← Fame through time100-199
The 2nd century
Whose working lives fell in the 2nd century. 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 2nd century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Marcus Aurelius22 decades - 2
Hadrian22 decades - 3
Ptolemynot measured- - 4
Septimius Severus22 decades - 5
Commodus22 decades - 6
Antoninus Pius22 decades - 7
Galen22 decades - 8
Tertullian22 decades - 9
Macrinus22 decades - 10
Nagarjuna15 decades - 11
Luciannot measured- - 12
Suetonius22 decades - 13
Cao Cao8 decades - 14
Pertinax22 decades - 15
Didius Julianus10 decades - 16
Lucius Verus22 decades - 17
Pope Victor I0 decades - 18
Irenaeus22 decades - 19
Pope Evaristus0 decades - 20
Pope Alexander I0 decades - 21
Guan Yu7 decades - 22
Apuleius22 decades - 23
Justin Martyr22 decades - 24
Cassius Dio10 decades - 25
Pope Pius I0 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.