Harris dates studies of both to Classical Greece and Classical Rome, specifically, to Herodotus, often called the " father of history " and the Roman historian, Tacitus, who wrote many of our only surviving contemporary accounts of several ancient Celtic and Germanic peoples.

* Adrian Goldsworthy ( born 1969 ), British historian and author who writes mostly about ancient Roman history

He kills 28 people in the Trojan War, and his career during that war is retold by Roman historian Gaius Julius Hyginus ( c. 64 BC – AD 17 ) in his Fabulae.

During Virgil's time Aeneas was well-known and various versions of his adventures were circulating in Rome, including Roman Antiquities by Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus ( relying on Marcus Terentius Varro, Ab Urbe Condita by Livy ( probably dependent on Quintus Fabius Pictor, fl.

The Roman historian Tacitus states that Agrippina had an ‘ impressive record as wife and mother ’.

Ammianus Marcellinus ( 325 / 330 – after 391 ) was a fourth-century Roman historian.

* Claudius Aelianus, Roman teacher and historian of the 3rd century, who wrote in Greek

The Roman historian Livy, writing in ca.

The Roman historian Tacitus ( ca.

Tacitus, the most important Roman historian of this period, took a particular interest in Britain as Gnaeus Julius Agricola, his father-in-law and the subject of his first book, served there three times.

Tacitus writes that the Praetorian Prefect, Macro, smothered Tiberius with a pillow to hasten Caligula's accession, much to the joy of the Roman people, while Suetonius writes that Caligula may have carried out the killing, though this is not recorded by any other ancient historian.

Indeed John Morris, the English historian who specialized in the study of the institutions of the Roman Empire and the history of Sub-Roman Britain, suggested in his book The Age of Arthur that as the descendants of Romanized Britons looked back to a golden age of peace and prosperity under Rome, the name " Camelot " of Arthurian legend may have referred to the capital of Britannia ( Camulodunum, modern Colchester ) in Roman times.

Narseh moved south into Roman Mesopotamia in 297, where he inflicted a severe defeat on Galerius in the region between Carrhae ( Harran, Turkey ) and Callinicum ( Ar-Raqqah, Syria ) ( and thus, the historian Fergus Millar notes, probably somewhere on the Balikh River ).

Einhard's literary model was the classical work of the Roman historian Suetonius, the Lives of the Caesars, though it is important to stress that the work is very much Einhard's own, that is to say he adapts the models and sources for his own purposes.

Eusebius ( c. AD 263 – 339 ) ( also called Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius Pamphili ) was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist.

Whether and how far the council was confirmed by Pope John VIII is also a matter of dispute: The council was held in the presence of papal legates, who approved of the proceedings, Roman Catholic historian Fr.

Then an Athenian militia, led by the historian Dexippus, pushed the invaders to the north where they were intercepted by the Roman army under Gallienus.

The Roman historian Tacitus reports that Prasutagus had left a will leaving half his kingdom to Nero in the hope that the remainder would be left untouched.

The most important Roman historian of the classical world was Tacitus ( late 1st and early 2nd century AD ).

The foremost Roman historian, he wrote an extremely influential account on Rome in the first century, the Annals.

Due to his literary style and the thoroughness of his research — which seemingly included studying Roman imperial archives and heavily relying on Thucydides — and his apparent rigor — for he tended not to support any character or subject, taking an impartial point of view — he was by far the most read and admired historian during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early Modern Era.

Often called " the first modern historian ", the English scholar Edward Gibbon wrote his magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ( 1776 – 1788 ).

Larger-scale persecutions followed at the hands of the authorities of the Roman Empire, beginning with the year 64, when, as reported by the Roman historian Tacitus, the Emperor Nero blamed them for that year's great Fire of Rome.

The Roman geographer Pliny the Elder ( ca.

Composting as a recognized practice dates to at least the early Roman Empire since Pliny the Elder ( AD 23-79 ).

Even in Roman times, hundreds of votive statues remained, described by Pliny the Younger and seen by Pausanias.

Also in Roman times, some Essenes settled on the Dead Sea's western shore ; Pliny the Elder identifies their location with the words, " on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... the town of Engeda " ( Natural History, Bk 5. 73 ); and it is therefore a hugely popular but contested hypothesis today, that same Essenes are identical with the settlers at Qumran and that " the Dead Sea Scrolls " discovered during the 20th century in the nearby caves had been their own library.

After his death, Domitian's memory was condemned to oblivion by the Roman Senate, while senatorial authors such as Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius published histories propagating the view of Domitian as a cruel and paranoid tyrant.

Other influential 2nd century authors include Juvenal and Pliny the Younger, the latter of whom was a friend of Tacitus and in 100 delivered his famous Panygericus Traiani before Trajan and the Roman Senate, exalting the new era of restored freedom while condemning Domitian as a tyrant.

One of the earliest encyclopedic works to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman statesman living in the 1st century AD.

Although his work has been criticized for the lack of candor in checking the " facts ", some of his text has been confirmed by recent research, like the spectacular remains of Roman gold mines in Spain, especially at Las Medulas, which Pliny probably saw in operation while a Procurator there a few years before he compiled the encyclopedia.

Also often advanced as a possible context for 1 Peter is the trials and executions of Christians in the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus under Pliny the Younger.

In the Roman period, Pliny the Elder wrote in detail of the many minerals and metals then in practical use, and correctly noted the origin of amber.

Pliny the Elder gives vivid examples of the popularity of gladiator portraiture in Antium and an artistic treat laid on by an adoptive aristocrat for the solidly plebeian citizens of the Roman Aventine:

The letters of Pliny the Younger described Roman life of the period.

Pliny's description of the exposed portion of the tomb is intractable ; Pliny, it seems clear, had not observed this structure himself, but is quoting the historian and Roman antiquarian Varro.

Pliny the Elder, an imperial Roman polymath, states that the games at Lykaion were the first to introduce gymnastic competition.

Ancient Romans, such as Pliny the Elder ( Natural History, 3. 5 ) and Varro ( cited by Pliny ), speculated that the name Lusitania was of Roman origin, as when Pliny says lusum enim liberi patris aut lyssam cum eo bacchantium nomen dedisse lusitaniae et pana praefectum eius universae: that Lusitania takes its name from the lusus associated with Bacchus and the lyssa of his Bacchantes, and that Pan is its governor.

Metal-coated glass mirrors are said to have been invented in Sidon ( modern-day Lebanon ) in the first century AD, and glass mirrors backed with gold leaf are mentioned by the Roman author Pliny in his Natural History, written in about 77 AD.

According to Pliny the Elder a vine, a fig and an olive tree grew in the middle of the Roman Forum, the latter was planted to provide shade ( the garden plot was recreated in the 20th century ).

Pliny gives the circuitus reported by Pytheas as 4875 Roman miles.

In 43 and 77 AD the Roman authors Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder referred to the seven islands they call Haemodae and Acmodae respectively, both of which are assumed to be Shetland.

Stalactites are first mentioned ( though not by name ) by the Roman natural historian Pliny in a text which also mentions stalagmites and columns and refers to their creation by the dripping of water.

A fermented fish sauce called garum was a staple of Greco-Roman cuisine and of the Mediterranean economy of the Roman Empire, as the first-century encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder writes in Historia Naturalis and the fourth / fifth-century connoisseur Apicius relates in his collection of recipes.

The Roman fleet based at Misenum, commanded by Pliny the Elder, evacuates refugees but he dies after inhaling volcanic fumes.

* August 25 – Pliny the Elder, Roman writer and scientist ( killed by Vesuvius eruption )