Quotes About Legacy

Livia died in A.D. 29 at the considerable age of eighty-six.

The eastern half of the empire spoke Greek and boasted a culture that went back to Homer.

Cleopatra took her time, but when she appeared she brought everything that was needed.

Bowing to this reality, the dying man handed Agrippa the symbol of his authority:

his signet ring bearing the head of Alexander the Great.

In his official memoir, he notes with satisfaction that he spent 600 million sesterces on land bought in Italy for his veterans

From Antony's point of view, the arrival of Caesar's heir was an annoying distraction.

It is as if nothing had ever happened on that bloodstained shore. Had Helen been worth it?

produced two sons, "an heir and a spare." (Two daughters, Julia and Agrippina

This development has been presented as leaving Livia and her sons, Tiberius and Drusus, out in the cold.

THE GREAT-UNCLE 48–47 B.C.

Her family was of obscure origin;

The Julii traced their ancestry to before the city's foundation, traditionally set at 753 B.C.

because I believe that each generation should have a chance to see a giant figure of the past from the perspective of its own time and circumstances.

Thucydides is the greatest writer of history in history. In fact, he is so good that we are trapped inside his version of events.

The first and foremost of these was the tomb of Alexander the Great, which stood at the crossroads of the city's two main avenues.

He immediately set out from Rome, but Agrippa was dead when he arrived.

This found its classic expression in Homer's Iliad, in which Glaucus says to Diomedes that he still hears his father's urgings ringing in his ears: Always be the best, my boy, the bravest, and hold your head high above the others.

It's a problem for him because he's got - like Edward VII had - nearly all his lifetime to wait until he becomes Monarch. What is he going to do with it? So he wants to do something positive but he always courts those dangers.

Requiem Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you 'grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. (1880-1884)

Well, I take it that when a man comes to die, love is more to him than a kingdom; it may be, if we could see truly, that it is more to him even while he lives.

My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker.

I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80 000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends, and then someone can finish it for me.

He had tattooed all of the names of the men he had killed on his body...unfortunately he had run out of room.