Sublime

Thrasea Paetus. Thrasea was not a philosopher or writer but a politician and an aristocrat, a member of the Senate, who is presented, in both Tacitus and Dio, as a man of absolute integrity. He was the only one who expressed disapproval of the speech Seneca delivered to the Senate in defense of Nero’s killing of his mother: when it was delivered, T

Hence it often assents to the clamor of a mountebank who knows the secret of stimulating its tastes, while its truest friends frequently fail in their exertions.

In an accident of history, Niccolò Machiavelli, who admired and feared the Ottoman Empire, completed his famous treatise of political philosophy, The Prince, the same year—1513—in which Selim defeated his half-brothers to secure the sultanate that he had gained in 1512.

Marsiglio of Padua (1270-1342), on the contrary, inaugurated the new form of opposition to the Pope, in which the Emperor has mainly a role of decorative dignity.