The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

The way to a landowner's heart was to tax gently.

By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction.

Biberunt ut Gothi – ‘drinking like Goths’ – would be a proverbial expression in Italy by the sixth century.

An emphasis on reading individual texts with a view to understanding the ideological visions of the world that underlie them has also had a dramatic impact. This type of interpretation requires historians to treat ancient authors, not as sources of fact, but rather like second-hand-car salesmen whom they would do well to approach with a healthy caution.

The author describes the attitude of some on the frontier at Rome's twilight as exhibiting "a kind of London-in-the-blitz determination to carry on being more Roman than usual.

Cultures reflect the interactions of mixed populations.

Foreign policy often involved nothing more than the decision whom to make war upon.

He was a stylist, not a thinker. He spent time trying to say things in as complicated a way as possible.

The most important thing for morale was to maintain a united front among the officers.

[W]ithin a generation, the Roman order was shaken to its core and Roman armies, as one contemporary put it, 'vanished like shadows'. In 376, a large band of Gothic refugees arrived at the Empire's Danube frontier, asking for asylum. In a complete break with established Roman policy, they were allowed in, unsubdued. They revolted, and within two years had defeated and killed the emperor Valens - the one who had received them - along with two-thirds of his army[.]

Such was the quasi-religious fervour surrounding the concept of the nation that politicians were ready to use identifications of the ancient spread of ‘peoples’ as evidence for claims about the present.

But in the fourth century, as in any other, ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’.

It was not the military prowess of the Germani that kept them outside the Empire, but their poverty.

With ancient history writers most immediately in view, the author indicates "tendency to look to the virtues and vices of individuals when seeking causes.

Author describes one monarch's impressive table but conveys a contemporary's observation, "the weightiest thing at dinner was the conversation".

The factor that made him so powerful was also his greatest liability.

That the regime was willing to hit itts chief political constituency in the pocket was a clear sign of desperation.

The cornerstone of the Roman legionnaires' astonishing fighting spirit can be attributed to their training.