Titus Annianus was a poet of ancient Rome, who lived in the time of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, and wrote erotic or light verse (ludicra carmina), possibly in the Faliscan language. [1]
Annianus was a friend of Aulus Gellius, who says of Titus that he was tremendously knowledgeable about ancient literature and the rules of language. [2] He claimed to Aulus Gellius to have been a pupil of Marcus Valerius Probus. [3] Among other things, he appears to have written (somewhat ribald) Fescennine Verses. [1] [4] Based on the information that Gellius provides, modern scholars consider this Annianus to be the author of a number of verses that the grammarian Terentianus ascribes to an anonymous Faliscan poet. [3]
Aelius Festus Aphthonius (via the grammarian Gaius Marius Victorinus, whose work Aphthonius's was often appended to) mentions Annianus as the author of a Faliscum carmen. (Whether Terentianus and Aphthonius meant the poet wrote in the Faliscan language, or was an ethnic Falisci, or both, is uncertain.)
The few verses of Annianus' that survive seem to be dedicated to pastoral country life and viniculture, and it is supposed that these are overall reflective of his body of work, owing to the fact that in his short description, Aulus Gellius depicts Annianus as harvesting grapes. [3]
Annianus is likely identical with the "Annianus Faliscus" mentioned by Ausonius as writing Fescennine Verses in Hadrian's time. [5]
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature would flourish for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into the following periods: Early Latin literature, The Golden Age, The Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
Aulus Gellius was a Roman author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome. He is famous for his Attic Nights, a commonplace book, or compilation of notes on grammar, philosophy, history, antiquarianism, and other subjects, preserving fragments of the works of many authors who might otherwise be unknown today.
Favorinus was a Roman sophist and skeptic philosopher who flourished during the reign of Hadrian and the Second Sophistic.
Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later periods, it was regarded as good or proper Latin, with following versions viewed as debased, degenerate, or corrupted. The word Latin is now understood by default to mean "Classical Latin"; for example, modern Latin textbooks almost exclusively teach Classical Latin.
Apion Pleistoneices, also called Apion Mochthos, was a Hellenized Egyptian grammarian, sophist, and commentator on Homer. He was born at the Siwa Oasis and flourished in the first half of the 1st century AD. His name is sometimes incorrectly spelt Appion, and some sources, as in the Suda, call him a son of Pleistoneices, while others more correctly state that Pleistoneices was only a surname, and that he was the son of Poseidonius.
Lucius Livius Andronicus was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period during the Roman Republic. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family, producing Latin translations of Greek works, including Homer's Odyssey. The translations were meant, at first, as educational devices for the school which he founded. He also wrote works for the stage—both tragedies and comedies—which are regarded as the first dramatic works written in the Latin language. His comedies were based on Greek New Comedy and featured characters in Greek costume. Thus, the Romans referred to this new genre by the term comoedia palliata. The Roman biographer Suetonius later coined the term "half-Greek" of Livius and Ennius. The genre was imitated by later generations of playwrights, and Andronicus is accordingly regarded as the father of Roman drama and of Latin literature in general; that is, he was the first man of letters to write in Latin. Varro, Cicero, and Horace, all men of letters during the subsequent Classical Latin period, considered Livius Andronicus to have been the originator of Latin literature. He is the earliest Roman poet whose name is known.
The gens Gavia, or occasionally Gabia, was a Roman family of plebeian descent. It first appears in history during the first century BC, but none of its members obtained any of the curule magistracies until imperial times. The Gavi Arch at Verona was built in honor of one of the Gavii.
The gens Julia was one of the most prominent patrician families in ancient Rome. Members of the gens attained the highest dignities of the state in the earliest times of the Republic. The first of the family to obtain the consulship was Gaius Julius Iulus in 489 BC. The gens is perhaps best known, however, for Gaius Julius Caesar, the dictator and grand uncle of the emperor Augustus, through whom the name was passed to the so-called Julio-Claudian dynasty of the first century AD. The nomen Julius became very common in imperial times, as the descendants of persons enrolled as citizens under the early emperors began to make their mark in history.
Cornelius Nepos was a Roman biographer. He was born at Hostilia, a village in Cisalpine Gaul not far from Verona.
Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus was a politician and historian of the Roman Republic. He was consul in 129 BC.
Alphius Avitus was a Latin poet believed to have flourished during the reigns of the Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius, that is, the late 1st century BC or early 1st century AD. Many suppose him to be the same person with Alfius Flavus—the precocious pupil of Lucius Cestius Pius and contemporary with Seneca the Elder, who while only a boy was so renowned for his eloquence that crowds flocked to listen to his orations—and with a "Flavius Alfius", who is referred to by Pliny the Elder as an authority for a story about dolphins. This has led some scholars to conjecture that this person's full, correct name may have been "Flavus Alfius Avitus". All this is very uncertain. We know from the ancient grammarian Terentianus that Alphius Avitus composed a work about "Illustrious Men", in iambic dimeters, extending to several books; and eight lines are cited by Priscian from the second book, forming a part of the legend of the Faliscan schoolteacher who betrayed his students to Marcus Furius Camillus; besides which, three lines more from the first book are contained in some manuscripts of the same grammarian. These fragments are given in the Latin Anthology of Pieter Burman the Younger.
Pamphile or Pamphila of Epidaurus was a historian of Egyptian descent who lived in Greece during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero and wrote in Greek. She was the first known female Greco-Roman historian and, along with Ban Zhao, one of the first known female historians. She is best known for her lost Historical Commentaries, a collection of miscellaneous historical anecdotes in thirty-three books, which is frequently cited by the Roman writer Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights and by the Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. She is also described in the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda, and by the Byzantine writer Photios. According to the Suda, she wrote a large number of epitomes of the works of other historians as well as treatises on disputes and sex. She may be the author of the anonymous surviving Greek treatise Tractatus de mulieribus claris in bello, which gives brief biographical accounts of the lives of famous women.
The gens Pomponia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Its members appear throughout the history of the Roman Republic, and into imperial times. The first of the gens to achieve prominence was Marcus Pomponius, tribune of the plebs in 449 BC; the first who obtained the consulship was Manius Pomponius Matho in 233 BC.
Gnaeus Gellius was a Roman historian. Very little is known about his life and work, which has only survived in scattered fragments. He continued the historical tradition set by Fabius Pictor of writing a year-by-year history of Rome from mythological times to his day. However, with about a hundred books, Gellius' Annales were massively more developed than the other Roman annalists, and was only surpassed by Livy's gigantic History of Rome.
The gens Gellia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome, where they settled after the Second Punic War. The first of the Gellii to obtain the consulship was Lucius Gellius Poplicola, in 72 BC, but the most famous member of this gens is probably the grammarian Aulus Gellius, who flourished during the second century AD.
The gens Lavinia was a minor family at ancient Rome.
The gens Neratia or Naeratia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome, some of whom subsequently became patricians. The first of the gens to appear in history occur in the time of Augustus, but they did not rise to prominence until the time of Vespasian, when Marcus Neratius Pansa became the first to obtain the consulship. The Neratii married into the Roman imperial family in the fourth century.
The lex Aternia Tarpeia was a Roman law, introduced by the consuls Aulus Aternius Varus and Spurius Tarpeius Montanus Capitolinus in 454 BC, and passed during their year of office. The law concerned the regulation of payments for fines and penalties.
Titius Aristo was a distinguished jurist of ancient Rome, who lived around the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, under the emperor Trajan, and was a friend of Pliny the Younger. He is spoken of by Pliny in terms of the highest praise, as not only an excellent man and profound scholar, but a lawyer thoroughly acquainted with private and public law, and perfectly skilled in the practice of his profession.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Smith, William (1870). "T. Annianus". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology . Vol. 1. p. 180.