"Concubine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, "I am sorry I must say, guilty upon my honour." Lord Stamford would not answer to the name of Henry, having been christened Harry—what a great way of thinking on such an occasion! I was diverted too with old Norsa, the father of my brother's concubine, an old Jew that kept a tavern; my brother [Orford], as Auditor of the Exchequer, has a gallery along one whole side of the court; I said, "I really feel for the prisoners!" old Issachar replied, "Feel for them! pray, if they had succeeded, what would have become of all us?" When my Lady Townsend ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... chief employment of Father Xavier was to endeavour the conversion of the king of Ternate, commonly called king of the Moluccas. This Saracen prince, whose name was Cacil Aerio, was son to king Boleife, and his concubine, a Mahometan, and enemy to the Portuguese, whom Tristan d'Atayda, governor of Ternate, and predecessor of Antonio Galvan, caused to be thrown out of a window, to be revenged of her. This unworthy and cruel usage might well exasperate Cacil; but fearing their power, who had affronted ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... BIFFE (La), concubine of the criminal Riganson, alias Le Biffon. This woman, who was a sort of Jacques Collin in petticoats, evaded the police, thanks to her disguises. She could ape the marquise, the baronne and the comtesse to perfection. She had her own ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... "king of Denmark," and laid claim to Norway, too; and when she blamed him for it he had answered her disdainfully. In a letter he had used foul and abusive language, calling her "a king without breeches," and the "abbot's concubine" (abbedfrillen), on account of her particular attachment to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... somehow, to be journeying out to an unknown bourne in this primitive fashion. I wonder if, in another existence, I was one of the wives or handmaidens in Abraham's caravanserai? Perhaps I was his favourite concubine!... How interesting!... I'm sure I've journeyed like this ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... punishment, (says Pitscottie,) by means of John Hamilton, Bishop of St. Andrews, brother to the Governor, who entertained the Lady Stenhouse, commonly called Lady Gilton, daughter to this Robert Lord Semple, as his concubine." From the date of the remission, it must have been her brother who had committed this murder. Buchanan and other authorities likewise attribute his acquittal to the same influence; and one compiler says of the Archbishop, in ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... and dinna be so fashed," cried a silver-tongued madam, the which my grandfather afterwards found, as I shall have to rehearse, was his concubine, the Mrs Kilspinnie. "What does ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... free, free-born (here of the lawful wife in contrast with the bond concubine): nom. sg. frēolīc wīf, 616; ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... party bound itself to aid the other, should its territory be invaded. England thus sought a guaranty against France, and Prussia against Russia. She had need. Her King, Frederic the Great, had drawn upon himself an avalanche. Three women—two empresses and a concubine—controlled the forces of the three great nations, Austria, Russia, and France; and they all hated him: Elizabeth of Russia, by reason of a distrust fomented by secret intrigue and turned into gall by the biting tongue of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Sultan, emir, cadi, prince, had this huge ruby burned? On what beloved breast or brow of princess, nautch-girl, concubine—yes, maybe of slave exalted to the purple—had that ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... we find elements that would not be recognized where monogamy prevails and children are born in the home and not in the herd. Instead of father, mother and children, there are father, wife, concubines, and various sorts of children who are born of the wife or of the concubine, or have been adopted into the family. With us, adoption is the exception, but in Japan it is the invariable rule whenever either convenience or necessity requires it of the house. Indeed it is rare to find a set of brothers bearing the same family name. Adoption and concubinage keep the house ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... motives of policy, were permitted a larger number. On the marriage day the German offered presents to his bride—not the bracelets and golden necklaces with which the Gaul adorned his fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse, a sword, a shield, and a spear-symbols that thenceforward she was to share his labors and to become a portion ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... relief that laymen saw priests openly select concubines. That at least gave a promise of some protection to domestic life. In some of the Swiss cantons it actually became the practice to compel a new pastor, on taking up his charge, to select a concubine as a necessary protection to the females under his care. The same practice ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... sodeinliche, and stall 6750 That thing which was to him so lief. Bot wo the while, he was a thief! For Venus, which was enemie Of thilke loves micherie, Discovereth al the pleine cas To Clymene, which thanne was Toward Phebus his concubine. And sche to lette the covine Of thilke love, dedli wroth To pleigne upon this Maide goth, 6760 And tolde hire fader hou it stod; Wherof for sorwe welnyh wod Unto hire moder thus he saide: "Lo, what it is to kepe a Maide! To Phebus ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... the gear I care naught about its loss, albeit I borrowed part of the stuff from my friends and it hath come to grief; yet is there no harm in that, for they know my excuse in the plunder of my property and the pillage of my place. But as for Ali bin Bakkar and the Caliph's favourite concubine, I fear lest their case get bruited abroad and this cause the loss of my life.' So I turned to my neighbour and said to him, 'Thou art my brother and my neighbour and wilt cover my nakedness; what then dost thou advise me to do?' The ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... more personal interest in the matter and were listening to the tale of a journey. 'Before God!' Katharine said, 'if you were not a virgin for the King, or if the King have coerced you to forswearing yourself in this matter, I would not be the King's wife, but his concubine. Only, sore is his need of me; he hath sworn it many times, and I do believe it, that I best, if anyone may, may give him rest with my converse and lead him to peace. He hath sworn that never woman save I made him so clearly to see his path to goodness; and never woman save I, at convenient ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... Monsieur Granville has lived in sin with a concubine, by whom he has two children; and on this adulterous connection he has spent more than five hundred thousand francs, which ought to have been the property of his ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... he is, and he will answer by giving his own name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line. Moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a slave, their children are free citizens; but if a free man marry a foreign woman, or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the first person in the state, the children ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... wiues vse very seldome to marrie the second time, vnlesse perhaps some man takes his brothers wife or his stepmother in marriage. They make no difference betweene the sonne of their wife and of their concubine, but the father giues what he pleaseth vnto each one: [Sidenote: Melich and Dauid two brothers.] For of late the king of Georgia hauing two sonnes, one lawfully begotten call Melich; but the other Dauid, borne in adulterie, at his death left part ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... prohibited, nor can girls be exchanged in marriage between two families. A wife's sister may also not be married during the wife's lifetime. The Muhammadan Bhils permit a man to marry his maternal uncle's daughter, and though he cannot marry his wife's sister he may keep her as a concubine. Marriages may be infant or adult, but the former practice is becoming prevalent and girls are often wedded before they are eleven. Matches are arranged by the parents of the parties in consultation with the caste panchayat; but in Bombay girls may select their own ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... with the Parthians had come and gone, and Artavasdes, King of Armenia, had been led in triumph through the streets of Alexandria. Cleopatra had visited Samos and Athens; and, by her counselling, the noble Octavia had been driven, like some discarded concubine, from the house of Antony at Rome. And now, at the last, the measure of the folly of Antony was full even to the brim. For this Master of the World had no longer the good gift of reason; he was lost in Cleopatra as I had been lost. Therefore, in the event, Octavianus ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... mistress of her maid and might degrade her to slavery again for insolence, but could not sell her if she had borne her husband children. If the wife did this, the Code did not allow the husband to take a concubine. If she would not, he could do so. The concubine was a wife, though not of the same rank; the first wife had no power over her. A concubine was a free woman, was often dowered for marriage and her children were legitimate. She could only be divorced on the same conditions ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... behaviour, is a sure proof how dissoluteness and immorality are the greatest enemies of the liberty and happiness of peoples; as a fact, after misappropriating the public revenues and wasting in debauchery a noticeable part of the people's patrimony, the person in question connived with his former concubine, the woman Rochemaure, to enter into correspondence with the emigres and traitorously keep the faction of the foreigner informed of the state of our finances, the movements of our troops, the ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... is the "legitimate wife," and the line inculcates monogamy as against promiscuous sexual intercourse. We know that monogamy was the rule in Babylonia, though a man could in addition to the wife recognized as the legalized spouse take a concubine, or his wife could give her husband a slave as a concubine. Even in that case, according to the Hammurabi Code, 145-146, the wife retained her status. The Code throughout assumes that a man has only one ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... overtaking and cutting off a flying enemy."[FN310] These replies caused Osiris to rejoice greatly, for they showed him that his son was sufficiently prepared for his enemy. We are, moreover, told that amongst the great numbers who were continually deserting from Typhon's party was his concubine Thoueris,[FN311] and that a serpent which pursued her as she was coming over to Horus was slain by his soldiers. The memory of this action is, they say, still preserved in that cord which is thrown into the ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... turn out intolerable tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aristonica, and Oenanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea, who have lorded it over kings' diadems.[74] Why Syrian Semiramis was only the servant and concubine of one of king Ninus's slaves, till Ninus the great king seeing and falling in love with her, she got such power over him that she thought so cheap of him, that she asked to be allowed one day to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... age, should promise that he would render me a blooming youth, such as I was when first I quitted fair-damed Hellas, flying the contentions of my father Amyntor, son of Ormenus; who was enraged with me on account of a fair-haired concubine whom he himself loved, but dishonoured his wife, my mother. But she continually would embrace my knees in supplication, that I should first have connection with the concubine, that she might loathe the old man. Her I obeyed, and did so; but my father immediately ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... and for love that spoke through the handsome adventurer, a young miscreant who haunted churches in search of a prize, an heiress to marry, or ready money. The Bishop bestowed his benison on the waves, and bade them be calm; it was all that he could do. He thought of his concubine, and of the delicate feast with which she would welcome him; perhaps at that very moment she was bathing, perfuming herself, robing herself in velvet, fastening her necklace and her jeweled clasps; and the perverse Bishop, so far from thinking ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... messengers, the mafoos and chair coolies, the servants and blind musicians with the old songs, The Millet's in Flower and Kuan Kuan Go to the Ospreys. The side door to the women's apartments, however, opened into a retreat, where her father's concubine, he had but one, trailed like a bird of paradise, and there was the constant musical drip of a fountain in an old granite basin. There, during the years when she was lame, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in the same place an event with a similar miracle but a different issue. He saw a man who was reported to be consorting publicly with his brother's concubine; and he was a knight, a servant of the count. And publicly accosting the incestuous man he displayed himself to him as another John, saying, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's concubine.[647] But he, nevertheless, in his turn displaying ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... attention of the reader, at least enslaves it, holding it captive with a chain of iron. Amongst his other adventures, the hero falls in with a Gypsy encampment, is enrolled amongst the fraternity, and is allotted a 'mort,' or concubine; a barbarous festival ensues, at the conclusion of which an epithalamium is sung in the Gypsy language, as it is called in the work in question. Neither the epithalamium, however, nor the vocabulary, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... but one thing, Dimitry, I require; I claim that thou Disclose to me thy secret hopes, thy plans, Even thy fears, that hand in hand with thee I may confront life boldly—not in blindness Of childlike ignorance, not as the slave And plaything of my husband's light desires, Thy speechless concubine, but as thy spouse, And worthy helpmate of the tsar ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... longer mute tongue stays that In festal jest, from Fescennine, Nor yet deny their nuts to boys, He-Concubine! who learns in fine ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... I see him and Apame the king's concubine, the daughter of the admirable Bartacus, sitting at the right hand ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... evident that the path of the virtuous woman without the independence that accompanies the possession of her own money, was in ancient days much more thorny than that of the concubine or the prostitute; and it is because of this fact that parental love, the most powerful of all levers employed by the Cosmic Law to lift love out of degradation, instituted the custom of the "dowry," ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... the Negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment a female slave becomes her master's concubine her bonds are broken, and as soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which contains the creed) he can no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... look filled with inquietude as well as disapprobation, which seemed to say, "Is it possible that at my age I have become but a concubine?" ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... citadel where no guard had been set; for they had no fear that it would ever be taken from that side, seeing that here the citadel is precipitous and unassailable. To this part of the wall alone Meles also, who formerly was king of Sardis, did not carry round the lion which his concubine bore to him, the Telmessians having given decision that if the lion should be carried round the wall, Sardis should be safe from capture: and Meles having carried it round the rest of the wall, that is to say those parts of the citadel where the fortress was open ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... passage in which Hecamede, the concubine of Nestor, is described as giving to the wounded Machaon a posset, ...
— Ion • Plato
... led for some time a very dissolute life, but was touched by an extraordinary grace upon the birth of his son Sigebert {335} and from that time entirely converted to God. Bagnetrude, our saint's mother, is only styled the concubine of Dagobert, though he was publicly married to her. The father desiring to have his son baptized by the most holy prelate of his dominions, recalled St. Amand, bishop of Masstricht, whom he had banished for his zeal in reproving his vices, fell at his feet at Clichi, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Persian monarch noted and resented the interference with territories which he had some right to consider his own; whether he took any steps to revenge himself is doubtful. According to some, he required Amasis to send him one of his daughters as a concubine, an insult which the Egyptian king escaped by finesse while he appeared ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... place, he determined carefully to conceal his design from all except the two or three intimate friends and advisers who originally counseled him to adopt it. He intended to take with him his concubine Afrosinia, and also a number of domestic servants and other attendants, but he did not allow any of them to know where he was going. He gave them to understand that he was going to Copenhagen to join his father. He was afraid that, if any of those persons were to know his real design, it would, in ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... or harmonica, sing, and read and write poetry; but their recreations are necessarily somewhat limited. Picnics, music, story-telling, kalyan and cigarette smoking, sweetmeat-making, and the bath, together with somewhat less innocent pastimes, form the sum total of a Persian concubine's amusements. Outside the walls of the anderoon they are closely watched and guarded, for Persians are jealous of their women, and, even in the most formal social gatherings, there is a strict separation ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... having triumphed over the Spanish Mussulmans, had taken the sister of the Caliph of Cordova as a concubine, and had had one daughter by her, whom he brought up in the teachings of Christ. But the Caliph, feigning that he wished to become converted, made him a visit, and brought with him a numerous escort. He slaughtered the entire garrison and threw the Emperor into a dungeon, and treated ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... richest soil,[15] Commodious for the vine, or for the plow. And now his consort fair three children bore To bold Bellerophon; Isandrus one, 240 And one, Hippolochus; his youngest born Laodamia was for beauty such That she became a concubine of Jove. She bore Sarpedon of heroic note. But when Bellerophon, at last, himself 245 Had anger'd all the Gods, feeding on grief He roam'd alone the Aleian field, exiled, By choice, from every cheerful haunt of man. Mars, thirsty still for blood, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... intrigue would be imperfect, if it were not added that there is still extant a religious meditation, written by the Treasurer, with his own hand, on the very same day on which the intelligence of his attempt to govern his master by means of a concubine was despatched by Bonrepaux to Versailles. No composition of Ken or Leighton breathes a spirit of more fervent and exalted piety than this effusion. Hypocrisy cannot be suspected: for the paper was evidently meant only for the writer's own eye, and was not published till he had been more than ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Yoshitomo by his wife, he had also three sons by a concubine named Tokiwa. She was a woman of great beauty, and for that reason as well as because she was the mother of the romantic hero Yoshitsune, she has often been chosen by Japanese artists as the subject of their pictures. Tokiwa and her three children, of whom Yoshitsune was then an infant at ...
— Japan • David Murray
... have surpassed Theodorick either in success as a warrior or in political skill. He had, further, enlaced the contemporary rulers in the various countries of the West in ties of relationship with himself. He had married Andefleda, sister of Clovis; he gave Theudigotha, one of his own daughters by a concubine, to Alaric of Toulouse, king of the Visigoths, and another, Ostrogotha, to Sigismund, king of the Burgundians, at Lyons. Even before he had conquered Odoacer, in 493, he was in strict alliance with the king of the Vandals in Africa, to whom he ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... harlot* and a kind; *a low fellow A better fellow should a man not find. He woulde suffer, for a quart of wine, A good fellow to have his concubine A twelvemonth, and excuse him at the full. Full privily a *finch eke could he pull*. *"fleece" a man* And if he found owhere* a good fellaw, *anywhere He woulde teache him to have none awe In such a case of the archdeacon's curse; *But if* a manne's soul were in his purse; ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... sure, and praiseworthy," said the bishop; "for, if I understand you rightly, this manufacturer had a concubine; now it is well to make use of an evil passion for the punishment ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... distinguishes them from all other nations in the world. Ask a Lycian who he is, and he answers by giving you his own name, the name of his mother, and so on in the female line. Aye, if a free-born woman marries a slave, her children are citizens, but if a free man marries a stranger, or takes a concubine, even if he be the highest person in the State, his children ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... and his complices (amongst whom was William earle of Ewe, who renouncing his allegiance to Robert duke of Normandie, was become the kings man) was to haue displaced the king from his roiall throne, and to haue set vp his sonne William de Albemarle, whom he had begotten of his concubine. But whatsoeuer their purpose was, after that the king had quieted his countrie in the north parts, [Sidenote: Matth. Paris.] he bent all his force against the Welshmen, who the yeare before had destroied and ouerthrowne the castell ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... sent Sidi Ali Ghaiath-ed-Din to the country of Perlak. This prince had three daughters, two of blood-royal on their mother's side, and one born of a concubine. The latter was called the princess Ganggang. When Sidi Ali Ghaiath arrived at Perlak they showed him the three daughters. The two sisters of the blood-royal were seated lower than the princess Ganggang, who occupied a high seat. The latter, by order of her ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... pride into the snare I fell Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains, Softn'd with pleasure and voluptuous life; At length to lay my head and hallow'd pledge Of all my strength in the lascivious lap Of a deceitful Concubine who shore me Like a tame Weather, all my precious fleece, Then turn'd me out ridiculous, despoil'd, Shav'n, and disarm'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... slave Carion. The moment he knew of my death, he came up to the room where I lay; it was late in the evening; he had plenty of time in front of him, for not a soul was watching by me; he brought with him my concubine Glycerium (an old affair, this, I suspect), closed the door, and proceeded to take his pleasure with her, as if no third person had been in the room! Having satisfied the demands of passion, he turned his attention ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... second and third degree. For Richard the first of that name duke of Normandie, begot Richard the second, and Emma; which Emma bare Edward by hir husband Ethelred. Richard the second had also issue Richard the third, and Robert, which Robert by a concubine had issue William, surnamed the bastard, that was now duke of Normandie, and after the death of his coosine king Edward, made claime (as is said) to the crowne ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (8 of 8) - The Eight Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... figure of the Dowager Empress Wu, the prototype of the celebrated lady who took charge of China's fate in our own day and, like her, superhuman in decision and unscrupulousness, yet capable of inspiring loyalty. She was a concubine of the Emperor Tai Tsung and when he died in 649 lived for a short time as a Buddhist nun. The eventful life of Wu Hou, who was at least successful in maintaining order at home and on the frontiers, belongs to the history of China rather than of Buddhism. She was not an ornament ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... bombarded the town; the Swedes fled; and a Russian soldier captured the deserted wife in the ruins of, the city. He passed her on to his marshal. The marshal sold her as a kind of white slave to a prince; the prince took her to Russia as his concubine. Being of a liberal disposition, he shared her capacious heart with the young czar, who happened to be married. Martha Skovronsky bore him a daughter and won his heart for keeps. He had her baptized in the Russian Church as Catherine. He divorced his czaritza ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns; in this town he had established a considerable commerce. He has at last been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor. He had for his concubine a woman of the town, who died of a shock at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is endowed with Herculean strength, found means to escape; but three or four days after his flight the police laid their hands on him once more, in Paris itself, at the very moment when ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in the prime of life; and, by an intrigue in his harem, a concubine, Ranavalo, was proclaimed Queen of Madagascar. The advance had been too rapid, and, as in Japan, there was a large party of conservatives anxious to return to the old regime. The new queen dissembled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... references to "stone churches," or "churches of stone and mortar," have many parallels in Boehme. Dinah of the Old Testament, for example, is "nothing else but a figure of our stone churches and our colleges with their ministers!" and Jacob's concubine, again, "signifieth nothing else but the stone churches in which God's ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... amounted to two hundred thousand sesterces; the bed upon which his body was carried to the pile and burnt, being covered with the white robes, interwoven with gold, which he had worn upon the calends of January preceding. His nurses, Ecloge and Alexandra, with his concubine Acte, deposited his remains in the tomb belonging (379) to the family of the Domitii, which stands upon the top of the Hill of the Gardens [633], and is to be seen from the Campus Martius. In that monument, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and Yu, are pointed at with the finger of scorn as examples of what a king ought not to be. The latter set aside his queen and her son in favour of a concubine and her son; and so offended was high heaven by this unkingly conduct that the sun hid his face in a total eclipse. This happened 775 B. C.; and it furnishes the starting-point for a reliable chronology. For her amusement the king caused the signal-fires to ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... gaze upon, Yet held an outcast from thy heart and mind; To hear my beauty praised but not my worth; To come and go at Pleasure's beck and call, While barred from Wisdom's conclaves! Think ye THAT A noble calling for a noble dame? Why, any concubine amongst thy train Could play my royal part as well as I ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of the Emperor, a plot was concocted by eight members of the extreme anti-foreign party at Court, who claimed to have been appointed Regents, to make away with the Empress Dowager, the concubine mother, known as the Western Empress, of the five-year-old child just proclaimed under the title of Chi Hsiang (good omen), and also the late Emperor's three brothers, thus securing to themselves ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... eleventh centuries. Of course the Church refused to sanction the marriage of its officials and called the wife of a clergyman, however virtuous and faithful she might be, by the opprobrious name of "concubine." ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... wilful falsehood) pretends that the duchess of York, his mother, endeavouring to dissuade him from so disproportionate an alliance, urged him with a pre-contract to one Elizabeth Lucy, who however, being pressed, confessed herself his concubine; but denied any marriage. Dr. Shaw too, the preacher, we are told by the same authority, pleaded from the pulpit the king's former marriage with Elizabeth Lucy, and the duke of Buckingham is said to have harangued the people to the same effect. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... to think with us," Uchimura told me afterwards, "is seen most in their treatment of women. Our host, had he not been a Christian, would have been credited by public opinion with the possession of a concubine, and would not have been blamed for it." When, after the speaking, we knelt in a circle and talked less formally of how best to benefit rural people, we were joined by the women folk. Later, when a ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the Greeks borrowed their institutions from them, it was also forbid by the laws of Cecrops, though concubinage seems either to have been allowed or overlooked; for in the Odyssey of Homer we find Ulysses declaring himself to be the son of a concubine, which he would probably not have done, had any degree of infamy been annexed to it. In some cases, however, polygamy was allowed in Greece, from a mistaken notion that it would increase population. The Athenians, once thinking the number of their citizens diminished, decreed ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... back a certain sultan of Sind had a son by a concubine, who behaved so rudely to his sultana, that she became dispirited and lost her health, which her favourite woman observing, resolved by stratagem to get rid of the prince. She advised her mistress, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... They feel of course that they are the bought property of their pocket-mother or keeper, but they know also that this is the feeling of almost every other woman in China, liable as each is to be sold, by her own parents or relatives, to be the wife or concubine of a man she never sets eyes on before the wedding day, or liable, as the case may be, to be pledged or sold, by her parents or relatives, to serve as a domestic slave in a strange family.... They have the chance, if they are pretty and accomplished, of being wooed ... and they may look forward ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... had deserted her and her children, and was living with a concubine all that time! Why should a person attempt to write biography when the simplest facts have no meaning to him? This book is littered with as crass stupidities as that one—deductions by the page which bear no discoverable kinship ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... We won't talk about marrying just at this moment, but let's see the money at all events. Come! I may not marry you, either. I don't know. I suppose you thought you'd keep the money, if I did! Ha, ha, ha! nonsense! I have no sense of shame left. I tell you I have been Totski's concubine. Prince, you must marry Aglaya Ivanovna, not Nastasia Philipovna, or this fellow Ferdishenko will always be pointing the finger of scorn at you. You aren't afraid, I know; but I should always be afraid that ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fourteen and Commodus attained to absolute power when Marcus died. Subsequently, Commodus became the epitome of all that was basest and worst in a ruler. He was murdered by the treachery of Marcia, his favorite concubine, and the Senate decreed that "his body should be dragged with a hook into the stripping room of the gladiators, to satiate the public fury." [Footnote: Decline and Fall, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... reassurest me; and in so doing, thou confirmest the fair omens with which Aphrodite has received my offerings. Therefore, I speak out. No dowry ask I with Cleonice, save such, more in name than amount, as may distinguish the wife from the concubine, and assure her an honoured place amongst my kinsmen. Thou knowest I am rich; thou knowest that my birth dates from the oldest citizens of Chios. Give me thy child, and deliver her thyself at once from the Spartan's power. Once mine, all the fleets of Hellas are her protection, and our marriage ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... sun went down and they withdrew. There were slain of the children of David nineteen men and of them of Benjamin three hundred and sixty were slain, and thus there was long strife and contention between the house of David and the house of Ishbosheth. After this Abner took a concubine of Saul and held her, wherefore Ishbosheth reproved him of it and Abner was wroth greatly thereof; and came to David and made friendship with him. Joab was not there when Abner made his peace with David; but when he knew it ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... so must tell the truth, howe'er you blame it. Her reason being weak, her passions strong, She thought that her lord's heart (even could she claim it) Was scarce enough; for he had fifty-nine Years, and a fifteen-hundredth concubine. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... you—no, not though heaven itself vouchsafe to strip my years from off me, and make me young as I was when I first left Hellas the land of fair women. I was then flying the anger of father Amyntor, son of Ormenus, who was furious with me in the matter of his concubine, of whom he was enamoured to the wronging of his wife my mother. My mother, therefore, prayed me without ceasing to lie with the woman myself, that so she hate my father, and in the course of time I yielded. But my father soon came to know, and ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... against me with cries of rage, and overwhelmed me with imprecations and awful curses. Having given way to these first emotions of despair, she sank into a more moderate tone: "What hast thou done! Sold thy wife, hast thou! Delivered her to another man! A Brahmanari is become the concubine of a vile merchant! Ah, what will her kindred and ours say when they hear the tale of this brutish stupidity—of folly so unexampled ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... Conscience, was really the work of Bentley; but Sterne has pilfered more freely from a divine more famous as a preacher than the great scholar whose words he appropriated on that occasion. "Then shame and grief go with her," he exclaims in his singular sermon on "The Levite and his Concubine;" "and wherever she seeks a shelter may the hand of Justice shut the door against her!" an exclamation which is taken, as, no doubt, indeed, was the whole suggestion of the somewhat strange subject, from the Contemplations of Bishop ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... recognized concubinage (barragania) as almost equal to marriage, and as conferring equal rights on the child, even on the sons of the clergy, who could thus inherit from their fathers by right of the privileges accorded to the concubine or barragana. Barragania, however, was not real marriage, and in many regions it could be contracted by married men (R. Altamira, Historia de Espana y de la Civilazacion Espanola, Vol. I, pp. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... accompanied with dignity. The reigns of those princes who derived their extraction from the Asiatic provinces, proved the most favorable to the Christians; the eminent persons of the sect, instead of being reduced to implore the protection of a slave or concubine, were admitted into the palace in the honorable characters of priests and philosophers; and their mysterious doctrines, which were already diffused among the people, insensibly attracted the curiosity of their sovereign. When the empress Mammaea ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... neighbour at La Mira? Well, about six weeks ago, he fell in love with a Venetian girl of family, and no fortune or character; took her into his mansion; quarrelled with all his former friends for giving him advice (except me who gave him none), and installed her present concubine and future wife and mistress of himself and furniture. At the end of a month, in which she demeaned herself as ill as possible, he found out a correspondence between her and some former keeper, and after nearly strangling, turned her out ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of Stranger degraded Cleopatra and Berenice to live the concubines of Mark Antony and Titus. This appellation, indeed, so injurious to the majesty, cannot without indulgence be applied to the manners of these oriental queens. A concubine, in the strict sense of the civilian, was a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful companion of a Roman citizen, who continued in a state of celibacy. Her modest station, below the honors of a wife, above the infamy of a prostitute, was acknowledged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... but their wives and children. Some of them appeared to be people of the worst description: there was one in particular, a burly savage-looking fellow, of about forty, whose conduct was atrocious; he sat with his wife, or perhaps concubine, at the door of a room which opened upon the court: he was continually venting horrible and obscene oaths, both in Spanish and Catalan. The woman was remarkably handsome, but robust and seemingly as savage as himself; her conversation likewise was as frightful ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... passion prevented him from keeping his vows of chastity. The amorous propensities and generative faculties of polyorchids have always been supposed greater than ordinary. Russell reports another case of a man with a similar peculiarity, who was prescribed a concubine as a reasonable allowance to a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... impunity the noblest blood of Rome; he perished as soon as he was dreaded by his own domestics. A cup of drugged wine, delivered by his favourite concubine, plunged him in a deep sleep. At the instigation of Laetus, his Praetorian prefect, a robust youth was admitted into his chamber, and strangled him without resistance. With secrecy and celerity the conspirators sought out Pertinax, the prefect of the city, an ancient senator of consular rank, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave her without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to seduce another man's wife, he fears intercourse with a public woman or with a widow who would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and sad state, he addresses to his Church a plea of which the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... endeavoured to curry favour with Yusef by betraying the other Mahommedan princes to him, and intrigued to secure the alliance of Alphonso against the Almoravide. It was probably during this period that he surrendered his beautiful daughter Zaida to the Christian king, who made her his concubine, and is said by some authorities to have married her after she bore him a son, Sancho. The vacillations and submissions of El Motamid did not save him from the fate which overtook his fellow-princes. Their scepticism and extortion had tired ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... (unchaste) 961; wanton, fornicatress[obs3]; Jezebel, Messalina, Delilah, Thais, Phryne, Aspasia[obs3], Lais, lorette[obs3], cocotte[obs3], petite dame, grisette[obs3]; demimonde; chippy* [obs3][U.S.]; sapphist[obs3]; spiritual wife; white slave. concubine, mistress, doxy[obs3], chere amie[Fr], bona roba[It]. pimp, procurer; pander, pandar[obs3]; bawd, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... said, 'on mercantile business at a venture, but according to the will of the two venerated kings now dead: she had married King Henry according to the decision of the Holy Father at Rome: she was the anointed and crowned Queen of England; were she to give up her title, she would have been a concubine these twenty-four years, and her daughter a bastard; she would be false to her conscience, to her own soul, her confessor would not be able to absolve her.' She became more and more absorbed in strict Catholic religious ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Their dress, as you may have judged by my rough description, is more quaint than graceful, and cannot be said to be at all becoming; nevertheless, when one's eyes have got accustomed to it, I have seen girls look quite pretty in it. I remember one in particular, a concubine of one of the king's ministers, whom I was fortunate enough to get to sit for me. She did not look at all bad in her long blue veil gown, much longer than the white one usually worn, which it covered, the white silk trousers just showing over the ankles, and a pretty pair of blue ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... years, God determining it to the length that Moses happened to live. Now Nahor had eight sons by Milcha; Uz and Buz, Kemuel, Chesed, Azau, Pheldas, Jadelph, and Bethuel. These were all the genuine sons of Nahor; for Teba, and Gaam, and Tachas, and Maaca, were born of Reuma his concubine: but Bethuel had a daughter, Rebecca, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Portuguese settlements was slavery. Slavery prevented a good example, it hindered justice, it kept down improvement. If a settler took a fancy to a good-looking girl, he had only to buy her, and make her his concubine. Instead of correcting the polygamous habits of the chiefs and others, the Portuguese adopted like habits themselves. In one thing indeed they were far superior to the Boers—in their treatment of the children born to them by native mothers. But the whole system of slavery gendered ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... of money to establish himself at Brescia, and has not seen his wife for these two years past. General Gourion, who was last spring in Italy, has assured me that he read the advertisement of a curate after his concubine, who had eloped with another curate; and that the Police Minister at Milan openly licensed women to be the housekeepers ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was sincerely disposed to assist James effectually, his intentions were obstructed by the disputes of his ministry. Louvois possessed the chief credit in council; but Seignelai enjoyed a greater share of personal favour, both with the king and madame de Maintenon, the favourite concubine. To this nobleman, as secretary for marine affairs, James made his chief application; and he had promised the command of the troops destined for his service to Latisun, whom Louvois hated. For these reasons this minister thwarted his measures, and retarded the assistance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... had offered, might have led me to do something of this kind; but, through their favor, there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the trial. Further, I am thankful to the gods that I was not longer brought up with my grandfather's concubine, and that I preserved the flower of my youth, and that I did not make proof of my virility before the proper season, but even deferred the time; that I was subjected to a ruler and father who was able to take away all pride from me, and to bring me to the knowledge that it ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... primarily the cause. It is notable that although the line between nobles and commoners was strictly drawn and rigidly observed, it did not extend to marriage in one sense: a nobleman could always take a wife or a concubine from the family of an inferior. In fact, orders were commonly issued to this or that province to furnish so many ladies-in-waiting (uneme)—a term having deeper significance than it suggests—and several instances are recorded ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and appointed the gouernement and generall conduct thereof vnto one William of Ypres a Fleming, who for his valiancie was by king Stephan created earle of Kent: he was sonne to Philip of Flanders, begotten of a concubine, his father also was sonne to Robert earle of Flanders, surnamed Frisius. This William was banished out of his countrie by Theodorike Elsas earle of Flanders, bicause he attempted to bereaue him of ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess of Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But the alarm had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening to the room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her own apartments. Those apartments had been thrice pulled down and thrice rebuilt by her lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of the chimney was massive silver. Several fine paintings, which properly belonged to ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... and if that proves unavailing they are usually chased away. (Paulitschke, B.E.A.S., 30.) If a Greenlander's wife did not bear him any children he generally took another one. (Cranz, I., 147.) Among the Mexican Aztecs divorce, even from a concubine, was not easy; but in case of barrenness even the principal wife could be repudiated. (Bancroft, II., 263-65.) The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Germans, the Chinese and Japanese, could divorce a wife on account of barrenness. For a Hindoo the laws of Manu indicate that "a barren wife may ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... wives are recognised by the code. But it was also possible—as the contracts prove—for a man to take one or more secondary wives or concubines, who were subordinate to the chief wife. In some cases this appears to have been done to enable the first wife to adopt the children of the concubine "as her children."[247] ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... concubine's outraged flesh was to Israel the infant mortality is to the Afrikanders of the Cape and Natal, who, a hundred thousand strong, may at any moment lose their self-control and throw in their lot with their brethren. Then Britain ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar |
