34 Quotes About Roman-empire

You know the Romans were fond of bloodshed. North Africa was one of many places where the Roman Empire had its arenas. It was their amphitheatre which, with the passage of time, had enlarged with the vanishing of many rocks. But, thank God, man has changed and, after six hundred years, that bloody sport has ended.

A man who had the legions of the east marching at his back could be bred by a donkey on a mule and the senate would have no choice but to accept him.

No wild beasts are so deadly to humans as most Christians are to each other.

The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone. In its place stood Neronopolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.

So much for the Emperor; the rest of this history must deal with the Monster.—IV:22

The ancient writer Suetonius tells the story that an inventor around 70 CE displayed to a Roman emperor a machine that could move columns, only to be dismissed with the objection that such labor-saving devices would cause the poor to starve by robbing them of employment.

Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike lead to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.

Arab merchants with their long caravans of camels traded Indian spices, hemp, opium and Chinese silk along the Incense Route which linked the Mediterranean world with Egypt, Arabia, India and Java. Although the merchants risked robbery and slavery along the way, the rich women of the Roman Empire could enjoy the perfumes of frankincense and myrrh, the flavours of Eastern spices, and the juices of exotic fruits such as guava, muskmelon and pomegranate

Every new increase in the vast imperial organism seemed to me an unsound growth, like a cancer or dropsical edema which would eventually cause our death.