Ancient Authors

Front 1

Plutarch
(100 years after Caesar's death)

Back 1

b. before AD 50, d. after AD 120
Greek later becoming a Roman Citizen.
Plutarch's best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices.

Front 2

Vellius Paterculus
(c. 25 years after Caesar's death)

Back 2

b. circa 19 BC, d. after AD 30
Roman soldier later involved in government.
The history shows partiality for the imperial house of the Caesars.

Front 3

Cicero
(Caesar's contemporary)

Back 3

b.106 BC, d.43 BC
Novus Homo and a popular figure in Rome.
Supported Brutus and the assassins, could not ally himself with Caesar due to his unconstitutional behaviour.

Front 4

Matius Gaius
(Caesar's contemporary)

Back 4

Friend of Cicero helped his relations with Caesar, especially in 49 and 48 BC.
In 44 he shared in the management of the games in honour of Caesar.

Front 5

Suetonius
(c. 30 years after Nero's death)

Back 5

b. AD 70, d. AD 130
In the late years of Trajan's reign and under Hadrian, Suetonius held three important posts in the imperial administration, the secretaryships a studiis, a bibliothecis, and ab epistulis (in charge of literary matters, the imperial libraries, and correspondence)
De vita Caesarum (the Caesares), a set of twelve imperial biographies from Caesar to Domitian, composed in the early 2nd century.

Front 6

Tacitus
(c. 20 years after Nero's death)

Back 6

b. c. AD 56, d. after AD 117
Nero's portrait also is simple: an initial quinquennium of mostly good government ends with the murder of Agrippina in 59, which frees Nero to follow his own desires. His extravagance, sexual depravity, and un‐Roman innovations are depicted with verve and disapproval. Tacitus also pillories the servility of a senate that congratulates Nero when his mother is murdered.
Tacitus used the official sources of the Roman state: the acta senatus (the minutes of the session of the Senate) and the acta diurna populi Romani (a collection of the acts of the government and news of the court and capital). He read collections of emperors' speeches.

Front 7

Cassius Dio
(100 years after Nero's death)

Back 7

b.c. AD 164, d.after AD 229
Greek senator and author of an 80-book history of Rome from the foundation of the city to AD 229.
One notable feature of the work is the prominence of the supernatural: Dio believed that divine direction played an important part in his own and others' lives and he devoted much space to portents. Another is the speeches, which are free inventions and sometimes on a very ample scale.