← 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
Ptolemynot measured- - 2
Tertullian22 decades - 3
Nagarjuna15 decades - 4
Irenaeus22 decades - 5
Justin Martyr22 decades - 6
Clement of Alexandria22 decades - 7
Polycarpnot measured- - 8
Marcion of Sinope0 decades - 9
Thecla22 decades - 10Valentinusnot measured-
- 11Basilides22 decades
- 12
Pompeia Plotina0 decades - 13Bardaisan10 decades
- 14Agrippa the Skepticnot measured-
- 15Carpocrates11 decades
- 16Favorinus20 decades
- 17Peregrinus Proteus0 decades
- 18
Zheng Xuan5 decades - 19
Junius Rusticus2 decades - 20Menelaus of Alexandria0 decades
- 21Xenophon of Ephesus0 decades
- 22
Theon of Smyrna1 decades - 23Atticusnot measured-
- 24Rabbi Ishmael6 decades
- 25
Polemon of Laodicea0 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.