Peter Heather Quotes

By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction.

Foreign policy often involved nothing more than the decision whom to make war upon.

With ancient history writers most immediately in view, the author indicates tendency to look to the virtues and vices of individuals when seeking causes.

To reach Greenland, turn left at the middle of Norway, keep so far north of Shetland that you can only see it if the visibility is very good, and far enough south of the Faroes that the sea appears half way up the mountain slopes. As for Iceland, stay so far to the south that you only see its flocks of birds and whales. So, ROUGHLY PARAPHRASED, run the navigational directions in an Icelandic manual of the Middle Ages,

The most important thing for morale was to maintain a united front among the officers.

Never base motivation or fear, entirely.

The factor that made him so powerful was also his greatest liability.

Having sliced Odovacar in half in early spring 493, Theoderic ruled his Italian kingdom for the next thirty-three years, until his own death on 30 August 526.

He was a stylist, not a thinker. He spent time trying to say things in as complicated a way as possible.

An emphasis on reading individual texts with a view to understanding the ideological visions of the world that underlie them has also had a dramatic impact. This type of interpretation requires historians to treat ancient authors, not as sources of fact, but rather like second-hand-car salesmen whom they would do well to approach with a healthy caution.

Cultures reflect the interactions of mixed populations.

These exchanges are reported without comment by the East Roman historian Theophylact Simocatta (charmingly, his surname means 'the one-eyed cat').

One answer to the transitory nature of imperial rule, in short, is that there is a Newtonian third law of empires. The exercise of imperial power generates an opposite and equal reaction among those affected by it, until they so reorganize themselves as to blunt the imperial edge.

Reality confounds image.

A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

Author describes one monarch's impressive table but conveys a contemporary's observation, "the weightiest thing at dinner was the conversation".

The cornerstone of the Roman legionnaires' astonishing fighting spirit can be attributed to their training.

It was not the military prowess of the Germani that kept them outside the Empire, but their poverty.11

Charisma often flows from total self-confidence.