SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

as Cicero once said of Cato, ‘he talks as if he were in the Republic of Plato, when in fact he is in the crap of Romulus’. But it was only later, in the romantic nostalgia

Disapprovers always need something to disapprove of; and, in any case, the distinction between exquisite good taste (mine) and vulgar ostentation (yours) is necessarily a subjective one.

‘they create desolation and call it peace’, ‘solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant’.