• The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.

    Edward Gibbon: The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.
    Edward Gibbon (1821). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.394