‘The Roman historians subsequent to Livy’, pronounced Sir Ronald Syme, ‘have perished utterly.’ It is true that most of the historians who wrote in the century between Livy and Tacitus, whether well known (e.g. the elder Seneca and the elder Pliny) or less familiar (e.g. Servilius Nonianus and Fabius Rusticus), have survived only in fragments or not at all; but there are two exceptions, Velleius Paterculus and Curtius.