Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Number of quotes: 79
Book ID: 16 Page: 14
Section: 1B
Thus the Roman historian Livy remarked that they were people all the more devoted to religious rites because they excelled in the art of performing them.PJ: ref in Livy: History of Rome V.i.6
Quote ID: 258
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 16 Page: 15
Section: 2B1
The temple was approached by a high stairway reaching to a platform with colonnaded portico opening on three chambers, the larger chamber being occupied by a powerful god while the side chambers were occupied by his divine attendants. All over ancient Etruria we find traces of such temples. When they built the great temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline hill, the Romans imitated the Etruscans by building a high stairway, a portico, and three chambers - one for Jupiter, one for Juno, and one for Minerva.PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 259
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 16 Page: 28
Section: 2C
The word pontiff comes from the Latin pons, a bridge. The college of pontiffs, presided over by the pontifex maximus, the chief bridgebuilder, preserved the sacred books, superintended all public religious ceremonies, and drew up the calendar of festivities.
Quote ID: 260
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 16 Page: 33
Section: 2B1
The temple he built to the trio of gods on the Capitoline was to be his most lastingmemorial and the first major monument in Rome. (Tarquinius Superbus)
PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 262
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 16 Page: 34
Section: 2E3
The Romans always regarded this sanctuary as the most sacred of all: it was the true habitation of Jupiter, the most powerful of the gods . . .
Quote ID: 263
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 16 Page: 40
Section: 3B
But the tribunate survived until the last days of the republic, and even when the republic was finally overthrown, the emperors took the proud title of tribunus plebis. Then, at last, the title lost all meaning.
Quote ID: 264
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 16 Page: 46
Section: 2E5
There were hundreds of these minor gods, some of them scarcely more than sprites.
Quote ID: 265
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 16 Page: 47
Section: 2E5
Beyond the known gods was an infinite number of unknown ones, who also had to be placated and given offerings.
Quote ID: 266
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 16 Page: 48
Section: 2E5
Many of the great gods were simply borrowed and reshaped to serve Roman needs.
Quote ID: 267
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 16 Page: 51
Section: 2E3
The temple on the Captoline, then, was the focus of the state religion, the place from which divine power was believed to radiate. There the pontiffs, who supervised all sacred observances under the ponitfex maximus, and the augurs, who examined the entrails of sacrificial victims or the play of lightning to foretell the will of the gods, had their priestly colleges and pronounced their verdicts.PJ: – until Augustus.
Quote ID: 268
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 16 Page: 53
Section: 2E5
In the imperial age, Venus became the symbol of the beauty of conquest, the serene embodiment of the Roman world empire. That the humble goddess of flowers should have grown in power and acquired so many virtues only demonstrates the changing nature of Roman mythology, which became amazingly intricate and almost unmanageable.Since the beginning of their history, the Romans had been accustomed to borrowing the gods of other tribes and nations. The result was that they accumulated more gods than they needed and more festivals and games than any single person could attend.
Quote ID: 269
Time Periods: 14
Book ID: 16 Page: 54
Section: 4B
To preserve the peace and to draw favor from the gods was the duty of every Roman. It was one of his many obligations, like fighting for his country, paying taxes, and raising a family . . .
Quote ID: 270
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 16 Page: 55
Section: 4B
The word religion comes from religare, “to bind”. Basically Roman religion was a contract between men and divinities, who offered service in exchange for gifts given. It provided favors and accommodation, but little in the way of what we would call a moral code. It filled the people’s lives more with holidays than with meaning, and in time it was doubted or rejected by intelligent men. The very oaths uttered to the gods were composed in legalistic language. Do ut des (“I give so that you may give”) was one of the principles of worship, though it was not the only one.
Quote ID: 271
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 16 Page: 56
Section: 2E4
The gods provided so many holidays that these seriously interfered with the normal conduct of affairs.
Quote ID: 272
Time Periods: 1234
Book ID: 16 Page: 57
Section: 2B2
It was a religion that had grown almost casually over the centuries, with no obvious plan, no body of doctrine, no contours. We speak sometimes of the Roman religion as though it possessed a firm basis, but in fact it was constantly changing, the gods melting away and being replaced by others.
Quote ID: 273
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 16 Page: 59
Section: 2B
Pythagoras of Samos [570–495 BC] had spoken of the one god who ruled the universe without the aid of any divine servants. Varro [116–27 BC], the great encyclopedist of the late republic, wrote of time when all the minor gods would be swept away, leaving Jupiter in sole command.
Quote ID: 274
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 16 Page: 61
Section: 2B2
Like Mithra and Isis, Jesus was excluded from the Roman pantheon, and although a pagan emperor might worship a statue of Jesus in private, Christianity remained obstinately remote from the state cult. Christ and Jupiter belonged to different worlds, and there could be no peace between them.
Quote ID: 275
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 16 Page: 61
Section: 2A4
The triumph of Christianity in Rome was to have prodigious consequences - not the least of these was that Christianity itself was colored by Roman religious practices. The robes of Christian priests, the shape of Christian churches, the order of services, the offerings at the altars, the title of the supreme pontiff, and the very language of Christian ceremonial were derived from the Romans. For a thousand years a hard, stubborn, earthy people had built a pragmatic edifice of belief, and though it was to be superseded by a far loftier one, many of its foundation stones survived.
Quote ID: 276
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 71
Section: 3A4
The consul, leading his army on the field of battle, was far more than a general. He saw himself as a religious leader in communion with the gods, possessing powers not given to ordinary mortals, capable of calling down the lightning on his adversaries; the heavens and the earth beneath were engaged in the struggle. The general became a shaman; the enemy could be cursed into defeat on condition that the general or someone chosen by him was prepared to sacrifice his life.
Quote ID: 277
Time Periods: 014
Book ID: 16 Page: 88
Section: 2B2
With the looting of Greece’s art treasures and with the importing of Greek ideas, a more mature Rome came into being - one in which worldliness and self-indulgence mixed with individuality and enlightenment.
Quote ID: 279
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 16 Page: 96
Section: 5C
In 133 B.C. most of the kingdom of Pergamum, in Asia Minor, was annexed as a new Roman province.
Quote ID: 280
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 16 Page: xi
Section: 1A
Through another of the principles in which its growth was rooted - adaptability. The Romans never claimed to be original. They borrowed nearly everything from others and amalgamated their borrowings into their system.
Quote ID: 255
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 16 Page: 153
Section: 2E3
To accomplish his aim, Augustus enlarged Rome’s central meeting area by adding a third forum next to the one built by Caesar. He turned his attention to an important element in “useful” building - the basilica, or the assembly hall, of which a number had been rising in Rome as well as in other cities of importance.They were both governmental and social meeting places, protected against summer’s heat and winter’s storms; in time the Christians would adapt the design of the basilica, transforming the hall into a church and placing an altar where the dais had been.
Quote ID: 282
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 16 Page: 170
Section: 2E6,3C
The emperor at one time or another took to identifying himself with various gods - Apollo, Hercules, and Helios, deity of the sun - and coins were struck depicting him with a radiating crown.Emperor Constantine?
Quote ID: 283
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 16 Page: 181
Section: 4B
For some two hundred years following the accession of Augustus, the Mediterranean world was virtually at peace. War, when it was waged at all, was confined almost entirely to frontier areas. Never in human history had there been so long a span of general tranquility, and never again was peace to be maintained so steadily among so many people.Throughout much of the empire, men lived out their lives in quiet contentment, safe from marauding armies, going about their affairs in the knowledge that they were sheltered by Rome, a stern but generous master that demanded unyielding obedience to its laws, at the same time granting to each community the right to adapt those laws to local circumstances.
Quote ID: 284
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 16 Page: 182
Section: 4B
There were times when Romans appeared to be awed by the scope of their success. Pliny the Elder speaks of the immense majesty of the Roman peace (immensa Romanae pacis maiestas) as though he could scarcely bring himself to believe that so great a thing had been accomplished.The legions that had imposed Roman rule were not, of course, gone or forgotten. Few Roman subjects dared to break the peace for fear of punishment almost too severe to contemplate. Those who did revolt - such as the hapless nationalists of Judaea - served as a terrifying example for any others who might be so inclined. Rebels could hope for no outside help, for as yet there existed no military power that could seriously challenge that of Rome.
PJ Note: Most of 2nd paragraph only has been used. None of 1st para.
Quote ID: 285
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 16 Page: 182
Section: 4B
. . . the very immensity of the empire ensured that it could not all come apart at once. To the mass of Romans the occasional murders in the imperial palace, the sporadic uprisings in Britain, Gaul, or Africa, the revolts of the Jews were little more than ripples on the surface of a peaceful lake.
Quote ID: 286
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 188
Section: 4B
The penetrating power of Roman civilization in any given province - the degree to which the Romans succeeded in stamping their own political and social brand upon a subject people - was largely determined by the characteristics of the society that they conquered. The essential differences between the western and eastern provinces were so marked that it seems that there were two empires long before any formal division into eastern and western branches took place.Latin was the lingua franca in all European lands that were situated to the west of the Illyrian shore of the Adriatic and in that part of Africa that extended westward from Cyrenaica.
East of this line Latin never replaced Greek.
Quote ID: 288
Time Periods: 0147
Book ID: 16 Page: 196
Section: 1B
But even before this liberal trend in private and official attitudes had made itself felt, the increasing influence of the slaves had introduced a disturbing element into the larger society of free Roman citizens.Read with note from p. 227-228
Quote ID: 289
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 16 Page: 197
Section: 4B
The threat of war and the tumult of political upheaval were largely absent; Romans could now expect to die in their beds. To them the empire seemed secure. There were in fact many pressing problems; among the most important were the growing restlessness of the people and the absence of a common faith, a common purpose. Oriental religions were proliferating on Roman soil. New and startling divinities were being worshiped. For many Romans, apparently, the joy had gone out of life, and the long peace had become unendurable without the consolation of religion.
Quote ID: 290
Time Periods: 134
Book ID: 16 Page: 208
Section: 1B
In about A.D. 150, when it seemed that the peace might continue forever, the Greek rhetorician Aristides declared that the Romans were the only rulers known to history who reigned over free men. “The luster of your rule is unsullied by any breath of ungenerous hostility; and the reason is that you yourselves set the example of generosity by sharing all your power and privileges with your subjects, so that in your day a combination has been achieved which previously appeared impossible - the combination of consummate power and consummate benevolence. Rome is a citadel that has all the people of the earth for its villagers.” Marcus Aurelius wrote: “For me as emperor, my city and fatherland is Rome, but as a man, the world.” At the death of Marcus, the great dream faded. Commodus stands at the beginning of the empire’s long decline.
Quote ID: 293
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 16 Page: 212
Section: 4B
The Greeks, though relishing the sight of human combat, had expressly forbidden games involving weapons, and they long refrained from building any amphitheatres in which spectacles of man against beast were to be presented. But the Romans, deriving their interest in bloody exhibitions from Etruscan funeral games, enjoyed the fight to the death.**Read with note from p. xiii**
Thus Augustus recorded that during his reign he had given the people twenty-seven gladiatorial shows in which 10,000 fighters appeared. He also gave them twenty-six spectacles of African animals in which about 3,500 beasts were killed. Whereas 320 pairs of public duelists had fought to the death during the aedileship of Julius Caesar, no less than 5,000 pairs were put in the ring during a festival celebrating a triumph of the emperor Trajan.
Quote ID: 294
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 16 Page: 216
Section: 3B,4B
In his famous edict of A.D. 212 Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all free persons living within the empire. But the measure, although seemingly magnanimous, was actually demagogic and, in its way, oppressive. Once everyone was a citizen, the hitherto cherished concept of Roman citizenship, with its rights and rewards for people of Roman or Italian birth, lost its meaning and became a mere word. As the historian Michael Rostovtzeff has remarked, Caracalla’s chief purpose “was not so much to raise the lower classes, as to degrade the upper.” Moreover, admission to citizenship involved the assumption of heavy taxes by all concerned. In the preamble to the law Caracalla himself remarked that the gods would look with favor on the grateful offerings by the new citizens. Certainly he himself looked with favor on this new scheme of extortion . . .
Quote ID: 295
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 218
Section: 2D2
[Bold part used](Elagabalus’) At the time of the Carthaginian wars they had acquired the black stone of the Phrygian Great Mother , and during the last century of the republic the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis had flourished even when it was officially proscribed. The Great Mother promised fertility and victory, Isis promised everlasting life.
Quote ID: 296
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 16 Page: 219
Section: 2B
Though the Senate showed an intense dislike for Elagabalus, the people briefly showered him with affection, and tolerated his strange ways. He summoned them to worship Baal, the unconquered Sun, and they raised no objection when in his newly erected temple of Baal on the Palatine he assembled all the sacred fetishes of the Romans - the vestal fire, the shields of Mars, the black stone of the Great Mother - insisting that the Romans should all bathe in the light of the Sun. From Carthage he imported the worship of the goddess Tanit, the heavenly mother, and celebrated the marriage of Astarte and the sun god.PJ Note: Elagabalus ? – 222.
Quote ID: 297
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 219
Section: 2B
The man Elagabalus was evidently mad. Within a few years, Rome wearied of his outrageous presence, and he was murdered in a latrine and thrown into the Tiber. Yet he left a legacy: within a few decades the worship of the Sun became the official religion of the empire.
Quote ID: 298
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 220
Section: 2B2
(In A.D. 222, at the age of thirteen) Alexander Severus . . . is said to have kept in his private shrines images of Abraham, Apollonius of Tyana, Orpheus, and Jesus, along with busts of Vergil and Cicero.
Quote ID: 299
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 227
Section: 5B
The fall and ruin of the world will soon take place, but it seems that nothing of the kind is to be feared as long as the city of Rome stands intact. But when the capital of the world has fallen . . . who can doubt that the end will have come for the affairs of men and for the whole world? It is that city which sustains all things. - Lactantius, The Divine Institutions
Quote ID: 300
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 227
Section: 3B2
The year A.D. 248 saw a great festival in Rome, celebrated with pomp, majestic rites, and games. It had been a thousand years from the time, according to tradition, that the city was founded, . . . Read with p. 196The idea of an eternal nation had deeply entered the Roman mind:
Quote ID: 301
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 227
Section: 3B
Yet everywhere there were signs of change - and no single one was more significant, perhaps, than that the emperor who presided over the celebration was an Arab chieftain’s son who had taken a Christian wife. Philip the Arab at 245 Read with p. 196
Quote ID: 302
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 227
Section: 3B2,4B
But even before this liberal trend in private and official attitudes had made itself felt, the increasing influence of the slaves had introduced a disturbing element into the larger society of free Roman citizens.Read with note from p. 227-228
Pliny the Elder quote is from HN 24.5
Quote ID: 303
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 230
Section: 3B2
But by the middle of the third century the new faith was making serious inroads among the upper classes no less than the lower, . . .Pastor John’s note - the power of military emperors had made them an endangered species.
Quote ID: 305
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 231
Section: 3B
(The fact of his [Philip the Arab] marriage to a Christian, coupled with stories of his lack of interest in the pagan rites that marked the millennial exercises of A.D. 248, was to cause Christian commentators to argue that he was, in fact, the first Christian emperor of Rome - a claim not otherwise supported).
Quote ID: 306
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 232
Section: 3B
Moreover, Decius was determined to compel the loyalty of all inhabitants to the state and its religion, and he took the occasion of a general sacrifice and libation to the gods in every village and city of the empire as the means of achieving this. All persons were required by decree to participate in the sacrifices and to procure from special boards of inspection certificates testifying that they had obeyed the order and that they had also made such sacrifices in the past.Pastor John notes: to unite the divided empire
Quote ID: 307
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 233
Section: 3B
While making his division, though, Valerian continued to follow a policy of general attack on the Christians throughout the empire. Many had bowed to Decius’ decree and paid their respects to the old Roman gods. This was not enough: they were now to be made to abjure their faith under penalty of having their goods confiscated, their places of worship shut, and their priests deported if they did not recant.
Quote ID: 308
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 234
Section: 2B
Plotinus had gathered many followers about him as he set forth his doctrine that the search for truth or reality behind appearance would lead, step by step, toward a recognition of a spiritual “One” beyond all physical things, and to communion with that supreme force.
Quote ID: 309
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 16 Page: 236
Section: 4B
Probus - “Soon perhaps”, he said, “the barbarians will be driven back and there will be no need for an army. There will be no more requisitions in the provinces, no demands for compulsory payments, and the Roman people will possess unfailing revenues. There will be no camps, no sound of trumpets, no fashioning or armaments, and the people will be free to follow the plow and do their own work, learn their own crafts, and sail the seas.”There were few emperors who dreamed of so idyllic a future, but there is little doubt that he was reflecting the common hopes and longings of many of his people. The idea of universal peace, which had haunted the Romans since the days of Numa, was revived during the last years of the third century, becoming all the more appealing the more distant it seemed to be.
Quote ID: 310
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 238
Section: 3B
Even so, there was no escaping the necessity of the empire’s division. Constitutionally, when he Diocletian gave his co-ruler Maximian the title of Augustus in A.D. 286, he endowed him with powers equal to his own - though in practice he retained a right of veto as senior augustus. Soon he decided that not even two rulers were sufficient to deal with the complex problems of the empire, and arranged the appointment of two further men who were to serve in effect as deputy co-emperors with the title of caesar - Constantius Chlorus in the West and Galerius in the East.
Quote ID: 311
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 16 Page: 239
Section: 3B
It is more likely that Diocletian’s action, far from being a fit of imperial temper, represented cold-blooded policy. Conversions had been increasing; Christian basilicas were flourishing in many cities; the imperial court itself was peopled with votaries of the new faith. A rapid series of edicts, beginning in February, A.D. 303, therefore undertook to root out the infection totally. The first ordered all copies of the Scriptures surrendered and burned and the churches destroyed; all meetings of Christians were forbidden. Next the Christians were deprived of all civil rights, including that of holding any public office. Regardless of their social rank, they could be submitted to torture after trial; Christian slaves were not to be liberated. In further edicts, setting up a progressive scale of punishments, Christian priests and then Christian laymen were to be executed unless they recanted and worshiped state gods.
Quote ID: 312
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 16 Page: 244
Section: 3C
He was - at least this is how he recounted it to the historian Eusebius - overtaken by a vision in the form of a cross in the sky, and a command that he go into battle under that sign. Whatever the source of his guidance, his troops put down Maxentius with the sign of Christ’s cross on their shields.
Quote ID: 313
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 249
Section: 2B2,3C
This victory over Maxentius confirmed his devotion to Christianity. But to speak of the conversion of Constantine is to misunderstand the quality of his mind. He did not immediately try to impose the Christian faith on his subjects. He continued to celebrate pagan festivals, minted coins in honor of Apollo, Hercules, Mars, Jupiter, and even after his conversion, presented himself on coins wearing the spiked crown of sol invictus, the unconquered Sun. He was tolerant of all religions, and as Augustus had, he showed a special predilection for Apollo.
Quote ID: 316
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 250
Section: 3C
How deeply Constantine believed in the tenets of Christianity is a question that has puzzled historians, as it may very well have puzzled Constantine himself. His complex mind appears to have been capable of believing simultaneously in the Christian God and the entire pagan tradition. He acknowledged a summus deus, a supreme god who ordered and commanded the entire universe, but beyond this, he apparently was not prepared to go, though he would pay lip service to Christ or to the unconquered Sun whom his father had worshiped. Toward the end of his life, he caused to be erected, near the Colosseum, a magnificent triumphal arch in his honor, bearing an inscription of the divine - instinctu divinitatis. Perhaps he was paying tribute to his own divinity or to all divinities. Certainly the ambiguous phrase does not reveal a special preference for the Christian God.Constantine was not, after all, so deeply interested in religion; what interested him almost to the exclusion of everything else was the exploration of power, and he realized very early that toleration was itself a form of power.
Quote ID: 317
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 252
Section: 3A4,3C
Nevertheless his new religion gave the emperor the opportunity to announce that he was “ordained by God to oversee whatever is external to the Church” - a statement that was to have awesome consequences in the Middle Ages when emperors and popes struggled for supremacy.Yet Constantine also established a foundation for the papacy’s claims to temporal power when he gave the rights and duties of magistrates to all the bishops in his empire. Many of the bishops carefully searched their consciences before they agreed to accept the post, for Christian tradition, centuries old, looked on the state and all of its work as being corrupt. But finally, with gratitude, they assented to the change and regarded it as a sign of the new era that was dawning.
Constantine . . . he finally chose the old Greek fishing port of Byzantium, the junction of all the roads between Asia and the West. There on May 11, 330, in the presence of high ecclesiastical officials, the city of New Rome was formally inaugurated with great pomp. Christian commentators, who carefully noted the presence of the Churchmen, appear to have glossed over the fact that the ceremony was also pagan and modeled on the legendary inauguration of Rome by Romulus.
Quote ID: 319
Time Periods: 047
Book ID: 16 Page: 253
Section: 3C
Christianity, too, failed to unify Constantine’s domain. Even before he brought the new religion to dominance, the Church had been plagued with dissension, and its divisions often fell along social as well as doctrinal lines. In North Africa, one religious squabble aligned the old Berber and Punic elements in a bitter struggle against the Roman colonists. About the year 318 a more serious controversy erupted in Egypt, splitting the entire Church into factions that opposed each other in their political as well as their religious sphere.
Quote ID: 320
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 253
Section: 3C1
The argument - over the nature of Christ - aroused the passions not only of theologians but of the workers and artisans of Alexandria as well, men who followed the philosophical controversy with as much enthusiasm as some men devote to athletic contests. To resolve the differences between the two parties - the Arians, who claimed that Christ must have originated after God and was not equal to Him, and their opponents, who believed that Christ was coeternal with God - the First Ecumenical Council was called at Nicaea in 325 to settle all disputes. There the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated.
Quote ID: 321
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 253
Section: 3D
Although greater unity was thus achieved, a few Arians refused to accept the concept, and the Church and the empire remained divided over the question until the year 381 when the emperor Theodosius the Great made heresy a crime.In that same year Theodosius made paganism a crime too.
Quote ID: 322
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 16 Page: 255
Section: 3B1
In a strict sense the Germain tribes were not really barbarians. They had their own cultures, their own traditions in the arts, in commerce, and in warfare, and many of them were even Christians.
Quote ID: 323
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 16 Page: 255
Section: 3B1
They the Goths spoke a pure and primitive Teutonic, and the majority of them embraced Arian Christianity with the passion of converts.
Quote ID: 324
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 16 Page: 257
Section: 2E3,4B
Tertullian, in the second century, had believed that Rome would last as long as the world, enduring until the Day of judgment. A special sanctity was attached to the inviolate city. But Alaric had proved that it was a city like any other, only too vulnerable. In far-off Bethlehem, Saint Jerome lamented: “The entire human race is implicated in the catastrophe. My voice is choked, and my words are broken with sobs while I write: The city now is taken that once held the world.”
Quote ID: 325
Time Periods: 245
Book ID: 16 Page: 258
Section: 2E3
. . . the greatness of Rome was no more. Attila the Hun - He intended to attack Rome, but his army was racked with disease, and Alaric’s death, shortly after the sack of the city by the Goths in 410, had filled the barbarians with superstitious horror. When Pope Leo I came to him to ask his leniency, therefore, Attila was ready to grant it. Attila turned back and Rome was saved. Three years later, in 455, Leo confronted Gaiseric, the Vandal, whose armies were camped outside the walls. Once again the pope was able to save Rome from destruction. Gaiseric wanted to plunder, and this was given to him on condition that there would be no rape, no murder, no firing of houses, churches, and ancient palaces.For Leo it was pure victory; he had exchanged the gold tiles of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline and all the baubles of pagan Rome for a Christian peace.
Quote ID: 326
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 16 Page: 260
Section: 1A,4B
After Odoacer [PJ: 433–493], invading chieftains fought for power and looted and burned the city; Italy began to split into its many principalities, which were not to be reunited until the nineteenth century. But the civilizing mission of Rome did continue through the agency of the Church - especially through the monasteries, which grew in usefulness and importance during the years of the barbaric invasions when men turned in relief from war to contemplation. These monasteries preserved the manuscripts of ancient Rome and Greece, many of which have come down to us only because the monks copied them.What caused this breakdown of Roman power - a power that had held the world in thrall for centuries? It is tempting to search for an answer, but of course no one really knows. The great eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon claimed that one of the reasons was that Christianity had sapped the vigor of the Roman people.
Quote ID: 327
Time Periods: 135
Book ID: 16 Page: 261
Section: 1A
Today’s scholars are less inclined than those of the past were to explain away such a complex historical process as the empire’s fall with a glib generalization. They admit quite frankly that they do not know the reasons and that they can only guess at them; and they go on to study the age’s history in terms of continuity as well as in terms of change.. . . in many ways society was not vastly different from the way it had been when imperial power was still unchallenged.
For the barbarians who hammered at its gates, the city of Rome itself presented problems that almost defied solution. It could be conquered easily; it could be destroyed as the Gauls had destroyed it long ago. But what were the advantages of conquering it or putting it to flames? Powerless, it was still powerful - with power of legends and of traditions and of the knowledge of government. The ruined city was still teaching law to the world, and with law went civilization, order, the quiet pursuit of trade, the flourishing of arts.Eventually the barbarians were to one degree or another to come under the spell of Rome.
Book not found
Quote ID: 328
Time Periods: 15
Book ID: 16 Page: 263
Section: 1A
The Roman empire perished and went on living. Long after the capital had become a small town outside the frontiers of the Byzantine empire and long after the last Roman legionary marched down the Flaminian Way, its civilization held sway in the West. The legacy of this most worldly of empires was to lie largely in the realm of ideas - in law, language, literature, government, attitudes, and styles. In innumerable ways, as century followed century, men’s minds were to respond to a presence that was shorn of all the panoply of power while gradually becoming transfigured into a dominion of the spirit and of thought.The legacy was a mixed one, inextricably compounded of Greek influence on Rome and Rome’s original contributions. What we call Roman civilization was very largely a Greco-Roman Civilization; but it was Rome that gave it the endurance that enabled it to survive down through the centuries. The Romans were great borrowers, great adapters, and great transmitters . . . Even in decline and defeat, Rome had the remarkable power of assimilating other peoples. Its barbarian invaders at first thought to stay aloof from the fallen conquerors, but they soon fell under the spell of a culture so much richer than their own.
Quote ID: 329
Time Periods: 14
Book ID: 16 Page: 264
Section: 1A
The Roman scheme of universality was shattered by the breakup of the empire; yet the concept was to survive in a new form - that of a Christian commonwealth in which state and Church were united.Pastor John’s note - The west, seemingly low at this time, taught the east how to survive, or at least demonstrated for the eastern empire how it would live.
Quote ID: 330
Time Periods: 16
Book ID: 16 Page: 265
Section: 3E
The Byzantine emperors cultivated splendor as it had perhaps never been cultivated before. They appeared in public in jeweled garments, their gestures were minutely studied, and they almost vanished beneath the weight of their panoply. They were gods walking the earth, remote and inaccessible, moving in that breath-taking splendor that was the mark of their divinity. Their palaces were plated in gold, they sat beneath gold crowns suspended from the ceiling, and sometimes they concealed themselves behind jeweled curtains. By the time of Justinian the Byzantine court had surrendered to almost unimaginable luxury. The great palaces on the Bosporus shimmered like the Christian churches with brilliant mosaics, and the Roman emperor moved like a ghost appareled in majesty. He was no longer merely the emperor. He was the king of kings, the vicar of Christ, the giver of all blessings, the divinely appointed one. The distance between the ruler and his subjects, always great, now became so great that they seemed to live in different worlds.
Quote ID: 331
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 16 Page: 267
Section: 1A
To the West, Rome left a legacy of quite another order; it was passed in the first instance through the Church, which inherited much of Rome’s talent, character, and learning. The early Church had been the foe of the pagan Roman state; gradually it was to become the preserver and adapter of much of what had been best in it.
Quote ID: 332
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 16 Page: 267
Section: 3E
Justinian’s triumphs against the Goths in Italy only left the state in complete disorder: after 541 there were no more consuls in Rome, the Senate withered away, and only the perfect of the city, praefectus urbis, remained to testify to the ancient traditions of the capital.
Quote ID: 333
Time Periods: 1467
Book ID: 16 Page: 267
Section: 3F
Out of the storm of the Gothic wars mid 500’s there emerged one strong western power - the papacy. In the hands of Pope Gregory I, himself a former praefectus urbis, the office a began to exert strong influence. A monkish priest who never learned Greek, though he spent many years on an embassy to Constantinople, he seemed to symbolize the ancient Roman virtues, and by the singular force of his personality he was able to bring some order to a ruined land. He believed in old wives’ tales, relished mysteries, wrote a vivid and interminable commentary on the Book of Job, and pronounced himself to be the arbiter of Roman destinies.
Quote ID: 334
Time Periods: 1467
Book ID: 16 Page: 268
Section: 3G
But in time Italy was to become dappled with territories owing allegiance to the papacy; and the kings of Europe would find compelling reasons to accept the doctrine that all spiritual power was vested in the pope and that earthly power should receive the sanction of the spiritual. When Charlemagne permitted himself to be crowned by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, 800, he was under no illusions that any rights had been conferred on him. Nevertheless the coronation laid the foundations for the Holy Roman Empire.
Quote ID: 335
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 16 Page: 268
Section: 1A,3F
Not until the time of Napoleon was the dream of the divine Roman empire ultimately abandoned.
Quote ID: 336
Time Periods: 147
Book ID: 16 Page: 268
Section: 1A
What happened was that the Church had gradually acquired many qualities of the old imperial order. The Roman genius for organization, along with the Roman sense of hierarchy, had given shape to Church institutions. The Roman political imagination, which had once brought so many peoples into one orbit, had lent strength to the idea of a Church universal. Roman jurisprudence had become the basis of canon law. The Church, which had begun by being an enemy of Rome, became the chief stronghold and preserver of the ancient Roman traditions.
Quote ID: 337
Time Periods: 147
Book ID: 16 Page: 270
Section: 3F
In the Middle Ages men almost seemed to breathe in Latin. If it was not the language of trade, it was the language of nearly everything else.
Quote ID: 338
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 16 Page: 271
Section: 1A
The cult of antiquity never died out.
Quote ID: 339
Time Periods: 147
Book ID: 16 Page: 271
Section: 3F
The unearthing of the Laocoon group of sculptures near the baths of Trajan in 506 revived the classical presence. So, too, did the discovery of the Apollo Belvedere a few years later. Both statutes were promptly acquired by Pope Julius II. A passion for excavating, restoring, and imitating old sculpture arose; the young humanist, painter, and architect Raphael pleaded with Pope Leo X to halt the continuing despoliation of Roman edifices. The pope appointed the young man general superintendent or conservator of Roman antiquities, and there exists an unsigned letter, which appears to have been written by Raphael and Baldassare Castiglione, urging the pope to preserve the relics of ancient Rome . . .
Quote ID: 340
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 16 Page: 277
Section: 1A
The states of western Europe, all formed between A.D. 500 and 1200 under the tutelage of the Roman presence, picked and chose from it, but all remained indebted to the Roman idea of law as supreme over men and as penetrating into the remotest corners of their lives. When the framers of the United States Constitution erected what they termed “a government of laws, not men,” they were in effect reasserting Rome’s better self.
Quote ID: 342
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 16 Page: 278
Section: 1A
Roman genius for logic and order is with us yet. The architect poring over his drawing board, the bridgebuilder studying stress, the attorney invoking high principles, all hark back to Roman ways; in countless ways we still live under the sign of the spacious mind of Rome.
Quote ID: 343
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 16 Page: viii
Section: 1A
Or, looked at in another way, the Roman empire, which started from Romulus and fell before the barbarians in the fifth century of the Christian dispensation, did not die, but continued to exist for another thousand years in the Holy Roman Empire, and still exists, transformed and spiritualized, in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, whose language is Latin and whose central seat is Rome.Rome’s power sprang from some spiritual source. What that source was, the Romans themselves did not surely know. Nor do we.
The dominion of Rome, he said, was willed by almighty God in order to bring peace to the warring world. Christian interpreters have often thought that, although born a pagan, Vergil was a “naturally Christian soul,” and foresaw something of God’s purpose in making Rome the capital of the Prince of Peace.
Quote ID: 254
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 16 Page: xiii
Section: 1A
. . . surely it [Rome] can scarcely be called a civilization except in the external sense, wealth and vulgar pleasure, a titanic body without a heart. That would be true indeed, except for the fact that the body as it grew acquired a heart and a soul.but this, from p. 212:
“The Greeks ... had expressly forbidden games involving weapons.... But the Romans ... enjoyed the fight to the death.“
Quote ID: 256
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 16 Page: xiii
Section: 1A
At first little more than the power of the sword carried Rome forward; but as it grew, it acquired the power of thought, the power of the law, and the power of religious and poetic vision. These are spiritual powers, which it bequeathed to its heirs, the modern nations of the western world.
Quote ID: 257
Time Periods: 14
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