Jacques Louis David's painting The Oath of the Horatii

The Oath of the Horatii, by Jacques-Louis David, 1784. Louvre, Paris.

Revolutions

Volume VII, Number 2 | spring 2014

Miscellany

In Britain in 60, Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe, led a revolt against the occupying Romans. According to the historian Tacitus, her forces killed seventy thousand people, sacking and burning the cities later known as St. Albans, Colchester, and London. “We must conquer in the line of battle or fall,” she announced before her final charge. “That is the fate of this woman; let men live on as slaves if they wish.”

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BC