Sublime

Unlike his elder brother, Gaius somehow succeeded in being elected tribune twice. But, in murky circumstances, he failed to be elected again for 121 BCE. In that year he resisted the efforts of the consul Lucius Opimius, a diehard who became something of a hero to the conservatives, to cancel much of his legislation. In the process he was killed, o

He criticized Seneca of having acquired a vast personal fortune, three hundred million sestertii, in a mere four years of service to Nero. He claimed that Seneca had a personal grudge against anybody—presumably including himself—who spoke in defense of his fellow citizens, and against anybody who had been a friend to Claudius, under whom, he said,

CICERO MAY WELL have been sitting in the senate on the Ides of March 44 BCE when Caesar was assassinated, an eyewitness to a messy and almost bungled murder. A gang of twenty or so senators crowded round Caesar on the pretext of handing him a petition. One backbencher gave the cue for the attack by kneeling at the dictator’s feet and pulling on his