Our latest volume in the Aleksander Krawczuk series is "The Devil's Brood," the tale of the sons of Constantine the Great. It tells two parallel stoiries: one of the vicious, evil, and incompetent sons of Constantine fighting it out amongst themselves like rabid dogs, and murdering all and sundry in the process; and the other--of a gentle, sensitive, beautiful boy reading poetry and studying the classics. One day, fate will raise him to the purple and posterity will remember him as Julian the Apostate.
We have illustrated the volume with reproductions taken from "Romanorvm imperatorvm effigies: elogijs ex diuersis scriptoribus per Thomam Treteru S. Mariae Transtyberim canonicum collectis", or "Portraits of Roman Emperors: eulogies collected from various authors by Thomas Treter of St. Mary in Trastavere."
Tomasz Treter, who wrote the short biographical notes of the emperors (the list is by no means complete and the reasons why some emperors are not included are not clear) was a son of a Poznań family of book binders, a philologist, translator, and poet with a clerical career in Rome (where he served as a canon at Santa Maria in Trastavere) and Poland (where he succeeded to a canonry once held by Copernicus). He had also served as secretary to Kings Stephen Bathory and Sigismund III.
The book, published in 1583 with entirely fanciful illustrations by Giovanni Battista Cavalieri, was dedicated to Stephen Bathory, King of Poland, with a beautiful frontispiece featuring the Polish coat of arms.
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