Poets Ancient Rome
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.
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman Epicurean poet and philosopher.
Lucretius is considered one of the most prominent adherents of atomistic materialism, a follower of the teachings of Epicurus. He is the author of a six-book Latin didactic poem on Epicurean physics, De rerum natura ("The Nature of Things" or "On the Nature of the Universe").
This poem is an extended exposition of the Epicurean worldview, a naturalistic explanation of the physical origin, structure, and destiny of the universe. It includes theories of the atomic structure of matter and the origin and evolution of life forms - ideas that eventually became the most important foundation and framework for the development of Western science. In addition to his literary and scientific influence, Lucretius served as an inspiration to a number of modern philosophers, including Gassendi, Bergson, Spencer, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin.
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.