Sara

“Molto, molto tempo prima, in un tempo di cui la breve memoria del genere umano non conservava tracce, la Luce aveva trionfato, e ora regnava suprema nel Sole. Ma nel corso degli infiniti cicli temporali – e questo lo ammettevano perfino i Sacerdoti della Luce – il regno del Sole era destinato a finire; Dyaus, il Dio Occulto, il Dormiente, avrebbe riassorbito la Luce... e, in una smisurata Notte del Caos, avrebbe spezzato le sue catene e instaurato il suo dominio.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley

“E così avvenne che quando il ragazzo che sarebbe stato il mio pupillo subì la mia influenza, io gli insegnai secondo le antiche tradizioni dell'antica Roma, e della Roma repubblicana, e secondo le idee del vecchio vescovo Alarico e di Palagio, e secondo le idee che regnavano a Camelot ai tempi di mio padre e di suo padre, e che non erano le idee della nuova Roma. Il ragazzo a cui feci da maestro apprese la pulizia, la semplice religiosità, la disciplina e la vita di un guerriero. Apprese a godere la bontà della vita, a godere e ad apprezzare la bontà e la forza delle donne, e ad accettare per vere l'intrinseca nobiltà e la bontà dell'uomo.”
― Jack Whyte

“They are ordinary but courageous people who decided they could not continue to live under the Empire's rules, even then."

I frowned. "For example?"

"Examples? Try crippling taxes, unjust and self-serving laws, constant inflation, corrupt officials, restrictive regulations governing the way they lived their lives and constant government interference."

I had nothing to say to this, so he continued. "They walked away — out of the Empire. Away from their homes, from their businesses, from their employment. Away from the taxes and the duties and the burdens. They walked away to the hills and the forests and they refused to go back. They built huts and they lived on whatever they could grow and hunt for themselves." His voice was almost a monotone. "It started as a trickle at the end of the third century and it grew into a flood. We're now at the end of the fourth century and it's still going on. For over a hundred years now these Bagaudae have paid no taxes, obeyed no Roman laws and spared the lives of no Roman soldiers who came after them. Most of them live communally on huge villa farms and settlements. Each man contributes to the life of the commune with his own skills and abilities. They have no use for money; they barter. And among their numbers are physicians, magistrates, architects, lawyers, administrators and a large number of professional soldiers."

"That's incredible, " I said. "And the Empire does nothing?" He spread his hands wide in a gesture that was purely Gallic. "What can the Empire do? The bureaucrats are afraid that the story will spread. The official policy is to do nothing that will attract attention to the problem. To ignore it, in the hope that it will go away. Rome leaves the Bagaudae in peace, because the alternative might stir up a furore that could breed an Empire full of Bagaudae."
- The Skystone”
― Jack Whyte, The Skystone

“Empires have risen in this world and fallen, and history takes note of few of them. Those that survive in the memories of men do so by virtue of the faults that flawed their greatness. But here in Britain, in my own lifetime, a spark ignited in the breast of one strong man and became a clean, pure flame to light the world, a beacon that might have outshone the great lighthouse of Pharos, had a sudden gust of wilful wind not extinguished it prematurely. In the space of a few, bright years, something new stirred in this land; something unprecedented; something wonderful; and men, being men, perceived it with stunned awe and then, being men, destroyed it without thought, for being new and strange. When it was over, when the light was snuffed out like a candle flame, a young man, full of hurt and bewilderment, asked me to explain how everything had happened. He expected me to know, for I was Merlyn, the Sorcerer, Fount of all Wisdom.”
― Jack Whyte