Theodor Mommsen in the context of "Caesar and Cleopatra (play)"

Latium Vetus or Latium Antiquum (English: Old Latium) is a region of the Italian Peninsula bounded to the north by the Tiber River, to the east by the central Apennine Mountains, to the west by the Mediterranean Sea and to the south by Monte Circeo. It was the territory of the Latins, an Italic tribe which included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome. Later it was also settled by various Italic tribes such as the Rutulians, Volscians, Aequi, and Hernici. The region was referred to as "old" to distinguish it from the expanded region, Latium, that included the region to the south of Old Latium, between Monte Circeo and the river Garigliano – the so-called Latium adiectum ("attached Latium"). It corresponded to the central part of the modern administrative region of Lazio, Italy, and it covered an area measuring of roughly 50 Roman miles. It was calculated by Mommsen that the region's area was about 1860 square kilometres.

36°00′N 6°30′E / 36°N 6.5°E / 36; 6.5

Numidia was a Roman province on the North African coast, comprising roughly the territory of northeastern Algeria.

The Dominate is a periodisation of the Roman Empire during late antiquity. It followed the earlier period known as the Principate, with both these concepts of historiography invented by the historian Theodor Mommsen. The Dominate is now considered a near-obsolete term.

The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history. The Corpus continues to be updated in new editions and supplements.

CIL also refers to the organization within the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities responsible for collecting data on and publishing the Latin inscriptions. It was founded in 1853 by Theodor Mommsen and is the first and major organization aiming at a comprehensive survey.

In ancient Rome the dies lustricus ("day of lustration" or "purification day") was a traditional naming ceremony in which an infant was purified and given a praenomen (given name). This occurred on the eighth day for girls and the ninth day for boys, a difference Plutarch explains by noting that "it is a fact that the female grows up, and attains maturity and perfection before the male." Until the umbilical cord fell off, typically on the seventh day, the baby was regarded as "more like a plant than an animal," as Plutarch expresses it. The ceremony of the dies lustricus was thus postponed until the last tangible connection to the mother's body was dissolved and the child was seen "as no longer forming part of the mother, and in this way as possessing an independent existence which justified its receiving a name of its own and therefore a fate of its own." The day was celebrated with a family feast. The childhood goddess Nundina presided over the event, and the goddess Nona was supposed to determine a person's lifespan. Prior to the ceremony infants were not considered part of the household, even if their father had raised them up during a tollere liberum.

On the dies lustricus, the Fata Scribunda were invoked. The "Written Fates" probably refers to a ceremonial writing down of the child's new name, perhaps in a family chronicle. To the Romans, the giving of a name was as important as being born. The receiving of a praenomen inaugurated the child as an individual with its own fate. A child's name may have been decided on before hand in the preceding days. In rare instances children were given names before the ceremony or posthumously, for example one child named Simplicius is recorded to have died the same day as he was born, possibly only living an hour. Often when a boy was commemorated despite dying before their name giving they are recorded only with their family nomen and possibly a cognomen. In the past some historians such as Theodor Mommsen believed that all male infants who died before their naming day were given a pseudopreanomen "Pupus" (a pet name meaning "little boy") in place of an actual praenomen on inscriptions, but it has later been proven that Pupus was a genuine praenomen (although incredibly rare).

Gaius Julius Solinus, better known simply as Solinus, was a Latin grammarian, geographer, and compiler who probably flourished in the early 3rd century AD. Historical scholar Theodor Mommsen dates him to the middle of the 3rd century.

Hermann Dessau (6 April 1856, Frankfurt am Main – 12 April 1931, Berlin) was a German ancient historian and epigrapher. He is noted for a key work of textual criticism published in 1889 on the Historia Augusta, which uncovered reasons to believe that this surviving text of ancient Roman imperial history had been written under circumstances very different from those previously believed.

He studied at the University of Berlin as a pupil of Theodor Mommsen, receiving his doctorate in 1877 from the University of Strasbourg. On behalf of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) he travelled to Italy and North Africa. In 1884 he was habilitated as a historian in Berlin, where he subsequently became an associate honorary professor (1912) and full honorary professor (1917). From 1900 to 1922 he served as a scientific officer for the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

The 1902 Nobel Prize in Literature was the second prestigious literary award based upon Alfred Nobel's will, which was given to German historian Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) "the greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work A History of Rome."