People - Ancient Rome

Lucullus, L. Licinius in Harpers Dictionary

A Roman celebrated as the conqueror of Mithridates. He fought on the side of Sulla in the Civil Wars with the Marian party, was praetor B.C. 77, and consul in 74. In the latter year he received the conduct of the war against Mithridates, which he carried on for eight years with great success (see Mithridates), but being unable to bring the war t...

Read More

Marius in Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

Gaius, a distinguished Roman general and statesman, who was born near Arpinum in B.C. 157 of an obscure family in humble circumstances. His father's name was C. Marius, and his mother's Fulcinia; and his parents, as well as Marius himself, were clients of the noble plebeian house of the Herennii. So indigent, indeed, is the family represented ...

Read More

Nero in Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

Claudius Caesar. The sixth of the Roman emperors, born at Antium, in Latium, A.D. 37, nine months after the death of Tiberius. He was the son of Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus, and was originally named Lucius Domitius. After the death of Ahenobarbus, and a second husband, Crispus Passienus, Agrippina married her...

Read More

Julius Caesar in Wikipedia

Gaius Julius Caesar[2] (13 July 100 BC[3] – 15 March 44 BC)[4] was a Roman general and statesman. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. During the late 60s and into the 50s BC, Caesar entered into a political alliance with Crassus and Pompey that was to dominate Roman politics for several ...

Read More

Livy in Wikipedia

Titus Livius (59 BC – AD 17), known as Livy in English, was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy'...

Read More

Maecenas in Wikipedia

Gaius Cilnius Maecenas (13 April 70 BC – ? October 8 BC) was a confidant and political advisor to Octavian (who was to become the first Emperor of Rome as Caesar Augustus) as well as an important patron for the new generation of Augustan poets. During the reign of Augustus, Maecenas served as a quasi-culture minister to the Emperor. His name h...

Read More

Martial in Wikipedia

Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial) (March 1, between 38 and 41 AD - between 102 and 104 AD), was a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he ...

Read More

Nerva in Wikipedia

Marcus Cocceius Nerva (8 November 30 – 25 January 98), commonly known as Nerva, was Roman Emperor from 96 to 98. Nerva became emperor at the age of sixty-five, after a lifetime of imperial service under Nero and the rulers of the Flavian dynasty. Under Nero, he was a member of the imperial entourage and played a vital part in exposing the Pis...

Read More

Galerius Maximiānus in Harpers Dictionary

Galerius Maximiānus, usually called Galerius, Roman emperor, A.D. 305-311. He was first made Caesar by Diocletian, whose daughter he had married; and upon the abdication of Diocletian and Maximianus (305 A.D.), he became Augustus or emperor. He died in 311, of the disgusting disease known in modern times by the name of morbus pediculosus. He w...

Read More

Epictētus in Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

(Ἐπίκτητος). An eminent Stoic philosopher, born in a servile condition at Hierapolis in Phrygia, about A.D. 50. The names of his parents are unknown; neither do we know how he came to be brought to Rome. But in that city he was for some time a slave to Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero, who had been one of his body-guard. An anecdote related by...

Read More