Peter Heather Quotes

#1. Charisma often flows from total self-confidence.

Peter Heather

#2. Cultures reflect the interactions of mixed populations.

Peter Heather

#3. 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.

Peter Heather

#4. Foreign policy often involved nothing more than the decision whom to make war upon.

Peter Heather

#5. 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.

Peter Heather

#6. It was not the military prowess of the Germani that kept them outside the Empire, but their poverty.11

Peter Heather

#7. The most important thing for morale was to maintain a united front among the officers.

Peter Heather

#8. These exchanges are reported without comment by the East Roman historian Theophylact Simocatta (charmingly, his surname means 'the one-eyed cat').

Peter Heather

#9. That the regime was willing to hit itts chief political constituency in the pocket was a clear sign of desperation.

Peter Heather

#10. Never base motivation or fear, entirely.

Peter Heather

#11. Author describes one monarch's impressive table but conveys a contemporary's observation, "the weightiest thing at dinner was the conversation".

Peter Heather

#12. Reality confounds image.

Peter Heather

#13. With ancient history writers most immediately in view, the author indicates tendency to look to the virtues and vices of individuals when seeking causes.

Peter Heather

#14. By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction.

Peter Heather

#15. The way to a landowner's heart was to tax gently.

Peter Heather

#16. When all the bullshit about rational, divinely inspired social order is put to one side, Roman law was all about defining and protecting property rights ...

Peter Heather

#17. But in the fourth century, as in any other, 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy'.

Peter Heather

#18. Having sliced Odovacar in half in early spring 493, Theoderic ruled his Italian kingdom for the next thirty-three years, until his own death on 30 August 526.

Peter Heather

#19. He was a stylist, not a thinker. He spent time trying to say things in as complicated a way as possible.

Peter Heather

#20. The factor that made him so powerful was also his greatest liability.

Peter Heather

#21. A handsome dowry went to the Vandal king Thrasamund along with his new bride, Theoderic's sister Amalafrida,

Peter Heather

#22. Such was the quasi-religious fervour surrounding the concept of the nation that politicians were ready to use identifications of the ancient spread of 'peoples' as evidence for claims about the present.

Peter Heather

#23. The cornerstone of the Roman legionnaires' astonishing fighting spirit can be attributed to their training.

Peter Heather