And when after long ages her temporal sovereignty was slipping from her weakened hands, she gathered to herself a spiritual sovereignty, and remains today the supreme ruler over the hearts and consciences of a large part of mankind in an empire which knows no geographical limits. (Location 53)
Romans, Sabines, and Etruscans, thenceforth known as the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. (Location 138)
The curia was an association of families or gentes, and ten of these curiae formed the tribe, of which, as has been already said, there were three, and upon this triple foundation stood the state. (Location 140)
Then when Romulus had created a military system and divided it into centuries and legions (one century to each curia, the whole forming a legion), (Location 146)
At a certain moment he told them Egeria had come to visit him; instantly the water changed to wine, the coarse food to delicious viands, and the rough benches to couches covered with rare and costly stuffs. Then they knew it was true that a divine power dwelt (Location 156)
They were freemen bat not citizens. (Location 195)
These were the plebeians, the common people. (Location 197)
It was an aristocracy of birth. The man who could not trace his lineage to the founders of the nation had not a single right of citizenship, and his connection with the state was simply by sufferance. (Location 206)
The third tribe, the Luceres or Etruscans, belonged to the curiae but had never been represented in the Senate. (Location 227)
These he proposed to add to the body of patrician gentes, and in the face of fierce opposition it was done. (Location 230)
The condition of the plebeians was unchanged and even more wretched than before, for upon them fell the task of the great public works which still exist as a memorial of this reign. (Location 232)
assassin he left a stronger and greater Rome, but one which had become a tyranny. (Location 248)
Servius created a new all-embracing order, with a classification not tribal, but based upon property. In other words, he gathered all the people into a military organization; an elaborately graded system of tribes and centuries, in which the wealthiest, richly armored and with sword and spear were at the top, and the poorest, with slings and arrows, at the base. (Location 251)
which joined the plebeians to the body politic. (Location 254)
It was the curiae which conferred upon the king his sovereignty (imperium). (Location 258)
This act was a cruel outrage upon Lucretia, the daughter of a noble Roman and wife of Collatinus, who was prefect of Rome, and a cousin of the king. (Location 270)
The stern Roman father condemned them with the rest, and himself gave the order to the lictors to scourge and then behead them with the axe. (Location 288)
If the debt was not discharged at the appointed time, the creditor might sell the debtor and all his sons to the highest bidder. (Location 306)
Rome had an instinct for organization. (Location 485)
In the study of history nothing is more obvious than the unconsciousness with which men and nations and empire, intent only upon their own selfish purposes, are developing vast designs of which they have never thought. (Location 489)
it was the administrative genius of Rome which retained them in her tenacious grasp. By converting Volscians, Etruscans, Samnites, at once into Romans— by establishing in the conquered provinces a vital and intimate relation with Rome, and Rome alone— (Location 498)
Each city was only a smaller Rome, with its patricians, its Senate, its two chief magistrates—and a system of carefully restricted Roman citizenship. (Location 502)
A marauding band of mercenaries from Campania, called Mammertines, had taken possession of the little town of Messana in Sicily, had murdered the males, and then appropriated their homes and wives and daughters. (Location 542)
are known as the Punic Wars. Carthage, with her wealth and her power was a prodigious engine of cruelty. She ruled her colonies with excessive rigor, imposing tribute that it required all their industry to pay. (Location 548)