John Mullan's 10 of the best: emperors

William Shakespeare's Saturninus In Titus Andronicus , Saturninus gets the imperial throne thanks to the victorious military commander, Titus Andronicus, who then discovers his appointee to be as violent and lustful as everyone else in Rome. At the play's catastrophe, the emperor unwittingly eats a pie made by Titus from the Empress Tamora's sons, before killing Titus and being murdered in his turn by Lucius, the next emperor. Ben Jonson's Tiberius Jonson's Sejanus His Fall portrays the rise to power of Tiberius's favourite, the ruthless Sejanus. Once a male prostitute, he has become "the second face of the whole world". But Tiberius is cleverer and more ruthless still, secretly ensuring that he is condemned by the Senate and torn to pieces by the mob. Racine's Nero Britannicus, son of Claudius, is Nero's rival for the imperial throne and for the love of the delicious Junia in Racine's tragedy Britannicus . Nero is helped to power by his terrifying mother, Agrippina, at which point his psychopathic tendencies take over. He poisons Britannicus but is destined to gnash his teeth when Junia becomes a vestal virgin. Wilkie Collins's Honorius In the gory historical novel Antonina , the barbarians are closing in. In the imperial palace, the Emperor Honorius, "a pale, thin, debilitated youth", feeds his chickens as they scrabble around the marble floor. Clearly Rome does not have the dynamic leader it needs, and civilisation is doomed. Walter Pater's Marcus Aurelius The eponymous hero of Pater's Marius the Epicurean travels to Rome in search of worldly wisdom after a youth spent studying philosophy. Eventually he becomes secretary to Marcus Aurelius, whom he admires as a stoic sage. However, he comes to realise that the emperor's stoicism allows him to be indifferent to the sufferings of his subjects, and so Marius deserts the court. Robert Graves's Claudius Graves gives us a gallery of emperors: wise Augustus, who is a fool when it comes to the scheming of his own wife, Livia; corrupt and sensual Tiberius; bonkers Caligula. The ruling presence is the narrator, stammering Claudius , saved from being murdered by the fact that he seems a dolt. In the end, he too will be laid low by the woman he loves. Marguerite Yourcenar's Hadrian Memoirs of Hadrian is written in the form of a letter from the ageing Hadrian to his designated successor, the teenage Marcus Aurelius. Looking back over his life he lets us into his sensual secrets – his love for the Bithynian youth Antinous – and the price an intelligent man has to pay for wielding power. Gore Vidal's Julian The narrator of most of Vidal's novel Julian , Flavius Claudius Julianus, is better known as Julian the Apostate, who tried to return the empire to paganism. In Vidal's version, he is a deeply thoughtful young man and a brave general. He sees that Christianity is obsessed with martyrdom and theological dispute, and will be bad for civic life. Vidal seems to agree. Caroline Lawrence's Titus Emperors aren't as bad as you expect. In Lawrence's children's tale The Assassins of Rome , 11-year-old Jonathan becomes embroiled in a plot to kill the emperor, Titus. In Rome he meets up with his long-lost mother, who knows the emperor, and thus finds out that he is quite a good egg. Though Jonathan has been branded as a slave, Titus apologises and releases him. Allan Massie's Caligula In Caligula Massie tries to rescue the emperor from John Hurt's memorably mad incarnation in the BBC dramatisation of I, Claudius . His emotionally wounded Caligula is paranoid for very good reasons and suffers for his loveless upbringing. • Tell us about the emperors we have missed and give us your ideas for future columns