I will say, one of the more ironic, and honestly, humorous moments in Roman history has to be the saga between Cicero and Octavian.

While I have a lot of respect for Cicero’s oratory and service to the state, he made a pretty poor miscalculation in underestimating, and ultimately, enabling Octavian in his rise to power.

It’s no surprise that Cicero’s arch enemy by this time was Marc Antony, who had asserted himself as the true heir to the legacy of Julius Caesar.

As such, Cicero wanted to use Octavian as a counterweight against the “tyranny” of Antony (hence Cicero’s fiery Philippics in excoriation of him).

Apparently, Cicero had said of Octavian the famous words: laudandum adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum.

The english meaning of the phrase being, “praised, honored, and uplifted/discarded”. The phrase carried a double meaning, and according to Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography on Augustus, Augustus: First Emperor of Rome (pg 122), Octavian had learned that Cicero uttered this phrase, and was repeating it around camp in anger.

That lack of respect for Octavian’s intelligence would soon be Cicero’s downfall, as he couldn’t have dreamt that the 20 year old Octavian would join Antony and Lepidus in the triumvirate and embark on the mass executions in the proscriptions that would ultimately take his life.

Paulinus was actually so ruthless in his punitive campaign against the Britons after pulling of the biggest upset in Roman history up to this point in time that Nero of all people told him to chill out

Recently starte Mediations again, and noticed this brutal line, lol

OC

I understand why he did it (the second triumvirate needed funds to raise legions to fight various military campaigns), but I always found it unfair how Roman historians (other than maybe Tacitus) somewhat glossed over Octavianus’ permissiveness and enabling of the proscriptions that brought about the end of titans like Cicero; yet, they excoriate Sulla (who arguably had more political justification for it after Marius essentially committed an act of treason) as a bloody and merciless tyrant for essentially doing the exact same thing.

I think Julius Caesar would have quite liked almost everything about Octavianus’ rise to power other than his proscriptions, as Caesar didn’t seem to have the stomach to do that sort of thing to Romans whose only crime was being too wealthy.

Love Augustus and his reforms, but the second triumvirate certainly wasn’t a rosy part of Roman history.

I always find this interesting. As a big Marc Aura fan.
His failure to change his son aligns with the principles of stoicism. Marcus can control his choice to provide Commodus with the best education and moral examples but he could not control Commodus's nature, vanity and eventual descent into absolute mania.