Practice with Gobbets

The generic set of instructions for gobbets looks like this:

The following passages are all from ancient authors, not written by the modern editors. Choose any [number]. Instructions: Identify the author and the work for each passage and annotate with respect to the following, as appropriate:

(1) the circumstances or action described,
(2) the person(s) or state(s) (specific or general) discussed in the passage, if any,
(3) points of interest (what does the selection indicate about Roman politics or society?), and
(4) the larger circumstances or description of which the passage forms a part. You may write lists.

Gobbets usually contain proper nouns. They should be fairly easy to identify. Here are two samples:

A. Do you not realize that their only objective is to eliminate the sons of proscribed citizens by hook or by crook, starting with Sextus Roscius, and with yourselves, a sworn jury, as executioners?

B. However, the meeting of the Senate produced no solution because the rich were able to dominate the proceedings, and so Tiberius, since he could find no other way of putting his law to the vote, resorted to a measure which was neither constitutional nor just: he had Octavius deprived of his tribuneship.

Passage A has got to be from Cicero's Oration for Sextus Roscius of Ameria ("oration for Roscius" will do, with author). Things to mention include Sulla, the proscriptions, Cicero's career, other details about the specific case - not necessarily in that order. Things not to mention include rewriting the passage given.

Passage B is about someone named Tiberius who was interested in getting a law passed; a tribune named Octavius was in the way, as was the senate. Given the removal of Octavius from office, and the name Tiberius, this must be about Tiberius Gracchus and his agrarian legislation - and, given that, it must either be from Plutarch's Life of Tiberius Gracchus or the beginning of Appian's Civil Wars. This much, one can probably figure out without having read Plutarch or Appian. The rest of the answer would have to do with identification of Tiberius Gracchus and his political agenda, his methods, the reasons in Roman society that made his agenda seem necessary to him, and so on. A person who has read neither ancient author has a 50% chance of guessing the right one.

Here are three more passages, without such obvious clues but clear enough if you have read the works and think about what the topics of the passages are:

C. For the revenues of the other provinces, Romans, are such that we can scarcely derive enough from them for the protection of the provinces themselves. But Asia is so rich and so productive, that in the fertility of its soil, and in the variety of its fruits, and in the vastness of its pasture lands, and in the multitude of all those things which are exported, it is greatly superior to all other areas.

D. The arguments in proof of his avarice were the vastness of his estate, and the manner of raising it; for whereas at first he was not worth above three hundred talents, yet ... before he went upon his Parthian expedition, he found his possessions to amount to seven thousand one hundred talents; most of which, if we may scandal him with a truth, he got by fire and rapine, making his advantages of the public calamities.

E. That which was above all things to be desired, O judges, and which above all things was calculated to have the greatest influence toward allaying the unpopularity of your order, and putting an end to the discredit into which your judicial decisions have fallen, appears to have been thrown in your way, and given to you not by any human contrivance, but almost by the interposition of the gods, at a most important crisis of the republic.