Sublime

CHAPTER 5 · A WIDER WORLD The descendants of Barbatus

“In every civil war,” says a Greek historian, “the great object is to change fortunes.”579 Every demagogue acted like that Molpagoras of Cios,580 who delivered to the multitude those who possessed money, massacred some, exiled others, and distributed their property among the poor.

In practice, if not in the Roman imagination, the empire of the first two centuries CE became less a field of conquest and pacification and more a territory to be managed, policed and taxed.

What went wrong with Gaius?

A segunda morte de Ramón Mercader (1969),

Cannae and the elusive face of battle

This second board of decemviri – the Ten Tarquins, as they were sometimes known – started to ape the behaviour of tyrants, right down to sexual violence. In what was almost a replay of the rape of Lucretia, which had led to the foundation of the Republic, one of their number, the patrician Appius Claudius (a great-great-grandfather of the road buil

The city militias were divided into companies from different quarters of the city, and it was rarely necessary to call out more than a part of the force at once. Each man was expected to keep his arms, and where applicable his horse, in readiness; but the service required of him was normally confined to defence of the walls of the city for the limi

Digging up early Rome