For Cicero, effective Republican leadership entailed both morality and agency. Morality meant actions that supported the Republic, while agency was required for such actions to be carried out. It is difficult to subsume any theory of leadership under a single word, but I argue that Cicero’s leadership theory can be signified by consilium. This term encapsulates the best mental and moral aspects of leadership as well as the actions and results of acting on behalf of the Republic. It is inherently tied to the practice of Republican politics, a practice that was fundamentally transactional. Cicero used this idea of consilium to support his acceptance of Octavian as an ally against Antony. According to his theory of consilium, Cicero acted correctly against Antony, but Octavian ultimately exposed the flaws in Cicero’s theory when he refused to participate in traditional Republican transactional politics.

2.1 [85] Because we considered it not at all unreasonable, or rather thought it useful and essential, to begin with the required account of who was chronologically born before whom and indeed also what sort of theological views each of them held, we have given the most precise explanation possible of these matters [in the previous book].

3.1 [163] Julian has, therefore, slandered all the habits, customs, and mysteries of Christians, and there is not one thing done well or even said correctly in the God-breathed scripture that he does not unabashedly surround with accusations for the purpose of debasing it. He exults only in those things that would naturally cause no small amount of distress to the truly intelligent and lead them to turn to a better course. And, just as unreservedly, he is in awe of Plato’s speech, which he has appropriated for himself in order to defame the divine and supernatural glory.

This concluding chapter highlights the important contributions that this volume makes in featuring the diversity of forms of leadership in the ancient world and in illustrating how ancient people were asking questions about leadership that we should be asking more often today. It further argues that future research on ancient leadership should help readers to draw connections among the different forms of leadership in the ancient world, especially those readers who are not expert in ancient studies, and also to draw lessons that can help us better lead and better select our leaders. Ancient leadership studies need to play a vital role in helping us understand contemporary leadership as a moral, creative and collaborative art that we can all learn from one another.

‘Mayors’ and village chiefs figure prominently in the iconographic and administrative record of ancient Egypt as key representatives of the pharaonic authority. Moreover, there also existed other local actors (wealthy peasants, ‘great ones’, etc.) whose occasional appearance in the written and archaeological record points to the existence of paths of accumulation of wealth and power that crystallised in the emergence of potential local leaders who owed little (or nothing) to the state in order to enhance their social role. The aim of this contribution is to explore how mayors and informal leaders ‘built’ their prominent local position in ancient Egypt, how it changed over time (especially in periods of political turmoil) and how they mobilised their contacts, family networks, wealth and official duties in order to consolidate and transmit their privileged position to the next generations. Inscriptions from Elkab, Akhmim and elsewhere, references in administrative texts and archaeological evidence (houses, etc.) related to a ‘middle class’ provide crucial clues about these themes.

Pierre-Louis Gatier, almost twenty years ago in 1996, presented to the academic community an attempt to sketch the state of play of studies concerning the relationships between the ‘caravan city’ par excellence, Palmyra, and its closest western neighbour, the city of Emesa. That contribution constituted the first attempt at reconsidering and putting into discussion hypotheses and opinions, which, despite being formulated in the fifties, mainly by Henri Seyrig, were still prevalent in modern research. Gatier’s contribution affirmed Emesa’s right to an autonomous identity and an independent historical evolution despite the enormous disparity in the information available between the two cities. This chapter tries to show, through putting into discussion the epigraphic sources used to prove a direct link between the two cities and presenting some brand new ones, that if, on the one hand, Gatier’s Emesa could exist ‘sans Palmyre’, there is no convincing reason, on the other, to think that the Palmyrene trade network needed Emesa and that the goods from the East had to pass through Palmyra’s western neighbour to reach the Mediterranean coast.