Classics by Credo Reference: Literature

First Roman emperor, a grandson of the sister of Julius Caesar. Named at first Caius Octavius, he became on adoption by the Julian gens (44 BCE) Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian); Augustus was a title of honor granted (27 BCE) by the senate.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), statesman, orator, and writer, is our main source for the culture and history of the Roman Republic in its last generation, and fundamental to the moral and political thought of the Latin Fathers (Augustine, Jerome, Lactantius), of the humanist renaissance of Italy, and of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment in Europe and America.

Roman poet, b. Verona. Of a well-to-do family, he went c.62 B.C. to Rome.

Latin name Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Roman poet and satirist: his verse includes the lyrics in the Epodes and the Odes, the Epistles and Satires, and the Ars Poetica.

From The Macmillan Encyclopedia
The earliest Latin literature dates from after the conclusion of the first Punic War (241 BC).

Titus Livius. Roman historian; of his history of Rome in 142 books, only 35 survive.

Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman poet and philosopher. Little is known about his life. A chronicle of St. Jerome speaks of the loss of his reason through taking a love potion. It states that in sane intervals he had written books that were later emended by Cicero. The poetry of Lucretius constitutes one great didactic work in six books, De rerum natura [on the nature of things].

Latin name Publius Ovidius Naso. Roman poet. His verse includes poems on love, Ars Amatoria, on myths, Metamorphoses, and on his sufferings in exile, Tristia.

From The Classical Tradition
Roman elegiac poet (ca. 50-45 bce-after 15 ce). A generation younger than Catullus, about a decade older than Ovid, he published four books of poems, most of them about the narrator-poet's tumultuous affair with a woman called Cynthia.

Roman poet, b. Andes dist., near Mantua, in Cisalpine Gaul; the spelling Virgil is not found earlier than the 5th cent. CE. Vergil's father, a farmer, took his son to Cremona for his education. Vergil worked on the Aeneid, a national epic honoring Rome and foretelling prosperity to come. The adventures of Aeneas are unquestionably one of the greatest long poems in world literature.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia Roman satirical poet. His verse established a model for the satire of indignation, in contrast to the less harsh satire of ridicule of Horace.

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
(AD 39-65) Born in Corduba (Córdoba), Spain, he was the nephew of the philosopher Seneca, the Younger. He studied in Rome and in Athens, and became proficient in rhetoric and philosophy.

From The Classical Tradition
Roman epigrammatist. His 14 books of epigrams embraced many topics: flattery of social superiors, satire of man's foibles, eroticism, and devotion to his Spanish heritage.

Roman scientific encyclopedist and historian. Many of his works have been lost, but in Historia naturalis/Natural History, probably completed AD 77, Pliny surveys all the known sciences of his day, notably astronomy, meteorology, geography, mineralogy, zoology, and botany.

From The Classical Tradition
Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (ca. 61-ca. 113 ce), nephew of the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, had interests that were much less encyclopedic and vastly more influential on later centuries than his illustrious uncle's.

From Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
(ca. 35-ca. 90 CE) Pleader in Roman courts and first public professor of Latin rhetoric in Rome, whose Institutio oratoria, written in retirement, is singular among ancient works of educational theory in its consideration of practical pedagogy.

From Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia
Seneca was the second son of Seneca the Elder, born at Córdoba in Spain but brought up as a child in Rome by an aunt and educated there in rhetoric and philosophy.

From The MacMillan Encyclopedia
The period (18-c. 130 AD) succeeding the Golden Age of Latin literature. During this time rhetorical brilliance and ornamentation became prized for its own sake. Major writers include the satirist Juvenal, the epigrammatist Martial, the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and the philosopher and dramatist Seneca.

From The Classical Tradition.
The most influential and best-known biographer in the Latin language. He composed lives of the Roman emperors down to Domitian (De vita Caesarum). He chose to begin the series not with Augustus but with Julius Caesar, whom Trajan, under whom he wrote, publicly commemorated as the founder of the imperial line.

Roman historian. Little is known for certain of his life. He was a friend of Pliny the Younger and married the daughter of Agricola.

In The Columbia Encyclopedia
The writings of the ancient Greeks. The Greek Isles are recognized as the birthplace of Western intellectual life. The earliest extant European literary works are the Iliad and the Odyssey, both written in ancient Greek probably before 700 BCE, and attributed to Homer. Among other early epic poems, most of which have perished, those of Hesiod, the first didactic poet, remain.

Athenian tragic dramatist, b. Eleusis. The first of the three great Greek writers of tragedy.

Greek playwright, Athenian comic poet, greatest of the ancient writers of comedy.

Greek philosopher, b. Stagira. He is sometimes called the Stagirite.

Greek tragic dramatist, ranking with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Born in Attica, he lived in Athens most of his life.

Greek historian, called the Father of History, b. Halicarnassus, Asia Minor. Only scant knowledge of his life can be gleaned from his writings and from references to him by later writings, notably the Suda.

Greek poet. Homer is considered to be the author of the the Iliad and the Odyssey, the great early epics of Greek literature.

Greek poet, generally regarded as the greatest Greek lyric poet.

Greek philosopher. Plato's teachings have been among the most influential in the history of Western civilization.

Sappho of Lesbos (late seventh/early sixth century BCE) was the most famous woman poet of antiquity.

Greek tragic dramatist, younger contemporary of Aeschylus and older contemporary of Euripides, b. Colonus, near Athens.

Greek historian of Athens, one of the greatest of ancient historians. His family was partly Thracian. As a general in the Peloponnesian War he failed (424 BCE) to prevent the surrender of the city of Amphipolis to the Spartan commander Brasidas and was exiled until the end of the war.

Greek historian, b. Athens. He was one of the well-to-do young disciples of Socrates before leaving Athens to join the Greek force (the Ten Thousand) that was in the service of Cyrus the Younger of Persia.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide
(ca. 3rd cent. BCE) Greek poet. He was the author of the epic Argonautica, which tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. A pupil of Callimachus, he was for a time head of the library at Alexandria.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(ca. 280–45 BCE) Hellenistic Greek poet and critic.

From Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, Routledge
(ca. 3rd cent. BCE) Theocritus's poems (written for the most part in the poet's native western, or Doric, form of Greek) came to be known as ‘idylls’. They cover various styles and genres, the largest single group comprising the ‘bucolic’ idylls, which (through Virgil) originated the European pastoral tradition.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(ca. 100 CE) Roman historian. He was a Greek, born in Alexandria. He held various offices in Alexandria, was an advocate in Rome, and then imperial procurator in Egypt. His history of the Roman conquests, from the founding of Rome to the reign of Trajan, is more a collection of monographs on specific events than a continuous history.

Greek mathematician, physicist, and inventor. He is famous for his work in geometry (on the circle, sphere, cylinder, and parabola), physics, mechanics, and hydrostatics.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Greek historian, philosopher, and general, b. Nicomedia in Bithynia. He was governor of Cappadocia under Emperor Hadrian and in A.D. 134 repulsed an invasion of the Alans. His chief work is the Anabasis, the prime extant source on Alexander the Great.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Sicilian historian. He wrote, in Greek, a world history in 40 books, ending with Caesar's Gallic Wars. Fully preserved are Books I–V and XI–XX, which cover Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Scythian, Arabian, and North African history and parts of Greek and Roman history.

From The Classical Tradition
Greek writer, 3rd century ce. Because of an irony of fate, no biographical details survive about the foremost biographer of Greek philosophers. Diogenes Laertius is a mere label attached to the ten books of the Lives and Doctrines of the Philosophers, our best indirect source of knowledge for classical philosophy.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(flourished c. 20 BC) Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric. Born in Halicarnassus, Caria (Asia Minor), Dionysius went to Rome in 30 BC

From Encyclopedia of Ethics
Epictetus was born in Hierapolis in Phrygia and grew up as a slave in Rome, where he studied Stoic philosophy with C. Musonius Rufus. He was given his freedom some time after C.E. 68, and taught philosophy in Rome until he was banished by an edict of Emperor Domitian in C.E. 88 or 93.

One of history's most accomplished men of science, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (ca. 276 B.C.E.-ca. 195 B.C.E.) was the precursor of the “Renaissance men” who would follow him almost 2,000 years later.

Greek mathematician whose works, and the style in which they were presented, formed the basis for all mathematical thought and expression for the following 2,000 years (although they were not entirely without fault).

Galen (129–ca. 216 CE) was the most prolific and influential of all medical writers of antiquity.

Greek essayist and biographer, b. Chaeronea, Boeotia. He traveled in Egypt and Italy, visited Rome (where he lectured on philosophy) and Athens, and finally returned to his native Boeotia, where he became a priest of the temple of Delphi.

Greek historian, b. Megalopolis. As one of the leaders of the Achaean League and a friend of Philopoemen, he was influential in Greek politics.

(Claudius Ptolemaeus) Celebrated Greco-Egyptian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. He made his observations in Alexandria and was the last great astronomer of ancient times.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Greek geographer, historian, and philosopher, b. Amasya, Pontus. He studied in Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, and Alexandria and traveled in Europe, N Africa, and W Asia. Primarily a historian, he wrote a group of historical sketches (47 books) quoted by later authors but almost entirely lost.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(ca. 356–ca. 260 BCE) Greek historian of Tauromenium (now Taormina), Sicily. Son of the tyrant of the city, he was banished by Agathocles either in 317 or 312 BCE and lived for 50 years in Athens, where he wrote a history of his native land. This history, now lost except for fragments which have survived as quotations in other works, covered the period from earliest times to the events of his own lifetime.