"Nero" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but had allowed Italy to occupy advantageous positions on Austrian territory By June 1st, the Italians had occupied the greater part of the west bank of the Isonzo, with little opposition. The left wing was beyond the Isonzo, at Caporetto, fighting among the boulders of Monte Nero, where the Austrian artillery had strong positions. Monfalcone ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Pilotel, the savage commissioner! He who arrested Monsieur Chaudey, and who pocketed eight hundred and fifteen francs found in Monsieur Chaudey's drawers. Ah! Pilotel, if by some unlucky adventure you were to succumb behind a barricade, you would cry like Nero: "Qualis artifex pereo!" But let us leave the author to criticise the work. A Gavroche, not the Gavroche of the Miserables, but the boy of Belleville, chewing tobacco like a Jack-tar, drunk as a Federal, in a purple ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... tell the truth in poetry. Perhaps it is, but why don't they do it oftener, then? And how was he to know that Polly and Jack had just gone through a terrible battle of words in which I was peacemaker, and that Dicky had been as naughty as—Nero—all day? These two circumstances made me look at the world through blue glasses, and that is always the time one longs to ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... days went on, Zerviah began to notice that things were somehow different. He found some flowers near his table. He was reading about Nero at the time; but he put aside his Gibbon, and fondled the flowers instead. Bernardine did ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... most inhuman lord, Who shall be deemed by men a child of hell. And work such evil, thinning with the sword Who in Ausonia's wasted cities dwell; Rome shall no more her Anthony record, Her Marius, Sylla, Nero, Cajus fell. And this fifth Azo shall to scathe and shame Put Frederick, second Caeser of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... in which famous men of antiquity—Julius Caesar, Nero, Alcibiades, etc., attempt to express themselves in the modes of thought and ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... the Christians continued at intervals with greater or less intensity for more than two centuries; the Christians were early persecuted by the Jews, later by the Romans. In the first century they were persecuted under Nero and Domitian, through personal spite or selfish interests. After {275} this their persecution was political; there was a desire to suppress a religion that was held to be contrary to law. The persecution under Hadrian arose on account of the supposition that the Christians were ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... credited with a miraculous power of curing rheumatic disorders. Lord Denbigh succeeded in getting one of the family, an old man, to come, and learned from him the legend of the cure. The belief was that in the reign of Nero, the Apostles Peter and Paul took refuge in the hut of an old couple named Cancelli, near Foligno, and, as a proof of gratitude, gave to the male descendants of the family living near the spot the power of curing rheumatic disorders to the end of time. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... to conquer positions firmly in Austro-Hungarian hands. The number of Italians captured reached 925 and the number of machine guns taken was increased to seven. Several Italian attacks against Mrzli and Krn (Monte Nero) broke down. On the Rombon the Austro-Hungarians captured a position and took 145 Italians and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... for the theatres to be opened, though they felt the pangs of hunger now. They {214} retorted readily when there was some speech of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Their city was not yet on fire, they said, and Napoleon, the Nero of the catastrophe, could not fiddle because he had no ear for music! The Cirque National was opened on October 23rd, though fuel was running ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... matter did require," "so many tears that her chamber-boy could scarce get napkins enough to dry her eyes." With absurdly unconscious offensiveness and egotism Knox began acquaintance with his sovereign by remarking that he was as well {366} content to live under her as Paul under Nero. Previously he had maintained that the government was set up to control religion; now he informed Mary that "right religion took neither original nor authority from worldly princes but from the Eternal God ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... night. The board of strategy met, of course, but it threw up its hands. It didn't have any first aid to the annihilated in its chest. Besides, Professor Sillcocks hadn't played the game. He had just grabbed the cards. It was about to pass resolutions hailing Sillcocks as the modern Nero, when Rearick began to come down with an idea. Nowadays people pay him five thousand dollars apiece for ideas, but he used to fork them out to us gratis—and they had twice the candle-power. As soon as we saw Rearick begin to perspire we just knocked off and sat around, and it wasn't two ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... "Caro! Nero!" called a sweet childish voice from the house door, and the two monsters, howling joyfully, rushed off in the ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... attributed to Wambe is not without a precedent. T'Chaka, the Zulu Napoleon, never allowed a child of his to live. Indeed he went further, for on discovering that his mother, Unandi, was bringing up one of his sons in secret, like Nero he killed her, and ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... to her; you might let her hear from your consecrated lips that she is not a castaway because she is a Roman; that she may be a Nero and yet a Christian; that she may owe her black locks and dark cheeks to the blood of the pagan Caesars, and yet herself be a child of grace; you will tell her this, won't ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Poem on the reconciliation of the Lords of the Yorkist faction with King Henry the Sixth and his adherents; the one from the Cottonian MS. Nero A. VI., and the other from the Cottonian ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... I, 9), as brief as this is long, he recommends his friend Septimius to Tiberius Claudius Nero, stepson of Augustus, a young man of reserved unpleasant manners, and difficult to approach. The suasive grace with which it disclaims presumption, yet pleads his own merits as a petitioner and his friend's as a candidate for favour, with its dignified deference, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... only sound heard is the chain of the slave, and the voice of the informer, when all tremble before the tyrant, and it is as dangerous to incur his favor as to merit his displeasure, it seems to be the historian's duty to avenge the people. The prosperity of Nero is in vain, Tacitus is already born in the empire, he grows up unknown by the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just providence has delivered to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world.' My accent was doubtless impressive and full of emotion, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... or looking-glasses, of the ancients were usually made of metal, either a composition of tin and copper, or silver; but in later times, alloy was mixed with the silver. Pliny mentions the obsidian stone, or, as it is now called, the Icelandic agate, as being used for this purpose. Nero is said to have used emeralds for mirrors. Pliny the Elder says that mirrors were made in the glass-houses of Sidon, which consisted of glass plates, with leaves of metal at the back; they were ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... industrial country. In spite of its agricultural basis and the vast army of slaves with which it was filled, it was essentially a land of trades and manufactures. Its manufacturing fame was remembered into classical days. One of the rooms in the palace of Nero was hung with Babylonian tapestries, which had cost four millions of sesterces, or more than 32,000, and Cato, it is said, sold a Babylonian mantle because it was too costly and splendid for a Roman to wear. The wool of which the cloths and rugs of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... anomalies often govern the acts of hysterical persons and other psychopaths. The Roman emperors, Nero, Tiberius and Caligula were almost certainly sadists and enjoyed sexual pleasure at the sight of the sufferings of their victims. Valerie, Messalina and Catherine de Medici were also female sadists. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... that he was a Briton, and as such he would be free—free not only to hold his opinions, but to act upon his convictions, and any man who would withdraw his support from him because he would not be a slave was a petty tyrant, and if such an one was not a Nero it was because he lacked ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... A. D. 64. The occasion was the great fire which destroyed a large part of the city of Rome. To turn public suspicion from himself as responsible for the fire, Nero attempted to make the Christians appear as the incendiaries. Many were put to death in horrible and fantastic ways. It was not, however, a persecution directed against Christianity as an unlawful religion. It was probably confined to Rome and at most the immediate vicinity, and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Nero used to call mushrooms the relish of the gods, because Claudius, his predecessor, having been, as was supposed, poisoned by them, was, after his death, ranked among ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... the foregoing explanation, either the fine colonnade of Bernini, or the dancing fountains, or that Egyptian obelisk which, according to Pliny, was set up by the Pharaoh at Heliopolis, and transferred to Rome by Caligula, who set it up in Nero's Circus, where it remained till 1586. Now, as Nero's Circus was situate on the very ground where St. Peter's now stands, and the base of this obelisk covered the actual site where the vestry now is, it looked like a gigantic needle ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Cecil Rhodes, "the founder of Bryn Mawr College"; "Seth Low—England, eighteenth century;" Attila "a woman mentioned in the Bible for her great cruelty to her child;" Warren Hastings "was a German soldier" (also "was a discoverer; died about 1870"); "Nero was a Roman emperor B. C. 450." Perhaps the most unique guess in this line was "Richard Wagner invented the Wagner cars;" Abbotsford is "the title of a book by Sir Walter Scott;" "Vassar College is a dream, high-up ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... command of an all-powerful cardinal; that Racine, the idol of the French living in my day, who had now also become my idol (for I had got intimately acquainted with him when Schoeff Von Olenschlager made us children act "Britannicus," in which the part of Nero fell to me),—that Racine, I say, even in his own day, was not able to get on with the amateurs nor critics. Through all this I became more perplexed than ever; and after having pestered myself a long time with this talking backwards and forwards, and theoretical quackery of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... except those who may exist at the present epoch, or who may have existed within the reach of memory or of tradition, ever infested the earth? Would not the enormities of the Dionysii, of Caligula, and of Nero, have been long since forgotten? And would not many of those princes who have merited and obtained the appellations of "great," of "good," and of "just," have become as atrocious monsters as these were, but from the dread of being held up as objects of similar execration to ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... one or the other of two places. He had very certainly never known anybody who in his opinion merited the torments of his orthodox Gehenna; so that in imagination he vaguely populated its blazing corridors with Nero and Judas and Caesar Borgia and Henry VIII, and Spanish Inquisitors and the aboriginal American Indians—excepting of course his ancestress Pocahontas—and with Benedict Arnold and all the "carpet-baggers" and suchlike other eminent practitioners ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... made all the earth drunken. The nations have drunken of her wine, therefore the nations are mad." Greek writers speak of cases of mental unsoundness as occurring with some frequency in Greece. The inhabitants of the Roman Empire were afflicted with mental unsoundness and Nero was considered crazy. In ancient Egypt there were temples and priests for the care of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... order to satisfy my own mind I have been looking in Latin Dictionaries for the correct and original meaning of 'impero,' (I govern,) and 'imperium.' The word 'Empire' has an unpleasant ring from some points of view and to some minds. One thinks of Roman Emperors, Domitian, Nero, Tiberius,—of the word 'imperious,' and of the French 'Empire' under Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. The Latin word means 'the giving of commands.' All depends on whether the commands given are good, and the giver of them ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... Heguri were annihilated. In the Records this event is attributed to the reign of Seinei in a much abbreviated form, but the account given in the Chronicles commands the greater credence. The Chronicles, however, represent Muretsu as a monster of cruelty, the Nero of Japanese history, who plucked out men's nails and made them dig up yams with their mutilated fingers; who pulled out people's hair; who made them ascend trees which were then cut down, and who perpetrated other hideous excesses. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the old chapel, a black cat was leisurely crossing the road. At her dashed Nero, stimulated perhaps by an almost involuntary scss—scss—from his master, if not from Amos and me. The cat flew up a low wall, and stood at bay on the top on tiptoe, with bristling tail, arched back, and fiery eyes, while the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time of Augustus, and furnished conclusive evidence that nothing in his language is inconsistent with this view. In revising the translation, I met with one bit of evidence for a date before the end of the reign of Nero which I have never seen adduced. In viii, 3, 21, the kingdom of Cottius is mentioned, the name depending, it is true, on an emendation, but one which has been universally accepted since it was first proposed in 1513. The kingdom of Cottius was made into a Roman province by Nero (cf. Suetonius, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... udendo Batto e Tirsi, Gran maestri d' amore; e 'l raccontava Nell' antro dell' Aurora, ove sull' uscio E scritto: Lungi, ah lungi ite, profani? Diceva egli, e diceva che gliel disse Quel grande che canto l' armi e gli amori, Ch' a lui lascio la fistola morendo; Che laggiu nello 'nferno e un nero speco, La dove esala un fumo pien di puzza Dalle tristi fornaci d' Acheronte; E che quivi punite eternamente In tormenti di tenebre e di pianto Son le femmine ingrate ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... a living lie, with the hope of peace in his heart. As for Penrod's father, that gladiator was painted as of sentiments and dimensions suitable to a super-demon composed of equal parts of Goliath, Jack Johnson and the Emperor Nero. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... us believe; neither does the loss of virility, in a procreative sense, seem to have always robbed them of their virility in other senses, as we find eunuchs holding the highest offices in the State under the reigns of Alexander, the Ptolemys, Lysimachus, Mithrades, Nero, and Arcadius. The eunuch Aristonikos, under one of the Ptolemys, and another, Narces, under Justinian, led the armies of their sovereigns. These are, however, exceptional cases; as a rule, the result is as ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the "Admonition" came home to Knox when English refugees in Frankfort, impeded by him and others in the use of their Liturgy, accused him of high treason against Philip and Mary, and the Emperor, whom he had compared to Nero ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... of the Roman Empire, we find a counterfeit Agrippa, after him a counterfeit Nero; and before them two counterfeit Alexanders, in Syria. But never was a nation so troubled with these mock kings as England; a counterfeit Richard II. being made in the time of Henry IV.; a counterfeit Mortimer in the time of Henry VI.; a counterfeit Duke of York; a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... fact; even an admitted necessity: St. Benedict's work was to tell them, if they chose to be monks, what sort of persons they ought to be, and how they ought to live, in order to fulfil their own ideal. In the solitude of the hills of Subiaco, above the ruined palace of Nero, above, too, the town of Nurscia, of whose lords he was the last remaining scion, he fled to the mountain grotto, to live the outward life of a wild beast, and, as he conceived, the inward life of an angel. How he founded twelve monasteries; how he fled with some of his younger disciples, to ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... No more, assure you, will any grave, wise citizen, or modest matron, take the object of this folly in Deliro and his wife; but rather apply it as the foil to their own virtues. For that were to affirm, that a man writing of Nero, should mean all emperors; or speaking of Machiavel, comprehend all statesmen; or in our Sordido, all farmers; and so of the rest: than which nothing can be uttered more malicious or absurd. Indeed there are a sort of these narrow-eyed ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... three O'Malleys before you. Godfrey O'Malley, that construed Calve Neroni to Nero the Calvinist,—ha! ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... smiled a real, sure-enough schoolma'am smile, and remarked that she hoped our brilliant scholar, Mister Champneys, knew now what the boy got for his chestnuts. The class laughed as good scholars are expected to laugh on such occasions. Peter came to the conclusion that Herod, Nero, Bluebeard, and The Cruel Stepmother all probably began ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... that a good king is not only a good thing, but perhaps the best thing. But it also involved the paradox that even a bad king is a good king, for his oppression weakens the nobility and relieves the pressure on the populace. If he is a tyrant he chiefly tortures the torturers; and though Nero's murder of his own mother was hardly perhaps a gain to his soul, it was no great loss to his empire. Bolingbroke had thus a wholly rationalistic theory of Jacobitism. He was, in other respects, a fine and typical ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... practical purposes Browning was, our critic thinks, a deliberate artist. The suggestion that Browning cared nothing for form is for Chesterton a monstrous assertion. It is as absurd as saying that Napoleon cared nothing for feminine love or that Nero hated mushrooms. What Browning did was always to fall into a different kind of form, which is a totally different thing to saying he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... fall into, after learning has made great progress, and after eminent writers have appeared in every species of composition. The endeavour to please by novelty leads men wide of simplicity and nature, and fills their writings with affectation and conceit. It was thus that the age of Claudius and Nero became so much inferior to that of Augustus in taste and genius; and perhaps there are at present some symptoms of a like degeneracy of taste, in France as well ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... 1245), which was probably a kind of bag-pipe, is also derived from [Greek: phusa], i.e. physallis, the "concrete,"[28] and physateria[29] the "collective"[28] form of the instrument. We leave the realm of inference for that of certainty when we reach the reign of Nero, who had a passion for the Hydraulus (see ORGAN: History) and the tibia utricularis.[30] That the bag-pipe was introduced by the Romans into the British Isles is a conclusion supported by the discovery ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... looking westward toward Trento, all the valleys in the labyrinth of the Dolomites, and several footholds in the Alps of Carinthia. The eastern army was well inside Austrian territory, its left at Caporetto on the Isonzo just under Monte Nero, its center looking down on Gorizia from the heights between Indria and the Isonzo, and its right between Cormons and Terzo. Losses on both sides were surprisingly small considering the extent of territory covered by the fighting. The Austrians, after slight resistance, withdrew into their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... receives him, and the other mockingly lifts him thereinto, and away he goes with the speed of lightning. Ere long the angel bade me look, and I saw the poor knight most horribly sodden in an enormous boiling furnace with Cain, Nimrod, Esau, Tarquin, Nero, Caligula, and others who first established lineage, and ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Do More than Look at A King Surviving Evils of the Reign of Terror The Rogue's Gallery of a Father Should be Exhibited to a Daughter with Particular Care "But Spare Your Country's Flag" Nero not the Last Violinist of his Kind The Ever Unpractical Feminine The Comedian A Tale of a Political Difference The Rule of the Regent Echoes of a Serenade A Voice in a Garden The Room in the Cupola The Tocsin ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... my bed from morning to night, and appeared as anxiously attentive as if we had been the most perfect friends. My mouth was shut up by the command I had received from the Queen our mother, so that I only answered his dissembled concern with sighs, like Burrus in the presence of Nero, when he was dying by the poison administered by the hands of that tyrant. The sighs, however, which I vented in my brother's presence, might convince him that I attributed my sickness rather to his ill offices than to the ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... death himself, it became necessary to rejoice at the death of his friend or relative. Under Nero, many went to return thanks to the gods for their relatives whom he had put to death. At least, an assumed air of contentment was necessary; for even fear was sufficient to render one guilty. Everything ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... absolutely. As he was in a moribund condition and could make no use of them for himself, he sold them to Giuliano della Rovere, and Giuliano della Rovere was elected pope, under the name of Julius II. To the Rome of Nero succeeded the Athens ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... gift-books, and the Rev. L. A. Seneca, formerly private tutor in His Majesty's household. Should H.I.M. decide to abdicate, it is anticipated that He will edit our Boeotian contemporary the Oracle, which is sadly in need of new blood. Nero will give it that. The meetings held at the Palazzo Pisone were ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... was born in Jerusalem in 37 A.D. His father, Matthias, was a priest, and his mother belonged to the Asmonean princely family. So distinguished was he as a student that, at the age of twenty-six, he was chosen delegate to Nero. When the critical juncture arose for his nation, through the rebellion excited by the cruelties of Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator, Josephus was appointed governor of Galilee The insurrection proved fatal, for Vespasian ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Flavian Amphitheatre, or, as it is also called, Coliseum. After a period of civil war and confusion, Vespasian began the Flavian dynasty, and entered upon his reign by filling up the spaces made by the demolitions of Nero, and by the fire, with large buildings, the most conspicuous and massive of them being the Coliseum. It is not known whether this name was given to it from its tremendous size or from the Colossus of ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the seeds of vice in Nero, his pupil, to whom incest and blood were afterwards so familiar[1], composed the Latin tragedy on the subject of OEdipus, which is alluded to by Dryden in the following preface. The cold declamatory rhetorical stile of that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... which they seek to traduce, which is that by that occasion the state hath been in the hands of pedantes: for so was the state of Rome for the first five years, which are so much magnified, during the minority of Nero, in the hands of Seneca, a pedenti; so it was again, for ten years' space or more, during the minority of Gordianus the younger, with great applause and contentation in the hands of Misitheus, a pedanti: so was it before ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... and Nannies for children that don't want a ponyback ride. But I was getting the goats ready to put in the stable for the night, and I'd taken off the saddles. I had my back turned, and the first I knew I heard a shout. I turned and saw this boy on Nero's back, heading for the merry-go-round. I followed as fast as I could. Nero is a gentle goat, but I couldn't tell what he'd do when he got mixed up with ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope
... concludes that this first Epistle was written shortly after the end of Nero's persecution, and ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... characteristically concise style, introduces London into authentic history during the apostolic era and the reign of Nero.[1] Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain, came in hot haste from Mona, suspending the slaughter of the Druid leaders in this their last fastness, to restore the Roman arms. For Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, outraged at the treatment of herself and her two daughters, had, like a second ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... ugliness of the transformation which is passing over our Society in some such abrupt and even grotesque image at the end of it. The beginnings of a decline, in every age of history, have always had the appearance of being reforms. Nero not only fiddled while Rome was burning, but he probably really paid more attention to the fiddle than to the fire. The Roi Soleil, like many other soleils, was most splendid to all appearance a little before sunset. And if I ask myself what will be the ultimate and final fruit of all our social ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... repeated in the history of this republic?" The answer is, we have saving influences in this republic Rome never knew. Rome never had an asylum for her blind or insane; she never had a home for widows and orphans; her "golden house" of Nero never had an equal, but nowhere in her dusty highways could be found footprints of mercy. In Rome the soldier was the cohesive power, while socially everything was isolated. In this republic there is an interlacing and binding together in bonds ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... identified with political, religious, or national movements but also because they have come to typify human relationships. The loyalty of Damon and Pythias, the grief of Rachel weeping for her children, the cynical cruelty of the egocentric Nero, the perfidy of Benedict Arnold, the comprehending sympathy of Abraham Lincoln, are proverbial, and as such have become part of the common language of all the peoples who participate in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... squire. "I suppose I am to be held up as a tyrant, a Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having things smart and tidy! Stocks indeed! Your friend Rickeybockey said he was never more comfortable in his life,—quite enjoyed sitting there. And what did ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the peasant. A fainter bluff limits the north-eastern boundary of the little bay. On it, once, stood the dwellings of emperors. There Caesar sought retirement, and the warm springs on its side are yet called the baths of the bloody Nero. That small conical hill, which, as you see, possesses a greener and fresher look than the adjoining land, is a cone ejected by the caldron beneath, but two brief centuries since. It occupies, in part, the site of the ancient Lucrine lake. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and truer-hearted of them, at least. Some here, surely, have read Epictetus, the heathen whose thought most exactly coincides with that of the Psalmist. If so, do they not see what enabled him, the slave of Nero's minion, to assert himself, and his own unconquerable personality; to defy circumstance; and to preserve his own calm, his own honour, his own purity, amid a degradation which might well have driven a good man to suicide? And was it not this—The intensity ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... disease fell upon Italy, and was coincident not with the murderous war against Hannibal and the subsequent campaigns, costly though they were, in Spain, Syria, and Macedonia, but with the Hellenisation of social life. Lucan, under Nero, complains that the towns have lost more than half their inhabitants, and that the country-side lies waste. Under Titus it was estimated that, whereas Italy under the Republic could raise nearly 800,000 soldiers, that number was now reduced by ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... a ring: A month or two later They made him dictator, In place of the elderly king: He was lauded by pulpit, and boomed by press, And no one had ever a chance to guess, Beholding this hero Who ruled like a Nero, His valor was zero, ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... our Lord appeared to St. Peter, saying to him: Simon Magus and Nero purpose against thee, dread thee not, for I am with thee, and shall give to thee the solace of my servant Paul, which to-morn shall come in to Rome. Then Peter, knowing that he should not long abide here, assembled all his brethren, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... ages to all animal poisons. It was named Theriaca (the Latin word for our present treacle) from the Greek word Therion, a small animal, in allusion to the vipers which were added to the triacle by Andromachus, physician to the emperor Nero. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... is but fair that we should allude to that of their successors. In ancient Rome, music was never popular. Combats of gladiators and wild beasts filled their theatres with streams of blood, instead of their resounding with music; and after the death of Nero,[1] that beautiful art was declared infamous, and by a public decree, banished from the city. In our theatres, however, heroes fight to music, from the Richard III. and Richmond of Shakspeare to the "terrific ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... nothing but the motive power to develop into absolute wickedness. Vanity can be savagely suspicious and diabolically cruel. What are the two typical names which stand revealed in history as the names of the two vainest men that ever lived? Nero and Robespierre. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... them dead instantly. I pronounced the doom of Rome to the Pope, and soon afterwards all the territory about Rome, the March of Ancona, the great city and all its riches sank into that vast bed of burning lava which heats Nero's bath. These two considerations were the delirious wanderings of the mind, but I hope to feel their force, to pray and strive for their accomplishment to the end of my life. But it is now time to attend to something ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Told in the prose 'Satyricon' ascribed to Petronius, whom Nero called his Arbiter of Elegance. The tale was known in the Middle Ages from the stories of the 'Seven Wise Masters.' She went down into the vault with her husband's corpse, resolved to weep to death or die of famine; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... garden of the Palace in Charlottenburg. As Effi walked up and down the long front, between the Palace and the orange trees, she studied time and again the many Roman emperors standing there, found a remarkable resemblance between Nero and Titus, gathered pine cones that had fallen from the trees, and then walked arm in arm with her husband toward the Spree till they came to ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... wasn't a joke. You can't have the bottom knocked out of your world, naturally, and find an invisible Nero blithely fiddling on your heart-strings. And I hated to see Dinky-Dunk sitting there with that dead look in his eyes. I hated to see him with his spirit broken, with that hollow and haggard misery about the jowls, which made me think ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the boards or tables were prepared with a thin ground of chalk and size of some kind. Linen cloth or canvas was also employed, but there is no evidence of its use before the reign of Nero. Parchment, ivory and plaster were the ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... north. He gave a West Saxon form to his selections from Bede. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due balance of priest, soldier, and churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak on the abuses of power. The cold providence of Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgment of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... also others, the associates of Emilius. There was Sotus, the Egyptian, a learned astronomer, and Cyope, the renowned Greek dramatist, and Spoletius, who is now writing a history of the empire, and, if what he says is true, has already brought his work down to the time of the Emperor Nero—' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... that the onion gave strength to the human frame, but that it would also improve the pugnacious quality of their gamecocks. Horace, however, thought that garlic was a fit poison for anybody who committed parricide. The Emperor Nero, on the other hand, thought that eating leeks improved the human voice, and as he was ambitious of being a fine singer, he used to have a leek diet on several ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... of the sanctuary, amongst the numerous bas-reliefs representing various sovereigns paying homage to the beautiful Hathor, is one of a young man, crowned with a royal tiara shaped like the head of a uraeus. He is shown seated in the traditional Pharaonic pose and is none other than the Emperor Nero! ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." If this was true of Napoleon that he was of the seed of the serpent, doing his will, how much more is it true of the Hohenzollern, William II. His deeds and the deeds of his associates in this war of all wars surpass the deeds of Nero, Attila and Napoleon. The devil's bait was swallowed by this Prussian emperor and he hoped to gain world dominion, but has now found out that the devil is ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... done me the favour of allowing me to build a nunnery for ladies here at the foot of Monte Cavallo, by the broken portico, where it is said that Nero saw Rome burning, so that the wicked footprints of such a man may be trodden out by others more honest of holy women. I do not know, M. Angelo, what shape and proportions to give to the house, where the door should be placed, and whether ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... them is that we should never conquer by force, but always, if we can, conquer by persuasion. In their mythology St George did not conquer the dragon: he tied a pink ribbon round its neck and gave it a saucer of milk. According to them, a course of consistent kindness to Nero would have turned him into something only faintly represented by Alfred the Great. In fact, the policy recommended by this school for dealing with the bovine stupidity and bovine fury of this world is accurately summed up in the celebrated verse of ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog, whom he called Nero—I could not ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... possibly describe him. The small boys whispered to one another that once on a time he had murdered his mother, or somebody. The curious discovered that he was a lineal descendant of Judge Jeffreys, of hanging celebrity. The seniors represented him as a cross between Nero and Caliban, and could not forgive him for ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... personal property of the goddess, the gold drapery of the statue (see p. 185), which was worth about $600,000, could be used in case of great need, but it must be replaced in due time, with a fair interest.] But the riches of the sanctuary proved too great a temptation to the Roman emperor Nero. He risked incurring the anger of the great Diana, and robbed the temple of many statues and a vast amount of gold. Later (in 262 A.D.), the barbarian Goths enriched themselves with the spoils of the shrine, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher who although bound up in learning himself allowed his family free rein in their vices and finally turned the Empire over to his son Commodus, one of the most vicious men of all time. But take Caligula and Nero if you will. Both of them stepped into power comparatively clean and with the best of prospects. Well approved, well loved. What happened to them when ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... character and another?—the malicious, diabolical wickedness of the one, and set off against it, the goodness of the other, showing all the more conspicuously. How is it that we get a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Carcalla, a Domitian, a Nero; and on the other hand, the Antonines, Titus, Hadrian, Nerva? How is it that among the animals, nay, in a higher species, in individual animals, there is a like difference?—the malignity of the cat most strongly developed in the tiger; the spite of the monkey; on ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in that den— Far I think she juggled three cubs then, And a big "green" lion 'at used to smash Collar-bones far old Frank Nash; And I reckon now she hain't fergot The afternoon old "Nero" sot His paws on her!—but as far me, ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... the Terrible, and fierce Soar superior over all, bloody villain, Force with gold and silver alone— Dictating thy generous onslaughts! Caesar, Pompey and Scipio Could not compete with thy valor; Only Nero, paragon of infamy, Could match the renown of Roderick, Thy fame, great chief, boundless as the globe! Italy, Spain, France and England Pay constant tribute to thy purse, Travelers and pilgrims, seeking glory By kissing the pope's big toe Drop their ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... nature has cowed it, as the Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons have done, it has marched out to slaughter and be slaughtered with a sullen pride in the daring that this mightier ferocity has put upon it. When it has mastered its Drusus, its Domitian, its Nero, its Vespasian and its Louis XVI, it has indulged in wanton excesses of rage and destruction until, spent with exhaustion, a new master has arisen to tie it up like a whipped dog. It was this gloomy and savage force that crowded into the greatest tribunal of all history, ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... honorary colonel, a studied trumpery effort, designed for a momentary effect? Is the Kaiser just glitter and tinsel, impulse and rhapsody, with nothing solid beneath? Is it his supreme object to make an impression at any cost, to force, like another Nero, the popular applause by arts more becoming to a cabotin than a sovereign? Vanity, restlessness, a consuming desire for the palm without the dust—an intense and theatrical egotism—are these the qualities that give the clue to ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... time to send a new army and a new general. Fortunately the turn of the war in Italy, where Capua had just fallen, allowed this to be done. A strong legion—12,000 men—arriving under the propraetor Gaius Claudius Nero, restored the balance of arms. An expedition to Andalusia in the following year (544) was most successful; Hasdrubal Barcas was beset and surrounded, and escaped a capitulation only by ignoble stratagem and open perfidy. But Nero was not the right general for the Spanish war. He ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... strength were related, and in the minds of his simple followers he was regarded as more than a man, which shows us that the ideals of what a man should be, or might be, were not high. We are told that near Benedict's first monastery there was a very deep lake, made in the time of Nero by damming up a mountain stream. Along this lake the brambles and vines had grown in great confusion. Benedict set to work to clear the ground from this lake to his monastery, half a mile up the hillside. One day a workman dropped an ax into the lake. Benedict smiled, his lips moved ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of swords. Heaven help me! I'm but little of a parson: What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord's, Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on The fate of nations;—but this Russ so witty Could rhyme, like Nero, o'er a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... wee read, that any such Doctrine was accounted Christian in the time of the Apostles; nor in the time of the Romane Emperours, till the Popes had the Civill Soveraignty of Rome. But to this he hath replyed, that the Christians of old, deposed not Nero, nor Diocletian, nor Julian, nor Valens an Arrian, for this cause onely, that they wanted Temporall forces. Perhaps so. But did our Saviour, who for calling for, might have had twelve Legions of immortall, invulnerable Angels to assist him, want forces to depose Caesar, or at least Pilate, that unjustly, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Honestum animum. Tacit. Gracious Heart: Let them commend | Annal. l. 13.] their Wit, Wealth, Beautie, | Nobilitie, and other Gifts of | Fortune (as they call them) in | stead of Vertues[f]. Wee the | [Note f: Laudauit ipse Nero apud Ministers of Christ, and Stewards | rostra formam eius & quod diuinae of the Mysteries of God, must | formae parens fuisset, aliaque adorne none with the Honourable | fortunae munera pro Virtutibus. Id. Attributes of Heauenly Praise; but | Annal. l. 16.] such as are truly beautified, ...
— The Praise of a Godly Woman • Hannibal Gamon
... unceasingly in the fierce sun. Still I should desire greater strength and a stouter bow, wilder creatures to combat. The intense life of the senses, there is never enough for them. I envy Semiramis; I would have been ten times Semiramis. I envy Nero, because of the great concourse of beauty he saw. I should like to be loved by every beautiful woman on earth, from the swart Nubian to the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... I may be so familiar with a millionaire, because I hate both the names Spencer and Grenville—your invitation is meant kindly, but—the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while the bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived— barring, thank heaven, the fiddling—while the city burns at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the zones wait upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically conjured ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Before the dame, and round about, March'd whifflers and staffiers on foot, 650 With lackies, grooms, valets, and pages, In fit and proper equipages; Of whom some torches bore, some links, Before the proud virago minx, That was both Madam and a Don, 655 Like NERO'S SPORUS, or POPE JOAN; And at fit periods the whole rout Set up their throats with clamorous shout. The Knight, transported, and the Squire, Put up their weapons, and their ire; 660 And HUDIBRAS, who us'd to ponder On such sights ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... exterior gallery, where the golden horses are. Of the interior galleries I speak later. Let me say here that these noble steeds were originally designed and cast for a triumphal arch, to be driven by Victory, in honour of Nero. Filched from Rome by Constantine, they were carried to his own city as an ornament to the imperial hippodrome. In 1204 the great Doge Enrico Dandolo, having humiliated Constantinople, brought the horses to Venice as a trophy, and they were transferred ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... cannot certainly defend him against all the reproaches which he incurred through the imperious law of war and cruel necessity; but I may say that he has often been unjustly accused. None but those who are blinded by fury will call him a Nero or a Caligula. I think I have avowed his faults with sufficient candour to entitle me to credit when I speak in his commendation; and I declare that, out of the field of battle, Bonaparte had a kind and feeling heart. He was very fond of children, a trait which seldom distinguishes a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... reverie was merely to banish the thought of my late guest. (Of course, my object in recording it here is simply to kill time; for, to speak like a true man, I linger shivering on the brink of the disclosures to which I am pledged. I feel something like the doomed Nero, when he stood holding the dagger near his throat, trying meanwhile to screw his courage to the sticking-place by the recitation of heroic poetry. Trust me to go on with the narrative as soon as ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... treated as an honest gentleman again. I hold very strongly with what you say; it is that, under God, that has kept me steady. As I said to you last time, Christ's Kingdom is not of this world. Can you imagine, for example, Saint Peter preaching religious obedience to Nero to be a Christian's duty? I do not say (God forbid) that her Grace is a Nero, or even a Poppaea; but there is no particular reason why some successor of hers should not be. However, Nero or not, the principle is the same. I do not deny that a National Church may be immensely powerful, may convert ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... "Even Nero had his weaknesses," Sir Timothy remarked, waving the dogs away. "My animals' quarters are well worth a visit, if you have time. There is a small hospital, too, which is quite up ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... room in which were heaped up bits of marble of all sorts and sizes, fragments of columns and friezes; and he told us that they never excavated without finding something. And Titus's Baths, less magnificent but equally curious, because they contain the remains of the Golden House of Nero, on which Titus built his Thermae. The ruins are, in fact, part of the Golden House, for the Thermae have been altogether destroyed. Then to the Capitol, Forum, Temple of Vesta, Fortuna Virilis, and other places with Morier. The Capitol contains an interesting collection of busts and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Juvenal, Cicero and Tacitus, there was a gap of half a century, in which Roman genius was slumbering. The gradual growth of a spirit of adulation deterred all who were qualified for the task of the historian from attempting it. Fear, during the lifetime of Tiberius and Caligula, Claudius and Nero, and hatred, still fresh after their deaths, rendered all accounts of their reigns false. And the same causes which silenced the voice of history extinguished the genius of poetry and oratory. As ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Albertina bronze. It is just this which the portrait of the Capitol lacks for the completion of Caligula. The man who could be so represented in art had nothing wholly vulgar in him. The brutality of Caracalla, the overblown sensuality of Nero, the effeminacy of Commodus or Heliogabalus are all absent here. This face idealizes the torture of a morbid soul. It is withal so truly beautiful that it might easily be made the poem of high suffering or noble passion. If the bronze were plastic I see how ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... wills its existence; and in this sense, and this alone, the powers that be are ordained by him. But civil government cannot exist, if each individual may, at his pleasure, forcibly resist its injunctions. Therefore Christians are required to submit to the powers that be, whether a Nero or a slave-catching Congress. But obedience to the civil ruler often necessarily involves rebellion to God. Hence we are warned by Christ and his Apostles, and by the example of saints in all ages, in such cases, ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... all-wise and all-merciful, as every creed proclaims, could punish the unfortunate wretch who hatches criminal thoughts behind the slanting brows of a criminal head? A doctor has but to glance at the cranium to predicate the crime. In its worst forms all crime, from Nero to Jack the Ripper, is the product of absolute lunacy, and those gross national sins to which allusion has been made seem to point to collective national insanity. Surely, then, there is hope that no very terrible inferno is needed to further punish ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gross the inherent defects of democratic governments, and fatal as the results finally and inevitably are, we need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula, of Heliogabalus and Caracalla, of Domitian and Commodus, to recognize that the difference between freedom and despotism is as wide as that between Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness, and insanity of tyrants are incredible. Let ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike |
