A manuscript of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, copied out in Austria in the 1470s Suetonius lived just a little later than Seneca, during the reign of the Flavian emperors and then [...]
Seneca, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca was one of the great writers of the Julio-Claudianperiod in Rome. He was born in the Roman province of Spain about 3 BC. But his [...]
Snow in Athens (thanks BBC!) Polybius (po-LIB-ee-us) was a rich Greek man, who was born in the Greek city of Athens, about 200 BC. When the Romans conquered his city-state, they demanded some hostages from that [...]
Actors in ancient Rome During the Roman Republic, when the Romans first began to go to plays, there weren't any plays written in Latin, only plays in Greek. Plautus (PLAW-tuss or PLOW-tuss) was [...]
Part of a page from a copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses (South Italy, 1000s AD, just as the Normans were conquering it) When did Ovid live? With the end of the Roman [...]
Narcissus and his pond (Third Style Roman painting from Pompeii, about 79 AD) - Echo and Narcissus Where is Echo's story from? Echo and Narcissus is a story we know [...]
The Roman historian Livy wrote about Hannibal. One of Hannibal's coins shows a man riding an elephant. When did Livy live? Livy was a Roman historian who was born in [...]
Latin literature: A Roman papyrus scroll from a library of Epicurean philosophy (Herculaneum, Italy) Where did Latin come from? The Roman Empire lasted for more than a thousand years, so there was [...]
Mt. Vesuvius Who was Pliny the Elder? Pliny the Elder was a very rich man from one of the most important families in the Roman Empire. He lived during the [...]
Just a loaf of bread This is a story we only know because Ovid wrote it down in his poem, the Metamorphoses. It might be a traditional Greek story, but we don't know [...]
