Four secretaries listened for four different letters. One man supplied every stream. Pliny the Elder offered that scene as a measure of Julius Caesar’s mental speed. He then raised the count to seven when no other business competed for Caesar’s attention. The boast is memorable because it converts command into throughput: one voice, several hands, … Read more
Five children arrived in one delivery near Laurentum. They lived for only a few days. Their mother died soon afterward. Aulus Gellius preserves no name for her and none for them. He does preserve an order from Augustus: erect a monument beside the Via Laurentina and inscribe the number of children. The count entered public … Read more
Four people could arrive with four legitimate claims: a ward needing protection, a guest invoking hospitality, a client asking for aid and a relative appealing to blood. Aulus Gellius heard senior Romans debate which claim should come first when one person could not satisfy them all. Their answer did not begin with affection. It began … Read more
Cicero wanted the Palatine house. He did not have the ready money. A private loan of two million sesterces solved one problem and created another. The lender, Publius Sulla, was under accusation. When news of the transaction spread before the sale, Cicero denied receiving the money and denied any intention to buy. Then he bought … Read more
The woman did not deny the poison. She explained why she had used it. Before Gnaeus Dolabella, Rome’s proconsular governor in Asia, a defendant from Smyrna admitted killing her husband and one of her sons. She said those two men had treacherously murdered another son, a blameless young man from an earlier marriage. Aulus Gellius … Read more
Scipio Africanus sat down beside a man he had opposed for years. Before the feast ended, that enemy had become his future son-in-law. Aulus Gellius tells the reconciliation as a sudden turn at Jupiter’s banquet on the Capitol. The Senate’s seating arrangement placed Publius Scipio beside Tiberius Gracchus after repeated disagreement over public affairs. The … Read more
At night, discovery could turn a stolen vessel into a question of life and death. In daylight, the same taking followed a different path unless the thief resisted with a weapon. Later Roman actions could demand twice, three times or four times a value depending on how the goods disappeared and reappeared. Aulus Gellius gathered … Read more
The messenger had an order, but Labeo wanted the magistrates themselves. A woman had appealed to Rome’s tribunes of the commons, and they sent for the jurist Antistius Labeo at the Gallianum. He did not simply obey. The tribunes, he answered, could arrest him, but they could not summon him while he was absent. If … Read more
Cato was still speaking when Caesar called for the attendant. The consul had asked for his opinion on a motion. Cato opposed it and used a senator’s procedural liberty to discuss another subject first, for as long as he wished. His aim, Gellius says, was to consume the whole day and prevent a decision. Caesar … Read more
Metellus asked Rome to accept a bargain he refused to decorate. If people could live without wives, his surviving words suggest, they might gladly escape the trouble. Yet a life arranged around universal avoidance could not give the community lasting security. The censor therefore asked his audience to accept a limited private burden for a … Read more
