Historiae
Rome
T
Tacitus, Cornelius
Tacitus, Cornelius
c. 56 CE–c. 120 CE · Rome
Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56-c. 120 CE) was a Roman senator and one of the greatest historians of antiquity, author of the Annals and the Histories, which chronicle the Roman Empire in the 1st century CE. His other works include the Germania, an ethnographic account of the Germanic peoples, and the Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law. He is admired for his penetrating analysis of power and his terse, incisive Latin style.
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RomeרומאItaly
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About Rome
# Rome In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Rome lay within the Papal States, the territorial domain of the Catholic Church, though its temporal glory as an empire had long faded. The city sprawled across its famous hills along the Tiber River, a landscape of crumbling ancient monuments, medieval fortifications, and Romanesque churches that dominated the skyline. The Jewish community of Rome was among Europe's most ancient, tracing roots to the second century BCE, and it flourished in a precarious but resilient position under papal authority; while confined to restricted quarters and subject to discriminatory laws, Roman Jews maintained a sophisticated intellectual and commercial life, with Hebrew scholarship and biblical commentary flourishing despite—or perhaps because of—the community's isolation. The Jewish quarter itself, densely packed and vibrant, became a center of learning where skilled scribes copied manuscripts and rabbinical discussions drew on centuries of local tradition. What made Rome extraordinary for Torah study was not merely its learned scholars but the tangible presence of antiquity itself: the community lived amid the ruins of pagan temples and Roman law, giving their interpretations of Jewish law a unique resonance, as if they were rebuilding Jewish civilization in the very streets where Roman power had once reigned supreme.
In Rome at the same time
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus, Curtius Rufus, Quintus, Pliny, the Elder, Silius Italicus, Tiberius Catius, Petronius Arbiter
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Tacitus, Cornelius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
- Pope Peter the Apostle· Rome
- Paul the Apostle· Rome
- John the Apostle· Rome
- Berenice· Rome
- Josephus· Rome
- Rabbi Yehoshua· Rome
- Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh· Rome
- Eleazar ben Azaryah· Rome
- Pope St. Sixtus I· Rome
- Pope St. Alexander I· Rome
- Pope St. Evaristus· Rome
- Pope St. Anacletus· Rome
- Pope St. Linus· Rome
- Ignatius of Antioch· Rome
- Mark the Evangelist· Rome
- Luke the Evangelist· Rome
- Pope Clement of Rome· Rome
In the same tradition
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus, Curtius Rufus, Quintus, Pliny, the Elder, Silius Italicus, Tiberius Catius, Petronius Arbiter, Musonius Rufus, Persius, Quintilian, Titus, Lucan, Martial, Valerius Flaccus, Gaius, Statius, P. Papinius (Publius Papinius), Plutarch, Domitian, Epictetus, Juvenal
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Tacitus, Cornelius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.