Curated playlist
1st-century BC Roman consuls
- CiceroCicero's name comes from the Latin word for chickpea. He refused advice to drop it when he entered politics.
- Julius CaesarJulius Caesar was stabbed at least twenty-three times by some sixty conspirators.
- Mark AntonyMark Antony offered Julius Caesar a crown, and Caesar threw it off.
- PompeyPompey was murdered on an Egyptian beach one day before his 58th birthday. His killer had once served under him.
- AugustusAt nineteen, Augustus accepted a dead man's will and took Julius Caesar's name.
- Gnaeus Octavius (consul 87 BC)Roman consul Gnaeus Octavius waited on the Janiculum Hill in 87 BC instead of fleeing, and was beheaded.
- Lucius Antonius (brother of Mark Antony)Lucius Antonius, Mark Antony's brother, marched on Rome in 41 BC and vowed to abolish the triumvirate.
- Gaius MariusGaius Marius died within a fortnight of becoming Roman consul for the seventh time.
- Lucius Cornelius CinnaEarly in 84 BC, the Roman leader Cinna was killed by his own soldiers in a mutiny.
- Marcus Licinius CrassusRome's richest man ran a private fire brigade that let buildings burn. Crassus offered owners a miserable price first.
- SullaSulla wrote his own epitaph for his tomb in Rome. It boasted he repaid every friend and enemy in full.
- Marcus Vipsanius AgrippaAgrippa's name is still on the Pantheon in Rome, though Hadrian built it. The emperor kept the original inscription.
- Gaius Asinius PollioGaius Asinius Pollio, who lived from 75 BC to AD 4, was present when Julius Caesar deliberated over whether to cross the Rubicon and start a civil war. He was a soldier, a politician, an orator, a poet, a playwright and a literary critic.…