Edward Gibbon Quotes

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

Rome ... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of being an emperor while the Praetorian Guard ruled.

In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

Rome was great in arms, in government, in law.

We are fascinated with our own history, and we are fascinated with the Romans because they were millennia ago, and yet they still capture our imagination because they were actually so similar to us. They were very civilized. They had a very similar political system.

Ancient Rome was a violent place.

I love Rome and the way that you can wander around and find something interesting around every street corner. You can smell the history.

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.

Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?

[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.

History has scarcely deigned to notice [Libius Severus's] birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

I certainly don't see myself as Caligula.

In Rome, the emperor sat in a special part of the Colosseum called the Caesarian Section.

When Rome burned, the emperor's cats still expected to be fed on time.

Let us now relieve the Romans of their fears by the death of a feeble old man.

Julian sincerely abhorred the system of oriental despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of four score years, had established in the empire. A motive of superstition prevented the execution of the design which Julian had frequently meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but he absolutely refused the title of Dominus or Lord, a word which was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans, that they no longer remembered its servile and humiliating origin.

The first persecution of the Church took place in the year 67, under Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome.

We were all Romans once, I guess.

Take care always to remember that you are a Roman.... Have a care you are not too much of a Caesar!

America has never been an empire. … We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused.

Having conceived a violent enmity to them Caligula [The Roman Emperor] took possession of the synagogues in the other cities after beginning with those of Alexandria, by filling them with images and statues of himself...

Eternal Rome

All empires are created of blood and fire.

Most civilizational advancements occurred under empires.