Sublime

it meant that Seneca had—like Cicero before him—reached the highest official rank in Roman government. After service as consul, a Roman man, and all his male descendants after him, had attained the rank of the aristocracy: he now counted as a “nobleman,” nobilis, on a level with the oldest Roman families.

Cicero famously defined the orator as “a good man skilled in speaking.”

Augustus had attempted a careful balancing act, combining extra privileges for the senate and a parade of civilitas with an attempt to reconfigure the old Republican institution into something closer to an arm of administration in his new regime.

Pompey the Great

Clodius’ subsequent reputation for outright villainy has been almost entirely formed by Cicero’s enmity. He has gone down in history as the mad patrician who not only arranged to be adopted into a plebeian family in order to stand for the tribunate but also put two fingers up to the whole process by choosing an adoptive father younger than himself.

Law, not anger, should be the primary weapon of the state.

economy overseen by the Communist Party. Zhu is a tall, angular man, known for his energy and impatience. Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and president of Harvard, once estimated Zhu’s IQ at 200. As mayor and premier, Zhu had all kinds of nicknames alluding to his determination: One-Chop Zhu, Zhu the Boss, even Madman Zhu, for his will

While Seneca is reticent concerning the activities of the Julio-Claudian imperial dynasty, his nostalgia for the Roman Republic is evident in his negative remarks about Pompey and Julius Caesar (94.65, 95.70) and his admiration for such figures as Scipio Africanus (86), Quintus Aelius Tubero (95.72), and Publius Rutilius Rufus (24.4). Above all, he