Section: 1B - Ancient testimonies.
Number of quotes: 98
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 118
Section: 1B
Seen with hindsight, 410 had become a decisive turning point. Zosimus, as compared for example with Rutilius Namatianus who had left Rome a few years after 410, was aware of the decline of the Roman Empire. He had no trouble explaining it: Christianity was to blame---an accusation with little foundation, but destined to have a very long future.
Quote ID: 55
Time Periods: 14
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 125
Section: 1B,2A3
Christianized nobles preserved Roman traditions. Not only did Christianity tolerate their national pride, it offered them a new manifestation of it when Pope Leo I “the Great” (440 - 461), conferring on Rome the praise attributed to the Jewish people, glorified “a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city”
Quote ID: 60
Time Periods: 5
A History of Ecclesiastical Dress
Janet Mayo
Book ID: 6 Page: 11
Section: 1B,3B
Although the birth of the Christian religion occurred in a province within the Roman Empire, it was unheralded by any contemporary historian. Tacitus, writing at the beginning of the second century AD, made the famous remark that in Judaea ‘Under Tiberius all was quiet.{1}
Quote ID: 102
Time Periods: 2
Aelius Aristides, Orations, LCL 533: Aelius Aristides I
Edited by Michael Trapp
Book ID: 402 Page: 279/281
Section: 1B
The land and sea empire of modern times{236}—may it never pass away—does not disdain to glorify Athens in her role as teacher and foster parent. So abundant, indeed, are the honors that are showered on her that the city’s fortunes now differ from what they were only in that she plays no part in current affairs.{236} The Roman Empire
Quote ID: 8516
Time Periods: 1
Aeneid of Virgil, The
Virgil. Translated by John Dryden
Book ID: 435 Page: 217/218
Section: 1B
Let others better mould the running massOf metals, and inform the breathing brass,
And soften into flesh a marble face;
Plead better at the bar; describe the skies,
And when the stars descend and when they rise.
But Rome! ՚tis thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind, and make the world obey,
Disposing peace and war thy own majestic way;
To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free―
These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.”
Quote ID: 8778
Time Periods: ?
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
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
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
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
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
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
Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 417
Section: 1B
Book I
It is almost three hundred years {1} – something less or more — since we Christians {2} began to exist, and to be taken account of in the world.
PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, I.13.
Quote ID: 9456
Time Periods: 34
Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 417
Section: 1B
. . . . do we not see that .... the boundaries of the empire have been extended, and that nations whose names we had not previously heard, have been brought under our power . . .
PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, I.14.
Quote ID: 9457
Time Periods: 34
Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 422
Section: 1B
“If one religion is common to us and to you, the anger of the gods is stayed; but if they are hostile to us alone, it is plain that both you and they have no knowledge of God. And that that God is not Jove, is evident by the very wrath of the deities.”PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, I.35.
Quote ID: 9459
Time Periods: 4
Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 423
Section: 1B
“Now, having been led into the paths of truth by so great a teacher, I know what all these things are, I entertain honorable thoughts concerning those which are worthy, I offer no insult to any divine name; and what is due to each, whether inferior or superior, I assign with clearly defined gradations, and on distinct authority.”PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, I.39
Quote ID: 9460
Time Periods: 4
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 53
Section: 1B
This in turn, may bring us a little way to explaining a millennium-long change. In the first century AD, a Phrygian gentleman declared, in his last will and testament, that his bequests should stand ‘for as long as the eternal dominion of the Romans should last’. At the end of the ninth century AD, an Anglo-Saxon landowner in Kent declared that his will should stand, ‘as long as baptism lasts, and money can be raised from the land’.49 Vastly different from each other as those two gentlemen must have been, they are part of the same continuum.
Quote ID: 711
Time Periods: 17
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 24
Section: 1B
Virgil, argued by some to be “the noblest Roman of them all”, Dante’s exalted “master” and guide through the tortured trails of the Inferno, captured the true and abiding nature of the Old Roman Empire in his Aeneid (VI, 847-53, Dryden’s translation, 1697):Let others better mold the running Mass
Of metals, and inform the breathing Brass;
And soften into Flesh a Marble Face:
Plead better at the Bar; describe the Skies,
And when the stars descend, and when they rise.
But, Rome, ’tis thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule Mankind, and make the World obey;
Disposing Peace, and War, thy own Majestic Way,
To tame the Proud, the fetter’d Slave to free;
These are Imperial Arts, and worthy thee.
Rome envied not the Grecian mastery of artistic form and philosophy, but fed on them and made them hers. She marveled at the Mesopotamian command of the stars and time, not seeking to cover their wisdom in order to exalt herself; rather, she took that hidden wisdom into her bosom and gloried in those mysteries as happily as if she herself had discovered the secrets of the skies. Hers was not a mere craving for mastery of things, but for the ultimate earthly mastery: raw political mastery over men.
Quote ID: 965
Time Periods: 17
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 42
Section: 1B,3B
“With the death of Marcus Aurelius, the revered philosopher-king, the Old Rome came to an end.” In Dio Cassius’s [PJ: c. 155–c. 235] classic, and contemporary, history of this time, he concluded his last book covering the reign of the pitiable Marcus Aurelius (p. 33), with these stunning words, “Our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.”
Quote ID: 970
Time Periods: 2
Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries
Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
Book ID: 53 Page: 302
Section: 1B,4A
Brock divides the process of the hellenization of Syriac culture into three periods.{17} Aphrahat and Ephrem, both fourth-century writers, belong to the first period. Both represent a Christian culture which is still Semitic in its vision and style, Ephrem alone showing the beginnings of some borrowings.
Quote ID: 1196
Time Periods: 4
Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical
Frank C. Senn
Book ID: 54 Page: 487
Section: 1B
The consequence of the destruction of the Byzantine Empire, in the Russian point of view, was that guardianship of Orthodoxy passed from Constantinople to Moscow. The monk Philotheos, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, formulated the theory that Moscow was the “third Rome.” The first Rome had fallen because of heresy; the second Rome (Constantinople) had fallen because of unfaithfulness; “but a new third Rome has sprung up in the north, illuminating the whole universe like a sun . . . the third will stand till the end of history; a fourth Rome is inconceivable.”Naturally, this ideology served the expansionist aims of the Dukes of Moscow, who became the caesars (czars) of the Third Rome.
Quote ID: 1231
Time Periods: 17
Christian Topography: Flat Earth
Cosmas Indiopleustes
Book ID: 368 Page: 63
Section: 1B,4A
…the scope of his words includes, though but darkly, the Roman empire, which made its appearance {147} contemporaneously with the Lord Christ. "For while Christ was yet {71} in the womb, the Roman empire received its power from God as the servant of the dispensation which Christ introduced, since at that very time the accession was proclaimed of the unending line of the Augusti by whose command a census was made which embraced the whole world. The evangelist certainly indicates that this enrollment {142} was first made in the days of Augustus Caesar, when the Lord Christ was born, and deigned to be enrolled in a country subject to Roman dominion, and to pay tribute thereto.The empire of the Romans thus participates in the dignity of the Kingdom of the Lord Christ, seeing that it transcends, as far as can be in this state of existence, every other power, and will remain unconquered until the final consummation, for he says that it shall not be destroyed for ever.
Quote ID: 8196
Time Periods: 12
Christian Topography: Flat Earth
Cosmas Indiopleustes
Book ID: 368 Page: 63
Section: 1B
…this empire is the servant of the dispensation established by Christ, on which account he, who is the lord of all, preserves it unconquered till the final consummation.
Quote ID: 8197
Time Periods: 1
Chrysostom, An Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children
Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople
Book ID: 12 Page: 17
Section: 1B,4B
48. And do not, I pray, follow Greek customs. It is a great disgrace and laughable when in a Christian household some Greek pagan customs are observed; …
Quote ID: 212
Time Periods: 34
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, LCL 268: Cicero XIX
Translated by H. Rackham
Book ID: 354 Page: 131
Section: 1B
The fate of these men may serve to indicate that our empire was won by those commanders who obeyed the dictates of religion. Moreover if we care to compare our national characteristics with those of foreign peoples, we shall find that, while in all other respects we are only the equals or even the inferiors of others, yet in the sense of religion, that is, in reverence for the gods, we are far superior.
Quote ID: 8137
Time Periods: 0
Cicero, On the Republic, LCL 213: Cicero XVI
Translated by Clinton W. Keyes
Book ID: 303 Page: 211
Section: 1B
XXII. . . . True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment. . . .
Quote ID: 7534
Time Periods: 0
Cicero, On the Republic, LCL 213: Cicero XVI
Translated by Clinton W. Keyes
Book ID: 303 Page: 213
Section: 1B
…a State ought to be so firmly founded that it will live for ever. Hence death is not natural for a State as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.
Quote ID: 8584
Time Periods: 0
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 164/165
Section: 1A,1B,3B
….Diocletian gave even more massive and widespread publicity to the idea of Rome than any other ruler. For he and his fellow-emperors expressed this idea, without variation, on millions of the silvered bronze coins of their universally circulating reformed currency. These enormous and uniform issues, issued at many mints from c. 294 onwards for more than two decades, represent one of the largest outbursts of numismatic propaganda in the whole of Roman history. By such means, every household in the empire was repeatedly reminded of eternal Rome for many years.But the slogan of Diocletian and his colleagues was not simply concerned with Rome itself; instead it celebrated the Genius of the Roman People – GENIVS POPVLI ROMANI. The Genius was represented by a youthful male figure, carrying a cornucopia and wearing the turreted (mural) crown which was characteristic of the Fortune (Tyche) of cities.
Quote ID: 4718
Time Periods: 34
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 55/56
Section: 1B
In every aspect of culture, Greek models were copied but transformed, so as to celebrate the new age. The poet Propertius makes his own debt to Greek literature explicit. He wrote: "I write with a special purpose, to make thoroughly Italian, in manner and matter, this double Greek inheritance."
Quote ID: 4795
Time Periods: 0
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 178
Section: 1B,4A
Like Celsus in the second century, Porphyry presented Christians as apostates, both from Greco-Roman religion and culture and from Jewish religion and culture, who forsook the established cults of city and country, patronized by kings, lawgivers, and philosophers, for atheism and impiety. {108} Christians had first made common cause with the impious Jews, the enemies of all mankind, and then abandoned even the Jews for something newfangled and irrational. Such men deserved brutal punishment - and between 303 and 313 many of them received brutal punishment. {109}
Quote ID: 1595
Time Periods: 234
Councils: First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology, The
Leo Donald Davis
Book ID: 224 Page: 25
Section: 1B
For the Christian apologists of the early fourth century like Lactantius (250-320), Christianity was the sole guarantee of Roman civilization. Only by being confirmed by Christian revelation could the best traditions of classical philosophy and ethics be saved from the ravages of the barbarians. Only the Christian God could save the Empire from destruction.
Quote ID: 5630
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 18
Section: 1B,2E3
…Rome, the common asylum which receives and protects whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious.
Quote ID: 5190
Time Periods: 147
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 443
Section: 1B
…he confessed that in every age the arms and religion of Rome were destined to reign over the earth.*John’s note: “he” is Manuel Chrysoloras (ca. 1355-1415).*
Quote ID: 8402
Time Periods: 17
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 498
Section: 1B
The last speech of Palaeologus was the funeral oration of the Roman empire….
Quote ID: 8403
Time Periods: 17
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 512/513
Section: 1B
Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian….*John’s note: From 1453 on.*
Quote ID: 8404
Time Periods: 17
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 514
Section: 1B
…the final extinction of the two last dynasties {2} which have reigned in Constantinople should terminate the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the East.
Quote ID: 8405
Time Periods: 17
Dio Cassius: Roman History
Translated by Earnest Cary
Book ID: 371 Page: 69
Section: 1B
This matter must be our next topic; for our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.*John’s note: Dio is referring to Marcus Aurelius’ death and what follows.*
Quote ID: 8207
Time Periods: 2
Etruscans: How Did the Etruscans Shape Roman History and Society?
Daily History https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_the_Etruscans_shape_Roman_history_and_socoety3F
Book ID: 444 Page: 4
Section: 1B,4B
Even after the Etruscan kings were expelled the Romans still respected the oracles of the Etruscans. The Roman Senate ordained that the Etruscan oracles and ceremonies be maintained in perpetuity by the state and they were practiced by Roman priests until the Christian era.{16}
Quote ID: 8818
Time Periods: 014
Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000
Julia M. H. Smith
Book ID: 83 Page: 273
Section: 1B
Another poem (quite possibly by the same poet) underscores the point that both were transferable notions, equally potent as metaphors as they were as institutions:My Palaemon [Charlemagne] looks out from the lofty citadel of the new Rome and sees all the kingdoms forged into an empire through his victories.
Our times are transformed into the civilisation of Antiquity.
Golden Rome is reborn and restored anew to the world!{30}
Quote ID: 2200
Time Periods: 17
Fall of Rome: And The End of Civilization, The
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Book ID: 222 Page: 28
Section: 1B
….Ezekiel..The brightest light of the whole world is extinguished; indeed the head has been cut from the Roman empire. To put it more truthfully, the whole world has died with one City.
Who would have believed that Rome, which was built up from victories over the whole world, would fall; so that it would be both the mother and the tomb to all peoples. {32}
Rome’s fall, however, did not bring down the empire (indeed its impact on eastern provinces like Palestine was minimal).
Quote ID: 5479
Time Periods: 1
Fall of Rome: And The End of Civilization, The
Bryan Ward-Perkins
Book ID: 222 Page: 29
Section: 1B,3A1
The most sophisticated, radical, and influential answer to this problem was that offered by Augustine, who in 413 (initially in direct response to the sack of Rome) began his monumental City of God. {33} Here he successfully sidestepped the entire problem of the failure of the Christian empire by arguing that all human affairs are flawed, and that a true Christian is really a citizen of Heaven. Abandoning centuries of Roman pride in their divinely ordained state (including Christian pride during the fourth century), Augustine argued that, in the grand perspective of Eternity, a minor event like the sack of Rome paled into insignificance.
Quote ID: 5480
Time Periods: 5
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 234
Section: 1B
Nor has the sack raised in Rutilius’ mind the slightest doubt about the Empire’s destiny, its mission to civilize humankind:Thy gifts thou spreadest wide as the sun’s rays,
As far as earth-encircling ocean heaves.
Phoebus, {70} embracing all things [,] rolls for thee;
His steeds both rise and sink in thy domains . . .
Far as the habitable climes extend
Towards either pole thy valour finds its path.
Thou hast made of alien realms one fatherland;
The lawless found their gain beneath thy sway;
Sharing thy laws with them thou hast subdued,
Thou hast made a city of the once wide world.
---------------------
His faith in the Roman ideal rested on a determination to rebuild what the barbarians had laid waste, not a delusion that the history of the last decade hadn’t happened:
Let thy [Rome’s] dire woe be blotted and forgot;
Let thy contempt for suffering heal thy wounds . . .
Things that refuse to sink, still stronger rise,
And higher from the lowest depths rebound;
And, as the torch reversed new strength attains,
Thou, brighter from thy fall, to heaven aspirest!
Quote ID: 5596
Time Periods: 15
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 411/412
Section: 1B,2E6
The Life includes a much quoted but nonetheless fantastic vignette of the last moments of one particular unit of frontier garrison troops.At the time when the Roman Empire was still in existence, the soldiers of many towns were supported by public money for their watch along the wall [the Danube frontier]. When this arrangement ceased, the military formations were dissolved and, at the same time, the wall was allowed to break down. The garrison of Batavis, however, still held out. Some of these had gone to Italy to fetch for their comrades the last payment, but on their way they had been routed by the barbarians, and nobody knew. One day when St. Severinus [PJ: died 482] was reading in his cell, he suddenly closed the book and began to sigh heavily and to shed tears. He told those who were present to go speedily to the river [the Inn], which, as he declared was at that hour red with human blood. And at that moment, the news arrived that the bodies of the said soldiers had been washed ashore by the current of the river.
As with all the episodes in the Life, this is impossible to date precisely. But when central funds began to run out, the surviving garrison troops just disbanded themselves.
Pastor John’s note: But who were these “barbarians”?
Quote ID: 5600
Time Periods: 5
Gladiators
Michael Grant
Book ID: 97 Page: 85
Section: 1B,4B
Of the Colosseum they said in the eighth century, ‘As long as it stands, Rome will stand; when it falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall.’ The Colosseum has often been raided, but has never fallen.
Quote ID: 2490
Time Periods: 17
Horace, Epistles, LCL 194: Horace
Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough
Book ID: 434 Page: 409
Section: 1B
Greece, the captive, made her savage victor captive, and brought the arts into rustic Latium.
Quote ID: 8777
Time Periods: 0
Inferno of Dante, The
Robert Pinsky
Book ID: 235 Page: 155
Section: 1B
Canto XV lines 72-73In which the sacred seed is living yet
Of Romans who remained when Florence went wrong,
Quote ID: 5877
Time Periods: 1
Inferno of Dante, The
Robert Pinsky
Book ID: 235 Page: 367
Section: 1B
Canto XXXIV lines 61-66“That soul,” my master said, “who suffers most,
Is Judas Iscariot; head locked inside,
He flails his legs. Of the other two, who twist
With their heads down, the black mouth holds the shade
Of Brutus: writhing, but not a word will he scream;
Cassius is the sinewy one on the other side.
Quote ID: 5889
Time Periods: 17
Leo the Great, NPNF2 Vol. 12, Leo the Great, Gregory the Great
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 676 Page: 195
Section: 1B
Peter’s holy See thou didst attain a wider sway by the worship of God than by earthly government. For although thou wert increased by many victories, and didst extend thy rule on land and sea, yet what thy toils in war subdued is less than what the peace of Christ has conquered.
Leo the Great, Sermon LXXXIII.i.
Quote ID: 9707
Time Periods: 147
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 153
Section: 1B
“Obdurate wrench! too fierce, too fell to moveThe least kind yearnings of a mother’s love!
No Knight are you, as having no estate;
Will you hear all? Yours is an exile’s fate.
No more the happy Golden Age we see;
The Iron’s come, and sure to last with thee.
Quote ID: 6208
Time Periods: 1
Livy - The Early History of Rome, Penguin Classics Books 1-5
Aubrey De Selincourt (translated), R. M. Ogilvie (Introduction)
Book ID: 314 Page: 54
Section: 1B
Rome had originally been founded by force of arms; the new king now prepared to give the community a second beginning, this time on the solid basis of law and religious observance.
Quote ID: 9116
Time Periods: 1
Livy - The Early History of Rome, Penguin Classics Books 1-5
Aubrey De Selincourt (translated), R. M. Ogilvie (Introduction)
Book ID: 314 Page: 56
Section: 1B
Once Rome’s neighbours had considered her not so much as a city as an armed camp in their midst threatening the general peace; now they came to revere her so profoundly as a community dedicated wholly to worship, that the mere thought of offering her violence seemed to them like sacrilege.PJ fn reference: Livy, The Early History of Rome, 1.21.
Quote ID: 7645
Time Periods: 01
Livy - The Early History of Rome, Penguin Classics Books 1-5
Aubrey De Selincourt (translated), R. M. Ogilvie (Introduction)
Book ID: 314 Page: 56
Section: 1B
By these means the whole population of Rome was given a great many new things to think about and attend to, with the result that everybody was diverted from military preoccupations. They now had serious matters to consider; and believing, as they now did, that the heavenly powers took part in human affairs, they became so much absorbed in the cultivation of religion and so deeply imbued with the sense of their religious duties, that the sanctity of an oath had more power to control their lives than the fear of punishment for lawbreaking.“Thus two successive kings each, though in opposite ways, added strength to the growing city: Romulus by war, Numa by peace. Romulus ruled thirty-seven years, Numa forty-three. When Numa died, Rome by the twin disciplines of peace and war was as eminent for self-mastery as for military power.”
PJ fn reference: Livy, The Early History of Rome, 1.21.
Quote ID: 9117
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 5
Section: 1B
It is the privilege of antiquity to mingle divine things with human, and so to add dignity to the beginning of cities; and if any people ought to be allowed to consecrate their origins and refer them to a divine source, so great is the military glory of the Roman People that when they profess that their Father and the Father of their Founder was none other than Mars, the nations of the earth may well submit to this also with as good a grace as they submit to Rome’s dominion.
Quote ID: 8142
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 65
Section: 1B
When Numa’s name had been proposed, the Roman senators…….
…unanimously voted to offer the sovereignty to Numa Pompilius.
Quote ID: 8143
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 73
Section: 1B
Not only had they something to occupy their minds, but their constant preoccupation with the gods, now that it seemed to them that concern for human affairs was felt by the heavenly powers, had so tinged the hearts of all with piety, that the nation was governed by its regard for promises and oaths, rather than by the dread of laws and penalties.
Quote ID: 8146
Time Periods: 01
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 73
Section: 1B
…the neighbouring peoples also, who had hitherto considered that it was no city but a camp that had been set up in their midst, as a menace to the general peace, came to feel such reverence for them, that they thought it sacrilege to injure a nation so wholly bent upon the worship of the gods.
Quote ID: 8147
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 75
Section: 1B
Thus two successive kings in different ways, one by war, the other by peace, promoted the nation’s welfare. Romulus ruled thirty-seven years, Numa forty-three. The state was not only strong, but was also well organized in the arts both of war and peace.
Quote ID: 8148
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 209
Section: 1B
Against Tarquinius the gates were closed and exile was pronounced. The Liberator of the City was received with rejoicings in the camp, and the sons of the king were driven out of it.
Quote ID: 8149
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 114: Livy I, Books 1-2
B. O. Foster, Trans.
Book ID: 356 Page: 215
Section: 1B
Tarquinius was expelled, chiefly through the efforts of Brutus, after a reign of 25 years. Then the first consuls were chosen, Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus.
Quote ID: 8150
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 172: Livy III, Books 5-7
B. O. Foster, trans.
Book ID: 408 Page: 5
Section: 1B
And so the nation which was devoted beyond all others to religious rites (and all the more because it excelled in the art of observing them)….Livy 5.1
Quote ID: 9114
Time Periods: 01
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 172: Livy III, Books 5-7
B. O. Foster, trans.
Book ID: 408 Page: 73
Section: 1B
A vast throng went out, and filled the camp. Then the dictator, after taking the auspices, came forth and commanded the troops to arm. “Under thy leadership,” he cried, “Pythian Apollo, and inspired by the will, I advance to destroy the city of Veii, and to thee I promise a tithe of its spoils. At the same time I beseech thee, Queen Juno, that dwellest now in Veii, to come with us, when we have gotten the victory, to our City—soon to be thine, too—that a temple meet for thy majesty may there receive thee.”
Quote ID: 8536
Time Periods: 0
Livy, History of Rome, LCL 396: Livy XIII, Books 43-45
Translated by Alfred C. Schlesinger
Book ID: 315 Page: 93
Section: 1B
“How hateful all these actions are to the gods also,” said the consul, ‘Perseus will discover in the outcome of his enterprises; for the gods support the cause of duty and faithfulness, the qualities by which the Roman people has climbed to so great an eminence.”
Quote ID: 7646
Time Periods: 0
Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 427 Page: 145
Section: 1B
And Simon said, “……..
Listen Peter. The Romans have understanding, they are no fools.”
Quote ID: 8693
Time Periods: 456
Lucretius, On The Nature Of Things, LCL 181: Lucretius
Lucretius
Book ID: 162 Page: 135
Section: 1B,4B
First, since I teach concerning mighty things,And go right on to loose from round the mind
The tightened coils of dread religion.
Quote ID: 3424
Time Periods: 0
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 104
Section: 1B,4B
Developments leading up to the establishment of the Imperial cult may be briefly told. The Roman Republic was famed for ‘religio’. Both foreign observers and citizens testify to the pride felt by the Roman governing classes for their devotion towards their ancestral religion. To Polybius, writing in Rome in circa 150 B.C., religious devotion was the one outstanding mark of superiority which Rome possessed over the Greeks of his day.
Quote ID: 3181
Time Periods: 0
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 568
Section: 1B
Source: trans. From Middle English by M.A. Stouck, The South English Legendary, ed. Charlotte D’Evelvn and Anna J. Mill, EETS 235 (rpt. 1967; London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1956), I, 1-3 and 340-348.
Quote ID: 3257
Time Periods: 7
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 569
Section: 1B,2C
In this way our sweet Lord was born on earth,To begin Christianity,
Quote ID: 3258
Time Periods: 17
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 569
Section: 1B,2C
He was twenty-nine years old before he armed himself for it,And started to do battle for Christendom.
Quote ID: 3259
Time Periods: 17
Medieval Saints: A Reader
Edited by Mary-Ann Stouck
Book ID: 151 Page: 571
Section: 1B,2C
Well ought we to love Christendom that has been bought at such a price,With the heart’s blood of our Lord, pierced by the spear.
Quote ID: 3260
Time Periods: 17
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 47
Section: 1B
…my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.
Quote ID: 7971
Time Periods: 12
Minor Latin Poets, LCL 484: Minor Latin Poets II
Minor Latin Poets
Book ID: 153 Page: 771
Section: 1B,2E3
Rutilius NamatianusA Voyage Home to Gaul Book I
Line 79-80
Thee, O goddess, thee every nook of the Roman dominion celebrates, beneath a peaceful yoke holding necks unenslaved.
Quote ID: 3275
Time Periods: 15
Minor Latin Poets, LCL 484: Minor Latin Poets II
Minor Latin Poets
Book ID: 153 Page: 771
Section: 1B,2E3
Rutilius NamatianusA Voyage Home to Gaul Book I
Line 89-90
By wars for justifiable cause and peace imposed without arrogance thy renowned glory reached highest wealth.
Quote ID: 3276
Time Periods: 15
Minor Latin Poets, LCL 484: Minor Latin Poets II
Minor Latin Poets
Book ID: 153 Page: 775
Section: 1B,2E3
Rutilius NamatianusA Voyage Home to Gaul Book I
Line 139-140
That same thing builds thee up which wrecks all other realms: the law of thy new birth is the power to thrive upon thine ills.
Quote ID: 3277
Time Periods: 17
Minucius Felix, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
C. Francis Higgins
Book ID: 600 Page: ?
Section: 1B,4A
In Octavius: In his dialogue, Minucius displays an antipathy towards the Roman policy of expansion: “all that the Romans hold, occupy, and possess is the spoil of outrage” (XXV.5)
Quote ID: 9331
Time Periods: 12
Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Book ID: 332 Page: 335
Section: 1B
He may be a Theodorus of Cyrene,{a} or an earlier Diagoras of Melos, called Atheist by antiquity, who both alike, by asserting that there were no gods, cut at the root of all the fear and reverence by which mankind is governed….
Quote ID: 8086
Time Periods: 2
Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Book ID: 332 Page: 391
Section: 1B
The Romans then have grown great not by religion, but by unpunished sacrilege; . . .
Quote ID: 8097
Time Periods: 12
Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Book ID: 165 Page: 208
Section: 1B,4B
The enormous difference between past and present can be seen in the fact that what Rome once extorted from us at sword-point to satisfy her own extravagance, now she contributes with us for the good of the state we share.. . . .
If at that time someone, overcome by the burden of his sufferings, abandoned his country along with its enemies, to what strange land could he, a stranger, go? What people, who, in the main, were his enemies, could he, an enemy, ask for pity? Whom could he, a man who had not been invited in as an ally, nor attracted by a commonality of laws, nor feeling secure in religion’s communion, trust on first meeting them?
Quote ID: 3476
Time Periods: 45
Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Book ID: 165 Page: 209/210
Section: 1B,4B
However, when I flee at the first sign of any sort of trouble, I do this secure in the knowledge that I have a place to which I can flee, for I encounter my country, religion, and laws everywhere......
Because I come as a Roman and Christian to Christians and Romans, I find my laws and nation in the broad sweep of the east, in the north’s expanses, in the southern reaches, and in the safe refuges of the great islands. {16} I do not fear my host’s gods, I do not fear that his religion will bring my death, I have no land to dread where the resident is allowed to do what he will and the rover not allowed to ask for what he needs: a place where my host’s law is not my own. The One God, who is loved and feared by all, has ordained in these times when He wished to be acknowledged, this united kingdom. Everywhere the same laws, subject to the One God, hold sway. Wherever I should a arrive as a stranger, I have no fear of being suddenly attacked like a friendless man. For, as I have said, as a Roman among Romans, as a Christian among Christians, and as a man among men, I can call on the state’s laws, a common knowledge of religion, and our common nature. For the short time that I am here.
Quote ID: 3477
Time Periods: 45
Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Book ID: 165 Page: 262
Section: 1B
10. But in case anyone thinks that this lucid reasoning is wrong and gives their own gods the credit, saying that they first carefully chose them, and then enticed them in with lavish worship with the result that through them they obtained for themselves this great and glorious empire – 11. for they boast that they became the gods’ favourites by performing the best sorts of religious rite and that after these were banned and abandoned, they then left after their shines and altars were abandoned, all the Gods through whom this empire has stood. {9}
Quote ID: 8396
Time Periods: ?
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: xi
Section: 1B
There are no pagan references to Christianity in the first century of the empire and very few in the second.
Quote ID: 3603
Time Periods: ?
Paganism and Christianity 100-425 C.E. a Sourcebook
Ramsay MacMullen and Eugene N. Lane
Book ID: 170 Page: 160/161
Section: 1B
13.5 Tacitus’s Idea of the Jews….
Histories (5.3ff.)
….
Most writers, however, agree in stating that once a disease, which horribly disfigured the body, broke out over Egypt, that king Bocchoris, seeking remedy, consulted the oracle of Hammon, and was bidden to cleanse his realm, and to convey into some foreign land this race detested by the gods. The people, who had been collected after diligent search, finding themselves left in a desert, sat for the most part in a stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moses by name, warned them not to look for any relief from god or man, forsaken as they were of both, but to trust to themselves, taking for their heaven-sent leader that man who should first help them to be quit of their present misery.
Pastor John notes: John’s note: ha!
….
Nothing, however, distressed them so much as the scarcity of water, and they had sunk ready to perish in all directions over the plain, when a herd of wild asses was seen to retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees.
….
In their holy place they have consecrated an image of the animal by whose guidance they found deliverance from their long and thirsty wanderings.
Quote ID: 3687
Time Periods: ?
Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire
Walter Woodburn Hyde
Book ID: 172 Page: 4/5
Section: 1B
But patriotism outlived these momentous changes and was still strong to the end of the fourth century as we see from the verses of the last of the classical Latin poets, Claudian of Alexandria, who dies under Honorius (ca. 408):Rome, Rome alone has found the spell to charm
The tribes that bowed beneath her conquering arm;
Has given one name to the whole human race,
And clasped and sheltered them in fond embrace;
Mother, not mistress; called her foe her son;
And by soft ties made distant countries one.
This to her peaceful scepter all men owe—
That through the nations, whereso’er we go
Strangers, we find a fatherland. Our home
We change at will; we count it sport to roam
Through distant Thule, or with sails unfurled
Seek the most drear recesses of the world.
Though we may tread Rhone’s or Orontes’ shore,
Yet are we all one nation evermore. {4}
Quote ID: 8400
Time Periods: ?
Perth Assembly
David Calderwood Edited by Greg Fox
Book ID: 177 Page: 29
Section: 1B
1. The articles proposed, if they be concluded, they do innovate and bring under the slander of change the estate of this Church…….Wherefore consequently a change that is not profitable, is noisome through fruitless perturbation.
Quote ID: 3915
Time Periods: 7
Pliny, Natural History, LCL 418: Pliny VIII, Books 28-32
Translated by W. H. S. Jones
Book ID: 358 Page: 17
Section: 1B
Why do we meet the evil eye by a special attitude of prayer, some invoking the Greek Nemesis, for which purpose there is at Rome an image of the goddess on the Capitol, although she has no Latin name?
Quote ID: 8152
Time Periods: 0
Pliny, Natural History, LCL 418: Pliny VIII, Books 28-32
Translated by W. H. S. Jones
Book ID: 358 Page: 21
Section: 1B
These customs were established by those of old, who believed that gods are present on all occasions and at all times….
Quote ID: 8153
Time Periods: 01
Polybius, The Histories, LCL 128: Polybius 1, Books 1-2
Translated by W. R. Paton
Book ID: 422 Page: 17
Section: 1B,4B
The Romans had ere this reduced the Etruscans and Samnites and had vanquished the Italian Celts in many battles, and they now for the first time attacked the rest of Italy not as if it were a foreign country, but as if it rightfully belonged to them.
Quote ID: 8619
Time Periods: 0
Polybius, The Histories, LCL 128: Polybius 1, Books 1-2
Translated by W. R. Paton
Book ID: 422 Page: 39
Section: 1B
…if History is stripped of her truth all that is left is but an idle tale.
Quote ID: 8620
Time Periods: 01
Polybius, The Histories, LCL 138: Polybius III, Books 5-8
W. R. Paton
Book ID: 357 Page: 437
Section: 1B
But the quality in which the Roman commonwealth is most distinctly superior is in my opinion the nature of their religious convictions. I believe that it is the very thing which among other peoples is an object of reproach, I mean superstition,{72} which maintains the cohesion of the Roman State. These matters are clothed in such pomp and introduced to such an extent into their public and private life that nothing could exceed it, a fact which will surprise many.
Quote ID: 8151
Time Periods: 0
Prudentius
M. P. Cunningham, New Catholic Encyclopedia
Book ID: 597 Page: ?
Section: 1B
“Prudentius saw Christianity as involving not the overthrow of Rome and its institutions but rather the fulfillment of Rome’s essential civilizing function, since paganism and barbarism are frequently opposed to Christianity and civilization. Just as works of sculpture are begrimed with soot and grease through the rituals of ancient religious sacrifice but can be made pure and clean by being washed and scrubbed, revealing themselves as works of art and beauty, so also could Roman institutions, by Christianization and baptism, achieve a more adequate realization of their essential purpose and function in the design of Providence.”*John’s note: Prudentius (348–c. 410).*
Quote ID: 9327
Time Periods: 45
Rise of Western Christendom, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 265 Page: 271
Section: 1B
Cosmas’ Christian Topography (written in around 550) was an optimistic tract.….
Cosmas was fortified in these views by a sense of divine providence. Because it was the empire in which Christ had been born, the Roman Empire was destined to last forever. He applied to it the prophecy of the Book of Daniel: The God of Heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed (Daniel 7:14).
“The empire of the Romans thus participates in the dignity of the kingdom of Christ, seeing that it transcends as far as can be… any other power and will remain unconquered until the end of time.”
Quote ID: 6723
Time Periods: 16
Rome 1300: On The Path of the Pilgrim
Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias
Book ID: 189 Page: 63
Section: 1B
Following the ancient ceremony of parading a portrait of the Roman emperor through the city, however, the Acheropita has, throughout its existence, also been removed from the pope’s inner sanctum once a year and carried in procession through the streets of Rome on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin.
Quote ID: 4191
Time Periods: 17
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 85/86
Section: 1B,4B
Part of the message delivered by Gregory follows. It was from Pope Pelagius to Tiberius (reigning as emperor in Constantinople:“May God bid the Emperor come to our aid at the earliest possible moment, in the perils that are now closing in upon us, before the army of that impious nation, the Lombards, shall have seized the lands that still form part of the Empire.”
Rome was still part of the Empire, and still felt itself, although neglected, an essential if despairing element in the constitution of the entire civilized world. Something of the anguish felt at the blows inflicted against the state are seen in the inscriptions incorporated in the few works of adornment that Pelagius could afford to St. Peter’s:
“May the Roman sceptre be guided by the divine hand so that under the Empire the true faith may have liberty;”
“May the enemies of the Roman name be vanquished throughout the entire world by the virtue of St. Peter, and peace be assured to the nations and to the Catholic faith.”
Quote ID: 4292
Time Periods: 6
Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 182
Section: 1B
. . .a faith that was built largely upon patristic commentaries to its text,...
Quote ID: 4358
Time Periods: 2
Rome Triumphant: How The Empire Celebrated Its Victories
Robert Payne
Book ID: 192 Page: 8
Section: 1B
THE STRONGEST POISON EVER KNOWN CAME FROM CAESAR’S LAUREL CROWN. WILLIAM BLAKE, Auguries of Innocence
Quote ID: 4421
Time Periods: 14
Sallust, The War with Catiline, LCL 116: Sallust I
Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Revised by John T. Ramsey.
Book ID: 317 Page: 39
Section: 1B
It is worthwhile, when you have acquainted yourself with houses and villas built on the scale of cities, to visit the temples of the gods fashioned by our forefathers, most reverent mortals.
Quote ID: 7699
Time Periods: 0
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 257
Section: 1B,3A1A
62-65 A.D.…but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, they first arrested all who pleaded guilty; …
Quote ID: 7524
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 263
Section: 1B,3A1A
…the lust of dominion inflames the heart more than any other passion.
Quote ID: 7525
Time Periods: 0
Tertullian, ANF Vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian
Edited by Philip Schaff and Alan Menzies
Book ID: 678 Page: 39
Section: 1B
I shall not avoid the controversy which is invited by the groundless assertion of those who maintain that, as a reward of their singular homage to religion, the Romans have been raised to such heights of power as to have become masters of the world; and that so certainly divine are the beings they worship, that those prosper beyond all others, who beyond all others honor them.PJ footnote reference: Tertullian, Apology, XXV.
Quote ID: 9722
Time Periods: 1
Tertullian, ANF Vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian
Edited by Philip Schaff and Alan Menzies
Book ID: 678 Page: 40
Section: 1B
their greatness was not the result of their religion. Indeed, how could religion make a people great who have owed their greatness to their religion? For, if I am not mistaken, kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars….PJ footnote reference: Tertullian, Apology, XXV.
Quote ID: 9723
Time Periods: 1
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 141
Section: 1B,4B
chapter XXV
So the Romans were not “religious” before they were great; and, it follows, they are not great because they were religious.
Quote ID: 2963
Time Periods: 23
Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 154
Section: 1B
chapter XXXII
[Footnote d] Cf. 2Thess. ii. 6-8. Tertullian elsewhere (Ad Scapulam, 2) indicates the belief that the Roman Empire is to last as long as the world. It is to be noted that, apart from the author of the canonical Apocalypse, the early Christian. . . .
Quote ID: 2964
Time Periods: 12
Twelve Tables, The, LCL 329: Remains of Old Latin III
Edited and translated by E. H. Warmington Vol. 3
Book ID: 305 Page: 493
Section: 1B,3B
Nocturnal meetings not permitted:Porcius Latro: We learn in the Twelve Tables that provision was made that no person shall hold meetings by night in the city.
PJ: Clubs
Quote ID: 7537
Time Periods: 12
End of quotes