Marcus Licinius Crassus was a Roman general and politician who commanded Sulla's decisive victory at Colline gate, suppressed the slave revolt led by Spartacus and entered into a secret pact, known as the First Triumvirate, with Gnaeus Pomp...

Spartacus was a Thracian gladiator who, along with Crixus, Gannicus, Castus, and Oenomaus, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about him beyond th...

Pompey (the Great), was a distinguished and ambitious Roman military leader, provincial administrator and politician of the 1st century BC, the period of the Late Republic. Hailing from an Italian provincial background, Pompey first disting...

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's great...

Gaius Julius Caesar is remembered as one of history's greatest generals and a key ruler of the Roman empire. As a young man he rose through the administrative ranks of the Roman republic, accumulating power until he was elected consul in 59...

Marcus Junius Brutus, often referred to simply as Brutus, was a politician of the late Roman Republic. He is best known in modern times for taking a leading role in the assassination conspiracy against Julius Caesar....

Marcus Antonius or Marc Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from an oligarchy into the autocratic Roman Empire. Antony was a supporter of Julius Caesar, and se...

Vercingetorix was the chieftain of the Arverni tribe known as the man who united the Gauls in an ultimately unsuccessful revolt against Roman forces during the last phase of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. Vercingetorix came to power in 52 BC,...

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A nu...

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintillian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyric...

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was a Roman consul, statesman, general and architect. He was a close friend, son-in-law, and lieutenant to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus and was responsible for the construction of some of the most notable building...

Emperor Augustus of Rome was born with the given name Gaius Octavius on September 23, 63 B.C. He took the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian) in 44 B.C. after the murder of his great uncle, Julius Caesar. In his will Caesar had a...

Titus Livius, or Livy, was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, "From the Founding of the City", covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional...

Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet best known for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous mythological narrative written in the meter of epic, and for collections of love poetry in elegiac co...

Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (or Tiberius I), was the second Roman Emperor, from the death of Augustus in AD 14 until his own death in 37. Tiberius was one of Rome's greatest generals, whose campaigns in Pannonia, Illyricum, Rhaetia and...