"The Romans conquered the world through seriousness, discipline, organisation, continuity of vision and method; through the conviction that they were a superior race, born to command; through the well-considered, methodically calculated use of the most ruthless cruelty, cold perfidy and the most hypocritical propaganda, employed simultaneously or in turn; by an unshakeable resolution to always sacrifice everything to prestige, without ever being sensitive either to peril, or to pity, or to any human respect; by the art of decomposing under terror the very soul of their adversaries, or of putting them to sleep with hope, before enslaving them with arms; finally by such skilful handling of the crudest lie that they have deceived even posterity and are still deceiving us. "
Simone Weil, in "Some reflections on the origins of Hitlerism". @history
"Life expectancy at birth in Roman Egypt was just 27.3 for women and 26.2 for men."
"As the empire expanded, the Romans took the show—including all their diseases—on the road. In every location, “The empire’s arrival led to the hasty construction of the first town, in Roman style, with baths and aqueducts, drains, heating systems, and latrines. Despite the amenities, a reasonable answer to the question ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ might have been ‘Got us sick.’ Mortality rates went up.”
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