Tag Archives: biography

Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars

by Ed Whelan, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom He is considered one of the fathers of the genre of biography. He is regarded as one of the most important writers of the Latin Silver Age in literature, and his collection of biographies of Roman emperors has been enormously influential. Yet who was Suetonius? What was the

Written on March 22, 2022 at 5:43 pm, by Whelan

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Categories: Historians, People

Tags: biography, Hadrian, Roman history, Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

Sappho: the Tenth Muse

Sappho_and_Alcaeus_by_Lawrence_AlmaSappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

By Van Bryan, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom Besides being born on the island of Lesbos around 630 BCE (and this date is often disputed), surprisingly little is known about the life of this beloved poet. The only reliable source of biographical information about Sappho comes from her own poetry. Additionally, much of her writing has

Written on November 18, 2021 at 1:02 pm, by Van Bryan

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Categories: Poets

Tags: Ancient Greek Poetry, Anthologia Graeca, biography, Sapphic Stanza, Sappho, Suda

The Mysterious Mr. Homer

No one knows exactly when the Greek poet Homer lived. Herodotus, the father of history, guessed around 850 BC. Other ancient sources proposed that he was conjuring up transcendent imagery as early as the 12th century BC. Modern researchers, however, appear to place Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. The dates, as you

Written on July 29, 2019 at 9:19 am, by Anya Leonard

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Categories: Poets

Tags: a.p. david, biography, iliad, Odyssey, Samuel Butler

The Birth of the Biography

By Ben Potter, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom What springs to mind when we think about literature of the Ancient World? Maybe it’s Homer’s Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector around Troy or Sophocles’ Oedipus stabbing out his polluted eyes. Perhaps it’s Plato’s Socrates holding forth or Herodotus’ Leonidas and his 300 Spartans. It even might

Written on July 5, 2019 at 12:38 pm, by Ben Potter

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Categories: History

Tags: Antony, Aristotle, Augustus, biography, Cleopatra, Funeral Oration, Hadrian, Herodotus, History, Homer, Josephus, Julius Caesar, Odyssey, pericles, Plutarch, Septimius Severus, Suetonius, Sulla and Sallust, Tacitus, Theopompus, Thucydides, Tiberius, Timaeus, Xenophon

The Much Beloved but Little Known Poet: Sappho

By Van Bryan, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom Besides being born on the island of Lesbos around 630 BCE, and this date is often disputed, surprisingly little is known about the life of this beloved poet. The only reliable source of biographical information about Sappho comes from her own poetry. However it is often disputed if

Written on September 14, 2018 at 3:02 pm, by plato

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Categories: Poets

Tags: Ancient Greek Poetry, Anthologia Graeca, biography, Sapphic Stanza, Sappho, Suda

The Warring Writer: Aeschylus Tragedy

Let’s say you are considered the “father of tragedy”. Even in your own lifetime, everyone knows you have revolutionized drama and changed the theatre game. Do you think it would be mentioned on your tomb? Surely a throw away reference at least? But no, not for Aeschylus. The man who wrote between 70 and 90

Written on April 20, 2017 at 10:34 am, by anya

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Categories: Dramatists

Tags: Aeschylus, Ancient Greece, biography, Darius, Persian, playwright, theatre, Tragedy, Xerxes