Sublime

And it is easy to imagine the widespread pleasure when in 167 BCE Rome became a tax-free state: the treasury was so overflowing – thanks, in particular, to the spoils from the recent victory over Macedon – that direct taxation of Roman citizens was suspended except in emergencies, although they remained liable to a range of other levies, such as

Vespasian in 79 CE was the only emperor in the first two dynasties to die without any rumours of foul play surfacing.

Among the excesses of Nero's reign, are to be mentioned the horrible cruelties exercised against the Christians in various parts of the empire, in which inhuman transactions the natural barbarity of the emperor was inflamed by the prejudices and interested policy of the pagan priesthood.

After the death of Chrysippus, the Stoic school continued to prosper under a succession of leaders, including Panaetius of Rhodes, who is remembered in the annals of Stoicism not as an innovator but as an exporter of the philosophy. When Panaetius traveled to Rome in around 140 BC, he took Stoicism with him. He befriended Scipio Africanus and other

It was not for nothing that both Lord Palmerston and John F. Kennedy proudly broadcast the Latin phrase Civis Romanus sum (‘I am a Roman citizen’) as a slogan for their times. In short, Rome for the first time began to look ‘Roman’ as we understand it, and as they understood it.

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