Quotes from Michael Grant

Superpowers," he said to himself, "don't always make you a superhero.

It is in your interest', said the dancer Pylades to Augustus, 'that the people should devote their spare time to us entertainers - if they do so, they will not bother about subversive politics.

We take the names of madmen, because madness is our fate. Terribly melodramatic, that.

Did she herself even believe in God anymore? Why argue over a phantom? They were two fools arguing over lies.

The Classical civilisation, which Greece originated, is the only civilisation which is spread out before us, from beginning to end.

One thing that is clear is that we do not always want to relive the experience of the Romans; although sometimes what they did is entirely to be admired and envied, in other respects they were detestable. Most of what they achieved was based upon the use of force. The culture that has given us their unequaled masterpieces was created and maintained, in the last resort, by violent means that modern societies could not, or should not, tolerate today…

The future of Judaism depended upon many other centres of the Jewish Dispersion even more than upon Rome. But archaeological evidence for all these centres remains sparse. There were catacombs at Venusia (Venosa) in south Italy. The Jewish necropolis