The Venetians used to say that whenever the Golden Horses were moved, an empire fell

There they are now, out of the sun at last. Through the door of their last resting-place you may see their forms, proud as ever, silhouetted against the half-light from the windows. Their hoofs are raised, as always, in a noble gesture of greeting, companionship or compassion. Their heads are turned still, fraternally towards each other. But the life has gone out of them at last, as the power and purpose have left Venice. The Venetians used to say that whenever the Golden Horses were moved, an empire fell – the Byzantine Empire in 1204, the Venetian Empire in 1797, the Napoleonic Empire in 1815, the Kaiser’s Empire in 1918,Hitler’s Empire in 1945. This their last move, though, is no more than an obituary gesture, a long farewell, a recognition that the glory of Venice has gone, and only the forms remain.

J. Morris, The Venetian Empire (1980), 187

Their chief achievement was to leave them, as they found them, unmistakably Greek

The Venetians left the Ionians peacefully if in obloquy, pushed out by Napoleon, and their place was presently taken by the British, whose manners were not dissimilar and whose intentions towards the islands were much the same. When, in their turn, the British voluntarily left in 1864, the islands became the most cultivated and progressive parts of the new Greece, and for this the Venetians could properly claim credit. They had ruled the Ionians for four centuries, and their chief achievement was to leave them, as they found them, unmistakably Greek.

J. Morris, The Venetian Empire (1980), 152

A tumultuous line of princelings governed the Venetian Aegean under the watchful, often baffled and sometimes infuriated eye of the Serenissima

Certainly the arrogance of the Venetians has never been forgotten by the Greeks – who, established here in Homeric times long before Venice existed, have out-stayed all successive rulers to remain as Greek as ever. Until the land reforms in Greece after World War II the Catholic descendants of the Venetians, with their Latinized local associates, remained overwhelmingly the landlords of Naxos. Embittered locals used to say that the war had not been won at all until the Catholics of the Kastro had been dispossessed. Seven and a half centuries after the arrival of Sanudo and his young men, the lifestyles of the island remained recognizably those of conquerors and conquered: even in the 1950s, there used to be at least one family of the Kastro which, loading its necessary comforts upon strings of mules, set out each spring beneath parasols, attended by servants and household pets, seigneurially through the dusty suburbs for the annual migration to its summer estates in the interior of the island, held by right of conquest since the beaching of Marco’s galleys.

A tumultuous line of princelings governed the Venetian Aegean under the watchful, often baffled and sometimes infuriated eye of the Serenissima. The chronicles of the Archipelago are confused and very bloody, and the only constant thread linking the feuds and the dynasties is the shadowy presence of Venice in the background, the knowledge of her war-galleys over the horizon and the stern if not invariably effective supervision of Doge and Grand Council far away.


J. Morris, The Venetian Empire (1980), 49

For old he was, but rascally

For old he was, but rascally. Enrico Dandolo’s part in the Fourth Crusade has been debated ever since, but we may assume that, however moved his people were by the cause, he himself did nothing out of pure religious impulse. It is very unlikely that he ever intended to lead his ships to an assault on Egypt, as the Crusaders thought. Venetian trade with Egypt was extremely valuable to Venice, and some scholars suggest indeed that Dandolo told the Sultan of Egypt all about the Crusaders’ plans.

The chances are that even as that great white hat was placed upon his head, Dandolo was planning to lead the Crusade to a very different destination: not an Islamic objective at all, but the greatest city of Christendom itself, Constantinople. The time had come to humble the arrogant emperors, and ensure once and for all Venetian commercial primacy in the east.

J. Morris, The Venetian Empire (1980), 21

I think of old British colonialists, bred to authority and the wide horizons, living out their pensioned lives in semi-detached houses of cramped suburbia

At the other end of life I have often met exiles from their own times. I think of old British colonialists, bred to authority and the wide horizons, living out their pensioned lives in semi-detached houses of cramped suburbia.

J. Morris, Trieste and the meaning of nowhere (2001), 74

Possesses still, at least for romantics like me, a fragrant sense of what might-have-been

The most appealing aspect of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at least in retrospect, was its European cosmopolitanism. It had few black , brown or yellow subjects, but it contained within itself half the peoples of Europe. It was multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-faith, bound together only, whether willingly or unwillingly, by the imperial discipline. it was closer to the European community of the twenty-first century than to the British Empire of the the nineteenth and possesses still, at least for romantics like me, a fragrant sense of what might-have-been.

J. Morris, Trieste and the meaning of nowhere (2001), 32

I have no enemies ... I've had them all shot

'Do you forgive your enemies?' a nineteenth century Duke of Valencia [this one] is asked on his deathbed in a famous Spanish anecdote. 'I have no enemies,' he retorts, 'I've had them all shot.'


J. Morris, Spain (1964. revised 1979), 47

She has a fatal weakness for the past

Party it is plain old-fashionedness that makes Spain feel so special. She has a fatal weakness for the past. When the French were building in the Gothic style, she was still building Romanesque. When they moved to the Renaissance, she was still building Gothic. She retained her medieval values when they had long been abandoned elsewhere in Europe, so at the Spanish universities in the eighteenth century they were still wondering whether Copernicus was right,  and anxiously debating whether sky was made of metal or fluid.

J. Morris, Spain (1964. revised 1979), 26

More often plunging helplessly downwards in a welter of despair and recrimination

Spanish geographers are very fond of elevation graphs - diagrams which, by cutting an imaginary slice through the Iberian Peninsula, show how its altitudes vary from sea to sea. If you apply this approach to the slab of Spanish history, you will find that though the graph is often bumpy, its general outline is all too sadly simple.From the beginning of history to the sixteenth century, the Spaniards gradually climbed towards the pinnacle of their success - hindered often by wars and invasions, but steadily accumulating wealth, culture, prestige, and unity. From the sixteenth century until our times, on the other hand, they have been constantly slithering downhill, sometimes bravely digging their heels in, more often plunging helplessly downwards in a welter of despair and recrimination. Spanish history does not form a happy pattern, but at least it looks symmetrical.

J. Morris, Spain (1964. revised 1979), 12

I met Che Guevara sharp as a cat

I met Che Guevara sharp as a cat in Cuba, and Guy Burgess swollen with drink and self-reproach in Moscow, and Kim Philby, whom I thought I could have loved, deceiving us all in Lebanon. I watched Eichmann humdrum and offended within the bullet-proof glass of his courtroom cage, the common man personified as the murderer he was. I saw Powers the aerial spy paraded before the People's Court, the peasants stumbling in to give their evidence like figures from Tolstoy, the thick-set judges solemn at their dais, the sense of vast unseen forces at play behind those puppets. I watched my own beloved army floundering in degradation as it was forced, year by year, from its last imperial footholds, now and then spitting back like a cornered animal, and forced at last into that distasteful ignominy, Suez.

J. Morris, Conundrum (1974), 79-80