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Catullus (publisher)
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 – 54 BC), known as Catullus (), was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and because of their personal or sexually explicit themes. Life Gāius Valerius Catullus was born to a leading equestrian family of Verona, in Cisalpine Gaul. The social prominence of the Catullus family allowed the father of Gaius Valerius to entertain Julius Caesar when he was the Promagistrate (proconsul) of both Gallic provinces. In a poem, Catullus describes his happy homecoming to the family villa at Sirmio, on Lake Garda, near Verona; he also owned a villa near the resort of Tibur (modern Tivoli). Catullus appears to have spent most of his young adult years in Rome. His friends there included the poets Licinius Calvus, and Helvius Cinna, Quintus Hortensius (son of the orator and rival of Cicero) and the biographer Cornelius Nepos, to whom Catullus dedicated a ''libellus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catulus
Gaius Lutatius Catulus ( 242–241 BC) was a ancient Rome, Roman statesman and Commander, naval commander in the First Punic War. He was born a member of the plebeian gens Lutatius. His Roman naming conventions, cognomen "Catulus" means "puppy". There are no historical records of his life prior to consulship, but his career probably followed the standard cursus honorum, beginning with service in the cavalry and continuing with the positions of military tribune and quaestor. He was elected as a Roman consul, consul in 242 BC, a ''novus homo''. His colleague as consul was Aulus Postumius Albinus (consul 242 BC), Aulus Postumius Albinus. In addition to the consulship Postumius held the position of Flamen Martialis, and for this reason the pontifex maximus Lucius Caecilius Metellus (consul 251 BC), Lucius Caecilius Metellus forbade him from leaving the city. Lutatius was therefore the only candidate for commanding the war in Sicily. The Roman Senate, senate appointed the praetor Q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaul
Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during Republican era, Cisalpina was annexed in 42 BC to Roman Italy), and Germany west of the Rhine. It covered an area of . According to Julius Caesar, Gaul was divided into three parts: Gallia Celtica, Belgica, and Aquitania. Archaeologically, the Gauls were bearers of the La Tène culture, which extended across all of Gaul, as well as east to Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, and southwestern Germania during the 5th to 1st centuries BC. During the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, Gaul fell under Roman rule: Gallia Cisalpina was conquered in 204 BC and Gallia Narbonensis in 123 BC. Gaul was invaded after 120 BC by the Cimbri and the Teutons, who were in turn defeated by the Romans by 103 BC. Julius Caesar finally subdued the remaining parts of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, properly entitled ''De vita Caesarum''. Other works by Suetonius concerned the daily life of Rome, politics, oratory, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians. A few of these books have partially survived, but many have been lost. Life Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born about AD 69, a date deduced from his remarks describing himself as a "young man" 20 years after Nero's death. His place of birth is disputed, but most scholars place it in Hippo Regius, a small north African town in Numidia, in modern-day Algeria. It is certain that Suetonius came from a family of moderate social position, that his father, Suetonius Laetus, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great, was a leading Roman general and statesman. He played a significant role in the transformation of Rome from republic to empire. He was (for a time) a student of Roman general Sulla as well as the political ally, and later enemy, of Julius Caesar. A member of the senatorial nobility, Pompey entered into a military career while still young. He rose to prominence serving the dictator Sulla as a commander in the civil war of 83–82 BC. Pompey's success as a general while young enabled him to advance directly to his first Roman consulship without following the traditional '' cursus honorum'' (the required steps to advance in a political career). He was elected as Roman consul on three occasions. He celebrated three Roman triumphs, served as a commander in the Sertorian War, the Third Servile War, the Third Mithridatic War, and in va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Furius Bibaculus
Marcus Furius Bibaculus (103 BC? BC), was a Roman poet, who flourished during the last century of the Republic. Life According to Jerome, he was born at Cremona, and probably lived to a great age. He wrote satirical poems after the manner of Catullus, whose bitterness he rivaled, according to Quintilian (''Instit.'' x.i.196), in his iambics. He even attacked Augustus (and perhaps Caesar), who treated the matter with indifference. He was also author of prose '' Lucubrationes'' and perhaps of an epic poem on Caesar's Gallic Wars (''Pragmatia Belli Gallici''). Otto Ribbeck attributes to him one of the shorter poems usually assigned to Virgil. It is doubtful whether he is the person ridiculed by Horace (''Satires,'' ii.5.40) and whether he is identical with the ''turgidus Alpinus'' (''Satires,'' i.10.36), the author of an ''Aethiopis'' dealing with the life and death of Memnon and of a poem on the Rhine. Some critics, on the ground that Horace would not have ventured to attack s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libellus
A ''libellus'' (plural ''libelli'') in the Roman Empire was any brief document written on individual pages (as opposed to scrolls or tablets), particularly official documents issued by governmental authorities. The term ''libellus'' has particular historical significance for the libelli that were issued during the reign of Emperor Decius to citizens to certify performance of required pagan sacrifices in order to demonstrate loyalty to the authorities of the Roman Empire. During later periods libelli were issued as certificates of indulgence, in which the confessors or martyrs interceded for apostate Christians. Etymology The word ''libellus'' is a Latin diminutive form of the ordinary word ''liber'' (meaning "book"), from which we get the English word ''library''. Literally, it means "little book". Sometimes the word was used to describe what we would call: essays, tracts, pamphlets, or petitions. History During the Decian persecution In the year 250, in an attempt to promote tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornelius Nepos
Cornelius Nepos (; c. 110 BC – c. 25 BC) was a Roman biographer. He was born at Hostilia, a village in Cisalpine Gaul not far from Verona. Biography Nepos's Cisalpine birth is attested by Ausonius, and Pliny the Elder calls him ''Padi accola'' ("a dweller on the River Po", ''Naturalis historia'' III.127). He was a friend of Catullus, who dedicates his poems to him (I.3), Cicero and Titus Pomponius Atticus. Eusebius places him in the fourth year of the reign of Augustus, which is supposed to be when he began to attract critical acclaim by his writing. Pliny the Elder notes he died in the reign of Augustus (''Natural History'' IX.39, X.23). Works ''De viris illustribus'' Nepos' ''De viris illustribus'' consisted of parallel lives of distinguished Romans and foreigners, in sixteen books. It originally included "descriptions of foreign and Roman kings, generals, lawyers, orators, poets, historians, and philosophers". However, the sole surviving book (which is thought to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC. His influence on the Latin language was immense. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime, and it has been said that subsequent prose was either a reaction against or a return to his style, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century. Cicero introduced into Latin the arguments of the chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quintus Hortensius
Quintus Hortensius Hortalus (114–50 BC) was a famous Roman lawyer, a renowned orator and a statesman. Politically he belonged to the Optimates. He was consul in 69 BC alongside Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus. His nickname was ''Dionysia'', after a famous actress. After his retirement Hortensius took up fish-breeding as a hobby. Cicero spoke of him as a ''Piscinarius'' – 'fish fancier'. Biography At the age of nineteen he made his first speech at the bar and shortly afterwards successfully defended Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, one of Rome's dependents in the East, who had been deprived of his throne by his brother. From that time his reputation as an advocate was established. Through his marriage to Lutatia, daughter of Quintus Lutatius Catulus and Servilia, he was attached to the aristocratic party, the ''optimates''. During and after Lucius Cornelius Sulla's dictatorship the courts of law were under the control of the Senate, the judges themselves being senators. Endnote: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helvius Cinna
Gaius Helvius Cinna (died 20 March 44 BC) was an influential neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic, a little older than the generation of Catullus and Calvus. He was lynched at the funeral of Julius Caesar after being mistaken for an unrelated Cornelius Cinna who had spoken out in support of the dictator's assassins. Overview Cinna's literary fame was established by his magnum opus "Zmyrna", a mythological epic poem focused on the incestuous love of Smyrna (or Myrrha) for her father Cinyras, treated after the erudite and allusive manner of the Alexandrian poets. He was a friend of Catullus (poem 10, 29–30: ''meus sodalis / Cinna est Gaius''). When "Zmyrna" was completed in about 55 BC, Catullus hailed it as a great achievement, nine harvests and nine winters in the making. The poem has not survived. This is the key information to survive about his life, together with a passage in the ''Suda'' about the Augustan period poet Parthenius of Nicaea: Son of Heracleides and Eud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Licinius Macer Calvus
Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus (28 May 82 BC – c. 47 BC) was an orator and poet of ancient Rome. Son of Licinius Macer and thus a member of the ''gens Licinia'', he was a friend of the poet Catullus, whose style and subject matter he shared. Calvus' oratorical style opposed the "Asian" school in favor of a simpler Attic model: he characterized Cicero as wordy and artificial. Twenty-one speeches are mentioned, including several against Publius Vatinius. Calvus was apparently short, since Catullus alludes to him as ''salaputium disertum'' (eloquent Lilliputian). Seneca the Elder also mentions his short stature, and refers a story in which Calvus asked to be raised to a platform, so that he could defend one of his clients.Seneca the Elder, ''Controversiae'', 7.4.6 F. Plessis published fragments of Calvus in 1896. See also * Licinia (gens) The gens Licinia was a celebrated plebeian family at ancient Rome, which appears from the earliest days of the Republic until imperi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tivoli, Italy
Tivoli ( , ; la, Tibur) is a town and in Lazio, central Italy, north-east of Rome, at the falls of the Aniene river where it issues from the Sabine hills. The city offers a wide view over the Roman Campagna. History Gaius Julius Solinus cites Cato the Elder's lost ''Origines'' for the story that the city of Tibur was founded by Catillus the Arcadian, a son of Amphiaraus, who came there having escaped the slaughter at Thebes, Greece. Catillus and his three sons Tiburtus, Coras, and Catillus drove out the Siculi from the Aniene plateau and founded a city they named Tibur in honor of Tiburtus. According to another account, Tibur was a colony of Alba Longa. Historical traces of settlement in the area date back to the thirteenth century BC. ''Tibur'' may share a common root with the river Tiber and the Latin praenomen ''Tiberius''. From Etruscan times Tibur, a Sabine city, was the seat of the Tiburtine Sibyl. There are two small temples above the falls, the rotunda traditio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
