This page contains brief biographical details of the the most important of our surviving sources for the history of Rome and its conquest of peninsular Italy.

Fabius Pictor (late 3rd century BC)

Fabius Pictor wrote a now-lost narrative history of Rome in Greek in the late 3rd century BC. 

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Diodorus Siculus (ca. 45-30 BC)

The only known work of the Greek-speaking historian Diodorus Siculus, which he entitled the ‘Bibliotheke’ (or ‘Library of History’) set out to describe the entire history of the known world up to his own time.  Charles Muntz (referenced below, at pp. 3-4) described the scant surviving biographical details for Diodorus: importantly, Diodorus himself (at 1: 4: 2-3) revealed that he had spent a long period at Rome, where he had found excellent resources for his research.  Furthermore, other indications from his narrative suggest that:

1. ✴he arrived at Rome before 45 BC (when the Rostra was still outside the Senate); and
   

2. ✴his work was completed before Octavian’s victory at Actium in 31 BC (since he referred to the Ptolemies, the dynasty to which Cleopatra belonged, as the most recent dynasty to rule Egypt).
   

Since nothing is known about him after Actium, we might reasonably assume that he wrote this book in