A campaign strategy memo from 64 BC that reads like it was written last Tuesday.
The Commentariolum Petitionis: advice attributed to Quintus Tullius Cicero for his famous brother Marcus’s run for consul of Rome. Promise everything to everybody. Remind voters of your opponents’ sex scandals. Be a chameleon. Put on a good show. Surround yourself at all times with rabid supporters.
Politics has not needed a software update in 2000 years.
Asterisk included: it’s attributed to Quintus and supposedly from 64 BC, but some scholars date it to the following century. Modern bilingual edition by Philip Freeman (Princeton, 2012), Latin on the left, English on the right, barely 120 pages.