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Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor QUOTES

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor QUOTES

1 " Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy. The next two centuries saw a long struggle for power between a group of noble families, patricians, and ordinary citizens, plebeians, who were excluded from public office. The outcome was a apparent victory for the people, but the old aristocracy, supplemented by rich pledeian nobles, still controlled the state. What looked in many ways like democracy was, in fact, an oligarcy modified by elections. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

2 " For him, bravery was not an assertion of collective defiance and solidarity among colleagues but a solitary, obstinate act of will. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

3 " Livy’s worldview was moral and romantic, and most thinking people of his age shared it. In the preface to his magnum opus, he stated that writing history was a way of escaping the troubles of the modern world: “Of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every kind of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

4 " Turn not your country’s hand against your country’s heart! "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

5 " Perusian war proved that Antony and his supporters "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

6 " minister of culture,” Maecenas, well understood the power of literature to promote official values. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

7 " If we could get on without a wife, Romans, we would all avoid that annoyance; but since nature has ordained that we can neither live very comfortably with them nor at all without them, we must take thought for our lasting well-being rather than for the pleasure of the moment. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

8 " Augustus lacked the flair of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, but he possessed one valuable quality to which Caesar could not lay claim: patience. He had the practical common sense of an Italian country gentleman, for it was from that stock that he grew. He made haste slowly, seeking permanent solutions rather than easy answers. He did not revel in power; he sought to understand it. Plutarch has an anecdote that sums up Augustus’ approach to his responsibilities. Hearing that Alexander the Great had been at a loss about what to do next after his vast conquests, the princeps remarked: “I am surprised the king did not realize that a far harder task than winning an empire is putting it into order once you have won it. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

9 " Perhaps the most instructive aspect of Augustus’ approach to politics was his twin recognition that in the long run power was unsustainable without consent, and that consent could best be won by associating radical constitutional change with a traditional and moralizing ideology. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

10 " change his "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

11 " fresco of an actor’s mask from a room in Augustus’ house on the Palatine Hill, which may have been his bedroom. The princeps enjoyed theater and, to judge by his last words, saw himself as a performer. He asked the people around his bedside: “Have I played my part in the farce of life well enough? "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

12 " You must show yourself a man now and consider what you ought to do, and implement your plans as fortune and opportunity allow. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

13 " A.D. 15, Germanicus led an army across the Rhine and visited the battle sites where Varus lost his legions and his life. Tacitus gave an unforgettable description of the eerie scene: On the open ground were whitening bones, scattered where men had fled, heaped up where they had stood and fought back. Fragments of spears and of horses’ limbs lay there—also human heads, fastened to tree-trunks. In groves nearby were the outlandish altars at which the Germans had massacred the Roman colonels and senior company-commanders. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

14 " met it with calm decisiveness. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

15 " If I have pleased you, kindly signify Appreciation with a warm goodbye. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

16 " Brutus was high-minded, an intellectual who took ideas seriously. He saw the assassination of Caesar as a sacrifice rather than a political act. He was a man with “a singularly gentle nature,” who feared civil war almost (although not quite) as much as tyranny. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

17 " O wretched valour, you were but a name, And yet I worshipped you as real indeed; But now it seems you were but Fortune’s slave. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

18 " According to Plutarch, Cleopatra and Antony now dissolved their celebrated Society of Inimitable Livers and instituted another, which was at least its equal in elegance, luxury and extravagance, and which they called the Order of the Inseparable in Death. Their friends joined it on the understanding that they would end their lives together, and they set themselves to charm away the days with a succession of exquisite supper parties. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

19 " But now the idea that Rome had an imperial destiny was one of the ways by which the regime justified itself in the public mind. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

20 " Perhaps his rage expressed an unspoken, unadmitted bitterness at the truth that he had bought his high place in the world by subduing the claims of affection to the imperatives of power. "

― Anthony Everitt , Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor