From heaven to earth
One of the most striking characteristics of Socrates, as we know him from Plato, Plutarch, Xenophon, Cicero or Diogenes Laertius, and the numerous, yet exasperatingly fragmentary sources that survive, was his talent for convincing his interlocutors of his utter ignorance of any subject – his signature style was to present himself to the unwary as...
The art of violence
What an artist perishes in me, lamented Nero as he prepared to end his life before the rebelling senators had time to dispatch him. “He had indeed been an artist – he and his predecessors too” writes Tom Holland in the concluding pages of his sweeping survey of the Julio-Claudians, which delineates the rule of...
