Theodor Mommsen

“Little do we find any Phoenician architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy, to say nothing of the lands where art was native.”

“An independent state does not pay too dear a price for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures for it peace with its neighbours.”

“Individual tribes or, in other words, races or stocks, are the constituent elements of the earliest history.”

“The Dalmatian tribes and the Pannonians, at least of the region of the Save, for a short time obeyed the Roman governors; but they bore the new rule with an ever increasing grudge, above all on account of the taxes, to which they were unaccustomed, and which were relentlessly exacted.”

“If it was in the interest of Rome to extend her conquests towards the East, and to enter on the inheritance of Alexander the Great there in all its extent, the circumstances were never more favourable for doing so than in the year 716.”

“המלך הוא רק אזרח רגיל, שמתוך זכות או הצלחה, אולם קודם כל מתוך ההכרח, שלכל בית יהיה אדונו, נעשה הוא השליט על האנשים השוים אליו.”

“היחיד בין כל עמי־התרבות שבימי קדם, אשר בחוקה ובמשטר המבוססים על יסוד השלטון העצמי הגיע לידי אחדות לאומית.”

“אותם העיקרים, שלפיהם ארגנה רומא את הארצות הכפופות לה באיטליה, הועברו ברובם גם למושבות שמחוץ לאיטליה.”

“האיטלקי הקריב מתוך הכרה ובהחלטיות גמורה את שרירות־הלב האישית על מזבח החופש, ולימד לכבד את האב ולשמוע במצותו, למען ידע לכבד את המדינה ולשמוע במצותה.”

“The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the common mother endowments different from those of its Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic sisters.”

“Under the Julian and Claudian emperors, the Parthians seem to have been the leading power at the mouth of the Indus.”

“Sertorius was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise of Hannibal. He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people; and even there, he was more and more compelled to renounce the offensive.”

“To acquire possession of Latium was of the most decisive importance to Etruria, which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania.”

“The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country, and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.”

“The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the side of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided character.”

“When the Romans in the last age of the republic came into immediate contact with Iran as a consequence of the occupation of Syria, they found in existence the Persian empire regenerated by the Parthians.”

“The power which the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.”

“The language of the land in the Parthian empire was the native language of Iran. There is no trace pointing to any foreign language having ever been in public use under the Arsacids.”

“The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf of the ocean, and, alternately narrowed by islands or projections of the land and expanding to considerable breadth, at once separates and connects the three divisions of the Old World.”

“In the Roman commonwealth, even on the conversion of the monarchy into a republic, the old was as far as possible retained.”