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Curated category

1st-century Romans

  • Tiberius GemellusTiberius Gemellus was born on the 10th of October AD 19, the same day his uncle Germanicus died far away in Syria. He was a grandson of the emperor Tiberius…
  • LivyLivy, the Roman historian born in 59 BC in the prosperous northern Italian city of Patavium, devoted the greater part of his adult life to a single…
  • JuvenalThe name Decimus Junius Juvenalis appears in a single inscription found at Aquinum, yet the life of this Roman poet remains shrouded in speculation.
  • AugustusOn the 8th of May 44 BC, a teenager named Gaius Octavius accepted a dead man's will and, with it, the most dangerous inheritance in the Roman world.
  • JosephusFlavius Josephus surrendered to the Roman army in AD 67, then told his captor a prophecy that would save his life. Trapped in a cave with forty companions…
  • Pliny the ElderPliny the Elder died on the 25th of August, AD 79, on a beach near Stabiae, surrounded by the ash and toxic gases of Mount Vesuvius, having gone there not to…
  • PtolemyPtolemy lived sometime around 100 to 170 AD, and in that span he wrote about a dozen scientific treatises that would shape how people understood the heavens…
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • Seneca the YoungerSeneca the Younger spent his final hours in a warm bath, dictating last words to a scribe while friends gathered around him in his home.
  • 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…
  • HadrianHadrian was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus on the 24th of January 76, in the town of Italica in southern Spain, far from the city he would one day rule.
  • SuetoniusSuetonius, the Roman historian born around AD 69, spent his career collecting the secrets of emperors. He recorded the earliest known accounts of Julius…
  • QuintilianMarcus Fabius Quintilianus arrived in the world around 35 AD within the town of Calagurris, now known as Calahorra in La Rioja.
  • Gaius Julius HyginusGaius Julius Hyginus is a name that appears twice in the history of Latin letters: once as a living man who walked the halls of Roman power, and once as a…
  • Pliny the YoungerPliny the Younger watched a cloud rise from a mountain across the Bay of Naples and described it as resembling a pine tree, its trunk shooting upward before…
  • PlutarchPlutarch, the Greek philosopher and biographer born in the small town of Chaeronea in the region of Boeotia, left behind a body of work that shaped how…
  • BritannicusTiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus arrived in Rome on the 12th of February AD 41. His father, Emperor Claudius, had been reigning for less than a month…
  • 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.
  • Vibia SabinaVibia Sabina was a Roman empress whose face appeared on more official coinage than any imperial woman before her. She lived from 83 to 136 or 137 AD, wife…
  • FrontinusFrontinus received the surrender of 70,000 Lingones in AD 70. That single figure, recorded in his own hand, captures something essential about Sextus Julius…
  • Naevius Sutorius MacroQuintus Naevius Cordus Sutorius Macro was born in 21 BC in a hilltop town at the foot of Monte Velino and died in AD 38 having helped place a new emperor on…