Valerius Antias

Valerius Antias (1st century BC) was an ancient Roman annalist whom Livy mentions as a source. No complete works of his survive but from the sixty-five fragments said to be his in the works of other authors it has been deduced that he wrote a chronicle of ancient Rome in at least seventy-five books. The latest dateable event in the fragments is mention of the heirs of the orator, Lucius Licinius Crassus, who died in 91 BC. Of the seventy references to Antias in classical (Greek and Latin) literature sixty-one mention him as an authority on Roman legendary history.

Antias' family were the Valerii Antiates, a branch of the Valeria gens residing at least from early republican times in the vicinity of Antium (modern towns of Anzio and Nettuno). He may have been descended from Lucius Valerius Antias.

Not much is known about the life of Valerius Antias. He was probably a younger contemporary of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius and lived in the times of Sulla although some scholars believe that he was a contemporary of Julius Caesar and wrote his work after 50 BC, because he seems to have been unknown to Cicero (who especially does not mention him in his enumeration of famous historians (de legibus 1.2.3-7)). He was the most important of the so-called “younger annalists”.

The nearly completely lost work of Antias – cited as annales or as historiae – began its account of the Roman history with the foundation of Rome and extended at least to the year 91 BC. The second book told about the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius, the twenty-second book about the capitulation of Gaius Hostilius Mancinus in 136 BC (this event Livy only reports in book 55 of his history). Therefore, the earlier times were reported much shorter than the contemporary history of the author.

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