Gaius Velleius Paterculus, the author of a short history of Rome, was probably born in 20 or 19 B.C. He died sometime after a.d 30, the year in which he presented his history to the consul Marcus Vinicius. At the end of the second book of that history Velleius includes a summary of the novi homines (new men), who had come from outside of the traditional governing aristocracy to help shape Roman history (2.127-128). The ostensible point of this passage was to praise Aelius Sejanus, the praetorian prefect who was then the most influential man in Rome. In doing so, however, Velleius was also praising himself. His life and the history of his family, to which he alludes at various points in his history, were paradigmatic of the process through which Italy was unified under Roman rule and of the process that ultimately unified the Mediterranean world as it...