History of Rome
Michael Grant
Number of quotes: 8
Book ID: 109 Page: 240
Section: 3B
Then, three days before he was due to depart for the east, the Senate gathered for a meeting in Pompey’s theater; and there the conspirators surrounded him and stabbed him to death. Not long before, all senators had sworn an oath of allegiance to the father of their country, as Caesar had now come to be called; they were clients bound to protect their patron, just as a son is obliged to protect his own father. But at the moment of supreme reckoning they rushed out of the building, and Caesar lay where he had fallen.For all his immeasurable abilities as a general and administrator, he had failed, and would probably have continued to fail, to rescue Rome from its major dilemma. It was this: the republic, obviously, had become impotent, and because this was so, there was no practical alternative to one-man rule. Yet one-man rule was just what the nobles, although themselves incapable of ruling any more, categorically refused to accept; and so they put Caesar to death. It seemed an insoluble problem. Yet there now came another sort of man altogether, who performed the seemingly impossible task of finding a solution after all; he was the nineteen-year-old Octavian, grand-nephew of Julius Caesar who had adopted him in his will as his son.
Quote ID: 2632
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 109 Page: 245
Section: 3B
But although Cleopatra, and then Antony himself, succeeded in breaking out, only a quarter of their fleet was able to follow them.Both fled to Egypt. When the country fell to Octavian (30 B.C.), they committed suicide at Alexandria. Their conqueror declared the country a Roman possession, thus eliminating the last survivor of the three Greek monarchies that had succeeded to the heritage of Alexander; and he made it a unique sort of province, under his own direct control. His seizure of Cleopatra’s treasure made him wealthier than the Roman state itself.
Quote ID: 2633
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 109 Page: 249
Section: 2C,3B
Four days after the new political arrangements were announced in 27 B.C., the ruler’s name “Caesar” was supplemented by the novel designation “Augustus.” It was a word that carried venerable religious overtones, being linked with the verb “increase” (augere) which was also the root of auctoritus and probably of augurium, the practice of divination, which lay deep in Roman tradition. The adoption of this term “Augustus” to define his new status as the leader of the nation indicated his superiority over the rest of humankind and yet avoided dictatorial or divine appellations that would cause conservatives offense.
Quote ID: 2634
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 109 Page: 256
Section: 3B
After many earlier successes, Augustus’s policy of military expansion had ground to a halt in his last years, and he himself left Tiberius the advice not to continue it. By his reorganization, on the other hand, of the entire machinery of civilian government, he had proved himself one of the most gifted administrators the world has ever seen and the most influential single figure in the entire history of Rome. The gigantic work of reform that he carried out in every branch of Italian and provincial life not only transformed the decaying republic into a new regime with many centuries of existence ahead of it, but also created a durable efficient Roman peace. It was this Pax Romana or Pax Augusta that insured the survival and eventual transmission of the classical heritage, Greek and Roman alike, and made possible the diffusion of Christianity, of which the founder, Jesus, was born during this reign.
Quote ID: 2635
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 109 Page: 453
Section: 2E2
There were also various other causes of the downfall of the western empire, secondary and peripheral, though not altogether unimportant. One of these was the proliferation of dropouts who refused to participate in communal and public life. There were many people who found the social and economic situation intolerable and in consequence went underground and became the enemies of society. A large number of them became hermits and monks and nuns, who abandoned the company of their fellow human beings and, in the manner of modern Jesus-people or followers of gurus, divorced themselves from society, shaking the dust of the imperial system off their feet as completely as if they had never been part of it all.Then, early in the following century, John Cassian, founder of a monastery at Massilia (ca. 415), wrote works that induced many a nobleman to make the transition from senator to monk. By this time, however, the monastic life was no longer the end of a career but often led to a bishopric; monasticism had become respectable and was on its way to the prestige conferred upon it by St. Benedict (ca. 480-547). But in its earlier days it had attracted those who wanted to escape from the community; and at all times, granted its steadfast attempts to maintain Christianity’s spiritual commitment in face of an insidious society, it deprived the state of greatly needed manpower and revenue.
Quote ID: 2636
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 109 Page: 458
Section: 3A2A
Augustine, brooding on his own earlier spiritual deviations, concluded that Christian heretics as well as pagans must be brought into the fold by force. He quoted the scriptural text: “give opportunity to a wise man and he will become wiser.” But “opportunity” was only a euphemism for violent suppression; and it was in the same spirit that Pope Leo I later declared that “truth, which is simple and one, does not admit of variety.”
Quote ID: 2637
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 109 Page: 462
Section: 3D2
The Successor States in the WestWhen Rome’s rule crumbled in the west, it left the Visigoths ruling the southwest of Gaul as well as Spain, and the Burgundians in control of southeastern Gaul, while another group of German communities, the Franks, had established themselves in the north of the country. The Visigoths and Burgundians, however, whose Arian “heresy” was alien to the local Catholic populations and their bishops, were overcome in 507 by the Franks, whose pagan chief and founder of the Merovingian dynasty Clovis of Turnacum (Tournai), (ca. 482-511), had embraced the Catholic brand of Christianity with three thousand of his warriors. He was sent the emblems of a Roman consul by the eastern roman emperor Anatasius I; yet his kingdom was not a dependency of Constantinople, but the independent nucleus of a future nation-state. Clovius and his successors extended this Frankish dominion both to the east and to the south, where Mediterranean Gaul gave them strength and culture.
Quote ID: 2638
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 109 Page: 471
Section: 1A
It is a story that has extended from the establishment of diminutive Tiber villages to the creation and maintenance of an enormous multiracial society, followed by its fragmentation into units foreshadowing the nations of the modern world.With modifications, much of Rome continued to live on within these successor states; its language, government, law, church, literature, art , and habits of thinking and living were all far from dead.
Quote ID: 2639
Time Periods: 1
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