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Empire (Roma, #2) QUOTES

Empire (Roma, #2) QUOTES

1 " Bears?” Epaphroditus wrinkled his nose. “Everyone knows Prometheus was tormented by vultures. Every day they tore out his entrails, and every night he was miraculously healed, so that the ordeal was endlessly repeated.”
Martial laughed. “The trainer who can induce vultures to attack on command will be able to name any price! I suspect we’ll see a lot of bears today. "

― Steven Saylor , Empire (Roma, #2)

2 " There were a great many other such tableaux. As Martial had predicted, bears featured prominently in most of them. A temple thief was made to reenact the role of the robber Laureolus, made famous by the ancient plays of Ennius and Naevius; he was nailed to a cross and then subjected to the attack of the bears. A freedman who had killed his former master was made to put on a Greek chlamys and go walking though a stage forest populated by cavorting satyrs and nymphs, like Orpheus lost in the woods; when one of the satyrs played a shrill tune on his pipes, the trees dispersed and the man was subject to an attack by bears. An arsonist was made to strap on wings in imitation of Daedalus, ascend a high platform, and then leap off; the wings actually carried him aloft for a short distance, a remarkable sight, until he plunged into an enclosure full of bears and was torn to pieces. "

― Steven Saylor , Empire (Roma, #2)

3 " Because, Lucius, without the discipline of philosophy to give rigour to their thinking, people can and will believe anything, no matter how absurd. "

― Steven Saylor , Empire (Roma, #2)