Commentators are expressing shock at the Hutton inquiry’s ‘revelation’ that Tony Blair consults a private cabal of chums about policy. Excuse the Roman historian while he stifles a yawn.
The Greeks had a word for ‘a monarch’s court’, and Roman writers adopted it (aula) to describe the imperial ‘court’ that emerged with the advent of emperors: politics having been a relatively open affair under the republican system (rule by Senate and elected executives), power was now in the hands of the emperor and his chosen...
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