Quotes About Emperors

Blue!' she exclaimed. 'Violet blue. What are they made of?' 'Summer skies,' I said, 'and plums and figs, and the grape-blood of emperors.' 'No

Come la famiglia universale degli scrittori di talento supera le barriere nazionali, così il lettore dotato è una figura universale, non soggetta a leggi spaziali o temporali. È lui - il buon lettore, l'eccellente lettore - che ha salvato più e più volte l'artista dalla distruzione per mano degli imperatori, dei dittatori, dei preti, dei puritani, dei filistei, dei politici, dei poliziotti, dei direttori delle poste e dei pedanti.

I am trying to say that what has happened to you is a hard thing, even if there is war somewhere. Even if emperors and kings die. You are entitled to your rage.

A Greek invention, democracy is highly overrated. For starters, it never worked in Greece. The first philosophers were fascists and, even today, 2,500 years later, the 'cradle of Western civilization' remains an incompetent state. Roman emperors and a vengeful, authoritarian God are the true European success stories.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.

There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.

The ancient [pagan] faith was diseased at the bottom and at the top. The deification of the emperors revealed not how much the upper classes thought of their rulers, but how little they thought of their gods.

If you had such a secret, I And all my fiendish flock, my incubi, Succubi, imps and cacodemons, would have leapt Out of our bath of brimming brimstone, crying Eureka, cherchez, la femme!—Emperors Would be colonizing you, their mistresses Patronizing you, ministers of state Governmentalizing you. And you Would be eulogized, lionized, probably Canonized for your divine mishap.

Japan's most important archaeological monuments—the 158 gigantic kofun tombs constructed between A.D. 300 and 686, and thought to contain the remains of ancestral emperors and their families—are still the property of the Imperial Household Agency. Excavation of the tombs is forbidden because it would constitute desecration—and it might also shed undesired light on where Japan's imperial family really came from (e.g., perhaps Korea?).

The popes themselves were the authority behind the Inquisitions. They wielded the power of life and death even over emperors. Had any pope opposed the Inquisition, he could have stopped it during his papacy at least. Where do we read that the popes thundered anathemas against the secular authorities who imposed so many and such gruesome deaths upon their victims? Never! Civil

The greatest crime of which the Roman Emperors were accused is that they had Christians thrown to the lions; but that does not exceed in horror what the Christians did to one another.

Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.

And his rage rises to a white heat against certain nobles of Treves who, after the city had been burned and sacked thrice, could still ask the emperors for circuses. "Where would you hold these public spectacles?" he asks, – "Over the graves and ashes, the bones and blood of the dead?" In another passage he gives us briefly the conclusion of the whole matter: "The whole Roman world is in misery and yet is luxurious. . . . It is dying and it laughs.

Desengáñese usted; el ladrón, por valiente que sea, al tiempo de robar siempre tiene miedo. El valor viene unido, dice Santo Tomás, con la justicia de la causa, y esto le explica a usted el valor de los mártires que desafiaban la cólera de los emperadores romanos; pero volviendo a los ladrones, repito que tienen miedo, y por miedo matan al que trata de conocerlos.

there were always two emperors, ruling two separate empires, with two separate armies.

In February 1912, ancient China came to an end when the last of three millennia of Chinese emperors abdicated. Imagine twentieth-century Italy coming to terms with the fall of the Roman empire or Egypt with the last pharaoh abdicating in 1912. For China, the last century has been a period of transition - dramatic change and perpetual revolution.

Whichever side won, as Cicero again observed, the result was set to be much the same: slavery for Rome. What came to be seen as a war between liberty and one-man rule was really a war to choose between rival emperors.

Roman emperors and their advisors never solved the problem of succession. They were defeated in part by biology, in part by lingering uncertainties and disagreements about how inheritance should best operate. Succession always came down to some combination of luck, improvisation, plotting, violence and secret deals. The moment when Roman power was handed on was always the moment when it was most vulnerable.

This historical scepticism is healthy. But it misses the bigger point: that whatever the view of Suetonius and other ancient writers, the qualities and characters of the individual emperors did not matter very much to most inhabitants of the empire, or to the essential structure of Roman history and its major developments.

whatever the views of Suetonius and other ancient writers, the qualities and characters of the individual emperors did not matter very much to most inhabitants of the empire, or to the essential structure of Roman history and its major developments.

Los emperadores romanos y sus consejeros nunca resolvieron el problema de la sucesión. Fueron derrotados en parte por la biología, en parte por las persistentes incertidumbres y desacuerdos sobre la mejor manera de transmitir la herencia. La

Suetonius, in his series of biographies The Twelve Caesars

In short, as the last part of this chapter reveals, the empire created the emperors – not the other way round. Governors

From those pedestals which intersperse the railing of the Sheldonian, the high grim busts of the Roman Emperors stared down at the fair stranger in the equipage. Zuleika returned their stare with but a casual glance. The inanimate had little charm for her.