Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina Quotes

“Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“You know how it is when one talks of liberty. Everything seems beautifully simple. One expects every gate to open and every wall to fall flat.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“Most men—it is my experience—are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“But godhead is, after all, a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion: if a man is generally worshipped as a god then he is a god. And if a god ceases to be worshipped he is nothing.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“Another leading senator that I degraded was Caligula’s horse Incitatus who was to have become Consul three years later. I wrote to the Senate that I had no complaints to make against the private morals of this senator or his capacity for the tasks that had hitherto been assigned to him, but that he no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. For I had cut the pension awarded him by Caligula to the daily rations of a cavalry horse, dismissed his grooms and put him into an ordinary stable where the manger was of wood, not ivory, and the walls were whitewashed, not covered with frescoes. I did not, however, separate him from his wife, the mare Penelope: that would have been unjust.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina

“I had in the first place spoken extremely frankly, and unexpected frankness about oneself is never unacceptable.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina

“You don't want captains in the army who know too much or think too much.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“It was inevitable under a monarchy, however benevolent the monarch. The old virtues disappear. Independence and frankness are at a discount. Complacent anticipation of the monarch's wishes is then the greatest of all virtues. One must either be a good monarch like yourself, or a good courtier like myself—either an Emperor or an idiot.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“My plans were vague. I talked liberty to many of my friends and, you know how it is, when one talks liberty everything seems beautifully simple. One expects all gates to open and all walls to fall flat and all voices to shout for joy.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina

“Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one. For one’s full face, because of the familiarity that mirrors give it, a certain toleration and even affection is felt; but I must say that when I first saw the model of the gold piece that the mint-masters were striking for me I grew angry and asked whether it was intended to be a caricature.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina

“The Roman Road is the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people. It runs across mountain, marsh and river. It is built broad, straight and firm. It joins city with city and nation with nation. It is tens of thousands of miles long, and always thronged with grateful travellers. And while the Great Pyramid, a few hundred feet high and wide, awes sight-seers to silence—though it is only the rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery, so that no doubt in viewing it you may still seem to hear the crack of the taskmaster's whip and the squeals and groans of the poor workmen struggling to set a huge block of stone into position——”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“I happened to notice that among the men who had willingly presented themselves for jury-service was one whom I knew to be the father of seven children. Under a law of Augustus's he was exempt for the rest of his life; yet he had not pleaded for exemption or mentioned the size of his family. I told the magistrate: "Strike this man's name off. He's a father of seven." He protested: "But, Cæsar, he has made no attempt to excuse himself." "Exactly," I said, "he wants to be a juryman. Strike him off." I meant, of course,that the fellow was concealing his immunity from what every honest man considered a very thankless and disagreeable duty and that he therefore was almost certain to have crooked intentions. Crooked jurymen could pick up a lot of money by bribes, for it was a commonplace that one interested juryman could sway the opinions of a whole bunch of uninterested ones; and the majority verdict decided a case.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“On occasions of this sort it was, I must admit, very pleasurable to be a monarch: to be able to get important things done by smothering stupid opposition with a single authoritative word.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“The Governor of Syria, when he heard of this horrid act called a council of his staff to decide whether Mithridates should be avenged by a punitive expedition against his murderer, who now reigned in his stead; but the general opinion seemed to be that the more treacherous and bloody the behaviour of Eastern kings on our frontier, the better for us—the security of the Roman Empire resting on the mutual mistrust of our neighbours—and that nothing should be done.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina

“Освен това не бих се изненадал, ако узная, че житарите са ви увещали да ми изпратите този обезкуражителен доклад. Колкото по-малко е житото, толкова повече забогатяват. Те се молят за лошо време и процъфтяват на гърба на бедняците.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“One can expect an agreement between philosophers sooner than between clocks.”
― Seneca, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“I had chosen the fifteenth day of July, the day that Roman Knights go out crowned with olive wreaths to honor the Twins in a magnificent horseback procession:from the Temple of Mars they ride through the main streets of the City, circling back to the Temple of the Twins, where they offer sacrifices. The ceremony is a commemoration of the battle of Lake Regillus which was fought on that day over three hundred years ago. Castor and Pollux came riding in person to the help of a Roman army that was making a desperate stand on the lake-shore against a superior force of Latins; and ever since then they have been adopted as the particular patrons of the knights.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“Yet I had a clean conscience about them. Vinicianus and Asiaticus were clearly traitors, and Vinicius, I thought, had died as the result of an accident. But the Senate and People knew Messalina better than I did, and hated me because of her. That was the invisible barrier between them and me, and nobody had the courage to break it down.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

“Sleeplessness had made me very irritable. I said that, for my part, I was in no mood to receive them: I liked men who clung courageously to their opinions.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“How happy are the decrepit old men who at the end of a long life of slavery can breathe their last breath today with that sweet phrase on their lips—‘We are free’!”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“I am not a conscious hypocrite. I flattered myself that I was acting for the best. I”
― Robert Graves, Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina

“There were so many things to be done in the process of cleaning up the mess that Caligula had left behind him—nearly four years of misrule—that it makes my head swim even now to think of it.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“Malaria, measles, colitis, scrofula, erysipelas. The whole battalion answers ‘present,’ Xenophon, except epilepsy, venereal disease and megalomania.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“If a single man of them had shown himself courageous it would have been something: I would have felt less ashamed of my country. I had long suspected the veracity of certain of the heroic legends of ancient Rome related by the historian Livy, and on hearing of this scene in the Senate I even began to have doubts about my favourite passage, the one describing the fortitude of the senators of old after the disaster of the River Allia when the Celts were advancing on the City and all hope of defending the walls was gone. Livy tells how the young men of military age, with their wives and children, withdrew into the Citadel after getting in a store of arms and provisions, resolved to hold out to the last. But the old men, who could be only an encumbrance to the besieged, remained behind and awaited death, wearing senatorial robes and seated in chairs of office in the porticoes of their houses, their ivory rods of office grasped firmly in their hands. When I was a boy, old Athenodorus made me memorize all this and I have never forgotten it: “The halls of the patricians stood open and the invaders gazed with feelings of true awe upon the seated figures in the porticoes, impressed not only by the super-human magnificence of their apparel and trappings but also by their majestic bearing and the serene expression that their countenances wore: they seemed very Gods. So they stood marvelling, as at so many divine statues, until, as the legend tells, one of them began gently to stroke the beard of a patrician, by name Marcus Papirius—beards in those days were universally worn long—who rose and smote him on the head with his ivory staff. Admiration yielded to passion and Marcus Papirius was the first patrician to meet his death. The rest were butchered still seated in their chairs.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“Constitutionally, eh? I must bow of course to your superior authority as an antiquarian, but has the word ‘constitution’ any practical meaning today?”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“Silas, who had come to Rome, dissuaded him from this, quoting the proverb: “Don’t tamper with Camarina.” (Near Camarina, in Sicily, was a pestilent marsh which the inhabitants drained for hygienic reasons. This exposed the city to attack: it was captured and destroyed.)”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“You all know the old patrician saying: Aquila non captat muscas. The eagle is the noble soul and he does not hawk for flies, which means that he does not pursue petty ends, or go out of his way to revenge himself on mean little men who have provoked him.”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

“this German”
― Robert Graves, Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina