Ancient Rome Quotes

“The virtues that made a good farmer also made a good fighter. Patriotism, selflessness, industriousness and a hardy ability to persevere in the face of adversity would not only make a farm or a plot of land productive. These were the same virtues that would build the greatest empire of the ancient world.”
― Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

“gradual and diplomatic path to asserting Rome’s supremacy.”
― Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

“The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens and holes to lurk in, but the men who fight and die for our country enjoy the common air and light and nothing else. It is their lot to wander with their wives and children, houseless and homeless, over the face of the earth. And when our generals appeal to their soldiers before a battle to defend their ancestors’ tombs and their temples against the enemy, their words are a lie and a mockery, for not a man in their audience possesses a family altar; not one out of all those Romans owns an ancestral tomb. The truth is that they fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others. They are called the masters of the world, but they do not possess a single clod of earth that is truly their own.36”
― Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

“Indeed, in exiling Arius and his followers the treatment of ‘heretics’ had been taken out of the hands of bishops and become subject to the criminal law pronounced by the emperor.55 Religious and imperial power had become one. In”
― Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

“The Romans, terrified by the noise on either side, were running out of strength, numbers and weapons. This was the critical moment of the battle, and both sides fought with utter ferocity. Caesar rode along the ramparts to rally his men in person, shouting at them and explaining how ‘all the fruits of their labour depended upon that day, that hour’.30 Finally, he deployed his reserves of cavalry to attack the Gauls in the rear, and, riding at their head, he now threw himself into the frenetic fighting. As the scarlet colour of his cloak heralded his arrival, a booming shout went up from the Roman defences. The tables had turned, and it was now the allied Gauls who were trapped on both sides by the Romans. When they saw the Roman cavalry arrive, they turned tail and fled. Under”
― Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

“The Roman people paid great attention to the rightness of their wars in the building of the empire. ‘When the inception of war seems just,’ ran the logic, ‘it makes victory greater and ill success less perilous, while if it is thought to be dishonourable and wrong, it has the opposite effect’.”
― Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

“Pyrrhus invaded Italy at the start of the campaigning season in 280 BC. In two brutal and bloody battles he successfully defeated the Romans. The Greek king, though, having seen so many of his soldiers slaughtered in achieving this success, was said to have remarked, ‘With another victory like this, we will be finished!’ (Hence our modern phrase ‘pyrrhic victory’.)”
― Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire