Claudius Ptolemy was a Greco-Egyptian writer of Alexandria, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt...

Hegesippus was a Christian chronicler of the early Church and wrote against heresies. His works are lost, save some passages quoted by Eusebius, who tells us that he wrote Hypomnemata (Memoirs) in five books, in the simplest style concernin...

Tacitus (AD c.55-117), a Roman senator of the 2nd Century AD and famed historian, has written a brilliant year-by-year account of the Roman Empire from 14 AD to 66 AD. The Annals is without a doubt the most important book ever written on Im...

Saint Eustace, also known as Eustachius or Eustathius in Latin, St. Esthak in India, or Sh. Staka in Albania, is revered as a Christian martyr and soldier saint. Legend places him in the 2nd century AD (died AD 118). A martyr of that name i...

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece, a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsth...

Marcus Antoninus the Philosopher, Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in 180. It is this quality of Marcus' character which has made him a unique figure in Roman history, since he was the only emperor whose life was molded by, and devoted t...

Hadrian's Wall, also called the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or Vallum Hadriani in Latin, was a defensive fortification in the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. It ran from the banks of the River...

Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus, better known as Galen of Pergamum (modern-day Bergama, Turkey), was a prominent Roman physician and philosopher of Greek origin, and probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period....

Septimius Severus, also known as Severus, was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. Severus was born in Leptis Magna in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the cursus honorum—the customary succession of offices—under t...

The main desire of Ptolemy in writing his Almagest is to explain and account for the motions of the apparently erratic celestial beings in terms of perfect and circular motions. In doing so he introduces the epicyclic (which states that the...

Commodus was Roman Emperor from 180 to 192. He also ruled as co-emperor with his father Marcus Aurelius from 177 until his father's death in 180. His name changed throughout his reign; see changes of name for earlier and later forms. His ac...

According to the Christian father Origen, Celsus was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of Early Christianity. He is known for his literary work, The True Word, which survives exclusively in Origen's quotations from it in Contra C...

Ardashir I or Ardeshir I, also known as Ardashir the Unifier, was the founder of the Sasanian Empire. He was the ruler of Estakhr since 206, subsequently Pars Province since 222, and finally "King of Kings of Sasanian Empire" in 224 with th...

Caracalla, formally known as Antoninus, was a Roman emperor from AD 198 to 217. A member of the Severan Dynasty, he was the eldest son of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna. Caracalla reigned jointly with his father from 198 until Severus' d...

Valerian, also known as Valerian the Elder, was Roman Emperor from 253 to 260 AD. He was taken captive by Sassanian Persian king Shapur I after the Battle of Edessa, becoming the first Roman Emperor to be captured as a prisoner of war, caus...