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Pierre Grimal
Pierre Grimal (November 21, 1912, in Paris – November 2, 1996, in Paris) was a French historian, classicist and Latinist. Fascinated by the Greek and Roman civilizations, he did much to promote the cultural inheritance of the classical world, both among specialists and the general public. Biography Admitted to the École Normale Supérieure in 1933, and received third at the " agrégation de lettres" in 1935, he was member of the École française de Rome (1935–1937) then taught Latin at a Rennes lycée. Then he was active as a professor of Roman civilization at the faculties of Caen and Bordeaux, and finally at the Sorbonne for thirty years. He published studies on the Roman civilization, of which many volumes to the "Que sais-je?" series, and translations of Latin classical authors (Cicero, Seneca the Younger, Tacitus, Plautus, Terence). On his retirement, he also published biographies and fictionalized histories (''Mémoires d’Agrippine'', ''le procès Néron''), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agrippina The Younger
Julia Agrippina (6 November AD 15 – 23 March AD 59), also referred to as Agrippina the Younger, was Roman empress from 49 to 54 AD, the fourth wife and niece of Emperor Claudius. Agrippina was one of the most prominent women in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. She was the daughter of the Roman general Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, granddaughter of Augustus (the first Roman emperor). Her father, Germanicus, was the nephew and heir apparent of the second emperor, Tiberius. Agrippina's brother Caligula became emperor in 37 AD. After Caligula was assassinated in 41 AD, Germanicus' brother Claudius took the throne. Agrippina married Claudius in 49 AD. Agrippina functioned as a behind-the-scenes advisor in the affairs of the Roman state via powerful political ties. She maneuvered her son Nero into the line of succession. Claudius became aware of her plotting, but died in 54; it was rumoured that Agrippina poisoned him.Tacitus, ''Annals'' XII.66; Cassius Dio, ''Roman History'' LXI.3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chariton
Chariton of Aphrodisias ( grc-gre, Χαρίτων ὁ Ἀφροδισιεύς) was the author of an ancient Greek novel probably titled ''Callirhoe'' (based on the subscription in the sole surviving manuscript). However, it is regularly referred to as ''Chaereas and Callirhoe'' (which more closely aligns with the title given at the head of the manuscript). Evidence of fragments of the text on papyri suggests that the novel may have been written in the mid 1st century AD, making it the oldest surviving complete ancient prose romance and the only one to make use of apparent historiographical features for background verisimilitude and structure, in conjunction with elements of Greek mythology, as Callirhoe is frequently compared to Aphrodite and Ariadne and Chaereas to numerous heroes, both implicitly and explicitly. As the fiction takes place in the past, and historical figures interact with the plot, ''Callirhoe'' may be understood as the first historical novel; it was later imitat ... [...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] |
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] |
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities, freed him. It is thought that Terence abruptly died, around the age of 25, likely in Greece or on his way back to Rome, due to shipwreck or disease. DEAD LINK He was supposedly on his way to explore and find inspiration for his comedies. His plays were heavily used to learn to speak and write in Latin during the Middle Ages and Renaissance Period, and in some instances were imitated by William Shakespeare. One famous quotation by Terence reads: "''Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto''", or "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me." This appeared in his play ''Heauton Timorumenos''. Biography Terence's date of birth is disputed; Aelius ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his. Biography Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus's early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy, around 254 BC.''The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'' (1996) Ed. M.C. Howatson and Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference Online According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the names "Maccius" (a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seneca The Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Córdoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was probably innocen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daphnis And Chloe
''Daphnis and Chloe'' ( el, Δάφνις καὶ Χλόη, ''Daphnis kai Chloē'') is an ancient Greek novel written in the Roman Empire, the only known work of the second-century AD Greek novelist and romance writer Longus. Setting and style It is set on the Greek isle of Lesbos, where scholars assume the author to have lived. Its style is rhetorical and pastoral; its shepherds and shepherdesses are wholly conventional, but the author imparts human interest to this idealized world. ''Daphnis and Chloe'' resembles a modern novel more than does its chief rival among Greek erotic romances, the ''Aethiopica'' of Heliodorus, which is remarkable more for its plot than for its characterization. Plot summary ''Daphnis and Chloe'' is the story of a boy (Daphnis) and a girl (Chloe), each of whom is abandoned at birth along with some identifying tokens. A goatherd named Lamon discovers Daphnis, and a shepherd called Dryas finds Chloe. Each decides to raise the child he finds as his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Longus
Longus, sometimes Longos ( el, Λόγγος), was the author of an ancient Greek novel or romance, ''Daphnis and Chloe''. Nothing is known of his life; it is assumed that he lived on the isle of Lesbos (setting for ''Daphnis and Chloe'') during the 2nd century AD. It has been suggested that the name Longus is merely a misinterpretation of the first word of ''Daphnis and Chloes title ''Λεσβιακῶν ἐρωτικῶν λόγοι'' ("story of a Lesbian romance", "Lesbian" for "from Lesbos island") in the Florentine manuscript; EE Seiler observes that the best manuscript begins and ends with ''λόγου'' (not ''λόγγου'') ''ποιμενικῶν''. If his name was really Longus, he was possibly a freedman of some Roman family which bore that name as a cognomen. See also Other ancient Greek novelists: * Chariton - The Loves of Chaereas and Callirhoe * Xenophon of Ephesus - The Ephesian Tale * Achilles Tatius - Leucippe and Clitophon * Heliodorus of Emesa Heliodorus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metamorphoses (Apuleius)
The ''Metamorphoses'' of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as ''The Golden Ass'' (''Asinus aureus''), is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. The protagonist of the novel is Lucius. At the end of the novel, he is revealed to be from Madaurus, the hometown of Apuleius himself. The plot revolves around the protagonist's curiosity (''curiositas'') and insatiable desire to see and practice magic. While trying to perform a spell to transform into a bird, he is accidentally transformed into an ass. This leads to a long journey, literal and metaphorical, filled with inset tales. He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis, whose cult he joins. Origin The date of composition of the ''Metamorphoses'' is uncertain. It has variously been considered by scholars as a youthful work preceding Apuleius' ''Apology'' of 158–159, or as the climax of his literary career, and perhaps as late as the 170s or 180s. Apuleius adapte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apuleius
Apuleius (; also called Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis; c. 124 – after 170) was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He lived in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern-day M'Daourouch, Algeria. He studied Platonism in Athens, travelled to Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the attentions (and fortune) of a wealthy widow. He declaimed and then distributed his own defense before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near ancient Tripoli, Libya. This is known as the ''Apologia''. His most famous work is his bawdy picaresque novel the ''Metamorphoses'', otherwise known as ''The Golden Ass''. It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It relates the adventures of its protagonist, Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
