan he looks quite handsome. I imagine
they are from his youth. So there you have him, one of the few Roman
emperors about whom even the ancient Roman gossip columnists couldn't
find anything scandalous to say.
