The Sword of Revenge

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The dedication of a tomb to a great man was a magnificent occasion, doubly so when the person whose life was being recalled was someone seen as honest, upright and a friend to the common people. Few doubted that the individual being honoured this day had been such a man; if he had demonstrable defects they were those of the ordinary mortal: however upright a man tried to be in his life, he could never quite stand unbowed against the malice or jesting nature of the Gods.

Born into one of the leading families of Rome, Aulus Cornelius had been a great general, the man who led the legions against, and humbled the heirs of, Alexander the Great. His victories in Greece had earned him the suffix Macedonicus and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, but it was not just his fighting qualities that singled him out. He was remembered as an administrator who had employed, both in Rome and in the provinces, a light touch in the magistracies he had occupied, including the two occasions on which he had held the office of Consul, never bearing down on the poor and dispossessed in favour of the rich, the well-born or the powerful.

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