Sometimes, English takes words directly from Latin: mea culpa, alma mater, et cetera. That's the case with today's word: dictator. Even if "dictator" has a rather simple etymology, it has a complex and fascinating political history, which includes infamous Romans like Sulla and Julius Caesar. To conclude, we look at Hannah Arendt's classic work The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she provocatively claims that the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century should not, in fact, be called dictatorships but instead constitute a novel form of government.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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