who is your daddy and what does he do?

my favorite quote today from t.j. cornell's 'the beginnings of rome', on the somewhat jasonic (to coin a word) king pyrrhus of epirus after his defeat at beneventum at the hands of the romans in 275 BC:

'Pyrrhus then sailed back to Greece where he continued to waste his talents and the lives of his followers in fruitless enterprises. His brilliant but ultimately worthless career came to an end a few years later when he was struck on the head and killed by a rooftile during a street battle in Argos.'

and my favorite quote from plutarch for the day, from his life of tiberius gracchus (tr. scott-kilvert):

'Thus, when they addressed the people, Tiberius always spoke in a decorous tone and remained standing in the same position, whereas Gaius was the first Roman to stride up and down the rostra and wrench his toga off his shoulder, in the same way that Cleon the Athenian is said to have been the first of the demagogues to tear open his cloak and slap his thigh.'