Adrian Goldsworthy Famous Quotes
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Caesar was a serial seducer of married women.
The tribune was betrayed by one of his own slaves and killed.
Personal hatreds and rivalry loomed larger in most senator's minds than the good of the Republic. [A big problem then and now]
Roman women kept their name throughout their lives, and did not change it on marriage.
Julia. At the most basic level a Roman husband had only to utter the phrase 'take your things for yourself' (tuas res tibi habeto) to separate from his wife.
Although he paid attention to the effectiveness of the Roman military system, Polybius believed that Rome's success rested far more on its political system. For him the Republic's constitution, which was carefully balanced to prevent any one individual or section of society from gaining overwhelming control, granted Rome freedom from the frequent revolution and civil strife that had plagued most Greek city-states. Internally stable, the Roman Republic was able to devote itself to waging war on a scale and with a relentlessness unmatched by any rival. It is doubtful that any other contemporary state could have survived the catastrophic losses and devastation inflicted by Hannibal, and still gone on to win the war.
As Cicero would later declare, `For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former generations by a sense of history?"3
Caesar declared that an orator should `avoid an unusual word as the helmsman of a ship avoided a reef'.
Roman laws tended to be long and complex - one of Rome's most enduring legacies to the world is cumbersome and tortuous legal prose.
Napoleon was later to comment that it was better to have one bad commander than two good ones with shared authority.
For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former generations by as sense of history. [Cicero, quoted by Goldsworthy in his Augustus]
Tradition maintained that Rome had been founded in 753 BC. For the Romans this was Year One and subsequent events were formally dated as so many years from the `foundation of the city' (ab urbe condita).
It is widely believed that Christianity remained an essentially urban cult and that the population of the countryside clung for generations to the old beliefs. The word `pagan' comes from paganus, or someone who lived in the countryside (pagus). Unfortunately, we know so little about the religious life in rural areas that this remains conjectural. Paganus was usually derogatory - something like `yokel' or `hick' would give the right idea - and may just reflect the common belief of urban dwellers that countrymen were dull and backward.
