Sublime

“Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you, so keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, and strong for your proper work. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you. Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is shor

Cicero’s grisly death presaged a yet bigger revolution in the first century BCE, which began with a form of popular political power, even if not a ‘democracy’ exactly, and ended with an autocrat established on the throne and the Roman Empire under one-man rule.

“The mission of the tyrant,” says Aristotle, “is to protect the people against the rich; he has always commenced by being a demagogue, and it is the essence of tyranny to oppose the aristocracy.”

Mais en Cicéron se mêlent désormais à la fois la fatigue et la sagesse, deux sentiments qui se ressemblent souvent bien dangereusement. Il sait qu’à présent, il n’a plus besoin de rien d’autre que d’achever son œuvre, mettre de l’ordre dans sa vie et ses pensées.

Both were controversial figures who were accused of various forms of duplicity (indecision and flip-flopping in Cicero’s case, or a failure to practice what he preached in the case of Seneca) and who aroused deep enmity as well as deep friendship.

But to appoint agents in each township would have been to centre in his person the most formidable of powers, that of a judicial administration.

Tiberius Gracchus