Rome (TV series) Quotations

Rome is an American-British television show by HBO/BBC about the last century B.C. in Rome.

Unsorted

Nobody is a traitor until they are one.

Newsreader: Rufus has slaves for any budget.

The Stolen Eagle [1.1]

Titus Pullo: I have simpler tastes. I like to kill my enemies, take their gold and enjoy their women. That's it. Why tie yourself to one? Where's the flavor? Where's the joy?

Vorenus: Pullo, when is the last time you had a woman who wasn't crying or wanting payment?

Pullo: Look here, Mars! Look here, Mars! I am Titus Pullo! These bloody men are my gift to you.

How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic [1.2]

[Mark Antony, when discussing terms of Caesar's return to Rome]

Senator: He has one skeleton of a legion and commands us as what to do.

Mark Antony : Caesar has many more legions than the 13th.

Senator: Yes, on the far side of the Alps.

Mark Antony: Winter does not last forever. Spring comes. Snows melt.

Senator: That is a threat!

Mark Antony : No, I assure you, that is no threat. Snows always melt.

Vorena: What is going to happen?

Niobe: War is going to happen.

An Owl in a Thornbush [1.3]

Brutus: Mother, you are blinded by untapped lust. I'll get you a good big Cyrenian at the market and have done with it!

[Caesar has sent Vorenus ahead to scout with a squadron of cavalry]

Gaius Julius Caesar: Can we trust him?

Mark Antony: Who?

Gaius Julius Caesar: Lucius Vorenus.

Mark Antony: Vorenus? Deep Thirteenth, him. He'd follow the Eagle up Pluto's arse!

[Pullo instructs Vorenus on the fine points of wooing.]

Titus Pullo: Now, your best method of pleasing a woman is the warm, beating heart of an enemy. Oh, women say they don't like it, but they do! Makes them wet as October!

[discussing how to please Lucius's wife.]

Titus Pullo: Also: very important. When you couple with her there's this spot just above her cunny. It's like a button. Now, attend to that button and she will open up like a flower.

Lucius Vorenus: [outraged] How do you know this about her?!

Titus Pullo: [momentarily gobsmacked] All women have them! Ask anyone!

[On finding Rome unprotected by Pompeian troops:]

Lucius Vorenus: [aghast] This can only mean that the Republic has fallen.

Titus Pullo: And yet, the sky is still above us and the earth still below. Strange.

Vorenus: How could Mars allow such a thing to happen?

Pullo: Maybe he was out having a crap and missed it!

Stealing from Saturn [1.4]

Caesar: You are a thief. A foolish, incompetent thief. But we will treat your foolishness as some species of loyalty.

Caesar: I do not like to argue with fortune, and clearly she's taken you for a pet.

Caesar: [after having an epileptic seizure] Swear by Orcus never to speak of this.

The Ram Has Touched the Wall [1.5]

Caesar: They say a slave talks of freedom like a fish talks of flying.

Posca: They say that, do they? How very witty of them.

[Atia has informed Octavian she has engaged a tutor for him: one of the soldiers who rescued him.]

Octavian: Vorenus?

Atia of the Julii: Is that it? Not the sullen Catonian one, I don't like him. The cheerful, brutish one.

Octavian: [turning to go] Pullo.

Atia: What extraordinary names these plebs have. Pullo.

Egeria [1.6]

Atia: Octavian, have you penetrated anyone yet? Titus Pullo, didn't I tell you to get that sorted? What else?

Octavia: Perhaps you could arrange he kill someone.

Atia: That will happen in due course.

Titus Pullo: What's your price, then?

Madame: One thousand.

Titus Pullo: Gerrhae! I could have half the whores in Narbo for that, and their mothers!

Madame: We're not in Narbo, wherever that might be.

Titus Pullo: All right, my dove, we'll pay, but the girl better fuck him like Helen of Troy with her arse on fire, or I'll know the reason why!

Newsreader: This month's public bread is provided by the Capitoline Brotherhood of Millers. The Brotherhood uses only the finest flour: true Roman bread for true Romans.

Mark Antony: [to Atia] I had not realized until now... what a wicked old harpy you are.

Atia: A large penis is always welcome.

Titus Pullo: This is cack, this is! I'm wet through!

Lucius Vorenus: We're perfectly safe - a very favorable offering was made to Triton before we left.

Pullo: Well, if Triton can't keep me drier than this, he can suck my cock!

[Ship's mast breaks]

Vorenus: Pullo, when will you learn to keep your fat mouth shut?!

Pharsalus [1.7]

Caesar: Our men must win or die. Pompey's men have... other options.

Vorenus: His hands trembled, sir. His clothes were dirty, there was water in his eyes -- he is broken. I saw no need to apprehend him. I'd like to add that Legionary Pullo took no part in my decision, sir.

Caesar: You saw "no need." Do you not see that Pompey may be broken like a Dacian catamite and still be dangerous?!

Caesarion [1.8]

King Ptolemy XIII: [presenting the head of Pompey Magnus] We were going to make him a body, with moving arms and legs, and do a mime show with real animals and everything, and...

Gaius Julius Caesar: Silence!

[long, heavy silence]

Gaius Julius Caesar: Shame on the House of Ptolemy for such barbarity. Shame.

Pothinus: But... you are enemies.

Gaius Julius Caesar: He was a consul of Rome!

[guards put hands to their swords]

Gaius Julius Caesar: A consul of Rome, to die in this sordid way - quartered like some low thief? Shame!

Gaius Julius Caesar: These instruments tabulate the money that was borrowed by the previous king, Ptolemy XII, in the sum of seventeen thousand, thousand drachmae.

Pothinus: Seventeen? Absurd! Four, maybe.

Posca: That amount includes those sums that were borrowed from Pompey and those otherwise unable to collect.

Pothinus: That is not just.

Posca: Post mortem interests of this type are legally entailed to the presiding consul, i.e. Gaius Julius Caesar. It's... law.

Pothinus: Roman law.

Gaius Julius Caesar: Is there some other form of law, you wretched woman?

Caesar: I have conquered Gaul. I have defeated Pompey Magnus. I think I can handle a small boy and a eunuch.

Marc Antony: I'm glad you're so confident. Some would call it hubris.

Caesar: It's only hubris if I fail.

Vorenus: Pullo, report to Princess Cleopatra and do whatever she tells you!

[Pullo reports for duty - which is to have wild sex with Cleopatra. Afterwards:]

Pullo: [exhales] Gods, that was something, let me tell you...

Vorenus: I don't want to hear about it! If you're wise, you'll never speak of this again.

Pullo: Why? I was only following orders. Bloody good orders, too!

Cicero: You should have no ill conscience, we only did what we have to do.

Brutus: No doubt Saturn said something of the sort after eating his children.

Marc Antony: If I ever again hear your name connected with murmurs of treachery, I will cut off these soft, pink hands and nail them to the senate door.

Utica [1.9]

Scipio: Where there's life, there's hope.

Cato: (sad smile) I think, if anything, we have disproved that proverb, old friend.

Titus Pullo: [on Vorenus' toga candida] You look like laundry!

Triumph [1.10]

Posca: The Roman people are not crying out for clean elections. They are crying out for jobs. They are crying out for clean water, for food, for stability and peace.

The Spoils [1.11]

Caesar: You know I've always looked upon you as a son...

Brutus: Oh dear, one of those conversations.

Caesar: Be reasonable! You're on every wall in the city with a knife at my throat!

Marcus Junius Brutus: I betrayed nothing. Had you told me you were to march on Rome and asked me for my allegiance, I would have given it. I would've judged you insane, but I would've given you my allegiance because I look on you as my father.

Caesar: Brutus-

Marcus Junius Brutus: You did not ask me for my allegiance. You demanded it at swordpoint. I betrayed nothing.

Cassius: Look now. Look at that.

Marcus Junius Brutus: It is a chair. What of it?

Cassius: A chair? It's a throne!

Marcus Junius Brutus: I believe thrones are generally more decorative. That is decidedly plain, and chair-like.

Caesar: [of an assassinated political opponent]I didn't know he existed until he didn't.

Kalends of February [1.12]

[Servilia has invited Atia over for a visit.]

Atia: Why would she want to see me? She hates me!

Mark Antony: So do I; that's no bar to friendship.

Passover [2.1]

[Before Caesar's funeral.]

Antony: I'm not rising from bed until I fuck someone.

Atia: Fine, fine. Merula, fetch that German slut from the kitchen.

Mark Antony: You boys play too rough for me. Knives in the Senate House? I didn't know you had it in you. No, I will serve out my term as consul and then return to the provinces, plough my fields and fuck my slaves like old Cincinnatus.

[Servillia joins with Cassius and Cicero in urging Brutus to murder Antony]

Brutus: You too, mother?

Son of Hades [2.2]

Antony: You're not saying that these men paid me to put their names on here.

Cicero: Oh, no... I assume they paid Posca.

Vorenus: I AM A SON OF HADES! I FUCK CONCORD IN HER ARSE!

These being the words of Marcus Tullius Cicero [2.3]

Cicero: Please continue, I would hate to submit to implication alone.

Clerk (holding up a scroll for all to see): These being the words of Marcus Tullius Cicero: (reading) When I was a young man, I defended the State. As an old man, I shall not abandon it. I give sincere thanks to Mark Antony, who has generously presented me with the most promising theme imaginable. I address you directly, Antony. Please listen as if you... as if you...

Mark Antony: Go on...

Clerk (shaken): "...please listen, as if you were sober and intelligent, and not a drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck."

[Senators start leaving the Senate hall]

Clerk: "You are certainly not without accomplishments: it is a rare man who can boast of becoming a bankrupt before even coming of age. You have brought upon us war, pestilence and destruction. You are Rome's Helen of Troy. But then... but then..."

Mark Antony (fuming): Go on... GO ON!

Clerk: "...a woman's role has always suited you best."

[Antony screams in rage, and proceeds to beat the Clerk to death with the scroll. He looks up and finds the Senate completely empty.]

Testudo et Lepus (The Tortoise and the Hare) [2.4]

Cicero: Oh, how I tire of young men and their ambitions.

Heroes of the Republic [2.5]

Vorenus: These are my children, redeemed from slavery. This is my daughter, prostituted. This is the son of my wife and another man. You will treat them with the respect they are due, or you will answer to me.

Mark Antony: Oh, and when you kill Cicero, cut off his hands and nail them to the Senate doors. I told the old bugger that I would do that to him.

Philippi [2.6]

Eirene: [in tears] I'm preglant!

Titus Pullo: What?

Eirene: I'm preglant! Preglant!!

Titus Pullo: [surprised, but delighted] What, pregnant?

Eirene: However you say it!

[Before the Battle of Philippi]

Brutus: Heavens, I entirely forgot! Today's your birthday, isn't it?

Cassius: Is it? I believe you're right.

Brutus: [shakes his hand] Happy Birthday. Sorry there's no cake.

Cassius: Next year, eh? You bake me an extra big one.

Brutus: I shan't forget.

Cassius: No cinnamon, it makes me sneeze.

Octavian: What's happening? Do you know?

Antony: No idea. On my command, forward!

Octavian: Where are you going?

Antony: When in doubt... ATTACK!

[The cavalry charges with Antony at their head. Agrippa looks after them longingly.]

Octavian: Go.

Agrippa: Thank you. (to troopers) You two, on me!

[Rides after Antony.]

[Cassius is brought back from the battle line, mortally wounded.]

Brutus: Cassius? What happened?

Cassius: Not sure, to be honest. Hell of a birthday...

[As Antony's forces approach, Brutus decides to go down fighting.]

Brutus: Give my best to my mother. Tell her... tell her something suitable.

Death Mask [2.7]

[Servilia, kneeling in front of Atia's house, curses Atia, then commits suicide.]

Marc Antony: ...Now that's an exit.

Deus Impeditio Esuritori Nullus [2.9]

Vorenus: You are no coward, but you do have a sickness... disease in your soul.

Antony: And what disease is that?

Vorenus: I do not know. I am not a doctor.

Antony: So how is it that you know I have this disease?

Vorenus: I recognize the symptoms. I have the same disease.

De Padre Vostro [2.10]

[Discussing Pullo]

Cleopatra: Is he a good man?

Vorenus: Define "good".

[Atia moves to the head of the women's procession for Augustus' triumph]

Livia: Excuse me?

Atia: Yes?

Livia: Oh, I don't mind really, but it is really I who should go first. If you consult the priests, I'll think you'll find the wife takes precedence.

Atia: I don't give a fuck what the priests say. I'll not let a vicious little trollop like you walk ahead of me. I go first.

Livia: I take no offense, of course. You are not yourself.

Atia: I know who you are. I can see you. You're swearing now that, someday, you'll destroy me. Remember that far better women than you have sworn to do the same. Go look for them now.

Octavian: I was all sweetness and light with her... charm itself.

Maecenas: Yes, that is your most disheartening manner.

[last lines of the series]

Titus Pullo: (to Caesarion) About your father...

Quoternity