ricardienne | (no subject) (Reply)

I came across an awesome epigram today: Tacite vous apprend à vous taire et à vous tuer. Why is it awesome? Because when you think about it: what the heck does it actually mean? In what way is it even true? (I mean, apart from the obvious, that after reading all the way through the Annals, you will have amassed a large repertory of ways to kill yourself, from poison, to starvation, to open veins ± bath, to stabbing, to having someone else do the stabbing, to making them kill you, to throwing a party and draining a little blood out periodically over the course of the evening...)
But it sounds so convincing and authoritative.

Also, I read a very silly article whining about Livy falsifying history, but it did lead me to this very cute passage:

[Fabius Maximus Cunctator, (a great general, former dictator, war hero, etc.)] came to the camp in Suessula as a legate to his son[, the consul]. The son happened to be going out and his lictors, in modesty of his state, were preceding him silently, when the old man was traveling up on horseback. When the consul ordered the nearest lictor to take notice, and he in turn shouted out that he should descend from the horse, the old man said, only then dismounting: "I wanted to find out for myself, son, whether you knew well enough that you were a consul."(XII.44)

Awwww. Ancient Romans are so adorable when they get hung up over precedence.