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Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus
Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus (flourished second half of 1st century BC and first half of 1st century AD) was a Roman Senator who was a friend of the first two Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius.Pettinger, ''The Republic in Danger: Drusus Libo and the Succession of Tiberius'', p. 39 Family background Maximus was born and raised in Rome. His birth date is unknown; however, it is not earlier than 24 BC, and possibly in 14 BC. His father was the literary patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, suffect consul in 31 BC.Paterculus, ''The Roman History'', p. 127 Maximus was the son born to Corvinus’ second marriage to his unknown wife. The writings of the poet Ovid (Book EIV.XVI:1-52) reveals that his mother was a Roman noblewoman called Aurelia Cotta. Further evidence that Aurelia Cotta was his mother was that, although he was born into the gens Valeria, he was later adopted into the Aurelii Cottae.Skidmore, ''Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen: The Works of Valerius M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Senate
The Roman Senate ( la, Senātus Rōmānus) was a governing and advisory assembly in ancient Rome. It was one of the most enduring institutions in Roman history, being established in the first days of the city of Rome (traditionally founded in 753 BC). It survived the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC; the fall of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC; the division of the Roman Empire in AD 395; and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476; Justinian's attempted reconquest of the west in the 6th century, and lasted well into the Eastern Roman Empire's history. During the days of the Roman Kingdom, most of the time the Senate was little more than an advisory council to the king, but it also elected new Roman kings. The last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was overthrown following a coup d'état led by Lucius Junius Brutus, who founded the Roman Republic. During the early Republic, the Senate was politically weak, while the various executive magistr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Scribonius Libo
Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus (died 13 September 16) was a Roman accused of treason against the emperor Tiberius. Biography Early life He was likely the son or paternal grandson of Marcus Livius Drusus Libo (adopted brother of empress Livia). It is also possible that he was Marcus Livius nephew whom was adopted. Libo Drusus was regarded as a fatuous young man, who had tastes for absurdities. Trial Along with his brother Lucius Scribonius Libo, he was accused of conspiring against the Roman Emperor Tiberius. This included asking a fortune-teller if he would be rich enough to pave the Via Appia, as far as Brundisium or Brindisi with money. Tacitus described the accusations against Libo as 'preposterous' and 'pointless'. The two men were tried in a senatorial court by the Emperor Tiberius. At the trial, Marcus was ill and pleaded for mercy. A maternal relative, Publius Sulpicius Quirinus, defended them and appealed to the Emperor. Tiberius told him to apply to the senate. Tiberius ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annales (Tacitus)
The ''Annals'' ( la, Annales) by Roman historian and senator Tacitus is a history of the Roman Empire from the reign of Tiberius to that of Nero, the years AD 14–68. The ''Annals'' are an important source for modern understanding of the history of the Roman Empire during the 1st century AD; it is Tacitus' final work, and modern historians generally consider it his greatest writing. Historian Ronald Mellor calls it "Tacitus's crowning achievement", which represents the "pinnacle of Roman historical writing". Tacitus' ''Histories'' and ''Annals'' together amounted to 30 books; although some scholars disagree about which work to assign some books to, traditionally 14 are assigned to ''Histories'' and 16 to ''Annals''. Of the 30 books referred to by Jerome about half have survived. Modern scholars believe that as a Roman senator, Tacitus had access to '' Acta Senatus''—the Roman senate's records—which provided a solid basis for his work. Although Tacitus refers to part of his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals (Tacitus), ''Annals'' (Latin: ''Annales'') and the Histories (Tacitus), ''Histories'' (Latin: ''Historiae'')—examine the reigns of the Roman emperor, emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors (69 AD). These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus (14 AD) to the death of Domitian (96 AD), although there are substantial Lacuna (manuscripts), lacunae in the surviving texts. Tacitus's other writings discuss Public speaking, oratory (in dialogue format, see ''Dialogus de oratoribus''), Germania (in Germania (book), ''De origine et situ Germanorum''), and the life of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, Agricola (t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus
Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus (died 13 September 16) was a Roman accused of treason against the emperor Tiberius. Biography Early life He was likely the son or paternal grandson of Marcus Livius Drusus Libo (adopted brother of empress Livia). It is also possible that he was Marcus Livius nephew whom was adopted. Libo Drusus was regarded as a fatuous young man, who had tastes for absurdities. Trial Along with his brother Lucius Scribonius Libo, he was accused of conspiring against the Roman Emperor Tiberius. This included asking a fortune-teller if he would be rich enough to pave the Via Appia, as far as Brundisium or Brindisi with money. Tacitus described the accusations against Libo as 'preposterous' and 'pointless'. The two men were tried in a senatorial court by the Emperor Tiberius. At the trial, Marcus was ill and pleaded for mercy. A maternal relative, Publius Sulpicius Quirinus, defended them and appealed to the Emperor. Tiberius told him to apply to the senate. Tiberiu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appian Way
The Appian Way (Latin and Italian language, Italian: ''Via Appia'') is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient Roman Republic, republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. Its importance is indicated by its common name, recorded by Statius, of ("the Appian Way, the queen of the long roads"). The road is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who began and completed the first section as a military road to the south in 312 BC"Appian Way" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes Ltd, George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 490. during the Samnite Wars. Origins The need for roads The Appian Way was a Roman road used as a main route for military supplies for its conquest of southern Italy in 312 BC and for improvements in communication. The Appian Way was the first long road built specifically to transport troops outside the smaller region of greater Rome (this was essential to the Romans). The few ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juvenal
Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the ''Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late first and early second centuries CE fix his earliest date of composition. One recent scholar argues that his first book was published in 100 or 101. A reference to a political figure dates his fifth and final surviving book to sometime after 127. Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in the verse form dactylic hexameter. These poems cover a range of Roman topics. This follows Lucilius—the originator of the Roman satire genre, and it fits within a poetic tradition that also includes Horace and Persius. The ''Satires'' are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a number of perspectives, although their comic mode of expression makes it problematic to acc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural History (Pliny)
The ''Natural History'' ( la, Naturalis historia) is a work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the ''Natural History'' compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life". It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger. The work is divided into 37 books, organised into 10 volumes. These cover topics including astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Natural History''), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus: Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume work ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius. Tacitus—who many scholars agree had never travelled in Germania—used ''Bella Germani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asia (Roman Province)
The Asia ( grc, Ἀσία) was a Roman province covering most of western Anatolia, which was created following the Roman Republic's annexation of the Attalid Kingdom in 133 BC. After the establishment of the Roman Empire by Augustus, it was the most prestigious of the Senatorial province, governed by a proconsul. This arrangement endured until the province was subdivided in the fourth century AD. The province was one of the richest of the Empire and was at peace for most of the Imperial period. It contained hundreds of largely self-governing Greek city-states, who competed fiercely with one another for status, through appeals to the Imperial authorities and the cultivation of prestigious cultural institutions such as festival games, religious cults, and oratory. Geography The province of Asia originally consisted of the territories of Mysia, the Troad, Aeolis, Lydia, Ionia, Caria, and the land corridor through Pisidia to Pamphylia. The Aegean islands, with the exception of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proconsul
A proconsul was an official of ancient Rome who acted on behalf of a consul. A proconsul was typically a former consul. The term is also used in recent history for officials with delegated authority. In the Roman Republic, military command, or ''imperium'', could be exercised constitutionally only by a consul. There were two consuls at a time, each elected to a one-year term. They could not normally serve two terms in a row. If a military campaign was in progress at the end of a consul's term, the consul in command might have his command prorogued, allowing him to continue in command. This custom allowed for continuity of command despite the high turnover of consuls. In the Roman Empire, proconsul was a title held by a civil governor and did not imply military command. In modern times, various officials with notable delegated authority have been referred to as proconsuls. Studies of leadership typically divide leaders into policymakers and subordinate administrators. The proconsu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
