Curated playlist
Silver Age Latin writers
- TacitusThe first half of Tacitus's Annals survived in just one manuscript. The second half survived in a different single copy.
- JuvenalJuvenal never mentions exile in his Satires, yet every surviving biography says he was exiled.
- Pliny the ElderPliny the Elder sailed toward Mount Vesuvius's eruption to rescue a stranded friend.
- PetroniusCharged with treason, Petronius opened his veins, bound them up, then reopened them while talking with friends.
- MartialMartial, a Roman poet, mocked landlords who set fires for insurance money.
- Seneca the YoungerThe Roman philosopher Seneca survived bleeding and poison, then died from steam in a warm bath.
- PersiusThe Roman poet Persius left fewer than seven hundred lines, yet they became a medieval favorite.
- SuetoniusPliny the Younger asked Emperor Trajan for a tax break on behalf of the historian Suetonius.
- StatiusPublius Papinius Statius, a Latin poet who lived from about 45 to about 96 CE, three times received a golden crown directly from an emperor's hand. The emperor was Domitian, and the prize was handed out at the Alban Festival. Statius left…
- Gaius (jurist)Roman jurist Gaius is known only by his first name. Yet a later emperor made his opinions binding on judges.
- QuintilianIn 1416, the scholar Poggio Bracciolini found a complete copy of a lost Roman masterpiece in the Abbey of Saint Gall. It was the work of Quintilian, a teacher of public speaking whose full name was Marcus Fabius Quintilianus. Poggio found…
- Pliny the YoungerPliny the Younger, then 17 or 18, watched Vesuvius erupt in 79 AD while his uncle died in the cloud.
- LucanNero rewarded the poet Lucan with honors, then banned his poetry. Lucan's epic turned openly against the emperor.
- ApuleiusApuleius stood trial around 158 AD on a charge of using magic spells to win a rich widow.
- FrontinusFrontinus began fixing Rome's water supply by ordering maps of every aqueduct. They showed pipes tapped by thieves.