family-politics

Updated: May 29, 2025

But not only did this special protection give the Greeks opportunity to display in Rome all their talent for abasing themselves in presence of their masters, and to demoralize even those masters by their ready servility the decrees of the Syracusans in honour of Marcellus, after he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse but, in connection with the already dangerous family-politics, this patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically perilous side.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)

But not only did this special protection give the Greeks opportunity to display in Rome all their talent for abasing themselves in presence of their masters, and to demoralize even those masters by their ready servility the decrees of the Syracusans in honour of Marcellus, after he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse but, in connection with the already dangerous family-politics, this patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically perilous side.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book III : From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States