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Quotes About Emperor

Hadrian's successor Antoninus Pius ruled for twenty-three years, nor did he undertake any expedition other than the visiting of his estates in Campania, averring that the entourage of an emperor, even one over frugal, was a burdensome thing to the provinces. SCRIPTOTES HISTORIAE AUGUSTAE, ANTONINUS PIUS, 7. 4–12.
~ Elizabeth Speller
The key to Hadrian's behaviour, and to the subsequent integration of a style of rule, may be found in his relationship with the past. He was a broadly read man and a passionate, if nostalgic, historian, and the innovations of his reign as well as the strategies he adopted to consolidate power were all consistent with his pervasive sense of the past. His own immediate experience, infused with a broad knowledge of Mediterranean history, shaped the future of his empire.
~ Elizabeth Speller
History and speculation have placed Antinous at Hadrian's side as the one great attachment of the emperor's life, the loss of whom caused this mature, sophisticated and highly experienced ruler to allow himself to be subsumed by grief.
~ Elizabeth Speller
A belief in Antinous' posthumous power seems to have exceeded even the formal declaration of his new status. Although there was greater resistance to the acceptance of an emperor's sexual partner as a god in the more urbane society of Rome, in the Greek east Hadrian's own philhellenism assured the new god's absorption into the Greek pantheon from the moment the emperor decided on his deification.
~ Elizabeth Speller
Caligula, trapped leaving the games, was run through by noblemen who then hacked at his genitals and in their ferocity may even, according to Cassius Dio, have gorged themselves on his flesh. His wife, one of the few people Caligula loved, was murdered on the spot and his infant daughter, so a narrative of chilling verisimilitude relates, was picked up by the feet and had her brains dashed out against a wall.
~ Elizabeth Speller
Hadrian finds a man scratching his back against a post in the public baths and donates a slave to perform the duty for him, and money to keep him; on his next visit the emperor finds a whole group of old men hopefully rubbing their backs on posts, and confounds them by genially suggesting that they scratch each other.
~ Elizabeth Speller
Nero's insistence on entering himself in singing competitions and athletic contests, where being awarded the supreme prize was a surprise only to him, was perceived as undignified. Emperors sponsored games; they were not supposed to become part of the spectacle.
~ Elizabeth Speller
He never let it be forgotten that he had served his time in battle, nor forgot himself that it was the army which had initially acclaimed him as emperor.
~ Elizabeth Speller
The memory of Mark Antony and his attempts to create a new eastern Hellenistic empire had not yet died. So sensitive was the situation under Augustus that the emperor prohibited independent visits to the new province by Roman senators and eminent knights.
~ Elizabeth Speller
The reign of Domitian lasted for fifteen years from 81 CE, when Hadrian was a child of five, until 96, when he was a serving officer in the Roman legions aged twenty; thus it formed the backdrop to Hadrian's experience of imperial life.
~ Elizabeth Speller
Domitian is an important figure in Hadrian's life primarily because the choices and assumptions Hadrian was to make about how to be an emperor were undoubtedly influenced by the experience of living within the tensions of Domitian's reign.
~ Elizabeth Speller
The always suspicious Tiberius was given an enormous fish and promptly beat the fisherman about the face with it. The fisherman, in thoughtless simplicity, responded with the comment that he was glad he hadn't given the emperor the oversize lobster he had also collected.
~ Elizabeth Speller
It was a grim tableau of a reign gone wrong; of an emperor completely isolated at the centre of his empire and his family. Domitian summed up his own predicament succinctly: 'Nobody believes in a conspiracy against a ruler until it has succeeded.'12 His death was a justification of his beliefs; and it was the justification for Hadrian's later hostile action against the four senators.
~ Elizabeth Speller
Within weeks of Trajan's death the senate was coerced into agreeing to the summary execution of four alleged plotters against Hadrian's life. Neither he nor the senate ever forgot it, and the senate never forgave him. The deaths also appeared to contradict the new emperor's own stated intentions for his reign.
~ Elizabeth Speller
That night, on May 26, 1328, Ockham, Cesena, and another Franciscan companion slipped out of their rooms, mounted horses, and lit out of Avignon for the border. The trio did not stop until they crossed into Bavaria, where the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV was engaged in his own dispute with the pope. They met in Munich, where according to legend William of Ockham said to the emperor, "Defend me with your sword, and I will defend you with my pen." Ludwig accepted the
~ Arthur Herman
When the emperor Diocletian retired in 305, however, Constantine son of Constantius Chlorus rushed his legions down from Britain to join in the struggle for power. He also displayed a ruthless cunning in working to secure his title. He married the daughter of Diocletian's co-emperor, Maximian, then in 310 had his father-in-law arrested and strangled. The next year he allied himself with one rival, Licinius, in order to declare war on the other, Maximian's son, Maxientius.
~ Arthur Herman
Volviendo a la guerra, el Emperador prosiguió: «Los españoles en masa se condujeron como un hombre de honor»...
~ Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Oh, tonight I gave you my soul and I am dead! Christine replied. Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, replied the grave man's voice, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight.
~ Gaston Leroux
The man's voice spoke again: Are you very tired? Oh, to-night I gave you my soul and I am dead! Christine replied. Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, replied the grave man's voice, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. THE ANGELS WEPT TONIGHT.
~ Gaston Leroux
Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, replied the grave man's voice, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift.
~ Gaston Leroux
I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.
~ Georg Hegel
I also won one from the emperor of Japan, with a prize for the arts. That's important.
~ Marcel Carne
There was living in the palace at this time a brother of the great Germanicus, and consequently an uncle of the late emperor, whose name was Claudius Caesar.
~ Frederic Farrar
You want the Crown of Power, he told her. I can help you take it. You are mistaken, said Kitiara gravely. Ariakas is my Emperor. I am his loyal subject. And I am the king of the elves, said Raistlin with a sneer.
~ Margaret Weis