68 Ancient People You Should Know

Cornelius Tacitus (c. A.D. 56 - c. 120) is considered the greatest of the ancient historians. He writes about maintaining neutrality in his writing. A student of the grammarian Quintilian, Tacitus wrote:

• De vita Iulii Agricolae 'The Life of Julius Agricola
• De origine et situ Germanorum 'The Germania'
• Dialogus de oratoribus 'Dialogue on Oratory' 'Histories'
• Ab excessu divi Augusti 'Annals'

.

Plutarch (c. A.D. 45-125) is an ancient Greek biographer who used material that is no longer available to us for his biographies. His two main works are called Parallel Lives and Moralia. The Parallel Lives compare a Greek and a Roman with a focus on how the character of the famous person influenced his life. Some of the 19 completely parallel lives are a stretch and many of the characters are ones we would consider mythological. Other parallel lives have lost one of their parallels.

The Romans made many copies of the Lives and Plutarch has been popular since. Shakespeare, for instance, closely used Plutarch in creating his tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.

Cicero (Jan. 3, 106 - Dec. 7, 43 B.C.), best known as an eloquent Roman orator, rose remarkably to the top of the Roman political hierarchy where he received the accolade Pater patriae 'father of his country', fell precipitously, went into exile because of his hostile relations with Clodius Pulcher, made a permanent name for himself in Latin literature, and had relations with all the contemporary big names, Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, and Octavian (Augustus).

Demosthenes (384/383 - 322 B.C.) was an Athenian speech-writer, orator, and statesman, although he started out having a great deal of difficulty speaking in public. As official orator, he warned against Philip of Macedon, when he was beginning his conquest of Greece. Demosthenes' three orations against Philip, known as the Philippics, were so bitter that today a severe speech denouncing someone is called a Philippic.

Homer is the father of poets in the Greco-Roman tradition.

We don't know when and if Homer lived, but someone wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey about the Trojan War, and we call him Homer or the so-called Homer. Whatever his real name, he was a great epic poet. Herodotus says Homer lived four centuries earlier. This is not a precise date, but we can date "Homer" to some time following the Greek Dark Age, which was the period after the Trojan War. Homer is described as a blind bard or rhapsode. Ever since, his epic poems have been read and used for various purposes, including teaching about the gods, morality, and great literature. To be educated, a Greek (or Roman) had to know his Homer.

Publius Vergilius Maro (Oct. 15, 70 - Sept. 21, 19 B.C.), aka Vergil or Virgil, wrote an epic masterpiece, the Aeneid, for the glory of Rome and especially Augustus. He also wrote poems called Bucolics and Eclogues, but he is chiefly known now for his story of the Trojan prince Aeneas' adventures and founding of Rome, which is patterned on the Odyssey and Iliad.

Not only was Vergil's writing continuously read throughout the Middle Ages, but even today he exerts an influence on poets and the college-bound because Vergil is on the Latin AP exam.

Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 98-55 B.C.) was a Roman Epicurean epic poet who wrote De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). De rerum natura is an epic, written in 6 books, which explains life and the world in terms of Epicurean principles and the theory of Atomism. Lucretius had a significant influence on western science and has inspired modern philosophers, including Gassendi, Bergson, Spencer, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Pindar is considered the Greatest Greek lyric poet. He wrote poetry that provides information on Greek mythology and on Olympic and other Panhellenic Games. Pindar was born c. 522 B.C. at Cynoscephalae, near Thebes.