Quotes from Anthony Everitt

it was unnerving that a stronghold of barbarism should lie so dangerously close to civilized Italy.

It is the judge's responsibility always to seek the truth in trials; while it is the advocate's to make out a case for what is probable, even if it doesn't precisely correspond to the truth.

What he wants is hard to say, but when he wants it, he wants it badly.

So the final step would be to invade Germany and create a new frontier at the river Elbe.

He wanted writers like Titus Livius (in English, Livy) to speak their minds on this subject without fear or favor.

Octavian's most urgent task was to make his position official.

He went straight to Antony to ask for the money. He found him in his garden

the writing of a monumental history of Rome, from the foundation to 9 B.C.

From Antony's point of view, the arrival of Caesar's heir was an annoying distraction.

It is as if nothing had ever happened on that bloodstained shore. Had Helen been worth it?

was kept waiting in an anteroom and was admitted only after a long delay.

Something more serious, though, was taking place in his personality: a gradual and growing loss of focus.

Everywhere the land was covered by thick and tangled forests and there were few tilled fields.

When things are as bad as they can be, fate finds a way to deliver another blow.

Fox as Hedgehog

One of the consuls in 41 B.C. was Lucius Antonius, Mark Antony's brother

This would eliminate the salient and create a border roughly in a straight line between the North Sea and the Black Sea.

Direct taxation for Roman citizens living in Italy was abolished.

who decided to launch a military challenge against Octavian.

It would have been intended as a broad framework to guide future military activity, if not as a precisely worked-out blueprint.

During one never-to-be-forgotten confrontation over a debt crisis in 493 BC, the entire population withdrew its labor. The plebs evacuated Rome and encamped on a neighboring hill. It was an inspired tactic. The Patricians were left in charge—but of empty streets.

It would have been intended as a broad framework to guide future military activity

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.

it is not too fanciful to guess that the plan's inventor was the man