Roderick Beaton > Quotes

“it has been estimated that the Iliad would have taken three full days to perform before an audience”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“The conceptual shift that made it possible was even simpler than the application of binary mathematics to electrical circuits.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“The Greek word barbaros at first just meant a foreigner who spoke a different language.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“their owners were Mycenaeans heading for home when their ship foundered off the headland in southern Turkey known as Uluburun,”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Caligula, probably did not, in reality, appoint his horse as consul but would still be murdered by his own guards”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“This radical new policy provoked the first serious disagreement between the churches of Constantinople and Rome”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“The situation facing Byzantium in the mid-1090s was not so much desperate as catastrophic.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Carthage, in modern Tunisia, had grown from its origins as a Phoenician settlement”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“To make an example of them, Alexander had them sent back to Macedonia in chains”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“to become the most powerful state in the region.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“was through the narrow pass known as Thermopylae, where the crags of Mount Oeta fell”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Socrates had been born in Athens in 469 BCE. His career would span the entire second half of the century”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Modern historians regularly use the word empire to describe this extension of Athenian power during the fifth century”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“When Helen deserted her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta, and eloped with the handsome Trojan prince Paris,”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Heraclius made a humiliating offer of peace. If it had been accepted, it would have turned the Roman state into a Persian vassal.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“compelling the Spartans to grant them their liberty as an autonomous city-state?”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“For Socrates, the goal of all human beings was arete.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“The standard Greek terms for these would soon become established as, respectively, tyrannis, demokratia, and oligarchia.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“The previous year, Philip had married for the seventh time,”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“And all officeholders, whether chosen by lot or elected, were held closely to account.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Philip was ideally suited to lead the expedition against the Persian ‘barbarians’.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“The royal bodyguard, ordered by Philip to hang back for the occasion, followed at a discreet distance.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Paul’s letters have almost nothing to say about Jesus as a historical figure, about his life, or about the content”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“For the time being, the newcomers could bask with impunity.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“224 CE, a new Persian dynasty, the Sassanids, came to power.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Eratosthenes of Cyrene, a polymath and one of the first directors of the library,”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“much of Bulgaria, Albania, the Republic of North Macedonia, and all the European part of Turkey.”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“the distant origin of the Greek language may reach all the way back to the beginning of the period that we call the Neolithic,”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Buried in what he termed ‘shaft graves’, Schliemann uncovered the remains of the families”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History

“Over the next twenty years, the Normans went on to complete the conquest of Sicily from the Arabs,”
― Roderick Beaton, The Greeks: A Global History