"Petronius would take his free bread buns and run. I happened to know that since Petro had been elected to the watch he had never cast a vote. He believed a man on a public salary should be impartial. I didn’t agree but I admired him being so stubborn in his eccentricities. Aufidius Crispus would be an unusual politician if he had allowed for such morality in the voters he was courting."

"We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia’s father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers’ training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him… The old fisherman was a toothless, hapless, faithless cove you would not trust too near you with a filleting knife, but whether from fear or simple cunning he co-operated eagerly. The lad agreed to marry the girl and since Silvia would never abandon Ollia here, we decided that the fisherboy had to come back with us to Rome. His relations looked impressed by this result. We accepted it as the best we could achieve."

"She called me a rat.” “Oh yes, I gathered you two were very close!"

"He listened with the mild demeanour of a man who had waited eight years for his town council to draw up a specification for emergency repairs."

"The plumber plodded along in silence, like a man who has learned to be polite to lunatics through dealing with civil engineers."

"You could tell those two had been married by the way that she ignored him."

"I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher’s bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!"

"Senator, don't let your judgement be warped by one heady moment."

"Emperors must make their own rules."

"'How old now?' 'Thirty. Downhill to the dark boat across the Styx. Probably be sick over the side in Charon's ferry too…'"

"It struck me there might be a reason why Helena Justina whipped along at such a cracking pace: she did not want to be stuck in the wilderness with my corpse. I thanked Jove for her ruthless good sense. I did not want my corpse to be stuck with her in any case."

"In my experience, men who sit in corners are the ones to watch."

"Popular men who laugh at your jokes pose a threat which blatant villains can never command."

"Some men are born lucky. Others are born Marcus Didius Falco."

"I like my women in a few wisps of drapery: then I can hope for a chance to remove the wisps. If they start out with nothing I tend to get depressed because either they have just stripped off for someone else or, in my line of work, they are usually dead."

"Do we think Locusta is still alive?” “If so, she would have to be about two hundred.” “Sipping at the Fountain of Youth?” “No, I think she was killed in the Year of the Four Emperors.” “Poison?” “Natural causes—execution.” “Did she train up apprentices?” “Yes, but the old crafts are dying. No one wants to be bothered. These days you can’t find suppliers with the expertise, however big a bribe you offer."

"[Y]ou would think happy wedding guests would tuck in with gusto—yet ... [i]t’s mourners at funerals who scoff.” “Because this is food as human comfort, plus respect for the national gods. We are one with our ancestors and one with our fellow mourners."

"Think of tonight as having a real purpose. Yes, it is dining with the dead in order to be at one with our ancestors, but at the same time, a good scoff in shared company provides solace for the unhappy, it anneals the internal stress of bereavement, it helps the living along the path of their recovery from grief.” “That’s a useful motto for a caterer!"

"There comes a point for a nut-lover, Quintus thought, where funeral food is worth taking a risk, even when you are dining with a megalomaniac who wants to kill you."

"Sometimes information you barely noticed consciously comes back to you of its own accord."

"Their work was undercover—yet their existence unconcealed. That is how fear works."

"They were not beggars; well, not in the usual sense. They were Christians, who wanted not just my nephews' money but their souls."

"Curiosity is a terrible inducement."

"No woman who builds a career on hard work and talent will ever compliment a much younger one who uses the shallow gift of her looks."

"A wise partner does not come between her man and his best friend."

"I despise women who rely on men entirely for their own existence."

"He had the kind of personality that makes you think a boy will grow up to be a public torturer."

"Sometimes you run away by yourself purely so someone who cares will come to find you. Half the time nobody does. That's the tragedy of life."

"If being hit on the head by a falling flower tub could be worth cash to the victim, what price a child’s life under civil law?"

"He was dead. No point speculating. Cherish the past for what it was, an ideal, a signal that human happiness might be a possibility. Raise your standards. Make a decent life, Lucilla. Life is all there is. If it's only once, it must be good... He had been right. If perfection only happened once, that was better than never. Now nothing for her would ever again entail complete despair. So thank you, Gaius Vinius Clodianus, son of Marcus, thank you for your good deed, a deed that brightened somebody's dark world."

"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."

"Discovering that a fraud exists is only the first step. It has to be proved and the proof has to be absolutely watertight."

"Architectural drawings may look beautiful and be admired by critics but to be good, they have to work in daily use."

"That's the trouble with foreign travel. You spend half your time trying to find edible food, and the rest fighting off men who profess extravagant love to your female companions. I'm amazed how many women believe outright lies from foreigners."

"Luck is a wonderful luxury. What could better prove that some are born under a star of good fortune than the career (and the large, comfortable home) of the Great King?"