“What reason had he then for endeavouring, with such bitter hostility, to force me into the senate yesterday? Was I the only person who was absent? Have you not repeatedly had thinner houses than yesterday? Or was a matter of such importance under discussion, that it was desirable for even sick men to be brought down? Hannibal, I suppose, was at the gates, or there was to be a debate about peace with Pyrrhus; on which occasion it is related that even the great Appius, old and blind as he was, was brought down to the senate-house.”
Philippica I; English translation by C. D. Yonge
Potentially the origin of the phrase "Hannibal ad portas" (Hannibal at the gates)
Philippicae – Philippics (44 BC)
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Marcus Tullius Cicero180
Roman philosopher and statesman -106–-43 BCRelated quotes
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Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher
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John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
On the song "Yesterday", written by Paul McCartney
Playboy interview (1980)
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Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader
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Included in Portrait-Life of Lincoln (1910) by Francis T Miller
Posthumous attributions
Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter
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