Quotes from Terry Jones

People associated their emperor with a scale of horror fully comparable with Auschwitz – and perhaps worse. They.,were prepared to believe that living men and women nailed to posts,'•soaked in oil and set on fire were used to light a party, because the public enjoyment of torture was part of the fabric of their state. Death screams were part of the fun.

Trajan became commander of the world's largest army. It was a tradition for any new emperor to kick-start his reign with a little military adventure – and Trajan especially wasn't going to be left out. Kicking ass on the frontiers helped an emperor to stamp his authority on the Empire, built his reputation and kept the army busy. Besides, Trajan took 'delight in war'.19

The light of reason and civilization was virtually snuffed out by the Barbarian hordes who swarmed across Europe, annihilating everything the Romans had put in place, sacking Rome itself and consigning Europe to the Dark Ages. The Barbarians brought only chaos and ignorance, until the Renaissance rekindled the fires of Roman learning and art. It's a familiar story, but it's codswallop.

Oddly, none of the chroniclers who describe this 'sack of Rome' seem at all interested in the fact that what was being taken had actually been brought to the city as loot in the first place. And whereas the Romans had destroyed the places from which they took their plunder, not a single building in Rome was destroyed by the Vandals.

Criminal law, in which the state detects the offence, takes the accused to court and demands and imposes punishment, simply did not exist in early medieval society.

But Decebalus was not one to be cowed easily, and still showed his spirit by taunting the Romans. As Trajan reached the Iron Gates, Decebalus sent him a warning inscribed rather surprisingly, according to Dio Cassius, on 'a large mushroom'. This was probably a mushroom-shaped dish used for ritual purposes, and sadly not the only instance in history of diplomatic correspondence by fungi. The inscription advised Trajan to turn back and 'keep the peace'.22

world of elliptical allusions and allegory. And a lot of what they wrote was designed

Robbers of the world; having exhausted the land by their universal plunder, they rifle the deep. If their enemy is rich, they are rapacious; if he is poor, they lust for power; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. Robbery, slaughter and plunder they misname 'empire'; they make a wilderness and call it peace.45

Labour had become expensive and your average lord could now make more money out of sheep than he could out of his peasants. There was more wool on sheep, for a start, and you could also eat them – which is possible with peasants but socially taboo – so the lords started to throw the expensive, troublesome and uneatable peasants off their land and replace them with sheep. The

Today we expect but one thing from our doctors: to make us better. The medieval doctor was trying to do a lot more than that. He was taking care of the soul as well as the body. Unlike modern doctors he did not try to stop a patient dying at all costs . . . rather, if death seemed inevitable, he was duty-bound to try and help him or her die in the best possible way for their immortal soul.

From 235, over a period of 50 years, 49 men were proclaimed emperor by different groups of soldiers. We know that at least 25 of them were killed, not counting the three who committed suicide and one who seems to have been struck by lightning. In fact, apart from Gothicus, only one of them is known to have died a natural death – Valerian, who held on to the job for seven years and was safely locked away as a prisoner of the Persians when he expired in 260.

Oddly enough, fear seems to have played a key role in the history of Rome, and despite the might and power of the Romans, there is something curiously desperate about their whole story. It's almost as if the grandeur of Rome was born of paranoia and desperation.

The world of the Druids had been destroyed and would not be revived. But the power of Rome was so much more brutal, more inhuman, more oppressive that it would not need an invasion to get rid of it. It withered because it was so hated by the people who had to endure it. And because most of them saw no point to it any more.

They agreed to pay 5000 lb of gold, 30,000 of silver, 3000 scarlet sheepskins (the Goths must have been a very well turned out army) and 3000 lb of pepper (they were already, of course, well seasoned).

I'm cheerfully optimistic about life. Optimism is very important!

Every age sort of has its own history. History is really the stories that we retell to ourselves to make them relevant to every age. So we put our own values and our own spin on it.

The funny thing about history is that we imagine that people didn't laugh in the old days, but of course they did, at stupid things.