"Roman Empire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and there arose a western and an eastern Empire. As time went on the Western Empire with Rome at its head declined and fell, while the Eastern Empire with Constantinople as its capital grew great. But it grew into a Greek Empire. Even very clever people cannot tell the exact date at which the Roman Empire came to an end and the Greek or Byzantine Empire, as it is called, began. So we need not trouble about that. All that is needful for us to understand now it that Constantinople was a Christian city, a Greek city, and a treasure-house of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Feudalism.—When the Roman Empire fell civilization in western Europe was not on a high plane; indeed, the feudalism that followed was not much above barbarism. The people were living in a manner that was not very much unlike the communal system under which the serfs of Russia lived only a few years ago. Each centre of population ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... We have, too, a lecture delivered by another rabbi, Dr. Isidor Kalisch, before the Young Men's Literary and Social Union of Indianapolis, which is bold even to audacity. He told the young gentlemen that the prevalence of Christianity in the Roman Empire was not an escape from barbarism, but a lapse into it. "As soon," said he, "as Christianity began spreading over the Roman Empire, all knowledge, arts, and sciences died away, and the development of civilization was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... told you some things about the old Roman Empire, which ran its course long before modern Europe ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... kind of policy is to be computed, as was shown, from those inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards that overwhelmed the Roman Empire. But as there is no appearance in the bulk or constitution of modern prudence, that it should ever have been able to come up and grapple with the ancient, so something of necessity must have interposed whereby this came to be enervated, and that to ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... opened to me, more suitable to my views, as being less connected with the Government. My first attempts at writing, particularly my Critical Notes on Gibbon's 'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' and the 'Annals of Education,' a periodical miscellany in which I had touched upon some leading questions of public and private instruction, obtained for me the notice of literary men.[2] With gratuitous kindness, M. de Fontanes, Grand Master of the University, appointed ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hair-splitting superstition, the selfish passion for power. He recalled Gibbon's lamentation over the age of the Antonines, and Mommsen's grave doubt whether, taken as a whole, the area once covered by the Roman Empire can be said to be substantially happier now than in the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The red trousers of the Emperor's servants were numbered among Rome's mighty list of things vanished. In the Eternal City itself, Carleton attended mass at St. Peter's, and then re-read and retold the story of both the Roman and the Holy Roman Empire. Some of his happiest days were passed in the studios of American artists and sculptors. There he saw, in their beginning of outlines and color, on canvas or in clay, some of the triumphs of art which now adorn American homes and cities. Fascinated ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Marcus Ulpius Traianus, the fourteenth emperor. Of him it was said that he "built the world over," and the Romans themselves regarded him as the best, and perhaps the greatest of their emperors. He was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... it up by a more disgraceful retreat than this to the hair-dresser's saloon. The ghosts of his heroic forefathers in Valhalla would disown his shorn head with indignant scorn; for their golden locks had ever been sacred to them as their honor. When the Roman Empire was invaded by the Goths and Vandals, a Helwyse—so runs the tale—was taken prisoner and brought before the Roman General. The latter summoned a barber and a headsman, and informed the captive ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Childeric, counting his exile, and reign in Amiens, together, is King altogether twenty-four years, 457 to 481, and during his reign Odoacer ends the Roman empire ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... themselves in the symbols of the shields of the Seven against Thebes, colours have been the sign and stimulus of the most furious and fatal passions that have rent the nations: blue against green, in the decline of the Roman Empire; black against white, in that of Florence; red against white, in the wars of the Royal houses in England; and at this moment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon. With notes by Rev. H.H. Milman. Standard edition. To which is added a complete Index of the work. A new edition from entirely new stereotype plates. With portrait on steel. 5 vols., 12mo. Cloth, extra, per ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... triumphed over the superstitions of the most refined and of the most savage nations, over the graceful mythology of Greece and the bloody idolatry of the Northern forests. It prevailed over the power and policy of the Roman empire. It tamed the barbarians by whom that empire was overthrown. But all these victories were gained not by the help of intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of intolerance. The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... aspects the doctrine of the brotherhood of man was virtually forgotten. But the Christian Church had embodied that doctrine in its sacred writing, and was bound to maintain it. In its ambition of a universal dominion it was the direct successor of the Roman Empire. All the races of Europe were to meet as brothers under the one God of the new world and under the direction of his representatives on earth. It was this change in the features of the world which gave a certain air of insincerity to the Christian ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;—and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar[200] is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of the hermit Antony;[201] the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox;[202] Methodism, of Wesley;[203] ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... himself—could have had no other source but plunder, for of legitimate revenue there was scarcely enough to carry on the expenses of the Government—certainly none for luxurious ostentation; which, nevertheless, emulated that of the Roman Empire in its worst period—but without the "panem ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... volume of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" with me. I had not read the famous 15th and 16th chapters for ages, and I lay on the sands and enjoyed them properly. A lady came and spoke to me as I returned, who knew L. at Oxford very well—can't recollect her name—and her father and mother ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... require a more powerful stimulus; as we see the vulgar crowd round an object of real horror, with the same pleasure we reap from seeing it represented on a theatre. Besides, in ancient times, in those of the Roman empire at least, such abominations really occurred, as sanctioned the story of OEdipus. But the change of manners has introduced not only greater purity of moral feeling, but a sensibility, which retreats with abhorrence even from a fiction turning ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... to the Catholic Church is due the preservation of literature after the downfall of the Roman Empire; and all those who are versed in history must admit that the Popes, the rulers of the Church, have been the greatest promoters and protectors of literature and learned men in every age. They collected and preserved the writings of the great historians, poets, and philosophers of Greece and Rome, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the institution of Christmas saw the break-up of the Roman Empire in the west, and the incursions of barbarians threatening the very existence of the Christian civilization that had conquered classic paganism. It was by her army of monks that the Church tamed and Christianized the barbarians, and both ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... affect his life. The day's work over, he turned, with no feeling of incongruity, to a page of Thucydides, of Tacitus, or to those less familiar authors who lighted his favourite wanderings through the ruins of the Roman Empire. Better grounded for such studies than Harvey Rolfe, he pursued them with a steadier devotion and with all the advantages of domestic peace. In his mental habits, in his turns of speech, there appeared perhaps a leaning to pedantry; but it was ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... association may be ascribed some of the noblest efforts of human genius. The Historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire first conceived his design among the ruins of the Capitol; and to the tones of a Welsh harp are we indebted for the Bard of Gray.—GIBBON'S Hist. xii. 432.—Mem. of Gray, sect. ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... resorted to the same countries as their rivals in commerce, and surpassing them in practical navigation and the construction of ships, the Sabaeans were for some centuries reduced to a state of mercantile dependence and inferiority. In the meantime the Roman Empire declined; the Persians under the Sassanides engrossed the intercourse with the East, the trade of India now flowed through the Persian Gulf, and the ports of the Red Sea were deserted. "Thus the downfall, and it may be the extinction, of the African spice trade probably dates from the close ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... had been the cradle of Christianity, and which had witnessed the dying struggle of the Roman empire, the conquerors, maddened with the victories and crowned with the wealth which years of perpetual war had heaped upon them, mustered their armies and sallied forth. They subjugated many countries, but copied none of their virtues; and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of sentiments, which belong to the entire human species. The fourth book of the Eneid remains forever exposed to the admiration of men because it is suspended in heaven. The ships bearing the founder of the Roman Empire,—Dido, the foundress of Carthage, stabbing herself ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... philosophical discussions. Under his reign chess was introduced from India, and the famous book of Kalilah and Dimnah was translated. He thus became renowned as a wise prince. When Justinian in 529 closed the university of Athens, the last seat of paganism in the Roman empire, the last seven teachers of Neoplatonism emigrated to Persia. But they soon found out that neither Chosroes nor his state corresponded to the Platonic ideal, and Chosroes, in his treaty with Justinian, stipulated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... first time, too late, the thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this, Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his ordinances? Do you think ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... proves my case. The originality of Michael Angelo and Shakespeare began with the digging up of old vases and manuscripts. The mildness of poets absolutely arose out of the mildness of antiquaries. So the great mediaeval revival was a memory of the Roman Empire. So the Reformation looked back to the Bible and Bible times. So the modern Catholic movement has looked back to patristic times. But that modern movement which many would count the most anarchic of all is in this sense the most conservative ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... feudal states had lost all sense of allegiance to the ruler, and acted in entire independence. It is a pure fiction to speak of a Chinese State in this period; the emperor had no more power than the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in the late medieval period of Europe, and the so-called "feudal states" of China can be directly compared with the developing national states of Europe. A comparison of this period with late medieval Europe is, indeed, of highest interest. If we adopt a political system of periodization, we ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... had not. Which had the greater and the grander government? Let us be honest. Which of those nations produced the greatest poets, the greatest soldiers, the greatest orators, the greatest statesmen, the greatest sculptors? Rome had no bible. God cared nothing for the Roman Empire. He let the men come up by chance. His time was taken up by the Jewish people. And yet Rome conquered the world, and even conquered God's chosen people. The people that had the bible were defeated by the people who had not. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Bactria. They retained their predominant position in what is now Bokhara and Balkh, until they were gathered up by the Huns in their western march, and hurled, in conjunction with them, on the borders of the Roman Empire. Meantime, the war with the Huns themselves entered upon a new phase. A general named Wei Tsing obtained a signal victory over them, capturing 15,000 prisoners and the spoil of the Tartar camp. This success restored long-lost confidence to the Chinese troops, and it was followed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... popular of the later philosophies of Greece; and just as it had been implied in the imperial aspiration and polity of Alexander, so it was implied, still more clearly, in the imperial theory of Rome. The idea of the Roman Empire, its theoretical justification, might be described as the realisation of the unity of the world by the establishment of a common order, the unification of mankind in a single world-embracing political organism. The term "world," orbis (terrarum), which imperial ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... that the inhabitants of Cathea brought their infants at the age of two months before a magistrate for inspection. The strong and promising were preserved and the weak destroyed. The founders of the Roman Empire followed a similar usage. With great indignation Seneca, Ovid, and Juvenal reproved this barbarity of the Romans. With the domination of Christianity this custom gradually diminished, and Constantine stopped it altogether, ordering succor to ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... said with a nod. "Those would fit periods corresponding from the Roman Empire into the Middle Ages. But you're right, Ross, those ships had power of some kind to take them ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... Animated by this idea, penetrated with profoundest belief of the infinite worth of the individual man because the God-man had wonderfully renewed his nature, the early Christian heroes and martyrs took hold of the hostile and disorganized elements of European society—the fragments of the Roman empire on the one hand, and the barbarians of the north on the other—and brought order out of chaos. They re-organized society by naturally, though slowly, developing those numerous intermediary institutions—guilds, corporations, trial by jury, the judiciary, and representation of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... was just a phase of world convulsion. It made the first rent in the universal structure. For years the trend of civilization was toward a super-Nationalism. It is easy to trace the stages. The Holy Roman Empire was a phase of Nationalism. That was Catholic. Then came the development of Nationalism, beginning with Napoleon. That was Protestant. Now began the building of water-tight compartments, otherwise known as nations. Germany ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... persecutions" waged by the Roman emperors against the Christians, as that of Trajan in particular; but doubtless, like many other predictions, it was to have more than one fulfilment. The expression, "all the world" does indeed sometimes mean the Roman empire, (Luke ii. 1;) but perhaps it would be rash to affirm, that it is to be always thus limited. Like "the kingdom of heaven,—the kingdom of God,"—phrases which have unquestionably a two-fold signification, ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... history of missions vindicates the world-wide claim of the Gospel. Think of the wonderful number of converts in the first fifty years of gospel preaching. The Roman empire was Christianised in three centuries! Recall the innumerable testimonies down to date; e.g. the absolute abandonment of idols in the South Sea Islands, the weakening of caste in India, the romance of missions in Central ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the infancy of the Roman Empire, we find a counterfeit Agrippa, after him a counterfeit Nero; and before them two counterfeit Alexanders, in Syria. But never was a nation so troubled with these mock kings as England; a counterfeit Richard II. being made in the time of Henry IV.; a counterfeit Mortimer in the time of Henry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... fanciful, and often very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it: invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the Roman Empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful—but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... from an early period: commercial intercourse between the towns on the Mediterranean was in some cases strengthened by treaties; the local nobles were connected by feudal ties resulting from the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire. Hence it was natural for troubadours and joglars to visit the Italian towns. Their own language was not so remote from the Italian dialects as to raise any great obstacle to the circulation of their poetry and the petty princes of Northern Italy lent ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... April, 1417, the ceremony of enfeoffment was performed at Constance, by which the House of Hohenzollern became possessed of this territory, and was thereafter included among the great electorates having a vote in the election of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... had not employed and degraded it, nor had it been made into complex system by ingenious casuists. The pure spiritual truth, unsullied as it came from the hand of its founder, was scattered broadcast, as the band of Christians dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, naturally forming into communities here and there, which became the centres of Christian propagandism. Lyons in Gaul ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... previous to the fall of the Roman empire, the order of things was such as had arisen from the new state of mankind, who had gradually increased in numbers, and improved in sciences and arts. The different degrees of wealth were owing, at first, to local situation, natural advantages, and priority ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... interchangeable, authorities in science are nearly alike for all, and they readily combine to make experiments and researches in common. Towards 1500, European nations, having been fashioned and composed out of simple elements during the thousand years between the fall of the Roman Empire and that of its successor is the East, had reached full measure of differentiation. They were estranged from each other, and were inclined to treat the foreigner as the foe. Ancient links were loosened, the Pope was no longer an accepted peacemaker; and the idea of an international ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... about. Everything they had cast out followed them. That's the way Rome makes you feel about history. That which happened a thousand years ago is going on still. You can't get rid of it. The Roman Republic is a live issue, and so is the Roman Empire, and so ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... S. Leo took place but a few years before the Roman Empire in the West became extinguished, and political interests entirely submerged those of religion in the years that followed it. Dimly, beneath the noise of the barbarian triumph, we discern the survival in Rome of the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... with their caresses can seduce it from its hard austerity. I have several titles which for the moment escape me. Baron Llffthwchl am I, and... and... but you can find them for yourself in Debrett. In me you behold a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Look well at me! I am Hereditary Comber of the Queen's Lap-Dogs. I am young. I am handsome. My temper is sweet, and my character without blemish. In fine, Miss Dobson, I am a ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... at the man indignantly. Who was this that dared to bid against Domitian, the third dignitary in all the Roman empire, Caesar's son, Caesar's brother, who might himself be Caesar? Still he answered with ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... now regarded as impossible. Consequently, while God is in his high heaven, surrounded by his court, the world holds on its courses, and is periodically corrected by special interferences, generally said to be due to the intervention of prayer. Thus, the grand historical evolution, which caused the Roman Empire to appear at the close of the three great Eastern Empires, and that monument of human genius itself to ultimately collapse and make way for the nations which now constitute modern Europe, in no wise strikes Augustine, or ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... self-consciousness, particularly of the Teutonic peoples. [Sidenote: Nationalism and Teutonism] The revolt from Rome was in the interests of the state church, and also of Germanic culture. The break-up of the Roman church at the hands of the Northern peoples is strikingly like the break-up of the Roman Empire under pressure from their ancestors. Indeed, the limits of the Roman church practically coincided with the boundaries of the Empire. The apparent exception of England proves the rule, for in Britain the Roman civilization was swept ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... references in the patristic writings that the primitive years of the Christian Church were not only years of suffering but years of song. That the despised and often persecuted "Nazarenes," scattered in little colonies throughout the Roman Empire, did not forget to mingle tones of praise and rejoicing with their prayers could readily be believed from the much-quoted letter of a pagan lawyer, written about as long after Jesus' death, as from now back to the death of John Quincy Adams—the letter of Pliny ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... and suggestive thing is that in the making and remaking of the map of Europe and Asia undertaken by the framers of the league, they are, all unconsciously, restoring the outlines of the old Roman Empire and preparing the way for the final and desperate revival of Rome under the form of ten confederate nations, with its last kaiser, that dark and woful figure, the man of sin, the son ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... over the occasional few who accepted the faith. We note how Christ rejoiced when now and then he found one who had true faith, and on the other hand was depressed when his own people refused to hear him, and reluctantly censured them. And Paul did not meet with more encouragement. In all the Roman Empire—and through the greater part of it he had traveled with the Gospel—he only occasionally found a place where was even a small band of earnest Christians; but over them he peculiarly rejoices, finding in them greater consolation than in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... presence at the center—Jerusalem. Thence out to Samaria, and through the Cornelius door to the whole outer non-Jewish world; at Antioch the new center, and thence through the uttermost parts of the Roman empire into its heart, His is the presence recognized and obeyed. He is ceaselessly guiding, empowering, inspiring, checking, controlling clear to the abrupt end. His is the one mastering personality. And everywhere ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... claimed for the fiery sword, and armies fighting in the air, which preceded the siege of Jerusalem: for the cross of the Emperor Constantine: for the bow about the sun seen by Augustus Caesar, when he took possession of the Roman empire: and for stars, or other heavenly lights, which have seemed to herald the births or deaths of illustrious personages. But are these stories to be believed? and, if they are, where is the line of credibility to be drawn? People ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... of augury and divination, the visions of oriental romance, the fanciful and attenuated theories of the later philosophy, the abstract and spiritual doctrines of Platonism, and all the grosser and wilder conceptions of the northern conquerors of the Roman Empire, became mingled together in the faith of the inhabitants of the European kingdoms. From this multifarious combination, the infinitely diversified popular superstitions of the modern nations ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... in the spring of 1772 for Wetzlar, a quiet country town on the Lahn, one of the seats of government of the Holy Roman Empire. The emperors lived at Vienna; they were crowned at Frankfort; they held their parliaments at Ratisbon, and at Wetzlar their courts of justice. It was the custom for young lawyers to attend the sittings of these courts for a certain time before they could be admitted to practice ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... torture, by the way, possibly one of the fruits of Empire? We see it in the Roman Empire, too, and how vigorously it was applied to Christians and other criminals. Christianos ad leones! But it was a disastrously unsuccessful policy—or we should not have an Archbishop of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... lie the celebrated Pomptine marshes, formed by the overflowing of some small streams. In the flourishing ages of Roman history these pestilential marshes did not exist, or were confined to a very limited space; but from the decline of the Roman empire, the waters gradually encroached, until the successful exertions made by the Pontiffs in modern times to arrest their baleful progress. Before the drainage of Pope Sixtus, the marshes covered at least thirteen thousand acres of ground, which in the earlier ages was the most fruitful ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... pursuing their own personal aims—had on their side the form of the constitution, and the power conferred by an appearance of justice. Caesar was contending for the maintenance of his position, honor, and safety; and, since the power of his opponents included the sovereignty over the provinces of the Roman Empire, his victory secured for him the conquest of that entire Empire; and he thus became—though leaving the form of the constitution—the autocrat of the State. What secured for him the execution of a design, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... England became England, how France came to be France, and Germany Germany. And yet you cannot know one of these things unless you know about the Roman Empire too, which like an old dead root underlies the greater ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... United States have had no outlying colonies or dependencies, such as an India and Canada are to us, as Cuba is and Mexico was to Spain, and as were the provinces of the Roman empire. Territories she has had, but by the peculiar beneficence of her political arrangements, these Territories have assumed the guise of sovereign States, and been admitted into federal partnership on equal terms, with a ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... Danube, they ravaged the Roman Empire of the East almost without opposition. Only the impregnable walls of Constantinople resisted the destruction. A few years later the savage horde appeared upon the Rhine, and in enormous numbers penetrated Gaul. No people ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... both the host and hostess were persons of ripe information. In the old days our ancestors wasted years of valuable time in the study of languages that were no longer spoken on the earth; and civilization was thus cramped by the shadow of the ancient Roman Empire, whose dead but sceptered sovereigns still ruled the spirits of mankind from their urns. Now every hour is considered precious for the accumulation of actual knowledge of facts and things, and for the cultivation ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... when the Roman empire was all-powerful, the women of Egypt, Byzantium, Greece and Rome, wore gilded wigs (see Plate I, Frontispiece), arranged in Psyche knots, and banded; sandals on their feet, and a one-piece garment, confined at the waist by a girdle, which fell ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... self-restrained Romans, who were ready to give up everything, and life as the least of things, to the glory of their commonweal, produce monsters of license and reckless folly. Therefore did a little knot of Galilean peasants overthrow the Roman Empire. ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... the origin and Progress of Society. 2nd. Legislation of Solon and Lycurgus. 3rd. State of Greece, from the Persian War to the Dissolution of the Achaian League. 4th. Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman Empire. 5th. Progress of Christianity. 6th. Manners and Irruptions of the Northern Nations. Growth of the European States. Feudal System. 7th. State of the Eastern Empire, to the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks; including the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... started for the long vacations, a little group of five would vow that during the summer we would read all of Motley's "Dutch Republic" or, more ambitious still, all of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." When we returned at the opening of school and three of us announced we had finished the latter, each became skeptical of the other two. We fell upon each other in a sort of rough-and-tumble examination, in which no quarter was given or ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... was, yet the coming of it was inevitable. What else than Feudalism could have followed upon the breakdown of that great centralized governmental machine known as the Roman Empire? Not so, however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly procedure of social evolution there was no place for it. It was not necessary, and it was not inevitable. It must always remain the great curiosity ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... forefathers of the present Albanians; see Schaffarik Gesch. p. 33, n. 2. Illyricum Magnum comprised in the fourth century nearly all the Roman provinces of eastern Europe. Napoleon affected to renew the names and titles of the ancient Roman empire, and called the territory ceded to him by Austria in 1809, viz. Carniola and all the country between the Adriatic, the Save, and the Turkish empire, his Illyrian provinces, and their inhabitants Illyrians. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... consciousness. After Sylla and Marius and Caesar, life as an affair of sheer individualism would not very strongly appeal to a thoughtful Roman. Accordingly, as has so often been remarked, the Aeneid celebrates the Roman Empire. A political idea does not seem a very likely subject for a kind of poetry which must declare greatly the fundamentals of living; not even when it is a political idea unequalled in the world, the idea of the Roman ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... of Coleridge to earn a small sum to tide over financial difficulties was to "Rumfordise" the cities of England. Coleridge reviewed Rumford's Essays in "The Watchman" of 2nd April. Count Rumford (Count of the Holy Roman Empire), had cleared certain cities of Austria of beggars and vagabonds, and had established garden cities for the soldiery practising agricultural pursuits and engaging in remunerative occupations during their non-attendance at drill. What part of the "Rumfordising" Coleridge ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... through natural constitution or adverse circumstances, in that one first and most important requisite of a general, which had he but added to his other many and remarkable virtues, his fortitude, vigilance, wisdom, justice, the Roman empire had not had Euphrates for its boundary, but the utmost ends of Asia and the Hyrcanian sea; as other nations were then disabled by the late conquests of Tigranes, and the power of Parthia had not in Lucullus's time shown itself ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... according to Hegel, is by no means an attribute which belongs to a given social or political condition, under all circumstances and at all times. Quite the contrary. The Roman Republic was real, but the Roman Empire which replaced it was also real. The French Monarchy had become unreal in 1789, that is, it had lost all the quality of necessity, and was so contrary to reason that it had to be destroyed by the Great Revolution, of which Hegel always speaks ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... early times. Then came Alexander Ptolemaus, and finally Antiochus Epiphanes, who pulled down the walls and set up an image of Jupiter in the Temple. But now, mark! —sixty-three years before Christ, Jerusalem was conquered by Pompey. What happened in the same year after Christ in the Roman Empire? Pompeii, the town by Naples, named after the conqueror, was destroyed in A.D. 63 by an earthquake. That was the answer, and the Lord of ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... While this great Roman empire stands and gods protect our fanes, Mankind with grateful hearts shall tell the story How one most lowly born upon the parched Apulian plains First raised the ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... German and Scythian nations overran the western provinces of the Roman empire, the confusions which followed so great a revolution lasted for several centuries. The rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised against the ancient inhabitants, interrupted the commerce between the towns and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... century the Roman Empire fell at the hands of the barbarians, rational medicine ceased altogether in Europe. Although the Christian religion survived, the Christian theology of that time denied liberty of conscience and taught superstitions and dogma. It was bitterly hostile to the scientific spirit. All ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... accordingly made of the Septuagint translation, and were taken to other countries; and there, in process of time, copies of the copies were made, until at length the work became extensively circulated throughout the whole learned world. When, finally, Christianity became extended over the Roman empire, the priests and monks looked with even a stronger interest than the ancient scholars had felt upon this early translation of so important a portion of the sacred Scriptures. They made new copies for abbeys, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... despite temporary defeats, and successfully defied all the various races who assailed them. During this Roman period the country was so well cultivated that it became, and was styled, 'the granary of the Roman Empire.' Christianity was also introduced, and became so wide-spread that at one time there were no fewer than a hundred and sixty bishoprics in northern Africa. Unquestionably there were then, as there always were and will be, some who ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... the power of the old Roman aristocracy in the interest of the people of the Roman empire. Under the name of 'The Republic,' that patrician class had oppressed the people of Rome and her provinces for years as never was people oppressed before. After fifty years of civil war, Julius and Augustus Caesar organized the masses of this world-wide empire, and established a government under ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Saxons after their settlement in England. These Saxons were a fierce, warlike, unlettered people from Germany; whom the ancient Britons had invited to their assistance against the Picts and Scots. Cruel and ignorant, like their Gothic kindred, who had but lately overrun the Roman empire, they came, not for the good of others, but to accommodate themselves. They accordingly seized the country; destroyed or enslaved the ancient inhabitants; or, more probably, drove the remnant of them into the mountains of Wales. Of Welsh or ancient British words, Charles Bucke, who says ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and when by the sale of the spoils he had amassed forty talents of silver and of gold, he designed such magnificence for a temple to Jupiter, as should be worthy of the king of gods and men, of the Roman empire, and of the majesty of the place itself: for the building of this temple he set apart the money arising from the spoils. Soon after a war came upon him, more tedious than he expected, in which, having in vain attempted to ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... The Roman empire, after having reigned as mistress of the world for upward of five centuries, commenced to show signs of decay. Its people had gradually lost the sturdy spirit of independence, endurance, and courage which had characterized their forefathers, and had degenerated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... peace. About the time of the birth of Christ there was peace throughout the Roman Empire, and the temple of Janus ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... advance towards the true good of man, but a lapse into endless and heathen wanderings. For Christianity, in its essence and origin, was an urgent summons to repent and come out of just such a worldly life as modern liberty and progress hold up as an ideal to the nations. In the Roman empire, as in the promised land of liberalism, each man sought to get and to enjoy as much as he could, and supported a ponderous government neutral as to religion and moral traditions, but favourable to the accumulation of riches; so that a certain enlightenment ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... been a Jewish one, addressed to the Christian converts from Judaism who were scattered abroad, within or beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. Luther deemed it "an Epistle of straw," by reason of its insistence upon the vital importance of 'works.' But its practical ideal assumes the same basis of Christian faith as is found in the Letters of Paul. The opening references to severe trial seem to show that the persecution begun ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... his successors, and kept in a state of servile thraldom for four hundred and fifty years. There was but little amalgamation between them and their military masters. Britain was a most valuable northern outpost of the Roman Empire, and was occupied by large garrisons, which employed the people in hard labors, and used them for Roman aggrandizement, but despised them too much to attempt to elevate their condition. Elsewhere the Romans depopulated, where they met with barbarian resistance; they made a solitude ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... along this road that the Church has always marched to her most splendid triumphs. Why did the Roman Empire so swiftly capitulate to the claims of Christ? Lecky discusses that question in his History of European Morals. And he answers it by saying that the conquest was achieved by the new spirit which Christ had introduced. The idea of a Saviour ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... their further dismemberment through internal discontent; a process which has been going on for so many hundreds of years all over Europe is not likely to be arrested without ample warning. True, during the Roman Empire the world was practically bonded together, yet broke in pieces again; but this, I imagine, was because the bonding was prophetic and superficial rather than genuine. Nature very commonly makes one or two false starts, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... livery came in and brought another cover; and the humble abbot then told me that he usually had his chancellor with him at dinner, "for," said he, "I have a chancery, since as abbot of Our Lady of Einsiedel I am a prince of the Holy Roman Empire." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... willing ear. So that in 1493 the rumour spread and became louder and louder that Charles the Eighth of France was about to cross the Alps with a mighty army; and the Italian populations, accustomed, since Italy had ceased to be the heart of the Roman empire, to look for an arbitrator from afar, began vaguely to regard his coming as a means of avenging their wrongs ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... of matinees extending over two months, Professor William P. Jones danced the whole of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The first two volumes were danced in slow time, to the accompaniment of two flutes and a lyre. The poses were statuesque rather than graceful, and the gestures had in them a great deal of the antique. But, beginning with the story of the barbarian invasions ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... the Roman empire proved the ruin of the republic, the vast compass of the city was no less ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... ago in one of the German-speaking countries of the Holy Roman Empire. There was a Count who lived in a large castle. He was rich, powerful, and the owner of large lands. He had a wife, and one daughter, who was dazzlingly beautiful, and she was betrothed to the eldest son of ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... commemorates the blotting out of the very name of Christian: "Nomine Christianorum deleto." But the age of martyrdoms ended with the accession of Constantine to the Roman empire, and to-day there are more Christians in the world than ever before. Skeptic, take one long look at the unbelieving, bloody, persecuting hosts, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... the healing art throughout the period of the Roman Empire, it is necessary to devote the next chapters to a consideration of the rise and progress of medical science in Greece, for it cannot be too strongly emphasized that Roman philosophy and Roman medicine were borrowed from the Greeks, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... circumstances, must lead to a destruction of important interests, and a total subversion of the balance of society in both the kingdoms subjected to it. To be conviced of this, we have only to look at the present condition of the British, or the past fate of the Roman empire. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... nothing, but set everything on fire." Jesus took the religion of Israel, and lived its life with God, and after Him it possessed a kindling flame it had never shown before. The faith of a small people in a corner of the Roman Empire, with a few thousands of proselytes here and there in the larger towns about the Mediterranean, became in a generation a force which entirely supplanted the Jewish missionary movement and rapidly ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... it there, and the goldsmith himself brings him the gold chain that makes him a master. This the young man would put aside, but the wise old shoemaker bids him take this too, and to honor the masters and their art; for, he says, though the Holy Roman Empire should vanish in smoke, yet art will remain. And I think he means by this that all the kingdoms of the earth may be lost and may fall into dust and ashes, as our fire here will do when we leave ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... chiefly with Roman history, and especially with points suggested by the author's profound study of Sallust. Gibbon pays De Brosses the compliment of quoting two of his works, and commends his "SINGULAR diligence," with emphasis on the adjective. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Bury's edition 4 37 and 7 168.) He was also Voltaire's landlord at Tournay, and had a quarrel with him about a matter of firewood; but De Brosses was a lawyer, whilst Voltaire was only a philosopher and a poet, so that of course the result was ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... fellow-citizens of the prince of poets." We can better sympathize with the advocate's indignation at this barbarity, than with his blame of Francesco for having consented, by his acceptance of the marquisate, to become a prince of the Roman Empire. Mantua was thus subjected to the Emperors, but liberty had long been extinguished; and the voluntary election of the Council, which bestowed the captaincy on each succeeding generation of the Gonzagas, was a mere matter ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the way of the Mongols. But toward the middle of that dynasty (2000 B.C.), civilization, agriculture and the arts began in the states of Greece, situated at the eastern end of the continent." This is followed by a very brief review of the rise and decay of the Roman Empire, of the rise of Moslemism and of the conquests of Tamerlane; next comes a description of the individual countries, with their resources, military and naval forces, "all things about which writers give very different reports, so that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... dwell in genteel independence, enjoying their entailed estates and living on their own cocoa nuts. There will be found the Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall when yielding the Palm to some aspiring rival is swifter than that of the Roman Empire; the Barberry Ape, so called from feeding exclusively on Barberries; the Chimpanzee—an African corruption of Jump-and-see, the name given to the animal by his first European discoverers in compliment to his alertness; the Baboon, a melancholy brute that, as you may observe ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... The middle class has never ceased to tend towards progress, with all its strength, by an irresistible impulse, and even at the peril of its dearest interests. A great statesman who must be judged by his doctrines, and not by the chance of circumstances, M. Guizot, has shown us that the Roman Empire perished from the want of a middle class in the fifth century of our era, and we ourselves know with what impetuosity France has advanced in progress since the middle class ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... discern the poison that is hidden in it, as I have said above of hectic fevers. Therefore, if he who rules a principality cannot recognize evils until they are upon him, he is not truly wise; and this insight is given to few. And if the first disaster to the Roman Empire(*) should be examined, it will be found to have commenced only with the enlisting of the Goths; because from that time the vigour of the Roman Empire began to decline, and all that valour which had raised it passed ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Jesus came on earth; our forefathers did not live here in England, but in countries across the sea, in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, which did not belong to the Roman Empire; for the Romans, who had conquered all the world beside, could never conquer our forefathers. It was God's will, that whenever they tried they were beaten back with shame and slaughter; and our forefathers, almost alone of all, remained free men, even as we are at this day. But for ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Christian doctrine; and only one or two perhaps may be sincere and open believers. But even if only one is gained, is not that an exceeding gain? It took three hundred years of apostolic teaching to make the Roman Empire Christian. Why should we "faint, and say 'tis vain," after ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... be but a temporary provision. As the population grew, so it would be absolutely necessary that the young men of the household should make new settlements for themselves. This fact accounts in its measure for the vast shifting of the population that took place when the Roman Empire was in its protracted death-agony. The torrents of human beings which poured in on the decaying Empire were considered by the older historians as evidence of nomadic barbarism. We, with our present lights, say rather that they indicate a ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... early distinctions. Hence the facts, that the Jews called Herod a god; that Father, in its higher sense, was a term used among them by servants to masters; that Lord was applicable to any person of worth and power. Hence, too, the fact that, in the later periods of the Roman Empire, every man saluted his ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... first, the men who were compelled to maintain these combats were convicts, who were condemned to them as a punishment for their crimes. The beasts were lions, tigers, and other ferocious animals that were caught in the forests in Africa, or in other remote parts of the Roman empire, and brought to the great cities ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... by the apostles concerning Jesus was that of his resurrection from the grave after death. It was not only the earliest, but the most essential to the success of the new religion. Christianity might have overspread the Roman Empire, and maintained its hold upon men's faith until to-day, without the dogmas of the incarnation and the Trinity; but without the dogma of the resurrection it would probably have failed at the very outset. Its lofty morality would not alone have sufficed to insure its success. For ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... devoured by the flames and destroyed by every kind of death. How much of our blood was shed by warlike Scipio, when he was eagerly compassing the overthrow of Carthage, the opponent and rival of the Roman empire! How many thousands of thousands of us did the ten years' war of Troy dismiss from the light of day! How many were driven by Anthony, after the murder of Tully, to seek hiding places in foreign provinces! How many of us were scattered by Theodoric, while Boethius was in exile, into the ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... against the law which was in his heart. The problem presented to him was how one was to be brought into subjection to the other, and the solution was by 'the putting on of Christ.' St. Paul's mind was charged with the ideas of Oriental and Greek philosophy then prevalent in the Roman Empire. His hearers understood him, because he spoke in the language of the prevailing speculations. We who have not the clue cannot, perhaps, perfectly understand him; but his words have been variously interpreted as human intelligence has expanded, and ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... The entire work will embrace about twenty numbers, appearing at intervals of a month. The first four of these, two numbers of which are before us, are devoted to Ancient History, extending to the Fall of the Roman Empire. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... and cruelest days of the Roman Empire, man was matched against wild beasts. But in the man's hand was the blade of his ancestors and over his breast the steel ribs which had helped his ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... command of what had once been the royal fleet. He was one of Polemo's freedmen, by name Anicetus, who had formerly been influential and resented the change which had converted the kingdom into a province of the Roman empire. He accordingly enlisted the maritime tribes of Pontus in Vitellius' service, attracting all the neediest ruffians with promises of plunder. At the head of no mean force he suddenly fell upon Trapezus,[122] an ancient and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the later periods of their power, silk; these, however, were almost exclusively confined to rare and solemn occasions, or to the use of the most wealthy and magnificent of the conquerors of the world. On the subversion of the Roman empire, the commodities of the East were for a short time in little request among the barbarians who subverted it: as soon, however, as they advanced from their ignorance and rudeness, these commodities seem strongly to ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... said that Athenodorus the Stoic contributed greatly by his conversation to amend the faults of Augustus, and to effect the change visible in that fortunate man after his accession to the Roman empire. If this be true, it may throw a new light on the character of Augustus, and instead of being the hypocrite, he was possibly the convert. Certain it is that there are few vices which cannot be conquered by wisdom; ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
