Curated playlist
Silver Age Latin writers
- TacitusTacitus, the Roman historian and senator who lived from roughly 56 to 120 AD, left behind a body of work so dense and so unsettling that readers have been arguing about his true allegiances for nearly two thousand years. He declared his…
- 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…
- 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 flee the disaster but to sail toward it. He was a corpulent man with a chronic…
- 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…
- 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. He had already tried to bleed to death by severing veins, and taken poison that failed to kill him. In…
- 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…
- SuetoniusSuetonius, the Roman historian born around AD 69, spent his career collecting the secrets of emperors. He recorded the earliest known accounts of Julius Caesar's epileptic seizures. He catalogued omens, physical descriptions, and private…
- 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…
- Gaius (jurist)Gaius was a Roman jurist who flourished between roughly AD 130 and 180, and yet almost nothing is known about who he actually was. His full name remains a mystery. Gaius, or Caius, is merely a praenomen, a personal first name, and no…
- QuintilianMarcus Fabius Quintilianus arrived in the world around 35 AD within the town of Calagurris, now known as Calahorra in La Rioja. His father was a well-educated man who sent him to Rome early during Nero's reign. The young student sought out…
- 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 spreading out into branches of ash and smoke. That observation, written roughly 25…
- 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…
- ApuleiusApuleius was born around 124 AD in Madauros, a colonia on the North African coast, and he described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian." He left behind the only ancient Latin novel to survive in its entirety, a courtroom defense that…
- 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 Frontinus: a man who lived at the center of Roman military and administrative…