Epitome

Life Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman architect active in the first century BCE. Little is known about Vitruvius apart from what he says about himself in his writings. His praenomen…

Life Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis (Eng. Juvenal) was the last great Roman satirist. Almost nothing of his life is known. There exists thirteen ancient biographies for him, but all are late, and the…

Life Nearly everything we know about Marcus Valerius Martialis (Eng: Martial) comes from his very generous autobiographical statements, although as with any author, conflating the author with the narrator leads to tenuous…

Life Caecilius Statius is a second-century writer of pallatiae, though beyond that, there are some problems concerning the traditions of his life. The fourth century chronicler Jerome lists his hometown as Mediolanum (mod. Milan)…

Life Titus Livius, known to the English-speaking world as Livy, was born in Patavium (mod. Padua) in 59 BCE. Very little of his early life is known, though some things…

Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil or Virgil in English) was the greatest Latin poet of the Augustan Age, and has been countlessly compared to Homer for his masterpiece epic, the Aeneid. Life Vergil’s early…

Life and Identity The identity of Petronius is an unsettled debate within scholarship. The name on the manuscripts is Petronius Arbiter. Some scholars connect this name to a certain Petronius whom Tacitus,…

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace in English), was one of the leading poets of the Augustan Age. He is considered not only the finest of Latin lyric, but, along with Vergil…

The Astronomica is a Latin didactic poem on astrology and written in five books. It was published in the early first century CE. Authorship Its author is unknown, but the name…

Marcus Tullius Cicero was Rome’s preeminent statesman and master of Latin prose. No other Roman has made a larger contribution to ancient Rome but to the Western literary tradition, and it…