22 Quotes by Peter Heather

The way to a landowner’s heart was to tax gently.

One answer to the transitory nature of imperial rule, in short, is that there is a Newtonian third law of empires. The exercise of imperial power generates an opposite and equal reaction among those affected by it, until they so reorganize themselves as to blunt the imperial edge.

Biberunt ut Gothi – ‘drinking like Goths’ – would be a proverbial expression in Italy by the sixth century.

The author describes the attitude of some on the frontier at Rome’s twilight as exhibiting “a kind of London-in-the-blitz determination to carry on being more Roman than usual.