Sublime

Gaius Julius Zoilos

Rome was always a warrior state, and victory in war the surest route to glory. Cicero, however, was no soldier: he had come to prominence in the law courts, not by leading his army in battle against dangerous, or unfortunate, foreigners. He needed to ‘save the state’ in some other way.

Pompeia Paulina, jovem romana e dama muito nobre, casara-se com Sêneca em sua extrema velhice. Nero, o belo discípulo deste, enviou seus guardas para anunciar-lhe o decreto de sua condenação à morte, o que se fazia da seguinte maneira: quando os imperadores romanos dessa época tinham condenado um homem de qualidade, despachavam-lhe seus oficiais

3. A ‘world full of gods’ is Keith Hopkins’s phrase in his engagingly quirky study of Roman religions, A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999).

Miguel was like a strong dog whom Majnoun both feared and admired,

Marriage alliances underpinned some major developments in Roman politics in the late Republic. In 82 BCE, for example, Sulla attempted to secure Pompey’s loyalty by ‘giving’ him his stepdaughter as a wife, although she was married to someone else at the time and pregnant by him; the gamble did not pay off, because the poor woman almost immediately

He made the same point when he took (or, technically, was given) ‘the power of a tribune’ for life. He was linking himself to the tradition of popular politicians, going back at least to the Gracchi, who stood up for the rights and welfare of the Roman in the street.