Sublime

The Romans versus Alexander the Great

The birth of liberty

Alfonso X of Spain, nicknamed El Sabio, “the wise,” had as a maxim: Burn old logs. Drink old wine. Read old books. Keep old friends. The insightful and luckily nonacademic historian Tom Holland once commented: “The thing I most admire about the Romans was the utter contempt they were capable of showing the cult of youth.” He also wrote: “The Romans

The Italian phrase coined in the 1930s to describe this period, ‘La Grande Roma dei Tarquini’ (‘The Great Rome of the Tarquins’), may not be so misleading – though it depends a lot, of course, on exactly what is meant by ‘Grande’. Rome was still, in absolute and relative terms, far from ‘great’. But it was a larger and more urban community than it

Seneca’s Rome was, like modern Britain, Europe, and especially the United States, a place of vast social inequality.

How to be Roman

and of Augustus too.” Yet

Polybius on the politics of Rome