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Timonides: [when Ballomar threatens to continue burning Timonides's left hand] Let's look at this logically...
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Commodus: If you listen carefully... you will hear the gods... you will hear the gods laughing.
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Timonides: As you see there is more than enough for ourselves. We were right Livius. There is no limit with what can be done with a human spirit, for good or evil.
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Timonides: Men of Rome, men of Rome! Do not touch these people, they have become your brothers. They're Roman now. The whole Northern people will answer with fire and blood, their hatred will live for centuries. Men of Roman blood will pay for this. You will make nations to kill us all. Let us live in peace! Peace!
[Timonides is killed with a javelin in the chest]
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Victorinus: We're in command now Livius, the throne is yours.
Senator: Gaius Mettelus Livius, the people are asking for you.
Livius: You would not find me very suitable, because my first official act would be to have you all crucified.
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Livius: [standing over the body of Timonides] What happened, gentle Greek? Did you try to tell them there were three possibilities? Did you not know that there was a fourth possibility? This!
[picks up and throws spear away]
Lucilla: This is the way they answer to reason - and now even you must see, this is the only way to answer them.
Livius: Look at his face. Tell me what I must do in his name. March the army into Rome and drench the city with blood!
Lucilla: He is dead.
Livius: He does not seem dead to me. I can still feel his life. And can hear his words.
Lucilla: He was my father's friend.
[uncovering the Christian cross Timonides wore around his neck]
Livius: I will go alone into Rome. If I do not return by sunset, then let the army into Rome.
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Livius: A few days longer, Caesar, we'll bring you his head.
Marcus Aurelius: No Livius, please don't bring me his head. I wouldn't know what to do with it.
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Closing Narrator: This was the beginning of the fall of the Roman Empire. A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.
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Marcus Aurelius: When I was a child, Timonides, I had a secret fear that night would come and would never end. That we would live out our lives in total darkness. It was a small fear, then.
Timonides: Yet, my lord Caesar, the sun always rises - and will again.
Marcus Aurelius: So you say.
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Marcus Aurelius: What is another day to offer you, Timonides?
Timonides: Warmth, life, color, people.
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Lucilla: As the dog fears the eagle, as the lamb fears the wolf, so is my heart and head with fear. Oh, mother Vesta, eternal mother of Rome, help me. Bring back the health of my father. Protect us from the danger which hangs - over the Empire. Let there be peace, over all Rome.
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Lucilla: I thought, by living alone away from the world, I could find peace. Then I found there is no real peace in being alone. There is only loneliness.
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Marcus Aurelius: We've had to fight long wars. Your burdens have been great. But, we come now - to the end of the road. Here, within our reach, golden centuries of peace. A true Pax Romana! Wherever you live, whatever the color of your skin, when peace is achieved, it will bring to all, *all*, the supreme right of Roman citizenship.
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Marcus Aurelius: Death is in the order of things. Didn't they teach you that in school?
Lucilla: I will not let you leave me.
Marcus Aurelius: Is there a choice? Soon, this trickle of blood, these few bones, this net woven of nerves and arteries, will be dust. No choice.
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Marcus Aurelius: You have a heart for it, Livius.
Livius: But Commodus already shares the throne with you.
Marcus Aurelius: I had hoped that position and responsibility would make him grow up. But he is interested only in games and gladiators.
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Marcus Aurelius: You have such a gift for life, Lucilla. But I think you ask too much of it. Learn to pity. Learn to have compassion. For yourself, too. Pity and compassion for yourself.
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Commodus: Gaius Livius! Warrior! Voyager!
Livius: Commodus, Commodus! Most Roman of them all!
Commodus: I've missed you!
Livius: Are you well?
Commodus: I'm never unwell!
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Lucilla: Rome has changed. It's now crawling with gladiators.
Commodus: Sister, I thought you'd retired as a Vestal virgin.
Lucilla: And abandon Rome to you? And your athletes?
Commodus: Female philosopher!
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Commodus: Father thinks too much.
Livius: There is much for a Roman to think of these days.
Commodus: Why Livius, for a moment that honest warrior's face of yours took on the - philosopher's look. Let's not think, let's drink.
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Lucilla: Livius. Livius.
Livius: Lucilla. Lucilla!
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Livius: Known, yet not known.
Lucilla: Known and not known? How can that be?
Livius: I'm not sure how it was. But I know now.
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Livius: You were always with me. Everywhere. I took you into battle with me. You were with me in the gold fields. But you know this.
Lucilla: Only this. I know this. You were with me, too. Always!
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Lucilla: In these buildings, you store all the writings of the great men of Rome. I am leaving - with my husband - and soon I'll be far from this city. Now I ask that you guard these, the "Meditations" of my father, Marcus Aurelius. Whatever else happens, in the days to come, let not these be destroyed. For this - is Rome.
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Commodus: When my father was dying, I spoke to the gods saying I'm not like my father and if I'm too crowned Caesar, I will change all he did. I offered them my life - and told them if it was not for the good of Rome that I be Caesar, then let me be killed. But, you see - I'm alive.
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Commodus: Now, I wish to see Rome once more the city of light, gaiety, of beauty and strength. We will have games!
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Timonides: Although I've been a slave, I'm not acostumed to pain. Although a philosopher, I am weak.
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Timonides: I'm not worthy of it. Barbarians! Monsters! Animals!
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Ballomar: Don't you want us Roman?
Timonides: You miserable, uneducated, half-men! You're not at all what we fought for. And, yet - yes, we want you. We want you.
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Commodus: Sister!
Verulus: If he'd not been Caesar, he'd be the greatest gladiator in Rome!
Lucilla: Yes, you do belong in the arena.
Commodus: You mean to say you came all this way to sharpen your wits? Everything you do - has a purpose. Hmm?
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Verulus: Ceasar, you are unarmed. Even a woman with a dagger can be dangerous.
Commodus: She has no dagger. She's my - sister.
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Timonides: Fellow Romans. I am a teacher, and as a teacher I know that when I have tried to teach the same lesson for a hundred times and still the pupil does not understand, then I am forced to the conclusion that perhaps there's something wrong, Either with the lesson or with the teacher. A hundred times we have taught those we have called barbarians what it means to make war with Rome. We've burned their villages, we've crucified their leaders. we've enslaved their young. Fires go out, the dead are buried, the slaves die, slowly. But their hatred that we leave behind us never dies! Hatred means wars. Wars mean tribute torn from our provinces, taxes, hunger, disease. How costly that is! How wasteful! And yet the answer is simple. We must have no war.
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Timonides: Let us transform my friends from men of war to men of peace. Let us put them on our abandoned farmland. Not only will they produce food for themselves, but this I pledge you. One day they will send food to Rome.
Roman Senator: Yes, I agree! Put them on those lands. Let them produce for us but as slaves. That is the way it has always been!
Timonides: Niger here used to have twenty thousand slaves on his family estate. Where are they now? All sold or freed. Why? Because Niger is opposed to slavery? No, because it is no longer profitable to keep slaves. Slaves do not produce as much as free men. Let us do what is profitable, and right. Let us share the greatest gift of all. Let us give these men the right of Roman freedom. And they will spread the word that Rome has accepted them as equals, then we will have our human frontiers. The Roman peace that Marcus Aurelius promised.
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Senator: How does an empire die? Does it collapse in one terrible moment? No. No! But there comes a time when its people no longer believe in it. Then, then does an empire begin to die. Fathers of Rome, I have lived under four great emperors: Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius. And during all those years our empire grew. Changed. The law of life is grow or die. And you, the senators, are the heart of Rome. It is through you that the people speak. Speak up! Let the world hear you! Let the world *know* that Rome will not die. There are millions like them waiting at our gates. If we do not open these gates they will break them down and destroy us, but instead, let us grow ever bigger, ever greater. Let us take them among us. Let the heart of the empire grow with us. Honorable fathers, we have changed the world. Can we not change ourselves?
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Timonides: Romans! Romans! Romans! Romans! Now can we say to our Senate, to our empire, to the whole world, look! Here we meet in friendship, the blond people from the north and the dark people from the south. What we have done here could be done the whole world over!
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Commodus: I've been made a god. Did you know?
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Commodus: I've finally understood why they have sent me this pestilence. There was famine, there were too many mouths, so the gods made less mouths.
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Commodus: I offered you everything and yet you put yourself against me. You could have become a god.
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Commodus: I loved you, Livius. Yet now you must die. But that's the sort of joke the gods love best. You told me once you'd never heard the gods laughing. Listen. Listen, carefully.
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Lucilla: Gods of Rome. Your empire has died! The light of the world has gone out!
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Lucilla: People of Rome! People of Rome! Quickly! Quickly, run to your Livius. Tell them the night is full of thieves. They have robbed us of our most precious treasures, of our pride, of our glory, of our wisdom, of our honor.
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Lucilla: People of Rome! Cry out! Death it is near! They do not see. They do not hear. Only the jackals who are waiting in darkness know. Only the vultures who are wheeling the black skies know. Mourn! Mourn for the land that is no more!
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Livius: Lucilla. You're beautiful.
Lucilla: "You're beautiful." - what does *that* mean?
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Marcus Aurelius: [as he feels a sharp pain in his side] He's come for me, the silent boatman...
The Fall of the Roman Empire Quotes
Extended Reading
