Section: 3B2 - Miscellaneous.
Number of quotes: 14
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
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
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
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
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
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
Bronze head from a statue of the Emperor Hadrian
Khan Academy and The British Museum
Book ID: 510 Page: 1
Section: 3B2
Hadrian was the first Roman emperor to wear a full beard. This has usually been seen as a mark of his devotion to Greece and Greek culture. Hadrian openly displayed his love of Greek culture. Some of the senate scornfully referred to him as Graeculus ("the Greekling"). Beards had been a marker of Greek identity since classical times, whereas a clean-shaven look was considered more Roman. However, in the decades before Hadrian became emperor, beards had come to be worn by wealthy young Romans and seem to have been particularly prevalent in the military. Furthermore, one literary source, the Historia Augusta, claims that Hadrian wore a beard to hide blemishes on his face.*John’s note: Nero had whiskers coming down the sides of this face. Fifty years later, Hadrian sported a full beard, like Greek philosophers wore.*
Quote ID: 9119
Time Periods: 2
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 67
Section: 3B2
In actual fact, the survival of the empire, in the face of intolerable odds, is something of a miracle, and one of the most remarkable phenomena in human history. Here was a ruined unit, and out of the ruins came another, different but equally formidable, empire.Pastor John’s note: Christianity rescued it?
Quote ID: 5043
Time Periods: 56
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: xvii
Section: 3B2
The fact that the Roman empire did not collapse in the 260s or 270s AD is one of the miracles of history, {1}[Footnote 1] These fifty years have been described as the lowest point in the Roman empire, when it barely escaped complete disruption. There was a political, military, financial crisis. But there is an extraordinary lack of good contemporary literary sources, or of any ancient literary sources at all. See, in particular, A. Alfoldi, Geschichte der Weltkrise des dritten Jabrhunderts (1967), J.N. Claster, The Medieval Experience: AD 300-400 (1982), J.B. Griard, Gordianus III – Quintillus, G.C. Brower, The Decadent Emperors: Power and Depravity in Third Century Rome (1995), and, above all, E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1766-1788; and recent editions, notably by the Readers’ Subscription, and Folio Society, 1997).
Quote ID: 5012
Time Periods: 3
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 125
Section: 3B2
There is still more convincing evidence, however, of the fundamental indifference Pliny felt toward the rites while he dutifully fulfilled the outward obligations. Let us look up the letter in which he announces his recent co-option into the College of Augurs. {91} His pleasure at the honour is wholly worldly. He barely alludes to the sacred power which this dignity confers (sacerdotium plane sacrum); he does not dwell on the incomparable privilege which is to be his of interpreting the signs of the Divine Will, of instructing the magistrates and the emperor himself in the value of their auspices. On the contrary, where a pious man would have welcomed the supernatural responsibilities with jubilation, what seems to him the most enviable feature of his new post is first that it is a life appointment (insigne est quod non adimitur viventi); secondly, that it has been bestowed on him on the recommendation of Trajan; thirdly, that he has succeeded “so eminent a man as Julius Frontinus”; finally and above all, that the prince of orators, Marcus Tullius Cicero, had held the same preferment. There is no shadow of religious emotion in Pliny’s self-gratulation. It is the pleasure of a courtier, a man of the world, a scholar – not of a believer. Pliny the Younger rejoiced to have been made an augur in much the same way that a modern author feels proud to be made a member of the French Academy; if we understand him aright the official priesthoods of the Romans had become for their dignitaries varying types of “Academy.”
Quote ID: 2008
Time Periods: 12
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 126/127
Section: 3B2
By the time of the Antonines, emperor worship had become no more than a pretext for revelry, a symbol of loyalty, a constitutional, stylistic phrase.. . . .
In spite of a deliberate return to enlightened despotism, neither the jesting familiarity of Hadrian nor the self-effacement of Antoninus Pius nor the stoic resignation of Marcus Aurelius to the designs of Providence had power to rekindle in men’s hearts the emotion which the cult of the emperor had ceased to evoke.
Quote ID: 2009
Time Periods: 12
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 132
Section: 3B2
The best minds of the second century, indifferent or hostile to foreign religions, had recourse to divination without embarrassment or scepticism, and the public authorities attached so much importance to it that they prosecuted unauthorised diviners.
Quote ID: 2012
Time Periods: 2
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 355/356
Section: 4B,3B2
*John’s note: With the election of the senator Tacitius to be emperor, and then his sudden death.*
Circular epistles were sent, without delay, to all the principal cities of the empire – Treves, Milan, Aquileia, Thessalonica, Corinth, Athens, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage – to claim their obedience, and to inform them of the happy revolution which had restored the Roman senate to its ancient dignity. Two of these epistles are still extant. We likewise possess two very singular fragments of the private correspondence of the senators on this occasion. They discover the most excessive joy and the most unbounded hopes. ‘Cast away your indolence,’ it is thus that one of the senators addresses his friend, ‘emerge from your retirements of Baiae and Puteoli. Give yourself to the city, to the senate. Rome flourishes, the whole republic flourishes. Thanks to the Roman army, to an army truly Roman, at length we have recovered our just authority, the end of all our desires. We hear appeals. We appoint proconsuls, we create emperors; perhaps, too, we may restrain them – to the wise a word is sufficient.’{1} These lofty expectations were, however, soon disappointed; nor, indeed, was it possible that the armies and the provinces should long obey the luxurious and unwarlike nobles of Rome. On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.
Quote ID: 9030
Time Periods: 3
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 118
Section: 3B2
. . . for the first time in its history Christianity, by a rescript of 261, obtained the position of a religio licita.
Quote ID: 5282
Time Periods: 3
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 120
Section: 3B2
Christian writings surviving from the first and second centuries have two common characteristics: they are all written in Greek and they are relatively meagre in quantity. From the third century however the literature becomes more extensive and Latin is added to Greek as a language of theological utterance.
Quote ID: 5284
Time Periods: 123
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 10
Section: 3B2,4A
The ideology was represented in art, above all by the elimination of elements of individuality in the portraiture of the rulers. Thus in the coins of these emperors only the inscriptions indicate which of the rulers is being portrayed. The styles vary from mint to mint but the individual rulers are given identical features. {24} The quintessential imperial image of this period may be found in the three-dimensional porphyry sculptures of the four emperors, now embedded in the wall of the Church of San Marco in Venice.
Quote ID: 2133
Time Periods: 34
Lives of the Caesars: The First Part of the Augustine History, with Newly Compiled Lives of Nerva and Trajan.
Anthony Birley
Book ID: 512 Page: 57
Section: 3B2
He immersed himself rather enthusiastically in Greek studies – in fact he was so attracted in this direction that some people used to call him a ‘little Greek’.
Quote ID: 9121
Time Periods: 2
End of quotes