Quotes from Anthony Everitt

Treaty or no treaty, here was an opportunity to dispose of Sextus.

the Romans were regarded as unwanted occupiers and a plot was formed to entrap and destroy the legions.

following him during the years when he won one victory after another over incompetently led Roman legions.

The ringleader was a young Germanic chieftain, known to us only by his Romanized name of Arminius.

the myth was a tenacious plant

terrible penalty exacted on the survivors of Spartacus' final defeat: thousands were crucified

I have as warm a regard for him as you do. The fact remains that with all his patriotism, he can be a political liability. He speaks in the Senate as if he were living in Plato's Republic instead of Romulus's cesspool.

The plot was betrayed, but Varus could not bring himself to distrust his friendly Germans

Octavius was already married to a woman of whom history has recorded nothing except for her name, Ancharia.

Then an astonishing thing occurred. In the early afternoon, the wind shifted

Believing in Arminius' honesty, he took the bait, gathered his scattered forces, and marched off

Her family was of obscure origin;

She would have been no help to an ambitious young man's career

Arminius had chosen the location for the ambush with great care.

he married Atia, a member of the Julian family.

A level pathway led through woods, running between a steep hill and a great bog.

The Julii traced their ancestry to before the city's foundation, traditionally set at 753 B.C.

They spoke of training public speakers under five traditional headings: inventio, seeking out ideas or lines of argument; collocatio, structure and organization; elocutio, diction and style; actio, physical delivery; and memoria, memory (speeches could last for hours and as they were spoken not read they had to be learned by heart).

Of the three legions' fifteen thousand men, few survived to tell the tale.

The Forum was the city's political, commercial, and legal heart, but it was also its spiritual center, a space more sacred than the city itself.

Cicero could not boast a long line of noble ancestors, as his colleagues and competitors constantly did

Victims' heads were nailed to trees in the forest as a warning

because I believe that each generation should have a chance to see a giant figure of the past from the perspective of its own time and circumstances.

The "palace" took up an entire fifth of the city