Varus Quotes

Michael Varus drew his sword. ''My father is Janus, the god of two faces. I am used to seeing through masks and deceptions.

His gut felt like Michael Varus was standing behind him, repeatedly stabbing him and yelling: Die like a Roman! Die like a Roman!

The dead praetor raised his sword. ''Our desires reveal us. They show us for who we really are. Someone has come come for you, Jason Grace.

I lost my cohort twice; once in life, once in death to a Graecus named Percy Jackson.

Hot hearts are wont to overpower cold minds

So much for Caligula as emperor; we must now tell of his career as a monster.... He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above. Many men of honourable rank were first disfigured with the marks of branding-irons and then condemned to the mines, to work at building roads, or to be thrown to the wild beasts; or else he shut them up in cages on all fours, like animals, or had them sawn asunder. Not all these punishments were for serious offences, but merely for criticising one of his shows, or for never having sworn by his genius. Having asked a man who had been recalled from an exile of long standing, how in the world he spent his time there, the man replied by way of flattery: "I constantly prayed the gods for what has come to pass, that Tiberius might die and you become emperor." Thereupon Caligula, thinking that his exiles were likewise praying for his death, sent emissaries from island to island to butcher them all. Wishing to have one of the senators torn to pieces, he induced some of the members to assail him suddenly, on his entrance into the House, with the charge of being a public enemy, to stab him with their styles, and turn him over to the rest to be mangled; and his cruelty was not sated until he saw the man's limbs, members, and bowels dragged through the streets and heaped up before him. He used to say that there was nothing in his own character which he admired and approved more highly than what he called his ἀδιατρεψία, that is to say, his shameless impudence. He seldom had anyone put to death except by numerous slight wounds, his constant order, which soon became well-known, being: "Strike so that he may feel that he is dying." When a different man than he had intended had been killed, through a mistake in the names, he said that the victim too had deserved the same fate. He even used openly to deplore the state of his times, because they had been marked by no public disasters, saying that the rule of Augustus had been made famous by the Varus massacre, and that of Tiberius by the collapse of the amphitheatre at Fidenae,​ while his own was threatened with oblivion because of its prosperity; and every now and then he wished for the destruction of his armies, for famine, pestilence, fires, or a great earthquake. While he was lunching or revelling capital examinations by torture were often made in his presence, and a soldier who was adept at decapitation cut off the heads of those who were brought from prison. At a public banquet in Rome he immediately handed a slave over to the executioners for stealing a strip of silver from the couches, with orders that his hands be cut off and hung from his neck upon his breast, and that he then be led about among the guests.

Sometimes life gives you sour grapes, sir,” Varus said. “It’s what I think they make cheap wine with.

come

Varus saw it, the army was there on a policing rather than a military mission.

Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” He kept the anniversary as a day of deep mourning.

The plot was betrayed, but Varus could not bring himself to distrust his friendly Germans

In AD 9 was the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The Roman commander Quinctilius Varus led twenty-five thousand legionaries into the heart of Germany and was slaughtered by Arminius’s spearmen, who rushed from their holy groves. Six years later, their skulls nailed to trees, their bones piled in torture pits and on votive altars, the Roman Army was discovered by the appropriately named Roman general Germanicus. It was the greatest tragedy ever to befall the Roman Empire and it sent a shudder of horror and shame across the civilized world that has vibrated in our subconscious for a thousand years. The slaughter in the Teutoburg Forest divided Europe into the warm south, who forever saw forests as dreadful places to be avoided and cleared, homes to dragons and trolls, antitheses of the civilized city, and the north, who understood them to be healing, protecting, mystical, spiritual places. How you feel about a silent birch forest at twilight says more about your blood and kin than your passport.

Pain flared in his lower back—so sharp and cold he thought Khione the snow goddess had touched him. Next to his ear, Michael Varus snarled, “Born a Roman, die a Roman.” The tip of a golden sword jutted through the front of Jason’s shirt, just below his rib cage. Jason fell to his knees. Piper’s scream sounded miles away. He felt like he’d been immersed in salty water—his body weightless, his head swaying.

It’s … gone,’ he said, stunned. ‘I feel completely normal. What the heck?’ ‘You beat it, man!’ Percy laughed. ‘You found your own cure.’ Jason considered that. He guessed it must be true. Maybe putting aside his pain to help his friends had done the trick. Or maybe his decision to honour the gods at both camps had healed him, giving him a clear path to the future. Roman or Greek … the difference didn’t matter. Like he’d told the ghosts at Ithaca, his family had just got bigger. Now he saw his place in it. He would keep his promise to the storm goddess. And because of that, Michael Varus’s sword meant nothing. Die a Roman. No. If he had to die, he would die a son of Jupiter, a child of the gods – the blood of Olympus. But he wasn’t about to let himself get sacrificed – at least not without a fight.

A.D. 15, Germanicus led an army across the Rhine and visited the battle sites where Varus lost his legions and his life. Tacitus gave an unforgettable description of the eerie scene: On the open ground were whitening bones, scattered where men had fled, heaped up where they had stood and fought back. Fragments of spears and of horses’ limbs lay there—also human heads, fastened to tree-trunks. In groves nearby were the outlandish altars at which the Germans had massacred the Roman colonels and senior company-commanders.