Quotes from Roderick Beaton

was forbidden throughout the empire to produce or to display images of Christ

Thebes had gained the upper hand, for joining forces with the enslaved helots of Messenia

into the Aegean by order of the Senate in 67 BCE with five hundred ships and over a hundred thousand

compelling the Spartans to grant them their liberty as an autonomous city-state?

troops. Not only did he destroy the pirates' bases

Others may have been burnt alive.

This radical new policy provoked the first serious disagreement between the churches of Constantinople and Rome

Pompey went on to roll up what little was left of the Seleucid kingdom of Asia three years later

It has always been the way of the world that the weaker is kept down by the stronger.

The Spartans would never afterwards sign up to any treaty that included recognition of Messene as a free polis.

Isocrates was ninety years old in 346 BCE but as active an opinion-former as ever.

Among the last words that Isocrates ever wrote, before his death at the age of ninety-eight

One by one, the great cities of the east were either sacked by the Persians or surrendered:

Sparta would become increasingly marginalised in Greek affairs from this time on.

providing the leadership that had eluded both Athens and Sparta for so long.

much of Bulgaria, Albania, the Republic of North Macedonia, and all the European part of Turkey.

The situation facing Byzantium in the mid-1090s was not so much desperate as catastrophic.

unite all the Greeks and lead them in avenging the wrongs inflicted by the Persians

In the spring of 336 BCE, three of his generals led a force across the strait of the Dardanelles from Europe to Asia.

Now the decision was taken to abandon the defence of the European provinces altogether

For the time being, the newcomers could bask with impunity.

Executive authority was devolved to the Boule, or Council, of five hundred

The previous year, Philip had married for the seventh time

not even this was enough to prevent a Persian expeditionary force from fighting its way through Anatolia towards the capital in 615.