Cleopatra: A Life

* A truly eloquent man is the one who can argue both sides of a case with equal finesse. “And so, if by chance you find anyone who despises the sight of beautiful things,” Cicero noted in the same speech, “whom neither scent nor touch nor taste seduces, whose ears are deaf to all sweet sounds—such a man I, perhaps, and some few will account heaven’s favorite, but most the object of its wrath.” As it happened, Cicero lived in one of the grandest mansions in the grandest quarters of Rome, for which he had paid an astronomical sum. And while he was pleased that one of his villas had “an air of high thinking that rebukes the wild extravagance of other country houses,” he had to admit that an addition to it would be awfully nice.