Caesar and Christ Quotes

“Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“The older Romans used temples as their banks, as we use banks as our temples;”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“But the new generation had tasted the wine of philosophy; and from this time onward the rich youth of Rome went eagerly to Athens and Rhodes to exchange their oldest faith for the newest doubts.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“but now and then liberty, in the slogans of the strong, means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“The form of Christianity that developed in Europe and later spread to America and the rest of the world was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Nevertheless, the movement of intelligence over western and southern Europe was as rapid in Caesar’s day as at any time before the railway. In 54 B.C.. Caesar’s letter from Britain reached Cicero at Rome in twenty-nine days; in 1834 Sir Robert Peel, hurrying from Rome to London, required thirty days.20”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“The principle of democracy is freedom, the principle of war is discipline; each requires the absence of the other.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“أشار سينيكا في مسرحية ميديا إلى وجود قارة أخرى على الجانب الآخر من المحيط الأطلنطي.
وبنفس هذه اللقانة الطبيعية كتب وهو يتأمل ملايين النجوم في السماء:
كم من كرات تتحرك في أعماق الفضاء لم تصل بعد إلى عيون بني الإنسان”
― Will Durant, قيصر والمسيح - الجزء الأول

“In Christ and Peter Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman. In Protestantism the Judaic element and emphasis were restored.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Self Government by extravagance and incompetence brings its own end.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Knowledge is of value only as a tool of the good life.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“The ancient [pagan] faith was diseased at the bottom and at the top. The deification of the emperors revealed not how much the upper classes thought of their rulers, but how little they thought of their gods.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Be lavish in your promises,” Quintus advised; “men prefer a false promise to a flat refusal. . . . Contrive to get some new scandal aired against your rivals for crime, corruption, or immorality.”43”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Sumptuary laws were passed by the Senate limiting expenditure on banquets and clothing, but as the senators ignored these regulations, no one bothered to observe them. “The citizens,” Cato mourned, “no longer listen to good advice, for the belly has no ears.”9 The individual became rebelliously conscious of himself as against the state, the son as against the father, the woman as against the man. Usually the power of woman rises with the wealth of a society, for when the stomach is satisfied hunger leaves the field to love. Prostitution flourished. Homosexualism was stimulated by contact with Greece and Asia; many rich men paid a talent ($3600) for a male favorite; Cato complained that a pretty boy cost more than a farm.10 But women did not yield the field to these Greek and Syrian invaders. They took eagerly to all those supports of beauty that wealth now put within their reach. Cosmetics became a necessity, and caustic soap imported from Gaul tinged graying hair into auburn locks.11 The rich bourgeois took pride in adorning his wife and daughter with costly clothing or jewelry and made them the town criers of his prosperity. Even in government the role of women grew. Cato cried out that “all other men rule over women; but we Romans, who rule all men, are ruled by our women.”12 In 195 B.C.. the free women of Rome swept into the Forum and demanded the repeal of the Oppian Law of 215, which had forbidden women to use gold ornaments, varicolored dresses, or chariots. Cato predicted the ruin of Rome if the law should be repealed. Livy puts into his mouth a speech that every generation has heard:”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Rome had freed the Greeks, but on condition that both war and class war should end. Freedom without war was a novel and irksome life for the city-states that made up Hellas; the upper classes yearned to play power politics against neighboring cities, and”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“In the early centuries Rome’s dead had been cremated; now, usually, they were buried, though some obstinate conservatives preferred combustion. In either case, the remains were placed in a tomb that became an altar of worship upon which pious descendants periodically placed some flowers and a little food. Here, as in Greece and the Far East, the stability of morals and society was secured by the worship of ancestors and by the belief that somewhere their spirits survived and watched. If they were very great and good, the dead, in Hellenized Roman mythology, passed to the Elysian Fields, or the Islands of the Blessed; nearly all, however, descended into the earth, to the shadowy realm of Orcus and Pluto. Pluto, the Roman form of the Greek god Hades, was armed with a mallet to stun the dead; Orcus (our ogre) was the monster who then devoured the corpse. Because Pluto was the most exalted of the underground deities, and because the earth was the ultimate source of wealth and often the repository of accumulated food and goods, he was worshiped also as the god of riches and plutocrats; and his wife Proserpina—the strayed daughter of Ceres—became the goddess of the germinating corn. Sometimes the Roman Hell was conceived as a place of punishment;72 in most cases it was pictured as the abode of half-formless shades that had been men, not distinguished from one another by reward or punishment, but all equally suffering eternal darkness and final anonymity. There at last, said Lucian, one would find democracy.73”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Old age was not then the abandoned desolation that so often darkens it in an individualistic age. The young never questioned their duty to care for the old; the old remained to the end the first consideration and the last authority; and after their death their graves were honored as long as a male descendant survived. Funerals”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“In summary, the typical educated Roman of this age was orderly, conservative, loyal, sober, reverent, tenacious, severe, practical. He enjoyed discipline, and would have no nonsense about liberty. He obeyed as a training for command. He took it for granted that the government had a right to inquire into his morals as well as his income, and to value him purely according to his services to the state. He distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, and unstable fluency of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect; and organization was his forte. He lacked imagination, even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effort love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“There his chief enterprises are reading and doing nothing.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“أما أصل الإيطاليين فيقول عنه أرسطو:
يقول أصدق الناس حكماً في هذا البلد إنه لما أصبح إيطالس Italus ملك أئنتريا Oenotria بدل أهل البلاد اسمهم فلم يعودوا يسمون أنفسهم أئنتوريين بل تسموا إيطاليين.
ولقد كانت أئنتريا هي مكان الإصبع الكبرى في الحذاء الإيطالي، ومعنى هذا اللفظ هو "أرض النبيذ" لكثرة ماكان فيها من الكروم.
ويقول توكيديدس Thucydides إن إيطالس هذا كان ملك الصقليين الذين احتلوا أئنتريا في طريقهم لاحتلال جزيرة صقلية وتسميتها بهذا الإسم.
وكما أن الرومان قد أطلقوا على الهيلينيين جميعاً اسم الأغارقة، وهو اسم جماعة قليلة هاجرت من شمال أتيكا Attica إلى نابلي، فكذلك توسع الإغريق في معنى إيطاليا حتى شمل هذا الاسم جميع أرض شبه الجزيرة من جنوب نهر البو Po إلى أقصى طرفها الجنوبي”
― Will Durant, قيصر والمسيح - الجزء الأول

“كان الجند الرومان في المعسكرات يطعمون طعاماً بسيطاً يتكون من الخبز وحساء الخضر وقليل من الخضر والنبيذ، وقلما كان يضاف إليه شيء من اللحم، وبذلك فتح الجيش الروماني العالم المعروف وقتئذ معتمداً على الغذاء النباتي.
ولما أن نقصت كمية القمح اللازمة لجيش يوليوس قيصر واضطر هذا الجيش لأكل اللحم، شكا الجند من هذه الحال.”
― Will Durant, قيصر والمسيح - الجزء الأول

“لم يحكم على أحد بالإعدام في أثناء حكم الإمبراطور تيتس ابن فسبازيان القصير، بل فعل عكس هذا، فقد كان الواشون والمخبرون يضربون بالسياط وينفون من البلاد، وأقسم أنه يفضل أن يقتل هو على أن يكون سبباً في قتل إنسان.
ولما عرف أن اثنين من الأشراف يأتمران به ليخلعاه، لم يعمل أكثر من أن يرسل إليهم يحذرهم، ثم أرسل رسولاً يطمئن والدة أحد المتآمرين، ويبلغها أن ابنها لم يصب بسوء.”
― Will Durant, قيصر والمسيح - الجزء الأول

“Men could not then enjoy the lavish abundance of useful products now poured forth by our machines; but they could, if they cared enough, gradually surround themselves with objects whose zealously finished form gave to all who lived with them the subtle and quiet happiness of beautiful things.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“She was too beautiful to be monogamous, but Septimius was too busy to be jealous.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful, yet act as does the creator of a statue ... he cuts away here, he smooths there, he makes this line lighter, the other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked . . . and never cease chiseling your statue until . . . you see the perfect goodness established in the stainless shrine.52”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“It is refreshing to find a philosopher who is wise enough to be happy.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“We cannot condemn Tacitus for not succeeding in what he did not attempt;”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Life is only lent to man; he cannot keep it forever. By his death he pays his debt to Nature.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“Most Romans were like our neighbors and ourselves: they rose reluctantly, ate too much, worked too much, played too little, loved much, seldom hated, quarreled a bit, talked a great deal, dreamed waking dreams, and slept.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

“the chief charm of the past is that we know we need not live it again.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ