The ancient Romans had the word dignitas, which meant something along the lines of honor and fame and having other people think well of you. They also believed that there wasn't really enough of this property to go around, and if someone else had a lot of dignitas, that meant you weren't getting any. This goes, I believe, some way towards explaining pre-imperial roman senatorial politics.

Once upon a time, in the days when Julius Ceasar was still thriving in politics, there was young patrician of the Clodii who didn't quite fancy the senatorial route to fame and power. He decided to be a tribune, the voice of the common people instead. There were a great many advantages to getting oneself elected a tribune, not least of which was that when the plebians had once (long ago) rebelled against their power structure and left the city en masse until the patricians agreed to their demands, they had written into the office of the tribune a safety catch that they were not to be killed. Not bad for job security, in those uncertain times...

There was one minor problem, however. As a representative of the people, no tribune could belong to one of the 50 "first families" who made up the patrician ruling class of the city. So young Claudius got himself adopted by a plebian cousin, changing his name to Clodius, and then he was in. The tribune lifestyle suited him just fine, and he quite enjoyed himself, making alliances, and feuding with other tribunes. As I said, this was when Caesar was still thriving, and Clodius allied himself with the general, while one of Caesar's enemies allied with another tribune called Milo. Clodius and Milo took to roaming the streets with gangs, feuding back and forth and (one supposes) generally making a nuisance of themselves to the common folk they were supposed to represent. Which was all well and good until the day that some followers of Milo came upon Clodius by himself, and killed him.

Now, as you may remember, one isn't supposed to kill a tribune (although presumably if another tribune does it, that's better than being executed by the patricians.) In any case, Clodius' gang was pretty upset when they found out what had happened. They carted the body around, made a great fuss about how awful this was, and when no one jumped up to make reparations, they took the body into the senate house, and burned down the whole building as an appropriate funeral pyre.

I spent some time once, after learning this story in a Roman history class, attempting to decide (should the college administration ever kill anybody) what campus building would be most appropriate to burn down.