Home > Work > Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
1 " We always want what we’re not allowed. "
― Tom Holland , Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
2 " While he may forget that he is Caesar, I never forget that I am Caesar’s daughter. "
3 " JULIA: Oldest daughter of Julia and Agrippa. Owner of the smallest dwarf in Rome. Exiled in AD 8. "
4 " Harmony enables small things to flourish – while the lack of it destroys the great. "
5 " Time erodes both steel and stone.’ So Ovid had written in the months before his death. "
6 " So highly did the Roman people prize this ideal of the common good that their name for it – res publica – served as shorthand for their entire system of government. "
7 " Prohibitions, trust me, only encourage bad behaviour. "
8 " Men are all such fashion-victims these days that, really, we can hardly blame women for feeling the pressure. "
9 " the complete lack of interest he had always shown in forcing himself on male partners marked Claudius out as a true eccentric. Not that people particularly disapproved – for it was the way of the world that different men had different foibles, and just as some might prefer blondes and others brunettes, so were there a few who only ever fucked females, and a few who only ever fucked males. "
10 " These are the objects of my prayers. A plot of land – not so very large. A garden, a spring beside the house, its water ever-flowing, and a small wood on a slope. "
11 " Set strictures on a person all you like, but the mind remains adulterous. "
12 " You cannot regulate desire. "
13 " Here, amid the murk of such contradictory opinions, was ample opportunity for Augustus to consolidate his position yet further. Who better qualified than the Restorer of the Republic, after all, to realise the full potential of hypocrisy? "
14 " We always want what we’re not allowed.’20 Ovid, in offering this sage observation, was putting his finger on a mocking truth. Forbidden fruit tasted the sweetest. ‘Prohibitions, trust me, only encourage bad behaviour. "
15 " Rome, over the years, had measurably benefited from the influx of foreign talent. "
16 " Beautiful, dignified and pathetic, she was precisely the kind of woman whom the Roman people loved. "
17 " When Nero, with a casual quip, declared ‘mushrooms to be the food of the gods, since it was by means of a mushroom that Claudius has become a god’,66 it "
