Scholar Rey M. Longyear writes that “the Eroica Symphony is the grandest and most grandiose specimen of the instrumental music of this time” and that it “must be regarded as the trunk of the tree of nineteenth-century music from which so many branches sprang” (21).

Biographer Carl August Griesinger wrote, “People were disappointed because this piece lacked beauty or true sublimity and regarding the length of the work, people would have payed to hear it stop” (Sipe 55).

According to Will Durant, “Their economy remained local in structure even while their fleets and products reached out to distant ports” (609).

Christine Shaw states that “a political changes brought about in Italy by the intervention of the French were fatal” (Shaw 18).

F.L. Taylor wrote, “When Charles VIII of France set out for the conquest of Naples he did so in a spirit of adventure, at the head of an army raised for the occasion” (8).