Quotes from Anthony Everitt

The sage's point was that life was uncertain and no one should be counted happy till the day of his death.

Then his colleague Pedius won approval for a bill that made Caesar's killing a crime

As many as three hundred senators were butchered—among them Cicero

Rome's ancient ruling class was decimated, and surviving nobiles were scattered to all corners of the empire

government by three men did not promise stability.

To attain this objective, they would have to draw most of Sextus' navy into an engagement in the seas off northern Sicily.

KILLING FIELDS 43–42 B.C.

Greeks were a religious people and there is little reason to suppose that the priests at Delphi were regularly guilty of conscious deceit or fakery.

Augustus' signet ring was removed from his finger. His eyes were closed.

In this way he would avoid the humiliation of falling into Caesar's hands and, worse, having to endure a pardon.

The statesman and moralist Cato the Censor defined an orator as "a good man skilled in speech.

AFTER PHILIPPI, NEARLY ALL THE men who had assassinated Julius Caesar were dead, and so was the Republic.

Tiberius, being his closest relative, called him by name and said, "Vale," "Farewell.

As so often happens in human affairs, fate intervened at the moment of victory and destroyed the best-laid plans.

As Cicero drily put it: "We must apply to our fellow-countrymen for virtue, but for our culture to the Greeks.

pay the ferryman to carry Augustus' spirit across the river Styx to the underworld.

Roman survivors of an ambush "had hard work to withstand the enemy's onslaught till nightfall;

in the night, seeing that all hope was gone, every single man committed suicide.

Now that Livia had become Julia Augusta, she had an official constitutional position

Officially, a legion had a strength of between four thousand and six thousand men

It was divided into ten cohorts, which were in turn subdivided into six centuries commanded by centurions;

Now he proclaimed himself the son of Neptune, took to wearing a dark blue cloak (instead of a commander's regulation purple)

Augustus' body was laid on a pyre in the ustrinum, or crematorium, next to the mausoleum.

Eighteen cities in Italy were marked down for land confiscation and freeholders were summarily dispossessed.