8 Quotes by Ronald Syme

When the individuals and classes that have gained wealth, honours and power through revolution emerge as champions of ordered government, they do not surrender anything.

The composition of the oligarchy of government [...] emerges as the dominant theme of political history [...] ; it is something real and tangible, whatever may be the name or theory of the constitution.

Pietas prevailed, and out of the blood of Caesar the monarchy was born.

Women have their uses for historians.

Crassus was in the habit of maintaining that nobody should be called rich who was not able to maintain an army on his income.

The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery.

Individuals capture attention and engross history, but the most revolutionary changes in Roman politics were the work of families or of a few men.

In matters of literary and historical appraisement, one cannot operate with the methods of a laboratory or furnish the proof to be demanded in a court of law. The best is only the probable. Any who raise complaint have an easy remedy: to offer something better, something coherent and constructive.