The fire was still burning after soldiers and the imperial household had joined the response. Claudius stayed at the Diribitorium for two nights. Then bags of money appeared before the people Rome still needed. Suetonius’s brief scene shows an emergency force being purchased in real time. Two Nights Turned Presence into Command Suetonius introduces the … Read more
Caninius wanted an annual feast to continue after nobody could ask him what he intended. Cash could disappear. Public land could decay. A generous promise therefore needed more than a large sum and a grateful town. Pliny’s answer was to give property away, receive it back and make himself owe rent forever. A Permanent Gift … Read more
Two young attendants in Pliny’s household entered a Roman basilica and came back as evidence of somebody else’s eloquence. The price was three denarii each. They did not need to understand the lawsuit, follow the advocate’s reasoning or even listen through the speech. They needed to watch a conductor and make the room sound convinced. … Read more
The young nobles did not rise when Gnaeus Flavius entered the sickroom. They remained seated, making a small domestic courtesy carry a public insult. Flavius did not demand applause or begin a speech about his ancestry. He laughed, called for his curule chair, and had it set across the threshold. The men who would not … Read more
Lucius Scipio Asiaticus had commanded Roman armies and celebrated a triumph. Now a tribune fined him, demanded security for payment, and ordered him toward prison when he refused. His brother, Publius Scipio Africanus, appealed to the other tribunes. Eight offered only a conditional shield. Then an avowed political enemy supplied the veto that friendship could … Read more
Cato did not need to win a vote if he could prevent the vote from arriving. Asked for his opinion in the Senate, he ranged beyond the motion and kept talking, aiming to consume the whole day. Caesar, presiding as consul, answered with an attendant and an arrest order. Cato was to be taken to … Read more
Fabricius did not trust Publius Cornelius Rufinus. He considered him greedy, thievish and personally hateful. Then a consular election arrived during a military crisis, and Fabricius worked to put Rufinus in command. Years later, the same Fabricius expelled the same man from the Senate because Rufinus owned ten pounds of silver plate. Aulus Gellius preserves … Read more
Corellius Rufus endured pain because he wanted to outlive Domitian by a single day. He achieved that political wish. Later, when illness spread through his body, he refused food for four days and would not be recalled by his wife, daughter, doctor or friends. Pliny admired the resolve, hurried to break it and then wrote … Read more
Byzantium paid 12,000 sesterces each year to send Trajan a greeting. The city spent another 3,000 on an envoy who travelled to salute the governor of Moesia. Pliny the Younger found both costs in the accounts, then asked whether the officials needed the visitors—or only the message they carried. The Audit Found Ceremony among the … Read more
Chilo had one vote, two fellow judges and a friend facing death. He secretly voted to convict. Then he persuaded the other two judges to acquit. At the end of his life, the solution still felt less like an answer than an unpaid debt. A Deathbed Memory Returned to One Ballot Aulus Gellius introduces Chilo … Read more
