Herodotus (Greek: Ηρόδοτος) (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thur…
Homer (Greek: Όμηρος born c. 8th century BC) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer …
Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid, an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aene…
Thucydides (c. 460 B.C. – c. 400 B.C.) (Greek Θουκυδίδης) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens un…
Sophocles (497/496 BC-406/405 BC), (Greek: Σοφοκλής; German: Sophokles, Russian: Софокл, French: Sophocle) was an ancient Greek tragedian, known as one of three from whom at least one …
Aristophanes (Greek: Αριστοφάνης; c. 446 – c. 386 BC) was an Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually…
Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he…
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born …
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher who rose to some of the most prestigious positions in the French academy. His most important work is on poetics and on the philosophy of science. To the latte…
French humanist François Rabelais wrote satirical attacks, most notably Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534), on medieval scholasticism and superstition.
After Napoleon III seized power in 1851, French writer Victor Marie Hugo went into exile and in 1870 returned to France; his novels include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables…
German philologist Erich Auerbach served as professor of Romance philology at Marburg University (1929-35), taught at the Turkish State University in Istanbul (1936-47), and became professor of French…
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by…
Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short storie…
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was born in the medieval centre of Bilbao, Basque Country, the son of Félix de Unamuno and Salomé Jugo. As a young man, he was interested in the Basque language, and competed …
Carlo M. Cipolla (August 15, 1922 – September 5, 2000) was an Italian economic historian. He was born in Pavia, where he got his academic degree in 1944. As a young man, Cipolla wanted to teach history…
Lucian of Samosata was a Greek-educated Syrian rhetorician, and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.
Alexandre Dumas (fils) (son) was born in Paris, France, the illegitimate child of Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay (1794-1868), a dressmaker, and novelist Alexandre Dumas. During 1831 his father legally re…
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca or Seneca the Younger); ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tuto…
Daniel Clement Dennett III was a prominent philosopher whose research centered on philosophy of mind, science, and biology, particularly as they relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. H…
