Livy

Titus Livius was born about 59 BC at Patavium, today Padua, in northern Italy. He never held public office or served in the army, but gave more than forty years of his life to one immense work, a history of Rome in a hundred and forty-two books from the founding of the city to his own day. Augustus admired his gifts and, though he teasingly called him a 'Pompeian', let him guide the young Claudius in the study of history. It is said that a man from Cádiz travelled all the way to Rome just to see him, and having seen him went home content.