Historia Antiga
Historia Antiga is a late 19th-century elementary treatise that surveys the ancient world from pre-historic times through the fall of Rome. Organized systematically, it introduces readers to the cultural genesis of human civilization, examining the contributions of the Semitic, Hamitic, and Aryan races before proceeding through the great civilizations: the Hebrews, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. The text builds toward the pinnacle of classical antiquity, tracing the trajectory of empires that shaped the political, cultural, and intellectual foundations of Western civilization. Though written over a century ago, it offers a fascinating window into how ancient history was taught to students of an earlier era, with its Victorian-era framework and pedagogical approach. For modern readers, it serves as both a historical curiosity and a reminder that our understanding of the past has always been shaped by the questions and assumptions of the present.
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“It is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not.””
— Unknown
“If the assassination of Julius Caesar became a model for the effective removal of a tyrant, it was also a powerful reminder that getting rid of a tyrant did not necessarily dispose of tyranny.””
— Unknown
“Caesar quoted in Greek two words from the Athenian comic playwright Menander: literally, in a phrase borrowed from gambling, ‘Let the dice be thrown.’ Despite the usual English translation – ‘The die is cast’, which again appears to hint at the irrevocable step being taken – Caesar’s Greek was much more an expression of uncertainty, a sense that everything now was in the lap of the gods. Let’s throw the dice in the air and see where they will fall! Who knows what will happen next?””
— Unknown
“In extending citizenship to people who had no direct territorial connections with the city of Rome, they broke the link, which most people in the classical world took for granted, between citizenship and a single city. In a systematic way that was then unparalleled, they made it possible not just to become Roman but also to be a citizen of two places at once: one’s home town and Rome.””
— Unknown
“Rome was not simply the thuggish younger sibling of classical Greece, committed to engineering, military efficiency and absolutism, whereas the Greeks preferred intellectual inquiry, theatre and democracy.””
— Unknown
“Cicero once said of Cato, ‘he talks as if he were in the Republic of Plato, when in fact he is in the crap of Romulus’.””
— Unknown
“Vespasian continued his down-to-earth line in self-deprecating wit right up until his last words: ‘Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god …””
— Unknown
“It cannot be stressed enough that there is no certain independent date for any of the archaeological material from earliest Rome or the area round about, and that arguments still rage about the age of almost every major find.””
— Unknown
“In Rome there was no doctrine as such, no holy book and hardly even what we would call a belief system. Romans knew the gods existed; they did not believe in them in the internalised sense familiar from most modern world religions. Nor was ancient Roman religion particularly concerned with personal salvation or morality. Instead it mainly focused on the performance of rituals that were intended to keep the relationship between Rome and the gods in good order, and so ensure Roman success and prosperity.””
— Unknown
