25 July 2011

Are you as catty as an ancient historian?

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> Polybius writes (XII 15) "Agathocles in his early youth was a common prostitute, one willing to associate with the most licentious characters, a jackdaw, a buzzard, a man who would face in any direction on request. Besides all this, Timaeus says that when Agathocles died, his wife, as she was lamenting him, cried out: 'Ah, what have I not done to you! What have you not done to me!'. . . . And yet Timaeus' description of Agathocles makes it clear that the man must have possessed some remarkable natural advantages."

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