Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs: brief Latin text, describing the trial of six Christian martyrs executed in 180 CE.The earliest Christian text in the Latin language appears to be little more than a court record. Six Christians from the unknown…
The Austuriani, or, as the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (c.330-c.400) prefers to call them, Austoriani, were a federation of Libyan tribes that became increasingly dangerous for the Roman Empire in the fourth century. In his Roman History 28.6, he describes…
The tsunami of 365 CE: a disastrous tidal wave that destroyed the ports of many Roman cities in northern Africa.In 365 CE, on the twenty-first of July, the southern shores of the Mediterranean were hit by a tidal wave –…
Res Gestae Divi Augusti ("the achievements of the deified Augustus"): the official autobiography of Augustus, which survives as an inscription in Ancyra (modern Ankara).
…
Gaius Julius Caesar (13 July 100 - 15 March 44 BCE), Roman statesman, general, author, famous for the conquest of Gaul (modern France and Belgium) and his subsequent coup d'état. He changed the Roman republic into a monarchy and laid…
Gaius Julius Caesar (13 July 100 - 15 March 44 BCE), Roman statesman, general, author, famous for the conquest of Gaul (modern France and Belgium) and his subsequent coup d'état. He changed the Roman republic into a monarchy and laid…
Gaius Julius Caesar (13 July 100 - 15 March 44 BCE), Roman statesman, general, author, famous for the conquest of Gaul (modern France and Belgium) and his subsequent coup d'état. He changed the Roman republic into a monarchy and laid…
Gaius Julius Caesar (13 July 100 - 15 March 44 BCE), Roman statesman, general, author, famous for the conquest of Gaul (modern France and Belgium) and his subsequent coup d'état. He changed the Roman republic into a monarchy and laid…
Caesar's Gallic War: Caesar's reports on his conquests in Gaul. The Roman senator Cicero thought it was a splendid text, and although we can recognize the book's bias, it still is a remarkably efficient piece of writing.Introduction
…
The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero tells the famous story about the tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse and his courtier Damocles, which he had read in the History of Timaeus of Tauromenium. The anecdote is often told as a reminder…
On 21 or 22 October 331, Alexander entered Babylon, the old capital of the ancient Near East. The longest description is that of the Roman author Quintus Curtius Rufus, who based his account on earlier, Greek sources. It should be…