Meditations 8:31
Augustus's court: his wife, his daughter, his grandsons, his stepsons, his sister, Agrippa, the relatives, servants, friends, Areius, Maecenas, the doctors, the sacrificial priests
. . . the whole court, dead.
And consider the others . . . not just the deaths of individuals (like the family of the Pompeys).
That line they write on tombs—"last surviving descendant." Consider their ancestors' anxiety—that there be a successor. But someone has to be the last. There, too, the death of a whole house.
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