Ancient Rome 1st century BC
Gaius Valerius Catullus, often called Catullus, was a Roman poet whose statements on love and hate are considered the best lyrical poetry of ancient Rome.
Scholars have concluded from existing sources that Catullus was a contemporary of the statesmen Cicero, Pompey, and Caesar, whom he addresses in various ways in his poems. In 25 poems he speaks of his love for a woman he calls Lesbia. In other poems Catullus speaks sarcastically or contemptuously of Julius Caesar and other politicians.
Catullus' poems have been praised by modern poets, notably Ovid and Virgil.
Marcus Terentius Varrō, sometimes called Varro of Reatinus, was an ancient Roman scholar-encyclopedist and writer.
Varro was a very prolific writer: the titles of his 74 works are known, totaling 620 books. Varron was engaged in logic, language, poetry, history, law and geography, history, art, history of literature, theory of music. Judging by the surviving accounts of his contemporaries, the most significant of Varron's lost works were "Divine and Human Antiquities" (Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum) in 41 books and "Portraits" (Imagines) in 15 books, which contained biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, as well as 700 portraits that illustrated the text. The treatise "On Agriculture" (De re rustica) in three books has survived in complete preservation.