Curated playlist
Golden Age Latin writers
- CiceroCicero's name comes from the Latin word for chickpea. He refused advice to drop it when he entered politics.
- Julius CaesarJulius Caesar was stabbed at least twenty-three times by some sixty conspirators.
- Lucius Varius RufusWhen Virgil died, Lucius Varius Rufus helped prepare the unfinished Aeneid for readers.
- OvidOvid blamed his exile on a poem and a mistake. He suggested the poem was his guide to seduction, the Ars Amatoria.
- HoraceHorace, the Roman poet, said he ran from the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC without his shield.
- VirgilVirgil wanted his unfinished Aeneid burned, but Augustus overruled him. The emperor ordered two executors to publish it.
- CatullusCatullus's poems nearly vanished, then turned up in one manuscript in Verona in 1305.
- LivyA man from Cadiz once traveled to Rome and back just to meet the historian Livy. Livy never held public office.
- Marcus Terentius VarroMarcus Terentius Varro left just one complete work out of an estimated 74. It is a farming manual.
- Gaius Julius HyginusGaius Julius Hyginus, once owned by Augustus, ran Rome's Palatine library and died poor.
- SallustSent to calm mutinous soldiers in 47 BC, the Roman politician Sallust barely got out alive.
- VitruviusIn January 2026, diggers in Fano, Italy, found the lost basilica of Vitruvius. It is the only building confirmed as his.
- LucretiusA Roman poem on atoms sat forgotten in a German monastery for over a thousand years.