Velleius Paterculus

Velleius Paterculus Synopsis

A Roman commander's comprehensive history of Rome.

The histories of Velleius Paterculus chronicle the story of Rome and Roman culture from the fall of Troy to AD 30. Although his work's title, proem, and opening chapters are lost along with the narrative from Romulus to the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC, Velleius provides much valuable information, especially about the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (30 BC-AD 37), for which he provides our only extant historical depiction by a contemporary witness. Velleius was also an active participant: after service under both emperors as a military tribune in Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor and as a cavalry officer and legatus in Germany and Pannonia, he joined Tiberius at his triumph in AD 12 and became praetor in 15, after which he seems to have retired from public life except for meetings of the senate.

Much like his near-contemporaries Cornelius Nepos (LCL 467) and Valerius Maximus (LCL 492, 493), Velleius adopted for his work a condensed and selective format, but his style is richly literary and he allows himself to digress when themes or topics seem especially interesting or significant: these include literature, rhetoric, culture, chronology, and dating, as well as individual Roman towns, colonies, and provinces, about which he was richly informed through firsthand familiarity with Rome and much of the empire along a vast arc that stretched from the Elbe to the Euphrates.

This edition of Velleius Paterculus, which replaces that of F. W. Shipley, offers a new translation, ample annotation, and a freshly edited text.