Reading tonight and thinking about what a bunch of dickheads Roman generals were.
Listen to this nugget, from Colin Wells’s history of the Empire:
“Another of Octavian’s successful generals, Lucius Cornificius, took to arriving at his host’s house on an elephant when he went out to dinner.”
Colin Wells, The Roman Empire
Or this bit from Suetonius, describing a thin-skinned Julius Caesar:
“he had ridden past the benches reserved for the tribunes of the people, and shouted in fury at a certain Pontius Aquila, who had kept his seat: ‘Hey, there, Aquila the tribune! Do you want me to restore the republic?’ For several days after this incident he added to every undertaking he gave: ‘With the kind consent of Pontius Aquila.'”
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (trans. Robert Graves)
What a bunch of jerks.
C.B. Crenshaw 