4 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Roman statesman who was called from his farm to serve as dictator during a Roman military crisis, defeated the enemy in 15 days, and then immediately resigned his extraordinary powers and returned to his farm — the supreme Roman example of civic virtue and voluntary limitation of power.
Lucius Junius Brutus — the founder of the Roman Republic — who led the uprising against Tarquinius Superbus after the rape of Lucretia, drove out the kings, and established the consulship, becoming Rome's first consul — and who later executed his own sons when they conspired to restore the monarchy.
British classicist at Cambridge who wrote SPQR (a history of ancient Rome), Confronting the Classics, Women and Power, and The Shock of the Ancient — and who became a prominent public intellectual and defender of academic freedom through her Times Literary Supplement blog and media presence.
Tarquinius Superbus — Tarquin the Proud — the last Roman king, whose son Sextus Tarquin's rape of Lucretia led to the expulsion of the kings and the founding of the Roman Republic, as narrated by Livy and Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece.