Sublime

In a rousing speech given on his return from a junior post in Sardinia, Gaius Gracchus had sharp words for his colleagues who went out there with ‘amphorae full of wine and brought them home brimming with silver’ – a clear criticism of their profiteering, as well as a hint of their dim view of the local grape.

In AD 61 a Roman senator was killed by one of his slaves. Custom dictated that every slave in the household—all four hundred of them—must be crucified.

One poem, addressed to her on the death of her son Drusus in 9 BCE, even calls her Romana princeps. It was the female equivalent of a term regularly applied to Augustus, Romanus princeps, or ‘first citizen of Rome’, and meant something close to ‘first lady’.

the word our Greek friends used to describe the love of friendship and the fellowship of being with people we enjoy. Philos describes the people you want to hang out with and who want to hang with you too.

Gaius Gracchus

Cicero versus Catiline