The author traces five successive modes of public feeling toward the central historical figure, from youthful adoration through reactive hatred, satirical derision, detached historical‑psychological assessment, to poignant remembrance of downfall and exile. He examines contrasting eyewitness and scholarly accounts that depict the subject alternately as tyrant, charmer, hero, or villain, and considers how personal temperament, social power, and cultural spectacle shaped those portrayals. The work analyzes character contradictions, leadership practices, and the figure's symbolic role as a cultural phenomenon, weighing accomplishments and violences without partisanship and reflecting on the tragic human cost of the later years in enforced solitude.
