Douglas Boin

“Historians must not confuse the passage of time with the accumulation of intelligence,” John Lewis Gaddis has cautioned.”
― Douglas Ryan Boin, Coming Out Christian in the Roman World: How the Followers of Jesus Made a Place in Caesar's Empire

“Other Romans pledged their allegiance not to the longstanding ideal of Romanitas but to the individual cities in which they resided. “I am a citizen of Bordeaux,” one fiercely insisted—conveniently ignoring the Roman roads he traveled, the Roman money he used to buy his writing equipment, and the Roman courts that protected his property. Bordeaux’s local government provided none of those protections or amenities. It was the treasury of Rome that made them possible. But for a resident of Roman Gaul, waving the flag of hometown pride had likely become an effective strategy for keeping unwanted strangers out.”
― Douglas Boin, Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome