Sublime

“Non solum nobis, sed patriae”: “Not for ourselves only, but for our country.”21

“The mission of the tyrant,” says Aristotle, “is to protect the people against the rich; he has always commenced by being a demagogue, and it is the essence of tyranny to oppose the aristocracy.”

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.

The emperor Tiberius summed up the basic ethics of Roman rule rather well when he said, in reaction to some excessive profits turned in from the provinces, ‘I want my sheep shorn, not shaven’.

SPQR takes its title from another famous Roman catchphrase, Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, ‘The Senate and People of Rome’.

What is more, if Attalus had left his kingdom to ‘the Roman people’ (populus Romanus), was it not up to them, rather than the senate, to determine how the bequest was used? Should not the profits of empire benefit the poor as well as the rich?

Augustus is dead. Long live Augustus!