King Abgarus asked, “If I may, general, what weapon do you prefer?” Crassus took no more than a moment to answer. “Overwhelming odds.

If you arrive for a meeting with a man you do not trust, and the man you do not trust does not arrive, do not trust the man who first arrives at the meeting.

You’d be surprised what people will accept once you insist two or three times running that they have seen what you tell them they have seen.

You Romans wash too much to be true men. Washing is for women, to clean our breeches and our vests. And even they barely let their toes touch the stream! Hah!

We would soon be on our way to war, where mercy is unwise and kindness has no place.

Illicit sex, Marcus, drives at least half the decisions of the modern world, wouldn’t you agree?

When I asked him how this cramping might affect his sword arm, he assured me it was only the narrow grip of the writing instruments that troubled him. “If we fought with pens,” he said, “I would be forced to fall upon mine.

Oh, I take your meaning now, Marcus,” he said, as if comprehension had just dawned. “You would have me harken back to a time when the outcome of a contest was not known until after the voting. How nostalgic.

There is no such thing as unrequited love; the phrase ought to be stricken from the lexicon. Love is a thing shared, an intertwining of essential separateness into something not quite alone. There is nothing like it under the heavens. Like bread, it will not be made with flour or water alone; the recipe requires both. Guarding each other’s vulnerability provides the yeast that makes it rise, and salt from the tears that caring brings lends the finishing touch.

He wore the memory of her embrace like armor, and though he knew it would not save his life, it would be all that was left to him to ease his passage into whatever lay beyond.