Marcus Velleius Paterculus

Roman historian, soldier and senator (c.19 BC - c. AD 31)

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Lived -19–31, aged 50Italy

Italy WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
42 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
-19–31
Aged 50

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

A Roman soldier and senator who turned historian, writing in a florid style that swept from Troy's fall to his own day — but whose real value lies in the decades he lived through: the bloody collapse of the Republic and Augustus's long reign.

Biography

About

Born around 19 BC, Marcus Velleius Paterculus served as both soldier and senator before taking up the pen. His Roman history, composed in a highly rhetorical style, attempted to cover nearly twelve centuries — from the end of the Trojan War to AD 30. The ambition was vast, but the execution uneven. What survives and matters most are his pages on the century he knew best: the period from Caesar's assassination in 44 BC through Augustus's death in AD 14, a span of civil war, autocracy, and reinvention. He died around AD 31, leaving behind a text that historians mine not for prose but for proximi…

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