Quotes & Sayings About Life In Ancient Rome

collectivity, on the other hand, is the place of what the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal calls "divertissement," an untranslatable word which roughly means "distraction" or "diversion": It is the escape from life's problems, and also its invitations, into activities that in ultimate terms are meaningless. It is a constant turning to superficial actions as a way to avoid facing the true realities of human life. The soap operas and situation comedies easily become an addiction. They take the place of the "bread and circuses" of ancient Rome. There was plenty wrong with Roman society and the Roman emperors offered the diversion of food and entertainment to make people forget the banality and meaninglessness of the lives they lived. Our society does much the same and has ever so much more in the way of sophisticated tools for doing so. — William H. Shannon

But, new soldier that I was, I understood at last what Cadus had been trying to tell me all along: that life and love and rank were not enough. To be whole in myself, I needed honour, and I had lost it, and could see no way to get it back. — M.C. Scott

One encounters in the streets, late at night on the evenings of fetes, the most strange and bizarre passers-by. Do these nights of popular celebration cause ancient and forgotten avatars to stir in the depths of the human soul? This evening, in the movement of the sweaty and excited crowd, I am certain that I passed between the masks of the liberated Bythinians and encountered the courtesans of the Roman decadence.
There emerged, this evening, from that swarming esplanade of Des Invalides - amid the crackle of fireworks, the shooting stars, the stink of frying, the hiccuping of drunkards and the reeking atmosphere of menageries - the wild effusions of one of Nero's festivals.
It was like the odour of a May evening on the Basso-Porto of Naples. It was easy to believe that the faces in that crowd were Sicilian. — Jean Lorrain

I despised myself for my weakness. I may have dreamed all my youth of life as a horse-trader like my father; I may have railed against my conscription and loathed the legions on principle, but even so, every morning in this place I cursed my lack of valour and every night, when I slept, my traitorous
mind brought me dreams drenched in the blood of our enemies as my comrades in the Vth launched themselves into battle, taking risks, winning glory, rising in the ranks, killing the enemy and so becoming men ... all without my being there.
The fact that it was winter, when the weather forced a kind of peace on both sides, and that my comrades were currently enduring endless forced marches over the mountains in western Armenia because their general had deemed them unfit for battle, did nothing to hamper my fantasies. — M.C. Scott

All his faces were designed to express rage or loathing. Now that something had happened which really deserved a face, he had none to celebrate it with. As a kind of token, he made his Sex Life in Ancient Rome face. — Kingsley Amis

Horgias nodded, his lips drawn back in a smile that was a wolf's snarl. 'They want us all flogged. Why us?'
'Lupus,' Syrion said. 'The other centurions hate him, even among the Fourth. He's too distant. He doesn't drink with them or whore with them. They don't know who he is, and so they hate him.'
'He loves war,' I said, who had seen the ice melt from his eyes, and the fire behind it, and these two made sense to me now. I felt the truth in my marrow, and it warmed me. 'He's bored with camp life. The Fourth are making a huge mistake giving him a reason to fight them. — M.C. Scott

Though they love people, the Christians are enemies of our life, our gods and our crimes; hence she fled from me, as from a man who belongs to our [Roman] society, and with whom she would have to share a life counted criminal by Christians ... I should not have stopped her from believing in her Christ, and would myself have reared an altar to Him in the atrium. What harm could one more god do me? Why might I not believe in Him, - I who do not believe over much in the old gods? ... It would not be difficult for me even to renounce other gods, for no reasoning mind believes in them at present. But it seems that all this is not enough yet for the Christians. It is not enough to honor Christ, one must also live according to His teachings; and here thou art on the shore of a sea which they command thee to wade through.
Quo Vadis — Henryk Stanczyk

The sun edged up until it caught the first heights of our standards. I saw the raised fist of Jupiter reach for the first rays, folding the light into its majesty so that it blazed with a life all its own.
I raised my hand to join it and the cheer that broke along the line was deeper than the enemy drumbeats, lasted longer, grew louder, and harder. It reached the oncoming cavalry and I saw them check in their advance, saw the horses pitch and stumble as they took the first rise of the hill. — M.C. Scott

The wheel of Rome spins constantly. Gods rise and fall, mortals live and die, and round and round we go. We all play a part in that wheel ... And I make sure the wheel never stops spinning. You see, if the wheel stops, balance is lost. — Katlyn Charlesworth

It was as if all my life had been spent fighting, killing and running. I wanted peace but I knew it was unattainable. I had to return and rule my people... — Fredrik Nath

I know not how the Christians order their own lives, but I know that where their religion begins, Roman rule ends, Rome itself ends, our mode of life ends, the distinction between conquered and conqueror, between rich and poor, lord and slave, ends, government ends, Caesar ends, law and all the order of the world ends; and in place of these appears Christ, with a certain mercy not existent hitherto, and kindness, as opposed to human and our Roman instincts.
(Quo Vadis) — Henryk Stanczyk

I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. — Henry Cavill

You have not studied the histories of ancient times, and perhaps know not the life that breathes in them; a soul of beauty and wisdom which had penetrated my heart of hearts. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis's devotion to his heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry, it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed shade of the gardens, and down — Edith Wharton

Nothing makes sense in Rome. — Katlyn Charlesworth

Every time I go back to Rome, I go back to that one spot. It is still alive for me, still resounds with something totally present, as though a heart stolen from a tale by Poe still throbbed under the ancient slate pavement to remind me that, here, I had finally encountered the life that was right for me but had failed to have. — Andre Aciman

I at least know what I am and do not try to hide it from the rest of the world. Do you know what you are? Because you can only be one thing at a time. — Katlyn Charlesworth

The danger we face does not come from religion. It comes from a growing intellectual bankruptcy that is one of the symptoms of a dying culture. In ancient Rome, as the republic disintegrated and the Caesars were deified, as the Roman Senate became little more than an echo chamber of the emperor, the population's attention was diverted by a series of frontier wars and violent and elaborate spectacles in the arena. The excitement of entertainment consumed ancient Rome's emotional and intellectual life. It poisoned civic and political discourse. Social critics no longer had a form in which to speak. They were answered with ridicule and rage. It was not prerogative of the citizen to think. — Chris Hedges

Selene's life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women's equality hasn't always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today; there have been setbacks before and may be more in the future. — Stephanie Dray

It almost looks like a halo of spikes," he said. "The sun crown isn't just a Christian symbol," Emily said. "In many cultures as far back as ancient Egyptian, and including Roman and Christian, crown of thorns and halo both derive from the tradition that identifies every newly-crowned king with the sun. The halo nimbus represents the rays of the rising sun. It's a sign that its wearer plays the life-giving role of the sun in his subjects' existence. The Greek sun god Apollo was driving his chariot across the heavens wearing the sun crown when Rome was just a huddle of huts. — Kenneth Atchity

A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease. — Titus Lucretius Carus

Tell me we're not going to be stoking up the cook fires to build palisades through the night by their light.' I stood, turning as I spoke.
Gravely, he said, 'You're not going to be stoking the cook fires and building palisades through the night by their light.'
Something was wrong with Lupus. He had never in his life made a joke, and his eyes were not laughing; quite the reverse. — M.C. Scott