Peter O'Toole: General Cornelius Flavius Silva

Quotes 

• Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : These aren't Britons or Gauls we're fighting, good honest rustics who stand out in the sun like archery targets and dare you to do something about it. These are more like the Egyptians, brainy bastards without a dram of ethics.

• Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : I've had very few conversations with Jews that didn't end in a brawl.

• Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : This pretending to be indifferent to your own death is a trick you've picked up from us. I've always been good at it and I can smell it a mile off.

• Gen. Marcus Quadratus : Sir, the tax payment has been promised.

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : I know.

  Gen. Marcus Quadratus : It may already be part of the budget. You know how the treasury works.

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : They won't be disappointed. I'll cover it from my personal funds. The Empire and I have the same banker, it's merely a question of paperwork.

• Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : I haven't asked you here to negotiate. I don't negotiate with bandits, whatever they call themselves. You've been called here so that I can tell you face to face, once and once only. If it takes the balance of the year or even another year on top of that one, your band will be captured and annihilated. That is not a threat, merely a statement of fact. No matter how many granaries you burn, no matter how long you can keep the distance between the legion and yourself, the end will be the same.

  Eleazar ben Yair : Still and all, you know a way to avoid that.

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : One way only. Disperse now! Listen to me. I've been here for seven years. Every one of those small insignia on my standard is a representation of of at least twenty thousand dead Jews. I have no wish to add to that record. I am sick of dead Jews, live Jews, men, women and children and of your miserable, unyielding country!

  Eleazar ben Yair : Then do yourself a kindness. Go!

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : I was about to do just that when you made it impossible.

  Eleazar ben Yair : But in the rush, General, you would have left five thousand men behind.

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : The legion will stay, of course.

  Eleazar ben Yair : And we also, of course. To keep fighting.

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : For how long? How long do you think four hundred can escape five thousand?

  Eleazar ben Yair : That's what you want to know. I won't give you a head count of our troops. But four hundred? Not even as a joke. At any rate it's not my worry. You want us to disperse and let your Syrians turn our barley into your money? We won't. You tell me you will catch us and kill us? I invite you to try.

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : You invite me to try? Your country is one long and narrow graveyard already. Your cities are flatter than your deserts, your temple has been destroyed and most of the survivors are slaves. All for seven years of us trying. Give us our due, man, we know how to kill.

• Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : Honor is like patience. It has its limits.

  Eleazar ben Yair : Spoken like a Roman.

• Eleazar ben Yair : We want our freedom back. We want our country back.

  Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva : Back? When was it ever yours? It has always belonged to somebody. Babylon, Egypt. For a thousand years it has been a recognized war trophy. A costly one.

• Cornelius Flavius Silva : [sees a Zealot whistling cheerfully while being hung by his heels in the marketplace]  What is this?

  Centurion : Sir, to set an example.

  Cornelius Flavius Silva : Of what? Courage and strength? I would have thought that was the last thing we wanted these Jews to see.

• Cornelius Flavius Silva : Caesar, when you and Titus and I were serving together in the field, we talked of one thing over and over again: a dream we had. It wasn't just a world without Nero, it was a world enlightened. That was the way we put it. The gift Rome had to give the world: a way of life, civilization, peace.

  Vespasian : Yes, I remember.

  Cornelius Flavius Silva : You remember this because it was you who said it. Without that dream as a mission, we were worse than the barbarians we conquered, because they made no pretense of a desire for anything better; they had no dream.

• Cornelius Flavius Silva : I was curious about you. But now the answer seems simple enough. You're insane.

  Eleazar ben Yair : I'm not about to argue about insanity with a man who got his commission from Nero.