Statius published his Thebaid in the last decade of the first century. This epic recounting the struggle between the two sons of Oedipus for the kingship of Thebes is his masterpiece, a stirring exploration of the passions of civil war. The extant portion of his unfinished Achilleid is strikingly different in tone: this second epic begins as a charming account of Achilles' life. Greek literary education is reflected in his poetry. The political realities of Rome in the first century are also evident in the Thebaid, in representations of authoritarian power and the drive for domination. This...

Catullus (84 54BCE) couples consummate poetic artistry with intensity of feeling. Tibullus (c. 54 19 BCE) proclaims love for Delia and Nemesis in elegy. The beautiful verse of the Pervigilium Veneris (fourth century CE?) celebrates a spring festival in honour of the goddess of love.

The surviving works of the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (331 or 332 363 CE) include eight Orations; Misopogon (Beard-hater), assailing the morals of the people of Antioch; more than eighty Letters; and fragments of Against the Galileans, written mainly to show that the Old Testament lacks evidence for the idea of Christianity.

The surviving works of the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (331 or 332 363 CE) include eight Orations; Misopogon (Beard-hater), assailing the morals of the people of Antioch; more than eighty Letters; and fragments of Against the Galileans, written mainly to show that the Old Testament lacks evidence for the idea of Christianity.

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106– 43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era which saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, 58 survive (a few of them incompletely). In the...

Barlaam and Ioasaph, a hagiographic novel in which an Indian prince becomes aware of the world s miseries and is converted to Christianity by a monk, is a Christianized version of the legend of the Buddha. Though often attributed to John Damascene (c. 676 749 CE), it was probably translated from Georgian into Greek in the eleventh century CE.

Tacitus (c. 55 c. 120 CE), renowned for concision and psychology, is paramount as a historian of the early Roman empire. Agricola includes Agricola s career in Britain. Germania is a description of German tribes as known to the Romans. Dialogus concerns the decline of oratory and education.

Dio Cassius (Cassius Dio), c. 150 235 CE, was born in Bithynia. Little of his Roman History survives, but missing portions are partly supplied from elsewhere and there are many excerpts. Dio s work is a vital source for the last years of the Roman republic and the first four Roman emperors.

In Heroides, Ovid (43 BCE 17CE) allows legendary women to narrate their memories and express their emotions in verse letters to absent husbands and lovers. Ovid s Amores are three books of elegies ostensibly about the poet s love affair with his mistress Corinna.