Ancient Rome also didn’t have political parties and political alliances were notoriously fickle so you had to get good at branding yourself.
Cicero for example. His whole thing was being really good at giving speeches and using rhetoric to talk people into a corner. He was also a really good lawyer. Basically every upper class citizen was expected to be a lawyer but he was particularly good at it.
Cato the elder ending all of his speeches with “Carthage must be destroyed” and doing his stunt with dropping figs out of his toga was probably also something like this. Did he actually hate Carthage that much? Maybe. More likely though was that he needed a gimmick.
Pompey’s thing was that he was stupidly good at military command. The guy couldn’t do the political game for shit but he had three triumphs which was basically unheard of.
Caesar’s thing was that he was flamboyant and was willing to spend a lot of money on people. He dressed weird and did stuff that the aristocracy didn’t like but he spent a lot on entertainment and road construction which meant that poor citizens loved him. That doesn’t mean that he liked poor people. It meant that he had a gimmick. His gimmick was that he was dramatic and would spend money on poor people.
Sulla’s thing besides being a mass murderer was that he hung out with actors and prostitutes. He would openly hang out with actors and dancers in public which was frankly scandalous but it got him a reputation alright. That and the killings.
snowghoul
kaledo-art
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
janainaart
gummygunk
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
titsay
