Roman Empire, The
Colin Wells
Number of quotes: 5
Book ID: 266 Page: 243
Section: 2E3
For Minucius Felix in the Octavius and Tertullian in the Apology, the pagans were all too sincere in their beliefs. The belief in the numinous, the association of certain places with the holy, was very powerful. The Christian church was later to try to capture such places for itself by promoting the cult of some appropriate saint in place of the pagan divinity.
Quote ID: 6731
Time Periods: 34567
Book ID: 266 Page: 249
Section: 4B
‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,’ said Christ, and the converse is also true: by how a society invests its resources you can tell where its real priorities are. In most towns and cities, the amphitheatre was the biggest building (its only rival would normally be the circus, if there was one, or the public baths).
Quote ID: 6732
Time Periods: 0147
Book ID: 266 Page: 251
Section: 3A1B,4B
Bulls and bears were among the less exotic fauna on display. Pliny records the appearances of tigers, crocodiles (risky – Symmachus in the fourth century had some which refused to eat and barely survived till needed, Letters vi.43), giraffes, lynxes, rhinoceroses, ostriches, hippopotami (Natural History viii.65). Lions were commonplace, with six hundred in a single show as long ago as the first century BC (Pliny, Natural History viii. 53, Dio xxxix.38). Elephants were also seen, and slaughtered, in the late Republic, and by Nero’s day were being bred in Italy (Columella iii.8). Commodus, who prided himself on his marksmanship, once killed five hippopotami in a single show; after Roman times, no hippopotamus was seen in Europe again until 1850. The scale of operations, from the capture of such beasts to their transport, their nourishment in captivity, and their eventual delivery to the arena, was enormous.
Quote ID: 6734
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 266 Page: 270
Section: 3D,4B
As for Byzantium itself, though the rulers worked and thought in Greek, they thought of themselves as ‘Romaioi’, and are so remembered: ‘Banish then, O Grecian eyes, the passion of the waiting West! / Shall God’s holy monks not enter on a day God knoweth best / To crown the Roman king again, and hang a cross upon his breast?’ We find still stronger testimony to Rome’s cross upon his breast?’ We find still stronger testimony to Rome’s power over the imagination in Y Gododdin, when Celtic warriors rode out from Edinburgh to confront Germanic invaders in Yorkshire at a time when there was no longer any Roman authority in the whole island, and felt and called themselves Roman. Charlemagne had himself crowned emperor of Rome on Christmas Day 800 to found what was to become the Holy Roman Empire. Rome inspired awe: ‘What wert thou, Rome, unbroken, when thy ruin / Is greater than the whole world else beside?’ (Hildebert of Lavardin 1056-1133, trans. Helen Waddell, More Latin Lyrics, 263). By the early twentieth century, the German Kaiser and the Tsar of Russia still rejoiced in the title of Caesar, though ruling from capitals which had never been part of the Roman Empire, so strong was the imprint of Rome’s authority and the magic of her name.Latin remained for centuries the common tongue of Europe, and for several more the language of the Catholic Church. From Roman law flowed both canon and secular law codes,
Quote ID: 6736
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 266 Page: 271
Section: 1A,4B
Paradoxically, it was the once persecuted Christians who absorbed, preserved and transmitted what remained of Rome’s heritage in the West.It was the Church that continued to teach the classics, and but for the Church, to quote Helen Waddell again, ‘the memory of them would have vanished from Europe’.
Quote ID: 6737
Time Periods: 47
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