Familiar History

Mary Beard says in SPQR, "Electioneering at Rome could be a costly business. By the first century BCE it required the kind of lavish generosity that is not always easy to distinguish from bribery. The stakes were high. The men who were successful in the elections had the chance to recoup their outlay, legally or illegally, with some of the perks of the office. The failures - and, like military defeats, there were many more of those in Rome than is usually acknowledged - fell ever more deeply into debt."

There is no comfort in knowing that we still carry that legacy.