Although the classical societies of ancient Greece and Rome have vanished, Greek and Roman thought is very much alive in the parlance of politics. As the joke goes, the etymology of the word politics derives from poly, “many,” and tics, which are blood-sucking parasites. In truth, politics issues from the Greek word polities, “city, citizen.” Politics may make strange bedfellows, but, as we shall see, politics makes for even stranger, and sometimes colorful, vocabulary. The story behind the word inaugurate is an intriguing one. The word literally means “to take omens from the flight of birds.” In ancient Rome, augurs would predict the outcome of an enterprise by the way the birds were flying. “To augur well” means “to prophesy