Episode 34: ambition
We normally think of ambition today as a kind of personal virtue, alongside traits like "grit" and "tenacity." But in the Roman world, ambitio—from which our English word "ambition" directly descends—was often viewed with suspicion. In today's episode, we look at the violent and tumultuous world of politics in the late Roman Republic through the work of Sallust, the Roman historian who chronicles the seditious—and ambitious—deeds of the politician Catiline in his Bellum Catilinae (or Catilinarian Conspiracy).
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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
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