Quotes from Anthony Everitt

Antony and Cleopatra renewed their friendship at the respective ages of forty-five and thirty-three.

produced two sons, "an heir and a spare." (Two daughters, Julia and Agrippina

Gaius was born in 20 B.C. and Lucius in 17.

The main trouble with the Roman constitution was that it contained too many checks and balances, whether to restrain ambitious power-seekers or to protect ordinary citizens from the executive. It is somewhat surprising that anything was ever decided.

AS far as it could, the Senate allowed events to take their course, intervening only when absolutely necessary.

set on having their day in court and pressed for Caesar's early recall.

With the arrival of the second boy, Augustus adopted them both and brought them up in his house.

A popular dramatist, Phrynichus, staged a play on the subject of the fall of Miletus. It was a hit and spectators wept at the moving reenactment. This did not do Phrynichus any good. He had laid bare their emotions and people were furious. They made him pay a heavy fine for reminding them of a real-life tragedy with which they were only too painfully familiar. They decreed that no drama on this subject should ever be presented again.

However, the senatorial extremists, increasingly sure of Pompey's support, refused to compromise.

The only eventuality Octavian wanted to avoid was Antony joining him in the war against Sextus.

Gaius was now thirteen years old and well able to understand the seriousness of the situation.

This development has been presented as leaving Livia and her sons, Tiberius and Drusus, out in the cold.

He understood that he needed the confidence of the people and, as the clear-eyed philosopher Aristotle put it, the "confidence of the people [depended] on hostility to the rich.

THE GREAT-UNCLE 48–47 B.C.

So the issue came down to whether plotting to commit treason could be equated with the act of treason itself. Cato was in no doubt that this was so, but he was arguing in the heat of the moment. In the final analysis, he and the other Senators were behaving not as legal experts but as politicians forced to come to a quick decision in an emergency. Nobody at the time challenged their right to do so.

From "Palatine" derives the word "palace," meaning that enclosed space where autocrats make decisions in private

It was September and rain was falling. The territory west of the river Weser through which the Romans marched was a mix of wetlands

squabbles between the signatories of the Treaty of Misenum

According to Plutarch, Cleopatra and Antony now dissolved their celebrated Society of Inimitable Livers and instituted another, which was at least its equal in elegance, luxury and extravagance, and which they called the Order of the Inseparable in Death. Their friends joined it on the understanding that they would end their lives together, and they set themselves to charm away the days with a succession of exquisite supper parties.

The territory west of the river Weser through which the Romans marched was a mix of wetlands, woods, and fields.

the most important development by far was the defection of Sextus' admiral Menodorus

the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and XIXth legions (about fifteen thousand men) were advancing through the countryside in column of route.

Menodorus delivered to Octavian Sardinia and Corsica, three legions, and some light-armed troops.

Varus saw it, the army was there on a policing rather than a military mission.