Thomas Cahill: Century

Thomas Cahill is American scholar and writer. Explore interesting quotes on century.

Thomas Cahill: 116 quotes0 likes

“For a century and a half—from the middle of the fifth century to the end of the sixth—there had been… no formal communication between Rome and the Christians of Britain, nor had there been any between Rome and Ireland…”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VII The End of the World

“Though the poems of Homer and his successors were recorded, there will be no Greek reading public till we reach the fifth century B. C. …There was instead, a hearing public that formed responsive audiences at festivals and contests.”

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch. III The Poet: How to Party

“A century after the death of Patrick… there were few Romans left in western Europe. [By the mid sixth century] the whole subtle substructure of Roman political organization and Roman communication has vanished. In its place have grown the sturdy little principalities of the Middle Ages, Gothic illiterates ruling over Gothic illiterates, pagan or occasionally Arian—that is, following a debased, simpleminded form of Christianity in which Jesus was given a status similar to that of Mohammed in Islam.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

“The Irish of the late fifth and early sixth centuries soon found a solution… the Green Martyrdom, opposing it to the conventional Red Martyrdom of blood. The Green Martyrs… retreated to the woods, or to a mountaintop, or to a lonely island… there to study the scriptures and commune with God.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

“Unfortunately, much of the post-Homeric poetry—called lyric poetry because it was usually sung to a lyre—was lost in the upheavals of subsequent centuries, especially in the depredations and decay that would follow the barbarian incursions into the Greco-Roman world in the fifth century A. D.”

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch. III The Poet: How to Party

“The Greek world will continue in almost constant cultural revolution from the time of Homer to the day Rome brings Greece to its knees in the second century B. C. …the longest trajectory of fluid development in any society known to history.”

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch. III The Poet: How to Party