Aulus Quotes

The two soldiers laughed, and even the king smiled. Reinforcing Costis's suspicion that Eugenides had been responsible for Ornon's lost sheep, Boagus asked, "Do you still baa like a lamb when he walks into the room?" Eugenides shook his head. "Ornon took me aside first thing after the coronation and explained that it would be against my dignity." Aulus and Boagus stared. Eugenides expression was bland. "He said that?" Aulus asked. "He did," the king confirmed. "What did you say?" Boagus asked suspiciously. "I promised to bark like a sheepdog instead." The Eddisians chuckled again. "You don't, though?" Aulus had to ask. The king eyed him with disgust. "Give me some credit," He said, and when Aulus was visibly relieved, added, "Not when anybody else can hear me.

Panem et circenses.

Besides what endless brawls by wives are bred, The curtain lecture makes a mournful bed.

Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta suppellex. Retire within thyself, and thou will discover how small a stock is there.

Of all existing things some are good, some evil, and some indifferent. Now the good things are virtues and what partakes of them, the evil are vice and what partakes of vice, and the indifferent lie  between these: wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, pain.

[F]or whenever I had taken in hand any Greek or Latin book, or had heard anything worth remembering, I used to jot down whatever took my fancy, of any and every kind, without any definite plan or order; and such notes I would lay away as an aid to my memory, like a kind of literary storehouse, so that when the need arose of a word or a subject which I chanced for the moment to have forgotten, and the books from which it had taken it were not at hand, I could readily find and produce it.

Kırdım diyorsun zincirlerimi; Evet, köpek de çeker koparır zincirini, Kaçar o da, ama halkaları boynunda taşıyarak

Traditionally, in the system that Augustus inherited from the Republic, the Roman command structure was class-based. As mentioned earlier, the officer class came from the narrow aristocracy of senators and equestrians. The great armies of the Republic were commanded by senators who had attained the rank of consul, the pinnacle of their society. Their training in military science came mainly from experience: until the later second century B.C., aspiring senators were required to serve in ten campaigns before they could hold political office 49 Intellectual education was brought to Rome by the Greeks and began to take hold in the Roman aristocracy sometime in the second century B.C.; thus it is the Greek Polybius who advocates a formal training for generals in tactics, astronomy, geometry, and history.50 And in fact some basic education in astronomy and geometry-which Polybius suggests would be useful for calculating, for example, the lengths of days and nights or the height of a city wall-was normal for a Roman aristocrat of the late Republic or the Principate. Aratus' verse composition on astronomy, several times translated into Latin, was especially popular.51 But by the late Republic the law requiring military service for office was long defunct; and Roman education as described by Seneca the Elder or Quintilian was designed mainly to produce orators. The emphasis was overwhelmingly on literature and rhetoric;52 one did not take courses, for example, on "modern Parthia" or military theory. Details of grammar and rhetorical style were considered appropriate subjects for the attention of the empire's most responsible individuals; this is attested in the letters of Pliny the Younger, the musings ofAulus Gellius, and the correspondence of Fronto with Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius.53

Ego te intus et in cute novi": je te connais dans ta subjectivité et dans ta chair.

A Roman city was founded by Etruscan rite (Etrusco ritu). At a designated day (by augury), a cow and a bull were harnessed to a plow. A furrow was cut within which the city would lay. Generally, we can say that this originally cut furrow is the pomerium. Boundary markers, cippi, delineated the pomerium. The historian Tacitus (Ann. 12.23) recorded that the emperor Claudius extended the pomerium. Cippi support this claim, while such archaeological proof does not exist for the extensions by Augustus, Nero, and Trajan, which Aulus Gellius mentioned.

The finest in the world, so they are.

Marius, when he found that the minds of the populace were excited, immediately freighted vessels with provisions, pay, arms, and other necessaries, and ordered Aulus Manlius, his lieutenant-general, to set sail with them. He himself, in the mean time, proceeded to enlist soldiers, not after the ancient method, or from the classes, but taking all that were willing to join him, and the greater part from the lowest ranks. Some said that this was done from a scarcity of better men, and others from the consul's desire to pay court to the poorer class, because it was by that order of men that he had been honored and promoted; and, indeed, to a man grasping at power, the most needy are the most serviceable, persons to whom their property (as they have none) is not an object of care, and to whom every thing lucrative appears honorable. Setting out, accordingly, for Africa, with a somewhat larger force than had been decreed, he arrived in a few days at Utica.

Then this is the exception that proves the rule. Julius Agricola is my oldest friend. For Jupiter’s sake, we grew up together. Julius would be the last man in the world to betray me.

[F]or whenever I had taken in hand any Greek or Latin book, or had heard anything worth remembering, I used to jot down whatever took my fancy, of any and every kind, without any definite plan or order; and such notes I would lay away as an aid to my memory, like a kind of literary storehouse, so that when the need arose of a word or a subject which I chanced for the moment to have forgotten, and the books from which it had taken it were not at hand, I could readily find and produce it.” (Attic Nights, Preface.)

[F]or whenever I had taken in hand any Greek or Latin book, or had heard anything worth remembering, I used to jot down whatever took my fancy, of any and every kind, without any definite plan or order; and such notes I would lay away as an aid to my memory, like a kind of literary storehouse, so that when the need arose of a word or a subject which I chanced for the moment to have forgotten, and the books from which it had taken it were not at hand, I could readily find and produce it. (Attic Nights, Preface.)