AELIAN [Claudius Aelianus] (circa 170–235 CE)—a Roman rhetorician and author of Historical Miscellany, a cultural-historical work in Greek that is filled with moralizing anecdotes and short biographies of illustrious personages as well as descriptions of the world’s natural wonders and diverse cultures.
AESCHYLUS (525/4?–456/5 BCE)—together with Sophocles and Euripides, one of the most famous Greek tragedians. He reputedly authored seventy to ninety plays, only seven of which have survived: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, a trilogy known as The Oresteia; Suppliants; Persians; Seven Against Thebes; and Prometheus Bound.
ALCMAN (mid? to late seventh century BCE)—a Greek lyric poet who worked in Sparta but was possibly born in Lydia, modern Turkey. His works, short poems performed to the accompaniment of the lyre (or other instrument), are now known in only fragmentary form.
ANTONINUS LIBERALIS (second or third century CE)—a grammarian and author of a collection of myths written in Greek and known as the Collection of Tales of Metamorphosis. The details of his life have not been preserved, and the Collection is his only surviving work.
APOLLODORUS (first or second century CE)—the name that, likely in error, has become associated with an encyclopedic summary in Greek of Greco-Roman myth and legend. That work is entitled The Library.
APOLLONIUS OF RHODES (first half of the third century BCE)—author of the Greek epic poem Argonautica (Voyage of the Argo), centered on the hero Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece.
APULEIUS [Lucius Apuleius] (circa 125–? CE)—a Roman author and rhetorician born in Madaura, a Roman-Berber city in what is now Algeria. His best-known work is the only complete novel in Latin to have survived from antiquity. This work, known under the titles The Golden Ass and Metamorphoses, presents a first-person account of the adventures of the tale’s hero, who is named Lucius and is transformed into a donkey.
ARATUS (315?–240 BCE)—a Greek poet born in Cilicia, the southern coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). His only surviving work is a 1,154-hexameter verse poem entitled Phenomena on the positions, risings, settings, and mythology of the most important stars and constellations.
ARRIAN [Lucius Flavius Arrianus] (circa 86–160 CE)—a Greek historian as well as military commander and public official of the Roman Empire. Born in Bithynia, central-northern Turkey, his work The Anabasis of Alexander is an important source on the campaigns of Alexander the Great.
ATHENAEUS (active circa 200 CE)—author of a fictional account in Greek of one or more dinner parties in Rome. Its title variously translated as The Connoisseurs in Dining or Learned Diners, the work recounts the guests’ conversations on food and a variety of other subjects.
BACCHYLIDES (520?–450? BCE)—a Greek lyric poet from the island of Ceos, now known as Kea or Tzia. According to Greek tradition, he was one of the foremost nine composers of lyric poetry, short poems performed to the accompaniment of the lyre or other instrument.
CALLIMACHUS (circa 310/305–240 BCE)—a notable Greek poet and scholar who was born in Cyrene in what is now northeastern Libya and became a major literary figure in Alexandria, Egypt. While he was reputedly very prolific, most of his works, which included poems on mythological subjects, have been entirely lost or survive only in fragmentary form.
CATO, MARCUS PORCIUS (218–202 BCE)—Roman statesman and military figure who rose to prominence in Rome’s wars against Hannibal and Carthage. A staunch advocate of traditional lifestyles, morality, and government, his writings include a work On Agriculture that covers topics including the cultivation of olives, grapes, and other fruit as well as pasturage for domesticated animals. Cato’s historical work Origins, begun in 168 BCE and incomplete at the time of his death, describes the early history of Rome until the year 149 BCE.
CATULLUS [Gaius Valerius Catullus] (84?–55? BCE)—a Roman poet from the Italian town of Verona, whose slim book of poems, a libellus (little book), as he calls it, reveals that he was a member of the Roman Republic’s “high society,” and includes references to the orator and statesman Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Caesar’s rival the general Pompey the Great, among others.
DIODORUS (active circa 60–20 BCE)—known as Diodorus Siculus, “the Sicilian.” He authored The Library of History, an extensive history of the known world from mythical times to Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. His work, written in Greek, includes discussions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Scythia, Arabia, North Africa, Greece, and Europe.
DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS (circa 60 BCE–7? CE)—a Greek historian and rhetorician who came from Halicarnassus to Rome at some time after 30 BCE, living and working there in the reign of the emperor Augustus. Dionysius’s major work was the twenty-book (or chapter) Roman Antiquities, a history of Rome from the city’s mythical origin to the first Punic War (264 BCE).
EURIPIDES (485?–406 BCE)—together with Aeschylus and Sophocles, one of the most famed Greek tragedians. He authored some ninety plays on mythological subjects, eighteen of which survive: Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women, Phoenician Women, Orestes, Bacchae, Helen, Electra, Heraclidae (Children of Hercules), Hercules, Suppliant Women, Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion, and Cyclops.
FESTUS [Sextus Pompeius Festus] (late second century CE)—scholar and author of an abridged version of the grammarian Verrius Flaccus’s (55 BCE?–20? CE) De Verborum Significatu (On the Meaning of Words).
HELLANICUS (480?–395? BCE)—a chronicler, mythographer, and ethnographer from the Greek island of Lesbos. Among his works, which survive only in fragmentary form, were a complete history of Athens, Atthis, as well as the Troica, a myth-history of Troy. His ethnographic writings covered a wide geographic range, from Greece to Egypt, Cyprus, Scythia, and Persia.
HERODOTUS (480?–425 BCE)—known as the “father of history,” he was the first to make the events of the past the subject of investigation. His history in Greek of the Greco-Persian Wars (490–479 BCE), The Histories, contains a wealth of geographical, mythological, political, and ethnographic information.
HESIOD (active circa 725 BCE)—according to Greek tradition, the author of two highly influential, instructional epic poems: the Theogony, which treats the origins of the universe and of the gods, and the Works and Days, which includes reflections on social and religious conduct as well as a farmer’s calendar.
HOMER (eighth century BCE)—according to Greek tradition, author of the Iliad and Odyssey, together constituting the earliest extant examples of literature in the Western world. The so-called Homeric Hymns, a collection of poems celebrating the Greek gods and of unknown authorship, are wrongly attributed to him.
HYGINUS (second century CE?)—known, probably falsely, as the author of a handbook of mythology compiled from a variety of Greek sources and a manual of astronomy, also with mythological content: Fabulae (Stories) and Astronomica (Poetical Astronomy), respectively.
JUVENAL [Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis] (active late first and early second centuries CE)—a noted Roman satirist about whose life little is now known. His sixteen satirical poems are collected as Satires.
LIVY [Titus Livius] (59 BCE–17 CE)—author of a history of Rome from the origins of the city to the time of Augustus. Published in installments, his 142-chapter work, Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), won immediate acclaim.
NONNUS (active third quarter of the fifth century CE?)—a Greek poet from the city of Panopolis (Akhim) in Egypt. His epic poem The Dionysiaca (Things about Dionysus) centers on the life and exploits of the god Dionysus.
OVID [Publius Ovidius Naso] (43 BCE–18 CE)—among the best known and highly acclaimed of Latin poets. His work includes the Metamorphoses, that epic poem which for centuries has been the primary source of Greek and Roman myth and legend. His other works include the controversial Ars Amatoria (Art of Love), a manual on the arts of seduction; Heroides (Heroines), a series of fictional letters in verse from heroines in mythology to their lovers; and Fasti (Calendar), a poetic work that goes through the official Roman calendar month by month, indicating festival days as well as their origins and mythology.
PARTHENIUS (first century BCE)—a Greek scholar and poet from Nicaea, a Greek city in northwestern Anatolia, modern Turkey. A war captive brought to Italy and later freed, he greatly influenced important Roman poets such as Virgil. His works are known only in fragmentary form apart from the Erotika Pathemata (Sufferings from Love), a work in prose collecting stories told in the works of Greek poets.
PAUSANIAS (circa 115–180 CE)—author of a description in Greek of mainland Greece based on his own travels. Cast as a travel guide, The Description of Greece provides a wealth of information regarding many now-lost sites, monuments, and artworks as well as the customs and beliefs of those regions that he visited.
PINDAR (active circa 498–446 BCE)—Greek lyric poet known chiefly for his commemoration of victors at the Olympic and Pythian Games, which were held in a religious context at the sanctuaries of Olympia (sacred to Zeus) and Delphi (sacred to Apollo) respectively.
PLATO (428/7–348/7 BCE)—Athenian philosopher and founder of the philosophical community or school that came to be called the Academy. Among Plato’s many writings is The Republic, a discourse on the ideal state, which features Socrates (by whom Plato had been deeply influenced) as a character.
PLINY THE ELDER [Gaius Plinius Secundus] (23/24–79 CE)—Roman statesman, admiral, and scholar who was among the victims of Mount Vesuvius’s eruption. A prolific writer on topics that included grammar, oratory, military science, and biography, he is chiefly remembered for his extensive encyclopedic work on natural history, The Natural History, which encompasses topics including astronomy, botany, geology, horticulture, medicine, mineralogy, and zoology.
PLUTARCH [Lucius? Mestrius Plutarchus] (45?–125 CE)—biographer and moral philosopher. A prolific writer, he is remembered primarily for his work on morality and his biographies of eminent Greek and Roman political and military figures. His Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, which is also known as the Parallel Lives or Plutarch’s Lives, included fifty biographies of prominent figures including Alexander the Great, the legendary Athenian king Thesius, and Numa, one of the legendary kings of Rome and the reputed successor of Romulus.
PROPERTIUS [Sextus Propertius] (second half of the first century BCE)—a Roman elegiac poet born in the Italian town of Assinium (modern Assisi). He enjoyed the patronage of the emperor Augustus and is best known as an author of poetry on the theme of love. His surviving work consists of four books of Elegies.
QUINTUS OF SMYRNA (third or fourth century CE)—author of a surviving epic poem in Greek entitled The Things that Happened Between the Iliad and Odyssey, in Greek Ta meth’ Homeron.
SAPPHO (late seventh century BCE)—a lyric poet of such high repute that she was called the “Tenth Muse” in antiquity. Sappho was born and lived on the Greek island of Lesbos; apart from that, details of her life are uncertain. She is known for the passionate, female-centered nature of her poetry. Of her collected poems, it is largely only fragments that survive.
SENECA [Lucius Annaeus Seneca] (4? BCE–65 CE)—a Roman statesman, philosopher, and dramatist. Born in Cordoba, Spain, Seneca was educated in Rome and became first tutor and then political advisor to the emperor Nero. Among his works are a group of tragedies on mythological themes: Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), Troades (The Trojan Women), Phoenissae (The Phoenician Women), Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, Agamemnon, and Thyestes.
SERVIUS [Marius Servius Honoratus] (active circa 400 CE)—a Roman grammarian and commentator best known for his extensive commentary on the works of Virgil.
SOPHOCLES (495/495?–406/405 BCE)—an Athenian playwright, and the most popular in his day. He was the author of 120 plays, among them Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Philoctetes, Ajax, Women of Trachis, and Electra.
STATIUS [Publius Papinius Statius] (second half of the first century CE)—a Roman poet whose surviving works are an epic entitled Thebaid, focusing on the campaign of the Seven Against Thebes; an unfinished epic entitled Achilleid, centering on the life of Achilles; and Silvae, a collection of poems on assorted subjects.
STESICHORUS (active circa 600–550 BCE)—a Greek lyric poet who was a contemporary of the poetess Sappho of Lesbos. Stesichorus’s poems, which were known in antiquity to have been numerous, have survived only in fragments. Of considerable fame in antiquity, Stesichorus is thought to have been born either in Sicily or in southern Italy.
STRABO (circa 65 BCE–25 CE)—historian and geographer. He is known primarily for his wide-ranging work in Greek on geography, inclusive of Spain, Gaul, Italy, the Balkans, Asia Minor, India, Egypt, northern Africa, and more. His seventeen-part work is known simply as Geographia (Geography).
TACITUS [Publius? Cornelius Tacitus] (55?–117 CE)—a Roman historian and statesman. He was born in Gaul, but came to Rome by 75 CE. His surviving works are: Agricola (The Life of Agricola); Germania; Dialogus de oratoribus (Dialogue on Oratory); Historiae (Histories), focusing on the reign of the Roman emperors from Galba to Domitian; and the Annales, a history covering the ascendancy of the emperor Tiberius to that of Nero.
THEOCRITUS (early third century BCE)—a Greek author of pastoral poems entitled the Idylls. Theocritus, who is called the creator of the bucolic genre of poetry, was likely born in Syracuse and then spent time working on the island of Cos as well as in Alexandria, Egypt. While thirty of the Idylls attributed to him have survived, not all were actually authored by him nor are all of the poems pastoral (dealing with the charms of country life) in content.
THUCYDIDES (460?—400 BCE)—an Athenian general and historian, known as the author of the first fact-based historical work, The Peloponnesian War.
VIRGIL [Publius Vergilius Maro] (70?–19 BCE)—illustrious author of the Aeneid, an epic poem recounting the founding of Rome and the origins of the Roman people. Virgil, who enjoyed the patronage of the emperor Augustus, was also the author of the Eclogues, a group of pastoral poems, and the Georgics, a didactic poem as much about agriculture as it is about the social and political concerns of the day.
VITRUVIUS [Marcus Vitruvius Pollio] (circa 80/70–15 BCE)—Roman architect and engineer who lived and worked during the regimes of Julius Caesar and the emperor Augustus. He is known chiefly for his De Architectura (On Architecture), the earliest known and vastly influential work on architecture and the art of building.