15 Quotes by Mike Duncan

But this was an age when a lie was not a lie if a man had the audacity to keep asserting the lie was true.

Reflecting on the recurrent civil wars of the Late Republic, Sallust said, “It is this spirit which has commonly ruined great nations, when one party desires to triumph over another by any and every means and to avenge itself on the vanquished with excessive cruelty.

The emperor Tiberius would chide an overzealous governor: “It was the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not skin it.

The plight of the dispossessed citizens might not have been so dire had they been allowed to transition into the labor force of the commercial estates. But the continuous run of successful foreign wars brought slaves flooding into Italy by the hundreds of thousands.

Pompey snapped, “Cease quoting laws to us that have swords.

Saturninus, on the other hand, was the first to show the demagogues of the future generations just how far cynically manipulated mob violence could push a man’s career forward.