Augustus is certainly a hard nut to crack when it comes to a biography, seeing as he was the most talented propagandist in the history of the world. He doesn't want us to know the "real" him, that's exactly the point. But Everitt is great at creating a person for the reader, and great at telling us exactly how he comes to believe Augustus would have been as a man.
On the other hand, Hadrian never comes alive. Maybe it's because Hadrian himself was a horse's ass and a know-it-all, but the book doesn't make you care. More than half is mostly about how Hadrian related to Trajan, naturally because that's what we have to go on, but I didn't enjoy it as much.
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