Generals and politicians, orators and warriors, sages and proud, patrons of the arts and gluttons, schemers and people of honor, unmercenaries and embezzlers, and sometimes both, and the third in one person... All the great Romans are collected in this book, covering the time from the royal period to the beginning of the empire. The gallery of portrait-biographies, masterfully painted by the outstanding German historian Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll, opens against the backdrop of grandiose - real and mythical - events of Roman history.