The Figure of the Tyrant

Ideas of libertas were powerfully resonant in Roman political ideology (eg, Stylow 1972, Wirszubski 1960), particularly in moments of transitions of power. Thus, L. Brutus was celebrated by Tacitus as founding the consulship and libertas (Ann. 1.1) and Augustus in his Res Gestae claims as his first achievement the liberation of the state from an oppressive faction (Res Ges. 1.1). The theme of libertas thus seems ideal for exploitation in justifying the deposition of a reigning emperor or usurper.

I explore how and why Demosthenes uses money in his rhetoric to characterise Philip of Macedon negatively. The public speeches of Demosthenes from the 340s make frequent reference to the limited resources that are readily available to the Athenian state. The orator frequently exhorts his audience to neglect no longer their financial duties and so to allow the polis to wage war effectively. The rich are to pay contributions and the dêmos as a whole has to vote its generals enough money to carry out their mandates.

Thucydides’ only lengthy editorializing passage on his war (3.82-3) describes it as a brutal teacher progressively warping human nature, but this process of corrosion can be difficult to trace in his long and complex work. I argue that the trajectory of the Spartan royal family is one clear example, and that Thucydides’ use of patronymics encourages the reader to observe the contrast between father and son.

In the past scholarly interest in Diodorus’ Bibliotheke focused primarily on determining what source Diodorus used in a particular section or book and on surmising what of the original historian might be reconstructed from the Diodoran account (i.e. Quellenforschung). Owing to the work of K. Sacks (1990; 1994) a growing consensus has begun to emerge that acknowledges original elements in Diodorus’ history (Pavan 1991; Green 2006).

In 39 CE, Caligula built a three-mile-long pontoon bridge in the Bay of Naples and rode back and forth over it in a procession lasting two days. Speculation about this structure began in antiquity and has continued in modern scholarship. One branch of the literature has seized upon Seneca’s comment that Caligula’s bridge procession was “an imitation of a mad and foreign and misproud king” (De Brev. Vit. 18.5). But which king?

At least since Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the last words attributed to Caesar (καὶ σύ, τέκνον, Suetonius, Divus Iulius 82; Dio 44.19) have been commonly interpreted as a paternal reproach to Brutus (see Canfora, 331; Woolf, 13; Lintott, 79; Wyke, 205). Caesar is shocked to witness the betrayal of his supposedly biological son and exclaims: “Will you, son, stab Caesar too?” (see Griffin, 386).