In any huge enterprise (like Fifa), where does the rot begin? Pliny the Younger mused on this question in a letter to a friend about a games festival held in the Roman colony Vienna (Vienne, south of Lyons).
Vienna had been celebrating Greek-style gymnastic games as a result of a bequest, when the town’s mayor decided to abolish them; they were corrupting, unlike good, honest Roman games. The case was contested and came before the emperor in Rome, with Pliny one of the assessors. There the mayor, ‘a true Roman and fine citizen’, came out on top. He was supported, Pliny wrote, by one Mauricus, another Roman famed for straight talking. Courageously, in Pliny’s view, Mauricus expressed the opinion that such Greek fripperies had no place in Rome either.
Pliny then gives another example of Mauricus’ courage. He was dining with the emperor Nerva, who seemed to be getting on very well with one Veiento, a state informer with blood on his hands.
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