Politics has always been a dirty business. As far back as the fall of the Roman Republic, Mark Antony replied to Marcus Tullius Cicero’s “Philippics” speeches, in which Cicero called Antony every Latin name in the book, by sending soldiers to kill Cicero. When the soldiers arrived at Cicero’s estate, he accepted his fate; the Roman historian Aufidius Bassus tells us Cicero told them:
Ego vero consisto. Accede, veterane, et, si hoc saltim potes recte facere, incide cervicem. (I go no further: approach, veteran soldier, and, if you can at least do so much properly, sever this neck.)
Neck was severed, and Cicero’s head and hands, at Antony’s order ended up nailed to the Rostra in the Forum, pour encourager les autres.
Politics today isn’t quite so openly brutal – usually. But on Sunday, we learned that a former political opponent of Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), William…
