In my dissertation, I argue that the tyrannical image of the Emperor Domitian (r. 81-96 CE) is a literary construct, which needs to be revisited in a wider spectrum of Roman imperial historiography. I believe that Domitian’s tainted reputation owes its origin to Augustus’ onerous legacy to his successors. Augustus posed as the civilis princeps, who treated senators as if they were his equals. Despite the Republican façade, a princeps was a monarch who ruled with absolute power. Stuck between the specter of the Republic and the reality of the monarchic Principate, Augustus’s successors would be judged by imperial historiographers on how civil they acted toward the Senate. Emperors, such as Domitian, who refused to pay enough deference to the Senate, were condemned as tyrants. Several misconceptions also besmirched Domitian’s image. Domitian was considered so arrogant that he requested that he be officially addressed as dominus et deus noster, but there is no evidence that Domitian incorporated this ostentatious appellation into his official titulature. The label, “Reign of Terror,” created by modern scholars to encapsulate Domitian’s tyranny, led to another misconception that Domitian must have decimated the Senate. However, my scrutiny of the twelve consular victims listed in Suetonius’s Life of Domitian and the victims of 93 CE refutes that accusation. I show that Domitian employed those senators in his administration and executed them only when they proved treasonous. Despite the positive depictions of Domitian in the poetry of Martial and Statius, composed during the emperor’s lifetime, the hostile accounts written after his death by the senatorial authors, such as Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, became prevalent enough to ossify the image of Domitian as a savage tyrant in Roman imperial historiography. I advocate for recasting the image of Domitian as an ordinary emperor who, because of his adversarial relationship with the Roman aristocrats, would go down in history as one of the worst Roman emperors. In studies on Roman historiography, their biased criteria have so far acknowledged only two impeccably good emperors: the exemplary civilis princeps Augustus and the optimus princeps Trajan.