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Gaius Valerius Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His surviving works are still read widely and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus's poems were widely appreciated by contemporary poets, significantly influencing Ovid and Virgil, among others. After his rediscovery in the Late Middle Ages, Catullus again found admirers such as Petrarch. The explicit sexual imagery which he uses in some of his poems has shocked many readers. Yet, at many instruction levels, Catullus is considered a resource for teachers of Latin. Catullus's style is highly personal, humorous, and emotional; he frequently uses hyperbole, anaphora, alliteration, and diminutives. In 25 of his poems he mentions his devotion to a woman he refers to as "Lesbia", who is widely believed to have been the Rom ... [...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] |
Equestrian (Roman)
The ''equites'' (; literally "horse-" or "cavalrymen", though sometimes referred to as "knights" in English) constituted the second of the property-based classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the senatorial class. A member of the equestrian order was known as an ''eques'' (). Description During the Roman kingdom and the first century of the Roman Republic, legionary cavalry was recruited exclusively from the ranks of the patricians, who were expected to provide six ''centuriae'' of cavalry (300 horses for each consular legion). Around 400BC, 12 more ''centuriae'' of cavalry were established and these included non-patricians (plebeians). Around 300 BC the Samnite Wars obliged Rome to double the normal annual military levy from two to four legions, doubling the cavalry levy from 600 to 1,200 horses. Legionary cavalry started to recruit wealthier citizens from outside the 18 ''centuriae''. These new recruits came from the first class of commoners in the Centuriate Assembly org ... [...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] |
Lake Garda
Lake Garda ( it, Lago di Garda or ; lmo, label=Eastern Lombard, Lach de Garda; vec, Ƚago de Garda; la, Benacus; grc, Βήνακος) is the largest lake in Italy. It is a popular holiday location in northern Italy, about halfway between Brescia and Verona, and between Venice and Milan on the edge of the Dolomites. Glaciers formed this alpine region at the end of the last ice age. The lake and its shoreline are divided between the provinces of Brescia (to the south-west), Verona (south-east) and Trentino (north). Etymology In Roman times the lake was known as ''Benacus'' and by some it was revered as god Benacus, the personification of the lake, sometimes associated with the cult of Neptune. Today it is better known as Lake Garda, a toponym of Germanic origin attested since the Middle Ages and deriving from that of the homonymous town on the Veronese shore of the lake, which, together with another famous locality of the lake, Gardone Riviera, and others less known – s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sirmio
Sirmio is a promontory at the southern end of Lake Garda, projecting 3.3 kilometers (2.1 mi) into the lake. It is celebrated in connection with the Roman poet Catullus, as the large ruins of a Roman villa known as the Grottoes of Catullus on the promontory have been supposed to be his country house. Catullus, upon his return home from a long voyage, joyously describes Sirmio as ''Paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque ocelle'' ("Sirmio, jewel of peninsulas and of islands") in his Carmen XXXI, ''Ad Sirmionem insulam''. A post station bearing the name Sirmio stood on the highroad between Brixia (modern Brescia) and Verona, near the southern shore of the lake. On the shore below is the village of Sirmione, with sulfur baths. In 1880, the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, visited what he called "Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio" in his poem "Frater Ave Atque Vale", the title referring to the last line of a famous elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflectio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Province
The Roman provinces (Latin: ''provincia'', pl. ''provinciae'') were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman appointed as governor. For centuries it was the largest administrative unit of the foreign possessions of ancient Rome. With the administrative reform initiated by Diocletian, it became a third level administrative subdivision of the Roman Empire, or rather a subdivision of the imperial dioceses (in turn subdivisions of the imperial prefectures). Terminology The English word ''province'' comes from the Latin word ''provincia''. In early Republican times, the term was used as a common designation for any task or set of responsibilities assigned by the Roman Senate to an individual who held ''imperium'' (right of command), which was often a military command within a specified theatre of operations. In time, the term became t ... [...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] |
Promagistrate
In ancient Rome a promagistrate ( la, pro magistratu) was an ex-consul or ex-praetor whose ''imperium'' (the power to command an army) was extended at the end of his annual term of office or later. They were called proconsuls and propraetors. This was an innovation created during the Roman Republic. Initially it was intended to provide additional military commanders to support the armies of the consuls (the two annually elected heads of the Republic and its army) or to lead an additional army. With the acquisitions of territories outside Italy which were annexed as provinces, proconsuls and propraetors became provincial governors or administrators. A third type of promagistrate were the proquaestors. History The first type of promagistrate was the proconsul. In the early days of the Roman Republic, when Roman territory was small, Rome had only two Roman legion, legions, each commanded by one of the two consuls. Rome was continually under attack by neighboring peoples (the Etruscan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
