Peter Jones

Cicero’s Brexit moment

It’s always a risk to greet an apparent historical turning point with joy

issue 25 June 2016

If Remain has won, for all the political and financial flurries, it will be business as usual for us plebs. But such is the EU’s octopus-like embrace, so it will be if the Leavers win, creating much disillusionment. Cicero felt equally impotent at a similarly dramatic turning point — the assassination of EUlius Caesar.

Cicero had long despaired at the slow collapse of the ‘free’ republic and the rise of the tyrant Caesar.

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