Quotes & Sayings About Roman Legions

The four walls of the living redoubt had fallen, hardly could a quivering be detected here and there among the corpses; and thus the French legions, grander than the Roman legions, expired at Mont-Saint-Jean on ground soaked in rain and blood, in the somber wheatfields, at the spot where today at four in the morning, whistling, and gaily whipping up his horse, Joseph drives by with the mail from Nivelles. — Victor Hugo

You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, protect it,and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did - by putting your soldiers in the mud. — T.R. Fehrenbach

the Temple was rebuilt, but by then the religion of Israel had been marked forever by the piety of the exile. Alongside the single Temple, where blood sacrifice was celebrated, arose numerous synagogues, places for meeting and for prayer, and the dominium of the priests yielded to the growing influence of the Pharisees and Scribes, men of the book and of study. In 70 A.D., the Roman legions again destroyed the Temple. But the learned rabbi Joahannah ben-Zakkaj, slipped covertly out of Jerusalem through the siege and obtained permission from Vespasian to continue the teaching of the Torah in the city of Jamnia. The temple has never been rebuilt since, and study, the Talmud, has become the real temple of Israel.24 This complex relationship to the Talmud is in fact a key to understanding the life and work of Mark Rothko. — Annie Cohen-Solal

Goose pimples rose all over me, my hair stood on end, my eyes filled with tears of love and gratitude for this greatest of all conquerors of human misery and shame, and my breath came in little gasps. If I had not known that the Leader would have scorned such adulation, I might have fallen to my knees in unashamed worship, but instead I drew myself to attention, raised my arm in the eternal salute of the ancient Roman Legions and repeated the holy words, "Heil Hitler!" — George Lincoln Rockwell

The castle's predecessor, the Roman villa, had been unfortified, depending on Roman law and the Roman legions for its ramparts. — Barbara W. Tuchman

We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth
all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. — William Makepeace Thackeray

During the battle, Spartacus himself tried with frenzied
determination, the symbolism of which is obvious, to reach Crassus, who was commanding the Roman
legions. He wanted to perish, but in single combat with the man who symbolized, at that moment, every
Roman master; it was his dearest wish to die, but in absolute equality. He did not reach Crassus:
principles wage war at a distance and the Roman general kept himself apart. Spartacus died, as he wished,
but at the hands of mercenaries, slaves like himself, who killed their own freedom with his. In revenge for
the one crucified citizen, Crassus crucified thousands of slaves. The six thousand crosses which, after
such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that
there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of
their own blood. — Albert Camus

The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength. — Goldwin Smith

Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud. — T.R. Fehrenbach

A man who had the legions of the east marching at his back could be bred by a donkey on a mule and the senate would have no choice but to accept him. — M.C. Scott