Steven Saylor > Quotes

“Men like Caesar and Pompey--they're not heroes, Meto. They're monsters. They call their greed and ambition "honour," and to satisfy their so-called honour they'll tear the world apart. But who am I to judge them? Every man does what he must, to protect his share of the world. What's the difference between killing whole villages and armies, and killing a single man? Caesar's reasons and mine are different only in degree. The consequences and the suffering still spread to the innocent (Gordianus the Finder to his son Meto)”
― Steven Saylor, Rubicon

“In politics, reality and appearance are of equal importance. You cannot attend to one and neglect the other. A man must determine both what he is, and what others believe him to be.”
― Steven Saylor, Roma

“The strands (the gods) weave out of our mortal lives are like a pattern visible only from the heavens; we here on earth can only guess at their designs”
― Steven Saylor, Last Seen in Massilia

“...detachment from anger is one part of wisdom.”
― Steven Saylor

“There was no arguing with a man's faith in the legends of his childhood.”
― Steven Saylor, Rogues

“Why have two figures of such remarkable interest been so scanted by the annalists and historians, so overlooked by philosophers, poets, and priests? I think it may be that they were, to put it bluntly, too disreputable. They were too stubbornly independent to give allegiance to a single city and thus become subject matter for a civic epic. They were too often involved with demons and sorcerers to appeal to the staid philosopher and too shifty to please the sober historian. In short, they were rogues, and rogues have no place in the lists of kings and demigods and heroes. It may be that no poet shall ever write of them, alas!”
― Steven Saylor, Rogues

“When I was a boy, my grandfather taught me the list of kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius the Elder, Servius Tullius. Tarquinius the Proud was to be the last, the very last, cast out and replaced forever by something called a republic. A mockery! A mistake! An experiment that failed! Today is the republic’s final day. Tomorrow, men will shout in the Forum, ‘All hail King Coriolanus!”
― Steven Saylor, Roma

“There is nothing so unsure as the plans we make that rely on the sensible behavior of another human being.”
― Steven Saylor, The Triumph of Caesar

“I kept secrets from you. I let you believe a lie. I am an impious son. But I made my choice, as C(aesar) did, and once the Rubicon is crossed, there can be no turning back (Meto, Caesar's scribe, to his father Gordianus the Finder)”
― Steven Saylor, Rubicon

“At length Old Tiro returned, lifting the curtain for his master. How shall I describe Marcus Tullius Cicero? The beautiful all look alike, but a plain man is plain according to his own peculiarity.”
― Steven Saylor, Roman Blood

“What appalling tales we shall have to tell of the strange lands we visited; and of those lands, surely none was stranger or more barbaric than Rome!”
― Steven Saylor, A Gladiator Dies Only Once

“Now as I grow older, Meto, I grow less and less able to tolerate the stupidity of the people and the wickedness of their rulers. I have seen too much suffering created by ambitious men who care only for themselves.”
― Steven Saylor

“But sometimes...sometimes I wake with a mad thought in my head: What if that boy's life mattered as much as anyone else's, even Caesar's? What if I were offered a choice: to doom that boy to the misery of his fate, or to spare him, and by doing so, to wreck all Caesar's ambitions? I'm haunted by that thought - which is ridiculous! It's self-evident that Caesar matters infinitely more than that Gaulish boy; one stands poised to rule the world, and the other is a miserable slae, if he even still lives. Some men are great, others are insignificant, and it behooves those of us who are in-between to ally ourselves with the greatest and to despise the smallest. To even begin to imagine that the Gaulish boy maters as much as Caesar is to presume that some mystical quality resides in every man and makes his life equal to that of any other, and surely the lesson life teaches us is quite the opposite! In stength and intellect, men are anything but equal, and the gods lavish their attention on some more than on others.”
― Steven Saylor, The Judgment of Caesar

“Mummius?” “His right hand,”
― Steven Saylor, Arms of Nemesis

“Nero wanted only to be an actor; Commodus, to be a gladiator; and young Antoninus … to be Venus!”
― Steven Saylor, Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire

“Consider all the mortals that populated the earth before us, generation upon generation, extending back through countless centuries. All are dead, all turned to dust—so many, one wonders how the earth has room to hold them all.”
― Steven Saylor, Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire

“How old did you say you were, Lucius? Thirty-two?” Epaphroditus shook his head. “A dangerous age for a man—old enough to feel that he should be in charge of his destiny and to chafe against the constraints of living under an absolute ruler, but perhaps not yet old enough to discern the fine line that a man must tread if he’s to survive the whims of Fortune.”
― Steven Saylor, Empire

“Still, Marcus was acutely aware that he served at Hadrian’s pleasure. In a state ruled absolutely by one man, no matter how enlightened that man might be, every other man was at his mercy.”
― Steven Saylor, Empire

“Reading Suetonius had given him the idea. The details were all a jumble in his head, but Marcus had been left with a vague impression that the world had progressed since the days of Augustus. In the rush of daily life, one tended to forget what a special place Roma was. One tended to forget, too, how strange was the past, and how much better, in every way, was the world of the present moment. Thinking of the outlandish tales in Suetonius, remembering the stories his father had told him, and reflecting on his own memories of a life that had begun in slavery but delivered him into the company of emperors and the care of the Divine Youth, it seemed to Marcus that the world had passed through a series of terrible trials to arrive at something resembling a perfect state, or as perfect as mortals could make it.”
― Steven Saylor, Empire

“No city is conquered unless its people have offended the gods; for the conquerors to kill or enslave the inhabitants is pleasing to the gods. The people of Roma have always known this. The humiliation of our enemies is one of the ways by which we please the gods, and by pleasing the gods, we continue to prosper.”
― Steven Saylor, Roma

“The stakes are too high,’ he said. ‘High stakes, high rewards!’ I said. Or as my warrior brother likes to say, ‘No spirit, no splendor!”
― Steven Saylor, Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire

“Yes, indeed, Senator Pinarius. It’s because the author mentions his dealings with the late Marcus, blessed be his memory, and with Commodus, blessed be his reign. Anything to do with the imperial family is always guaranteed to sell, and with today’s awful news, people are hungry to read anything to do with the beloved Marcus.”
― Steven Saylor, Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire

“To write about long-dead people is one thing. To write about one’s own lifetime is different. And of course I must take care to avoid writing anything that gives offense to the emperor. Yes, I’m finding it difficult. But never fear, I shall finish it, and Philip will be impressed.”
― Steven Saylor, Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire

“History and legend conspire to convince us that there are men who rise above the common lot of humankind, who are set apart from the rest of us by birth or achievement or the favor of the gods; but no man, regardless of his pretensions to greatness, is immune from death, and the death of the so-called great is often more squalid and terrifying than the deaths of their most humble subjects.”
― Steven Saylor, The Judgment of Caesar

“The state is the emperor; the emperor is the state. The rest of us are like grains of sand on a beach: interchangeable, indistinguishable, inconsequential. A Roman citizen has no importance whatsoever, no matter how much some of us would like to pretend otherwise.”
― Steven Saylor, Empire

“Epictetus was a living example of the Stoic philosophy he embraced, which placed great value on the dignity of the self and a graceful acquiescence to those things over which the self had no control.”
― Steven Saylor, Empire

“Amazing as it might seem, the emperors and the empire of Rome have been instruments of his will all along. With the final demise of the persecutors, and with power in the hands of divinely inspired men like Constantine and Licinius, the Roman Empire is now ready to assume a new role in the history of mankind.”
― Steven Saylor, Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire

“When politicians give up on liberty, it falls to poets to preserve it. Or to write its epitaph.”
― Steven Saylor, The Triumph of Caesar

“Alexander proclaimed that he was not to be addressed as Dominus by his fellow Romans. He preferred to be called Imperator.”
― Steven Saylor, Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire

“We are disturbed not by events, but by the views which we take of them.’ Is that not true, even of the death of loved ones?”
― Steven Saylor, Empire