← Fame through time1000-1 BC
The 1st millennium BC
Whose working lives fell in the 1st millennium BC. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1st millennium BC, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Julius Caesar22 decades - 2
Augustus22 decades - 3
Cicero22 decades - 4
Virgil22 decades - 5
Tiberiusnot measured- - 6
Ovid22 decades - 7
Mark Antony22 decades - 8
Pompeynot measured- - 9
Horacenot measured- - 10
Cato the Elder19 decades - 11
Livy22 decades - 12
Parmenides22 decades - 13
Vitruvius22 decades - 14
Catullus22 decades - 15
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa0 decades - 16
Gaius Marius4 decades - 17
Empedocles22 decades - 18
Lucretius22 decades - 19
Zeno of Elea11 decades - 20
Diodorus Siculus22 decades - 21
Livianot measured- - 22
Plautus22 decades - 23
Numa Pompilius22 decades - 24
Marcus Terentius Varro0 decades - 25
Sallust22 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.