Sublime

When Tiberius persuaded them to vote out of office the tribune who opposed him, his argument went along the lines of ‘if the people’s tribune no longer does what the people want, then he should be deposed’. That raised an issue still familiar in modern electoral systems. Are Members of Parliament, for example, to be seen as delegates of the voters,

The other source was Cicero’s province. While boasting, maybe correctly, that he had never broken the law in extorting money from the provincials, he still left Cilicia in 50 BCE with more than 2 million sesterces in local currency in his luggage. How exactly it was acquired is not certain: a combination perhaps of Cicero’s meanness with his expens

In 133 BCE, the votes for the next year’s tribunes were slowly being delivered on the Capitoline Hill when the posse invaded. A battle followed, in which Tiberius was bludgeoned to death with a chair leg. The man behind the lynch mob was his cousin Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, an ex-consul and the head of one of the main groups of Roman

Pliny the Elder, trying later to arrive at a headcount of Caesar’s victims, seems strikingly modern in accusing him of ‘a crime against humanity’.

‘Cato the Younger’ – the great grandson of ‘the Elder’ (p. 204) and one of Caesar’s most uncompromising enemies – argued that the city was overturned not when Caesar and Pompey fell out but when they became friends.

Le jugement sobre, mais motivé, de l'historien Cassius Dion 5 est l'un des plus exacts qui aient été portés sur lui : « Il n'eut pas la chance qu'il aurait méritée... mais il se trouva confronté pendant tout son règne à une multitude de malheurs. C'est la raison pour laquelle je l'admire plus que tout autre, car dans ces difficultés extraordinaires

Perusia revealed the pattern. Octavian first reconstituted respect in Rome by navigating the treacherous currents of land redistribution. He then won a battle by entrusting its conduct to others with superior military skills. Finally, he fortified his authority against further insurrections by publicly executing prominent rebels, an act of violence

If we go along with the Etruscan version, he had once been the faithful follower of Caelius Vivenna and a comrade in his adventures; and later, when he had been driven out by a change of fortune, he left Etruria with all that remained of Caelius’ militia and seized the Caelian Hill [in Rome], which then became called after his leader Caelius. When

Against this background, three men – Pompey, Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus – made an informal deal to use their combined influence, connections and money to fix the political process in their own interests. This ‘Gang of Three’, or ‘Three-Headed Monster’, as one contemporary satirist put it, for the first time effectively took public de