Thomas > Thomas's Quotes

“In my opinion, the key internal element in Rome’s success or failure was the economic well-being of its taxpayers. This was because the empire relied for its security on a professional army, which in turn relied on adequate funding.”
― Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

“A hung jury, however, suggests that any decline was not overwhelming; and, in common with most historians, I believe the empire was still very powerful at the end of the fourth century. Unfortunately, a series of disasters was soon to change things.”
― Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

“For the Germanic peoples, unity or disunity was the crucial variable in military strength; while for the Romans, as we have seen, it was the abundance or shortage of cash.”
― Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

“The almost total disappearance of coinage from daily use in the post-Roman West is further powerful evidence of a remarkable change in levels of economic sophistication.”
― Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

“In southern and central Italy, for example, both the Greek colonies and the Etruscan territories have provided much more evidence of trade and sophisticated native industries than can be found in post-Roman Italy. The pre-Roman past, in the temples of Agrigento and Paestum, the tombs of Cerveteri and Tarquinia, and a mass of imported and native pottery and jewellery, has left enough material remains to serve as a major tourist attraction. The same cannot be said of the immediately post-Roman centuries.”
― Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

“The new Late Antiquity is in part a deliberate corrective to a previous bias, which assumed that the entire Roman world declined in the fifth century, because this is what happened in the West. Relocating the centre of the world in the fourth to eighth centuries to Egypt, the Levant, and Persia is a stimulating challenge to our mental framework and cultural expectations.”
― Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

“There is, however, an obvious problem in imposing, on the basis of eastern evidence, a flourishing Late Antiquity on the whole of the late Roman and post-Roman worlds. In the ‘bad old days’ western decline at the end of Antiquity was imposed on the eastern provinces. Now, instead of all the different regions of the empire being allowed to float free (some flourishing in the fifth to eighth centuries, others not), a new and equally distorting template is being imposed westwards.”
― Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

“Ours was now a country in which the cost of replacing a broken machine with a newer model was typically lower than the cost of having it fixed by an expert, which itself was typically lower than the cost of sourcing the parts and figuring out how to fix it yourself. This fact alone virtually guaranteed technological tyranny, which was perpetuated not by the technology itself but by the ignorance of everyone who used it daily and yet failed to understand it. To refuse to inform yourself about the basic operation and maintenance of the equipment you depended on was to passively accept that tyranny and agree to its terms: when your equipment works, you’ll work, but when your equipment breaks down you’ll break down, too. Your possessions would possess you.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“I was reminded of what is perhaps the fundamental rule of technological progress: if something can be done, it probably will be done, and possibly already has been.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“Ultimately, saying that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“The truth, though, is that deletion has never existed technologically in the way that we conceive of it. Deletion is just a ruse, a figment, a public fiction, a not-quite-noble lie that computing tells you to reassure you and give you comfort.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“But the killers were not gladiators. They were ordinary people, and their victims were unarmed men and women and children, all savagely slaughtered without mercy.”
― Steven Saylor, Wrath of the Furies: A Novel of the Ancient World

“In the Roman world, peace was not thought of as the opposite of war, as it is today, but instead as the outcome of war and victory.”
― Nathan T. Elkins, A Monument to Dynasty and Death: The Story of Rome's Colosseum and the Emperors Who Built It

“The concrete core of the Meta Sudans was still visible until 1936 when Mussolini had it and the base of the Colossus of Sol removed because they were unattractive and because he wished to orchestrate parades of soldiers through the Arch of Constantine to the Via dell’Impero, the modern road he built that wraps around the Colosseum (figure 3.4). Before”
― Nathan T. Elkins, A Monument to Dynasty and Death: The Story of Rome's Colosseum and the Emperors Who Built It

“Condemnation to train as a gladiator or venator was a merciful punishment when compared with damnatio ad bestias, damnatio ad flammas, or crucifixion, as it allowed a chance for survival and hope to buy or win one’s eventual freedom.”
― Nathan T. Elkins, A Monument to Dynasty and Death: The Story of Rome's Colosseum and the Emperors Who Built It

“According to ancient sources, the holding of gladiatorial combats often coincided with funerary memorials, and even in the age of Augustus there was strong correlation of these games with memorials for deceased members of the emperor’s family or with holidays associated with the living emperor.”
― Nathan T. Elkins, A Monument to Dynasty and Death: The Story of Rome's Colosseum and the Emperors Who Built It

“The coinage of imperial Rome typically bears the portrait of the reigning emperor on one side and some other ideologically charged design on the other. Images on Roman imperial coins were always changing and topical. Modern Western coins are, by comparison, monotonous in terms of the images they represent and the messages they carry. Images do not change frequently on the coins, and the topics they relate to are seldom current.”
― Nathan T. Elkins, A Monument to Dynasty and Death: The Story of Rome's Colosseum and the Emperors Who Built It

“My talents, such as they are, have usually been employed in finding the truth of some event that’s already taken place. I’ve never claimed to have any talent for prevention or precognition. I can’t foretell the future.”
― Steven Saylor, The Throne of Caesar

“The Eight Myths of Hanukah 1. Hanukah is the Jewish Christmas. False. How many times have I been asked, “Is Hanukah the Jewish Christmas?” Let me set the record straight. Christmas is the Jewish Christmas. Mary and Joseph were Jewish, Jesus was Jewish, and at least one of the Wise Men was Jewish — the one that brought the fur. 2. Hanukah is the holiest of Jewish holidays. False. Hanukah isn’t even a religious holiday. The holiest of Jewish holidays is April 24, Barbra Streisand’s birthday. The second holiest Jewish holiday is December 29, the wedding anniversary of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. 3. Hanukah is another Jewish holiday where they tried to kill us, they didn’t, so we eat. True. Also known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukah is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the re-dedication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the second century BCE, which brings us to ... 4. Hanukah commemorates the miracle that one day’s worth of oil lasted eight days in the Holy Temple. True. But, this is hardly a miracle because I witnessed my grandmother doing the same thing with one tea bag. 5. During Hanukah, children get a gift every night for eight days. False. If you grew up in my house, you got a gift the first night, then for seven nights, you heard about how awful it was to grow up during The Great Depression. The ritual of gift giving is actually very American, since Jewish children in this country are totally exposed to Christmas customs. 6. Hanukah is a holiday when Jewish people eat bland, colorless foods that are fried in oil and difficult to digest. True for ALL Jewish holidays. On Hanukah, we eat latkes (potato pancakes) or sufganiot, if you are Sephardic. Sufganiot are similar to jelly donuts. I am part Sephardic, so I like donuts, just not jelly ones. 7. There are many popular songs about Hanukah, and Jewish people know the words to all of them. False. Other than “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” there are no other Hanukah songs we can sing, except for “The Hanukah Song,” by Adam Sandler, which brings us to Number 8 ... 8. Steve & Eydie and Barbra Streisand have recorded Hanukah albums. SO NOT TRUE! Would you believe Steve and Eydie have recorded a Christmas album, and Barbra has recorded not one but two Christmas albums?! And all those Christmas songs we hear on the radio are mostly written, and oftentimes performed, by Jews! Oy vay! This brings us back to myth Number 1, proving once again that Christmas is the Jewish Christmas! So, from my Trailer Park to Yours, here is wishing you a very Happy Jewish Christmas and a Merry Hanukah! 261”
― Milton Stern, The Gay Jew in the Trailer Park

“Of the rhetorical works composed in the classical period on the subject of Alcibiades, four survive: Isocrates, 16; Lysias, 14 and 15; and [Andocides] 4. [And.] 4,”
― David Gribble, Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation

“To treat these speeches at this point, before considering 'I'hucydides, might seem contrary to natural chronology. Yet the History as we have it, including the important analysis of Alcibiades at 6. 15, must have achieved its final form after the end of the war-perhaps at around the time Lys. 14 and Isoc. 16 were composed. In any case, as I will argue in Chapter 3, the polarized debate of accusation and defence exemplified in these speeches is essential background to the presentation of Alcibiades in the Histor - v. Moreover, the discussion of the speeches will maintain the focus on Alcibiades' civic image which dominated the previous chapter. For these reasons, it is convenient to discuss the rhetorical material first.”
― David Gribble, Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation

“Indeed, what `display' speeches seek to display is partly expertise at appealing to a (notional) demos audience. It is in this area where ideology meets rhetoric that the discussion of this chapter will be located.”
― David Gribble, Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation

“The trials also raised questions of pressing general interest: the role of the great individual in shaping the fortunes of the city, and the reasons for the failure in the Peloponnesian War and the loss of the empire.
"' See further Ch. 4 below. In a late anecdote (Plut. _`lie. 4. 5-6 and with variation Ath. 12. 534ef) someone called Anytus features as Alcibiades' shamefully treated lover. This has led some to suggest that one of the motives of Anytus in his prosecution of Socrates was to rid himself of the stigma of an association with Socrates. But the historical credentials of the store are pitiful.
" Dem. i9. i f i .
az Cf. Osborne (1985: esp. 52-3); Ober (ig8q: 148); both comparing courtroom to theatre.
2.”
― David Gribble, Alcibiades and Athens: A Study in Literary Presentation