THE FIVE GOOD EMPERORS
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
— Edward Gibbon
THE ARCH OF JANUS, OSTIA ANTICA, THEN HOME
It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.
— Carson McCullers
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS - PART III
When Gracchus wanted to be reelected as tribune, he was killed on the Capitol by the optimates, led by Publius Cornelius Nasica. Gracchus was first hit by a piece of a chair, and with those who perished in this fight, he was thrown in the river, without funeral.
— Livy
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS - PART II
For now there sprang up in the palace of the kings of Rome a monstrous growth of wickedness, to the end, it may well be believed, that the people might, for hatred of kingship and its way, come the earlier to love liberty.
— Livy
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS - PART I
Octavius … set himself in opposition to Tiberius and staved off the passage of the law.
— Plutarch
ROME: A BRIEF CIVICS LESSON
Rome has grown since its humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness.
— Livy
NOTABLE WOMEN OF ANCIENT ROME
One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress.
— Mary Beard