Curated playlist
1st-century Roman poets
- OvidPublius Ovidius Naso was born on the 20th of March 43 BC in the Paelignian town of Sulmo, a place tucked into an Apennine valley east of Rome. That birth year was no quiet moment in Roman history. It was a year of political upheaval, and…
- JuvenalJuvenal, the Roman poet known for the most caustic verse to survive from antiquity, is almost entirely unknown as a person. His contemporary Martial described him as "a poor dependent cadging from rich men." That description captures the…
- DomitianDomitian was assassinated on the 18th of September 96, stabbed seven times in a carefully staged attack by members of his own household. His chamberlain had recruited a steward named Stephanus, who spent several days feigning an arm injury…
- PetroniusGaius Petronius Arbiter spent his days in sleep, his nights in official duties or amusement. That was not a criticism. It was his reputation, and he wore it as a badge of distinction. In the court of the emperor Nero, this man became so…
- MartialMartial, the Roman poet born in Bilbilis in Hispania, left behind 1,561 epigrams that read less like literature and more like dispatches from the crowded, stinking, brilliant heart of imperial Rome. He wrote about landlords who committed…
- PersiusPersius, born Aulus Persius Flaccus on the 4th of December 34 AD, packed the full force of Roman Stoic philosophy into a single slim book of fewer than seven hundred lines. He died on the 24th of November 62 AD, at just twenty-seven years…
- StatiusPublius Papinius Statius grew up in the Bay of Naples during the early years of the first century. His father, a native of Velia, moved to Rome and taught with marked success before returning to Naples. The elder Statius competed in poetic…
- TitusTitus Flavius Vespasianus was born on the 30th of December 39 AD, in the same world that would later watch him tear down one of its most sacred buildings. He ruled Rome for just over two years. In that time, a volcano buried two cities, a…
- GermanicusGermanicus Julius Caesar died on the 10th of October AD 19 in Antioch, at the age of thirty-three. He left behind a Roman world in mourning so genuine that ordinary citizens began the formal mourning rituals before the Senate had even…
- LucanLucan was born on the 3rd of November in AD 39, in the Roman colony of Corduba, in the province of Hispania Baetica, now Córdoba, Spain. His full name was Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, though English speakers know him simply as Lucan. Ancient…