The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)

James Mason: Timonides

Photos 

Quotes 

• Timonides : [when Ballomar threatens to continue burning Timonides's left hand]  Let's look at this logically...

• 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.

• 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] 

• 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.

• Marcus Aurelius : What is another day to offer you, Timonides?

  Timonides : Warmth, life, color, people.

• Timonides : Although I've been a slave, I'm not acostumed to pain. Although a philosopher, I am weak.

• Timonides : I'm not worthy of it. Barbarians! Monsters! Animals!

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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!