Quintus Lutatius Catulus

Greater still the portent when Gracchus, clad in a tunic, played the gladiator and fled trident in hand across the arena.

Gracchus, a man of nobler birth than the Capitoline or the Marcelli, or the descendants of Catulus or Paulus or the Fabii, nobler than all the spectators in the podium, not excepting him who gave the show at which that net was flung.

That there are such things as manes, and kingdoms below ground, and punt-poles, and Stygian pools black with frogs, and all those thousands crossing over in a single bark, these things not even boys believe, except such as have not yet had their penny bath.

But just imagine them to be true.

Julius Caesar is usually acknowledged as the greatest of the Roman generals, but think about this list.

Before him came Corleianus, Catulus, Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paulus, Scipio Aemilianus, Gaius Marius Sulla, and Pompey.

After Caesar, there was Marcus Agrippa, Tiberius, Drusus, Germanicus, Agricola, Trajan, and later Septimius Severus.

No, we're certainly bad generals.

The office of Pontifex Maximus, the chief priest of the Roman state, was held for life, and it carried a kind of dignity that no annual magistracy could match.

In 63 BC, Caesar stood for it against Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and Publius Servilius Lisuarcus, two men far more senior than he was, with long careers and consulships behind them, and he spent heavily, and he won.

If he had lost, the debts would probably have ended his career.

He kept borrowing amounts that no private income could ever cover, so the only way out of debt was to keep climbing, with each new office paying for the one before it.

Plutarch says they climbed through snowstorms without clothes and slid down the slopes on their shields, which of course clearly can't be read as a historically accurate description.

Marius' colleague, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, fell back before them, and Marius marched to join him.

Cimbri envoys asked Marius for land for themselves and what they called their brothers, or in Latin, Germani, and some historians believe this is the etymology of the name German itself.

When he learned the brothers were the Teutons, Marius famously answered that their brothers already had land from Rome and would keep it forever.

Nay, rather it was due to these that Pausanias and Lysander had armies so brave and so well disciplined.

For my own part, I do not consider that Marcus Scaurus was inferior to Gaius Marius when I was a lad, or Quintus Catulus to Gnaeus Pompey when I was engaged in public life.

For arms are of little value in the field unless there is wise counsel at home.

So too, Africanus, though a great man and a soldier of extraordinary ability, did no greater service to the state by destroying Numantia than was done at the same time by Publius Nasica, though not then clothed with official authority, by removing Tiberius Gracchus.

The head I found, but not the butchered corpse.

Why now renew the tale of Catulus' shade appeased, and those dread tortures which the living frame of Marius suffered at the tomb of him who haply wished them not? Pierced, mangled, torn; nor speech nor grasp was left; his every limb maimed, hacked, and riven, yet the fatal blow the murderers with savage purpose spared.

'Twere scarce believed that one poor mortal frame such agonies could bear ere death should come.

Thus, crushed beneath some ruin, lie the dead.

No war is this, but for offended Rome we wreck the vengeance, as when Catiline lifted against her roofs the flaming brand.

And partner in his fury, Lentulus, and mad Cethegus with his naked arm.

Is such thy madness, Caesar? When the Fates with great Camillus' and Metellus' names might place thine own, dost thou prefer to rank with Marius and Cinna? Swift shall be thy fall, as Lepidus before the sword of Catulus, or, whom Miaxas felt, Carbo, now buried in Sicanian tomb, or who in exile roused Iberia's hordes, Sertorius.

Yet, witness Heaven, with these I hate to rank thee, hate the task that Rome has laid upon me to oppose thy rage.