Lindsey Davis Quotes

Afterwards, sometimes she dared to remember being in his arms. How, after only clumsy couplings with others, she and this man had straightaway come together as a perfect fit. How they moved together, in effortless synchronicity and with such deep pleasure. How when their exercise left them exhausted, she cried a little, so Vinius wiped her eye with his index finger, murmuring kindly, 'No tears!' before they both fell into profound sleep.
How her troubled mind had drowned in peace, her body melting against his...

On the scale of country crime, rape tended to rank with shouting boo at chickens.

Petronius once told me that pathological murderers tend to start their killing sprees while they are children. Find a man who takes prostitutes off the streets as a personal vocation, and he'll probably have a set of neat jars with his childhood collection of dissected rats.

Have any sheep been seen walking out of the Library with seagoing adventurers clinging to their wool?

Words are real if other people think they understand their meaning.

This was a solitary walk where the sun and the scents of wild flowers would act on a tortured mind like a soothing drug.

We are Romans. We despise thought.

To be born with nothing was grim. But to be born with everything, then to lose it, was far more cruel.

To know another person's fortune smacks of wanting to control their fate for the wrong reasons.

When I hear the words 'social order', I start looking around for somebody to pick a fight with.

'Do you want a cretin or a meddler?'
'Which is better for us?'
'Whoever gets the larger backhander.'
'We won't pay. We are going for probity.'
'Can't afford true justice, eh?'

This was no more cynical than most lying lozenge-pushers, but when he thought it mattered, Rhoemetalces had been honest. We cannot have that. Rome is a complex, sophisticated society. Truth is distrusted as much as Greek philosophy.

Never stop to breathe the pretty flower scents. The graves of the poor still stink.

Intimidation and awe are how our rulers keep us respectful.

Even the impetuous Helena Justina was an advocate of traditional family councils. However, every Roman matron knows that domestic councils were devised by our foremothers purely so the views of the matron of a household may prevail.