Adrian Goldsworthy Quotes

#1. (Sulla gave the slave his freedom and then had the man thrown to his death

Adrian Goldsworthy

#2. Quite openly, voters selected on the basis of perceived character and past behaviour rather than the views a candidate expressed. Where an individual's nature was not obvious, the Roman people tended to be drawn to a famous name, for there was a sense that virtue and ability were inherited.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#3. The story of the fifth century was one of the exploitation of imperial weakness. Thus the Western Empire died.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#4. The tribune was betrayed by one of his own slaves and killed.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#5. As Cicero would later declare, 'For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former generations by a sense of history?"3

Adrian Goldsworthy

#6. Roman women kept their name throughout their lives, and did not change it on marriage.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#7. Roman laws tended to be long and complex - one of Rome's most enduring legacies to the world is cumbersome and tortuous legal prose.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#8. Napoleon was later to comment that it was better to have one bad commander than two good ones with shared authority.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#9. By pagans the Jews (and later Christians) were seen as perverse, almost indeed as atheists, for they denied the very existence of other gods.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#10. Julia. At the most basic level a Roman husband had only to utter the phrase 'take your things for yourself' (tuas res tibi habeto) to separate from his wife.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#11. Personal hatreds and rivalry loomed larger in most senator's minds than the good of the Republic. [A big problem then and now]

Adrian Goldsworthy

#12. For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former generations by as sense of history. [Cicero, quoted by Goldsworthy in his Augustus]

Adrian Goldsworthy

#13. Tradition maintained that Rome had been founded in 753 BC. For the Romans this was Year One and subsequent events were formally dated as so many years from the 'foundation of the city' (ab urbe condita).

Adrian Goldsworthy

#14. Caesar was a serial seducer of married women.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#15. Caesar declared that an orator should 'avoid an unusual word as the helmsman of a ship avoided a reef'.

Adrian Goldsworthy