Marius

“So widespread was slavery in the Mediterranean and the Arabic world that even today regular greetings reference human trafficking. All over Italy, when they meet, people say to each other, “schiavo,” from a Venetian dialect. “Ciao,” as it is more commonly spelt, does not mean “hello”; it means “I am your slave.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“The way to a landowner's heart was to tax gently.”
― Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

“And yet, despite the horror it caused, the plague turned out to be the catalyst for social and economic change that was so profound that far from marking the death of Europe, it served as its making.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passion, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow.”
― George Macaulay Trevelyan