Quotes from Theodor Mommsen

If, as the emperor Augustus says, from his time the coast of the ocean from Cadiz to the mouth of the Elbe obeyed the Romans, the obedience in this corner of it was far from voluntary and little to be trusted.

Sertorius was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise of Hannibal. He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people; and even there, he was more and more compelled to renounce the offensive.

An independent state does not pay too dear a price for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures for it peace with its neighbours.

History is neither written nor made without love or hate.

The battle of Varus is an enigma, not in a military but in a political point of view - not in its course, but in its consequences.

When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes.

During the most flourishing times of Sidon and Tyre, the land of the Phoenicians was a perpetual apple of contention between the powers that ruled on the Euphrates and on the Nile, and was subject sometimes to the Assyrians, sometimes to the Egyptians.

The power which the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.

The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country, and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.

About the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, the Etruscan power had reached its height.

In the Roman commonwealth, even on the conversion of the monarchy into a republic, the old was as far as possible retained.

To acquire possession of Latium was of the most decisive importance to Etruria, which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania.

The language of the land in the Parthian empire was the native language of Iran. There is no trace pointing to any foreign language having ever been in public use under the Arsacids.

If it was in the interest of Rome to extend her conquests towards the East, and to enter on the inheritance of Alexander the Great there in all its extent, the circumstances were never more favourable for doing so than in the year 716.

The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the common mother endowments different from those of its Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic sisters.

The Dalmatian tribes and the Pannonians, at least of the region of the Save, for a short time obeyed the Roman governors; but they bore the new rule with an ever increasing grudge, above all on account of the taxes, to which they were unaccustomed, and which were relentlessly exacted.

Individual tribes or, in other words, races or stocks, are the constituent elements of the earliest history.

Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy.

The writer of history is perhaps closer to the artist than the scholar.

P]erhaps in this case, as often, the most courageous resolution might have been at the same time the most prudent

T]he sacred sense of right and the reverence for the law, which it is difficult to destroy in the minds of the multitude, it is still more difficult to reproduce.

Restoration is always revolution; but in this case it was not so much the old government as the old governor that was restored. The oligarchy made its appearance newly equipped in the armor of the tyrannis which had been overthrown.

His was one of those petty and mean natures, towards which it is dangerous to practice magnanimity; to his paltry spirit it appeared certainly a dictate of prudence to supplant at the first opportunity his reluctantly acknowledged rival, and his mean soul thirsted after a possibility of retaliating on Caesar for the humiliation which he had suffered through Caesar's indulgence.

To create order amidst this chaos did not require either brilliance of conception or a mighty display of force, but it required a clear insight into the interests of Rome and of her subjects, and vigor and consistency in establishing and maintaining the institutions recognized as necessary.