ceterumcenseo14

[ceterumcenseo14]

modern AU Hannibal/Scipio fanfic where they're both university professors, told partially from the perspective of some students who ship them :))) they get exposed caught kissing in an empty classroom

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Scipio Africanus’ political career if he had dicked Cato the Elder down real good during the African campaign:

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The Latin Library

A free, online Latin library with reference numbers:

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/

By author/category:

Ammianus

Apuleius

Augustus

Aurelius Victor

Caesar

Cato

Catullus

Cicero

Claudian

Curtius Rufus

Ennius

Eutropius

Florus

Frontinus

Gellius

Historia Augusta

Horace

Justin

Juvenal

Livy

Lucan

Lucretius

Martial

Nepos

Ovid

Persius

Petronius

Phaedrus

Plautus

Pliny Maior

Pliny Minor

Propertius

Quintilian

Sallust

Seneca Maior

Seneca Minor

Silius Italicus

Statius

Suetonius

Sulpicia

Tacitus

Terence

Tibullus

Valerius Flaccus

Valerius Maximus

Varro

Velleius

Vergil

VitruviusIus Romanum

Miscellany

Christian

Medieval

Neo-Latin

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are you telling me the first aeneas line is exactly the same phrasing as the turnus death line. are you fucking with me right now. publius i’m going to kill you

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idk if this is anything but you can kind of view aeneas as a man that's unstuck from time. he sees the ghost of hector. he takes his eyes off his wife and she's now a ghost. he finds carthage, a city that won't be founded for hundreds of years. he carries the future of rome, he sees people not yet born when he's in the underworld. and so forth

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Moving on from my boys, Scipio&Hannibal and the whole Livy package, I did not expect such a forthcoming Aeneas/Turnus thing to appear among the first 10 Vergilian papers I read.

So soon… it doesn’t even have to do anything with my research it’s just ✨appeared✨ and was a huge part of the said paper. Like, damn if classicists know what to write about… I’m not even kidding I’m trying to write my own paper and then some Irish dude throws the gays at me, like how am I supposed to do actual work when all I can think of now is the Lucretian thirst simile and Turnus as an”erotic object” Mister Mac Góráin, when I catch you

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no one talk to me about how the word virgil uses to describe aeneas killing turnus means "to bury [his sword]" but also means "to found [a city]". christ

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pietasless behavior

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found a comment on a translation of plutarch that really sums up what reading ancient texts is like

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studying roman history is a fucking nightmare

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SORRY FOR REPOSTING I FORGOT THE STRIPES please Reblog this version…..😔

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Imagine your brother is getting his ass kicked in the polls so you want to run as a candidate alongside him for moral support. To get Mom's permission you make up a lie about "God told me to run for office," and she doesn't believe you but says "Go ahead," because she thinks you're kidding. Then you somehow win, and your mom tells everybody about your fib, and now whenever you win a battle nobody wants to hear about your actual tactics because they assume you just cribbed the answers from God.

Polybius says this happened to Scipio Africanus.

Upon [Scipio's mother] consenting, as she never dreamt he would venture on it, but thought it was merely a casual joke...When the news suddenly reached his mother's ears, she met them overjoyed at the door and embraced the young men with deep emotion, so that from this circumstance all who had heard of the dreams believed that Publius communed with the gods not only in his sleep, but still more in reality and by day...Now it was not a matter of a dream at all, but as he was kind and munificent and agreeable in his address he reckoned on his popularity with the people, and so by cleverly adapting his action to the actual sentiment of the people and of his mother he not only attained his object but was believed to have acted under a sort of divine inspiration. For those who are incapable of taking an accurate view of operations, causes, and dispositions, either from lack of natural ability or from inexperience and indolence, attribute to the gods and to fortune the causes of what is accomplished by shrewdness and with calculation and foresight.

(Polybius, Histories, 10.2)

(I strongly suspect "LOL did Jupiter give you the answers again" was an in-joke among Scipio's friends that got taken out of context by people with no sense of humor, i.e. Cato the Elder.)

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Love it when historians are collectively like “yeah we have no idea why tf he did that, it made no sense and it was really bad for him”

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moodboard

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actually. your 20s are about joining conspiracies and getting good at oratory and your 30s are about being elected to successive magistracies and climbing the cursus honorum and your 40s are about becoming consul of rome and then going off to govern a province. and then being prosecuted for all the extortion you did