Ovid
Augustus' reign seemed to many to embody Virgil's ideals, and Rome prospered under his rule. But those who ran afoul of his strict sense of morality paid a heavy price. A generation younger than Virgil and the poets of Rome's Golden Age, the poet Ovid had matured in the relative peace of the countryside and the Pax Romana. In early works such as the Amores, Heroides, Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris, he honed his wit and skill, playing with conventions of society and literary genre. Building on a literary tradition of love poetry, Ovid's poems display a playfulness and technical dexterity that would make him Rome's reigning poet of stolen kisses:
So your husband is coming to this dinner party? I hope he gags on his food! Listen! And learn what you must do. When he settles on his couch to eat, go to him with a straight face. Look modest and lie back beside him. But secretly touch me with your foot. Don't let him drape his arms around your neck; don't rest your gentle head against his chest; don't welcome his fingers to your lap or to your eager nipples. Most of all no kissing. When dinner is done, your husband will close the bedroom door. But whatever the night shall bring, tell me tomorrow you refused him.
He enthralled the public with his suggestive verse — but his joyful insouciance challenged the moral legislation of Augustus. Soon after Augustus exiled his own daughter Julia for her string of affairs, Ovid published his Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), a salacious poem offering guidance for adulterers:
Do not doubt you can have any girl you wish. Some give in, others resist. But all love to be propositioned. And even if you fail, rejection doesn't hurt. But why should you fail... women always welcome pleasure... and find novelty exciting.
His words would return to haunt him, and Augustus' patience came to an end. Beleaguered, Augustus saw plots in every corner, anarchy in every act of disobedience. Blaming the subversive book, he banished Ovid from Rome. The poet was sent to an untamed backwater at the edges of the empire on the shores of the Black Sea. For Ovid — the ultimate urban sophisticate — no punishment could have been harsher. It was a brutal life, Ovid wrote home from exile, a side of the empire that few Romans ever saw. Under the hardship, his roguish aplomb crumbled to anguish:
Beyond these rickety walls, there's no safety. And inside it's hardly better. Barbarians live in most of the houses. Even if you're not afraid of them, you'll despise their long hair and clothes made of animal skins. They all do business in their common language. I have to communicate with gestures. I am understood by no one. And the stupid peasants insult my Latin words... They heckle me to my face and mock my exile.
As the years passed, Ovid shriveled into a bony old man. He fell ill, and contrition replaced his former bravado. Though he begged Augustus, and later Tiberius, for clemency, he would never get a reprieve. As he approached death, he became sadly resigned to his fate:
Look at me. I yearn for my country, my home and for you. I've lost everything that I once had. But I still have my talent. Emperors have no jurisdiction over that. My fame will survive... even after I am gone. And as long as Rome dominates the world, I will be read.
Ovid had dedicated his life to writing. Despite the hardships he suffered in exile, he continued to write poems for publication. His Metamorphoses, an epic poem which combines myth and history to detail the progression of the Roman world from the Creation to the reign of Tiberius, remains one of the defining works of Roman literature, and one of the most influential poems in European literary history.

Seneca
Ovid's fate was not unique. Near the middle of the first century, a Stoic philosopher named Seneca was banished for offending the Roman Emperor. Having already established a reputation as a writer and orator, Seneca was not content to sink into obscurity. Seeking to preserve his dignity at all costs, he expressed his thoughts through philosophy and dramatic writings. In an era when so many suffered at the hands of the powerful, he wrote "one man's exile was but a drop in the sea of human upheaval."
Richard Saller: Seneca was the leading Stoic philosopher of his day. The main teaching of Stoicism was the acceptance of one's fate to play the role that one had been assigned by fate in the world. And so Seneca's fate was to participate in court politics.
Seneca was ultimately recalled to Rome in AD 49 to tutor the young Nero, which raised ethical problems for the respected man of letters. Seneca was a follower of Stoic philosophy. In an age of slavery, Stoics advanced the notion of universal humanity — a brotherhood of man — that pre-dated similar Christian doctrines. In an age of opulence, Stoics shunned ostentatious living. And in an age of absolute rule, Stoics walked a narrow path between integrity and hypocrisy.
If someone who barks against philosophy should ask the standard question: "Why do you preach more boldly than you live?" I will someday reproach myself more strongly still. But for now I make this defense: I am not wise and never will be. Demand not that I be equal to the best, but better than the wicked.
Seneca participated in court politics through Nero — now a 16-year-old boy — whose path to the imperial palace had been bathed in blood. Seneca's task was to mold this spirited son of a power-hungry family into a tolerable world leader. For a time, he kept Nero's lust for absolute power in check.
But after distancing himself from the brutal ruler, he was implicated in a plot to assassinate the Emperor. On meager evidence, the Emperor sent an officer to demand the philosopher's suicide. The historian Tacitus described Seneca's death:
Seneca embraced his wife and gently begged her to live and temper her grief. But she chose to die with him. With a single stroke of the blade, they sliced their arms. Seneca, hardened by frugal living, did not bleed easily. He cut the veins of his knees and thighs. But still he did not die. He asked his doctor to dispense some poison Hemlock. He drank it in vain. Finally, he was carried into the baths, where he suffocated in vapor.
Few philosophers had reached such powerful heights, and few paid so dearly. Seneca's actions fell short of his ideals. But history, he hoped, would judge him well:
The man who considers his generation alone is born for few. Many thousands of years and people will come after him. Look to these. If virtue brings fame, our reputation will survive. Posterity will judge without malice and honor our memory.
As a poet, Seneca had specialized in writing tragedies. Ten of his tragedies survive, providing vivid illustration of Roman theatrical tastes during his lifetime. Despite his own tragic end, he left behind a body of writing — essays, letters, tragedies, and poems — that have preserved his thoughts for almost two thousand years.

Petronius
The Roman satirist Petronius, perhaps a contemporary of Seneca, did not share the philosopher's stark morality. He reveled in luxury and skewered the Roman nouveaux-riches in his writings. In his novel, the Satyricon, Petronius lampooned the lifestyle of former slaves by depicting a vulgar dinner party through the eyes of a fictional guest:
Petronius lampooned the lifestyle of wealthy former slaves.
We reached the dining room. Boys from Egypt poured cooled water on our hands while others ministered to our feet, removing the hangnails with precision. I began chatting with my neighbor. Who was that woman running here and there? "The host's wife," he replied. "She counts her money by the bushel. But take care you don't scorn the other freedmen here. They're oozing wealth too. See that one reclining at the end of the couch? Today he's worth 800,000. He's newly freed. Not too long ago, he carried wood on his back."
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill: Petronius' Satyricon is a wonderful insight into all sorts of social prejudices. In a situation where one of the big phenomena of the first century AD is the rise of the freed slave, the desire of the freed slave is to become a look-alike real Roman. And the characters in Petronius are these ex-slaves who are all trying it on as Romans. They're dining like Romans, they're bathing like Romans. They're trying to quote bits of ancient literature, mythology as if they were proper Romans. They get it wrong all the time. Socially, subtly wrong in a way that a Roman aristocrat such as Petronius can laugh at them.
Tacitus tells of how a consul and courtier of Nero named Petronius — considered by scholars to be the author of the Satyricon — ultimately fell from the Emperor's graces. Condemned to death by Nero, Petronius ended his own life by slashing his veins, but only after writing a letter to Nero detailing the Emperor's orgies and affairs. He made dying a leisurely and comfortable affair, slowly bleeding to death in front of his guests at a lavish dinner party. Pliny the Elder
With the death of Nero, Rome was once again plunged into civil war. The general Vespasian returned from Judaea to claim the throne, and to subdue the violence that gripped Italy. Vespasian's reign heralded a new era of hope for the Roman people, and renewed an interest in learning.

Pliny the Elder, a friend of Vespasian and a naval commander, was a prolific author. He wrote many books, most notably, his Historia Naturalis (Natural History), an encyclopedia of natural science that spanned thirty-seven books. Pliny describes in detail the nature of the physical universe: geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, and the medicinal uses of plants and curatives derived from the animals, among a host of other topics. Although dubious as a work of science, Pliny's Historia Naturalis provides a unique glimpse into the world view of ancient Rome:
An octopus, when he fears capture, emits a dark ink, which he has instead of blood and is able to conceal himself in the darkened water... The whole world is divided into three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa... When bees die, some people think they can be brought back to life by covering them with the stomach of a newly killed cow.
Pliny and his young nephew and ward, Pliny the Younger, were present at the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Pliny the Elder, eager to gather first-hand scientific information, and to help friends out of danger, sailed out to the base of the volcano in a Roman warship. His nephew stayed behind in Misenum, a town across the bay from the doomed city of Pompeii. Years later, Pliny the Younger described the scene in a letter:
The cloud was shaped like an umbrella pine, with a long trunk that branched at the top. It was so remarkable, my uncle wanted to study it closer. He ordered a boat to be prepared. Fearlessly, he headed across the bay, straight for danger, all the while making notes of the movements and shapes of the clouds. Soon, ashes were falling, hot and dense. Next came pumice stones, black and scorched by fire. He came ashore near his friend's villa and — hoping to calm him by his own composure — my uncle asked to bathe and rest.
Soon the courtyard outside his room filled with ash. The buildings swayed with heavy tremors. The sky turned blacker than night. Then flames and sulfur fumes sent everyone into flight. He asked for water, then stood up and suddenly collapsed; his breath choked by the thickening fog. Day light came three days later.
Pliny the Elder died of asphyxiation from volcanic ash, sharing the same fate as thousands of Roman citizens that day.

Pliny the Younger
Pliny the Younger was a witness to his age. His letters — published during his lifetime — show Pliny striving to reconcile his turbulent public and private life. He was born in 61 AD into a wealthy family from the countryside of northern Italy, and was just a child during Rome's civil wars. Far from the capital, he was spared the immediate violence of war, but was not spared personal tragedy: his own father died while young Pliny was still a boy.
It was a life-changing blow, but it was hardly unusual. Apart from the hazards of war, many Romans died young from infectious disease, famine, and during childbirth. Funerals and mourning were painful staples of daily life. Pliny wrote of witnessing one such funeral:
I've never seen a girl more cheerful and friendly; more worthy of long life. Barely fourteen, she blended virginal modesty with the wisdom and dignity of a mature woman. And her early death was all the more tragic since she was soon to marry a fine young man. The day had been chosen and the invitations sent. Such joy has turned to such sorrow!
The events of Pliny's childhood taught him early that life was fleeting. He was successful in his public career — starting by serving with a legion in Syria, and embarking on a career as a Senator soon afterwards.
By the end of the century, he had risen to the rank of Consul, and was a member of Trajan's imperial board of advisors. But fame, he concluded, was the only tonic that would satisfy him. By chronicling his times, Pliny hoped, he might not only shape the empire's legacy, but also secure the fame he sought.
Death seems bitter and premature for those composing timeless works. My own mortality, my own writings come to mind. No doubt the same thoughts frighten you. While life is with us, we must struggle to make our mark so that death finds little it can wipe away.

Historians
As the first century AD drew to a close, others took up the task of chronicling the events and personalities of the past century. Tacitus, an orator and statesman, documented the reign of the Emperors Galba (68-69 AD) and the beginning of the reign of Vespasian (to 70 AD), creating a clear view of Roman life during the years of civil war. In the surviving books of the Annals, Tacitus depicts of the reign of Tiberius and Claudius, memorializing a series of vivid characters. With the events of the past well behind him, Tacitus was at liberty to include eloquent moral judgments that helped shape Roman history for centuries to come.
Other biographers and historians followed in Tacitus' wake, who artfully blended information from the imperial archives and first-person accounts with rumors and gossip to cement the events of the first century AD in the minds of future generations. Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, which spans from the reign of Julius Caesar to Emperor Domitian, and the writings of Dio Cassius, along with Tacitus' work, remain the basis for our knowledge of the Roman Empire in the first century AD.