“I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.”

“Since my arrival in Rome, I have had many opportunities to wonder if compassion’s opposite is cruelty, or to reflect whether or not indifference would serve as a better black to its white.”

“Oh, I take your meaning now, Marcus,” he said, as if comprehension had just dawned. “You would have me harken back to a time when the outcome of a contest was not known until after the voting. How nostalgic.”

“Why can’t I remember that not once have I ever seen a coin, whether grimy copper or bright gold, that had but one side.”

“He wore the memory of her embrace like armor, and though he knew it would not save his life, it would be all that was left to him to ease his passage into whatever lay beyond.”

“When I asked him how this cramping might affect his sword arm, he assured me it was only the narrow grip of the writing instruments that troubled him. “If we fought with pens,” he said, “I would be forced to fall upon mine.”

“You’d be surprised what people will accept once you insist two or three times running that they have seen what you tell them they have seen.”