"Diocletian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pictorial conception. No one, however, who looked upon his suffering martyrs, could suppose for a moment that he honoured their martyrdom. They were but the vehicles for his hate of humanity. He was the torturer, and not Diocletian ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the most famous monument on the Appian Way outside Rome, commemorating the wife of Crassus (d. 53 BC), who as member of the First Triumvirate, joined with Caesar and Pompey to end the Roman Republic; amphitheatre of Verona built by the Emperor Diocletian about 290 A.D. to stage gladiator combats, it is one of the largest surviving ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... had lived in the days of persecution it would have made a considerable difference to us whether this or that sacred book was included in the Christian Scriptures. Thus, when the early Christians were ordered by Diocletian to "bring out their books," and either burn them or die for them, it became a matter of vital importance to know which these books were. Who could tell them this? Only the society which published them, only ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... remained in situ. She was plundered by her Popes. Statues were used as missiles; her marble was exported all over the world—to the Cathedrals of Orvieto and Pisa, even to the Abbey Church of Westminster. Suger, trying to get marble columns for his church, looked longingly at those in the baths of Diocletian, a natural and obvious source, though happily he stole them elsewhere.[115] The vandalism proceeded at an incredible pace. Pius II. issued a Bull in 1462 to check it; in 1472 Sixtus IV. issued another. Pius, however, quarried largely between the Capitol ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... that which animates the Lost Tribe enthusiasts of England. He considered that the world hardly realized how much it owed to his countryfolk; according to his views, Achilles, Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Pyrrhus, Diocletian, Julian the Apostate—they were all Albanians. Yet even towards the end of his life ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... bravest and wisest of the Caesars found their arms and their policy unavailing, when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal and the kingdom that was not of this world. The victory which Porphyry and Diocletian failed to gain is not, to all appearance, reserved for any of those who have in this age, directed their attacks against the last restraint of the powerful and the last hope of the wretched. The whole history of Christianity shows, that she is in far greater ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... play of which there has survived but the title: The Last Will and Testament of Defunct Jupiter. It appeared in the days of Diocletian, but it might have appealed when Cicero taught. Faith then had fainted. Fright had ceased to build. Worship remained, but religion had gone. The gods themselves were departing. The epoch itself was apoplectic. The tramp of legions was continuous. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... and twenty-eight bishops for the twenty-eight heathen flamens. Now all this is based on a short passage in Bede: "Lucius King of the Britains sent to the Pope asking that he might be made a Christian; he soon obtained his desire, and the Britons kept the faith pure till the Diocletian persecution," which itself is amplified from an entry in the Liber Pontificalis: "Lucius King of the Britains sent to the Pope asking that he might be made a Christian." This last does not occur in the early version of the Liber Pontificalis, and is irreconcilable with ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... use of several precious chronicles; while the abbess in the convent near by, who esteemed Louise for her piety and accomplishments, submitted to her care a gorgeously painted, satin-bound Life of Saint Agnes, a Roman virgin who died under the sanguinary persecution of Diocletian. But Jacqueline frowningly noticed that the saint's life lay idle—conspicuously, though fittingly, on the altar-table—while a manuscript of the Queen of Navarre suspiciously accompanied the jester when he sought the pleasant nook selected ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the course of construction. When I got out of the station I saw a huge brick building across the street, which had been left unfinished as if the workmen had gone on strike. I learned that it was the remains of the Baths of Diocletian. Opening a door I found myself in a huge church, which had a long history I ought to have known something about, ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... government to create an inconvertible paper currency, and to maintain its circulation at various levels of value. It also records what is perhaps the greatest of all governmental efforts—with the possible exception of Diocletian's—to enact and enforce a legal limit of commodity prices. Every fetter that could hinder the will or thwart the wisdom of democracy had been shattered, and in consequence every device and expedient that untrammelled ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... pious frauds of more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either to the use or the abuse of chemistry. In that immense register where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind, there is not the least mention of the transmutations of metals; and the persecution of Diocletian is the first authentic event in the history of alchymy. The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science over the globe. Congenial to the avarice of the human heart, it was studied in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... C. Valerius Diocletianus to the vacant dignity, and his first act was to execute the murderer of Numerian. His next was to encounter Carinus in battle, who was slain, A.D. 285, and Diocletian—perhaps the greatest emperor after Augustus—reigned alone. Diocletian is, however, rendered infamous in ecclesiastical history, as the most bitter of all the persecutors of the Christians, now a large and growing ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... One part, Dacia Mediterranea, had for its capital Sardica, now Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Then followed a period of comparative peace. The Roman emperors saw that on the Balkan frontier their Empire had to be won or lost, and strengthened the defences there. Thus Diocletian made his headquarters at Nicomedia. Finally, Constantine moved the capital altogether to Constantinople. Goth and Roman at this time showed a disposition to a peaceful amalgamation, and the Bulgarian population was rapidly ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... only to do his duty as well as he could, and to keep out corruption. He did some unwise things, it is true. To create a compeer in empire, as he did with Verus, was a dangerous innovation which could only succeed if one of the two effaced himself; and under Diocletian this very precedent caused the Roman Empire to split into halves. He erred in his civil administration by too much centralising. But the strong point of his reign was the administration of justice. Marcus sought by-laws ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... ... sealed their doctrine with their blood; St. Julius, and with him St. Aaron, have their room At Carleon, suffering death by Diocletian's doom. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Protestantism was put to the test of German science. What happened? Islam was defeated in Russia and in the Balkans, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. The epoch of the catacombs and the bloody days of Nero and Diocletian have been repeated once more in the Balkans, in Russia, and are still being experienced in Armenia and Asia Minor. The killed and martyred kings, princes, bishops, priests and laymen from these countries will not ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... over the nations of Europe was a thing of the past. There were still two men, one at the Old Rome by the Tiber, and the other at the New Rome by the Bosphorus, who called themselves August, Pious, and Happy, who wore the diadem and the purple shoes of Diocletian, and professed to be joint lords of the universe. Before the Eastern Augustus and his successors there did in truth lie a long future of dominion, and once or twice they were to recover no inconsiderable portion of the broad lands which had ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... speak of Dryades or "Druidesses" in the third century. One of them predicted his approaching death to Alexander Severus, another promised the empire to Diocletian, others were consulted by Aurelian.[1083] Thus they were divineresses, rather than priestesses, and their name may be the result of misconception, unless they assumed it when Druids no longer existed as a class. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Diocletian, who wore a crown so fortunate and revered, resigned it to retire to the felicity of a private life; and some time after the necessity of public affairs requiring that he should reassume his charge, he made answer to those who came ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Consulships of the reigning Emperor into the reign of his predecessor.[35] Thus Probus is Consul for two years under Aurelian, and for one year under Tacitus; both the two Consulships of Carus and the first of Diocletian are under Probus, while Diocletian's second Consulship is under Carinus and Numerianus; and so forth. It is wonderful that so intelligent a person as Cassiodorus did not see that combinations of this kind were false upon the face ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Caesar, and all the provincials, Augustin, no doubt, examined the curiosities and celebrated works which were pointed out to strangers: the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian; the Pantheon; the temple of Roma and of Venus; the Place of Concord; the theatre of Pompey; the Odeum, and the Stadium. Though he might be stupefied by all this, he would remember, too, all that the Republic had taken from the provinces to construct these wonders, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... killed! What do you think the Lord thinks of such a great man as that? Remember the Bible says of His people, 'He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye.' What do you think the Lord thought of Marcus Aurelius' greatness? Look here, Rupert—here is Decius, and here is Diocletian." ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... ancient days; and few cities have seen greater changes of fortune. In the reign of Diocletian and Maximilian it became the capital of the western empire, and was filled with the temples, baths, theatres, and other monuments which usually adorn royal cities. The tempest which Attila, in the middle of the fifth century, conducted across the Alps, fell upon it, and swept ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Darius had crushed the liberty of Greece, the purer faith of Zoroaster might easily have superseded the Olympian fables. Again, under the Sassanian dynasty (226-651 A.D.) the revived national faith of the Zoroastrians assumed such vigour that Shapur II, like another Diocletian, could aim at the extirpation of the Christian faith. The sufferings of the persecuted Christians in the East were as terrible as they had ever been in the West; nor was it by the weapons of Roman emperors or by the arguments ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... governor or propraetor at Londinium (as London was then called), and still more cross because he had that day received dispatches from Rome demanding a special and unexpected tax levy, or tribute, to meet the necessary expenses of the new Emperor Diocletian. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... controversy. In Anna Seward’s time, it was generally thought to mean “the field of dead bodies,” cadaverum campus—from a number of Christian bodies which lay massacred and unburied there, in the persecution raised by Diocletian. A reference to “Notes and Queries,” in the Sixth and Eighth Series, will show an inquirer that later search throws some doubt on such derivation. St. Chad, or Ceadda (669–672) founded the diocese of Lichfield, and ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... the colonate began in the corn provinces, and that it was, at the beginning of the fourth century, on the point of passing away, but the legislation of the fourth century perpetuated it. He thinks that it was injured, as an institution, by the great increase of taxation after Diocletian. Then legislation was necessary to keep the colons ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... historian, in his prose poem, the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Ask her gigantic ruins straggling their sadness through the ages, the screech owl at windows out of which world-wide conquerors looked. Ask the day of judgment when her crowned debauchees, Commodus and Pertinax, and Caligula and Diocletian, shall answer for their infamy? As men and as nations let us repent, and have our trust in a pardoning God, rather than depend on former successes for immunity! Out of thirteen greatest battles of the world, Napoleon ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... tribes at the frontiers were most numerous and powerful, an accident shook the system. A fierce and numerous people from Asia, the Huns, wandered into Europe, threw themselves on the Teutonic tribes, and precipitated these tribes upon the Empire. A Diocletian might still have saved the Empire, but there was none to guide it. The northern barbarians trod its civilisation underfoot, and Europe passed into the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... St. Vitus is by no means unimportant in this matter. He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with Modestus and Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the persecution of the Christians, under Diocletian, in the year 303. The legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the first centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denis, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Stella, and others, so much magnify in their books; a paradise, a heaven on earth, if it be used aright, good for the body, and better for the soul: as many of those old monks used it, to divine contemplations, as Simulus, a courtier in Adrian's time, Diocletian the emperor, retired themselves, &c., in that sense, Vatia solus scit vivere, Vatia lives alone, which the Romans were wont to say, when they commended a country life. Or to the bettering of their knowledge, as Democritus, Cleanthes, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 285. Diocletian divides and reorganizes the Roman empire. After his abdication in 305 a fresh series of civil wars and confusion ensues. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... garments of joy. The last reflection of her hundred triumphs still shines upon her palaces, baths, and temples. The Roman people, diminished in number, but unaltered in character, still frequented the baths of Nero, of Agrippa, of Diocletian; and Sidonius recommends instead baths less splendid, but less ...
— 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
... substantially the one suggested by the guide of the catacomb, in his allusion to the legend of Memmius. This man, or demon, or man-demon, was a spy during the persecutions of the early Christians, probably under the Emperor Diocletian, and penetrated into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, with the malignant purpose of tracing out the hiding-places of the refugees. But, while he stole craftily through those dark corridors, he chanced to come upon ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Christians were living at peace, worshipping freely, and venturing even to raise churches. Young people had grown up to whom the being thrown to the lions, beheaded, or burnt for the faith's sake, was but a story of the times gone by. But under the Emperor Diocletian all was changed. The old heathen gods must be worshipped, incense must be burnt to the statue of the Emperor, or torture and death were the punishment. The two brothers Simplicius and Faustinus were thus asked to deny their faith, and ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... period of civil confusion, in which the Empire seemed to be tottering to its fall, had been terminated by the Emperor Diocletian, who, by his radical administrative reforms, helped to preserve the Roman power in its integrity for another century. He desired to support his work of political consolidation by reviving the Roman spirit, ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... practical Bologna, and stately Milan, with its many-spired cathedral, were next on the list for the triumphal march. For the Venetian public the exhibition had to be given at Verona, in the historic amphitheater built by Diocletian, A. D. '90. This is the largest building in the world, and within the walls of this representative of Old World civilization the difficulties over which New World civilization had triumphed were portrayed. Here met the old and ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... senate only existed to register the edicts of their tyrant, and if need be, destroy each other, or any one else, by judicial murders, the willing tools of imperial cruelty. The government was administered (at least since the time of Diocletian) by an official bureaucracy, of which Professor Goldwin Smith well says, 'the earth swarmed with the consuming hierarchy of extortion, so that it was said that they who received taxes were more than those who paid them.' The free middle class ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... immortalised in Carlyle's "Past and Present," and still the wonder of Eastern England, is surrounded now by the same villages that Jocelyn tells us of. The town named after St. Alban, with its memories of Cassivellaun and Julius Caesar, of an old Roman city, of the Diocletian persecution, of the great King Offa, founder of the abbey that was to become [Page: 142] at once a school of historical research, and our best epitome of mediaeval architecture—all this, with the monument of the author of the ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on! Dr. Riccabocca will tell you that there was once an illustrious personage—[The Emperor Diocletian]—who made experience of two very different occupations,—one was ruling men, the other was planting cabbages; he thought planting cabbages much the pleasanter of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as containing mysteries not to be revealed to posterity, and things at war with the canonical scriptures; I, who originated the conspiracy against that purple murderer, Domitian; I, who in the senate moved, that great and good Aurelian be emperor. I instigated the abdication of Diocletian, and Charles the Fifth; I touched Isabella's heart, that she hearkened to Columbus. I am he, that from the king's minions hid the Charter in the old oak at Hartford; I harbored Goffe and Whalley: I am the leader of the Mohawk masks, who in the Old Commonwealth's harbor, overboard threw ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... scenes painted by Giotto, Simone of Siena, and Antonio of Venice, he there executed in fresco six stories of St Petitus and St Epirus. The first represents the saint as a young man, presented by his mother to the Emperor Diocletian, and appointed general of the armies which were to march against the Christians. As he is riding with his troop Christ appears to him, and showing him a white cross commands the youth not to persecute ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... began a dominion unlike that of any who had gone before. They had only been, as it were, overgrown generals, chosen by the Praetorians or some part of the army, and at the same time taking the tribuneship and other offices for life. Diocletian, though called Emperor, reigned like the kings of the East. He broke the strength of the Praetorians, so that they could never again kill one Emperor and elect another as before; and he never would visit Rome lest he should be obliged to acknowledge the authority of the Senate, whose ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... wall may be seen, and the frequent discoveries made there are placed in the museum in the town. St. Alban, or Albanus, who has given his name to the town, was the first British martyr. He lived in the reign of Diocletian, and was beheaded on the site of the abbey raised in his honour. The Benedictine monastery which arose became the wealthiest and most popular in England through the fame of the saint. Most of the kings from Saxon times until the dissolution of the monastery in Henry VIII.'s reign, visited ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... problem in ethics, an explanation of the present shape of the human foot. In some versions the emperor's crown is replaced, throughout, by "the bright sun," thus suggesting a mythological origin. It is called "The Emperor Diocletian ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... great imperial persecution of the Christians under Diocletian and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Roman history, but was a very considerable province, equal to the whole Austrian empire in our times, and was as completely reclaimed from barbarism as Gaul or Spain. Both Jerome and Diocletian were born in a ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... her death in a letter to Fronto that he would rather have lived in exile with his wife than in his palace at Rome without her. There are not many men who would give their wives a better character than these two emperors. Capitolinus wrote in the time of Diocletian. He may have intended to tell the truth, but he is a poor, feeble biographer. Dion Cassius, the most malignant of historians, always reports and perhaps he believed ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... Cornelius there were priests appointed to absolve those who had fallen into idolatry; and they were called Presbyteri Paenitentium. S. Marcellus also, according to Anastasius, after the persecution raised by Diocletian, appointed in Rome titular churches, in which penance as well as baptism were administered by priests, the former sacrament is conferred by the minor penitentiaries. Pope Simplicius in fine, as we learn ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... of Galen stood opposite the Temple of Romulus in the Roman Forum. This temple, in A.D. 530, was consecrated by Pope Felix IV to the honour of the saints, Cosma and Damiano, two Arabian anargyri (unpaid physicians) who suffered martyrdom under Diocletian. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... those leisurely days, and the priest of the god would probably be much delayed by the people in the towns and villages on the way, who would entreat him to ask the god to work cures on the diseased and afflicted that were brought to him. We must remember that when the Nubians made a treaty with Diocletian they stipulated that the goddess Isis should be allowed to leave her temple once a year, and to make a progress through the country so that men and women might ask her for boons, and ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... also, has ever, in devilish pride, exalted himself, and in the temple of God set himself forth as God. Further, in worldly pomp and pride he has lifted himself above all others. He has even learned, from heathen emperors, as Diocletian and other tyrants, to have men kiss his feet. Yea, he has forced emperors and kings to submit to this humiliating act. What open, inhuman insolence and pride Pope Alexander the Third practiced when, by threatening against ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, p. 223 foll. The statues of the virgines vestales maximae, discovered in the Atrium Vestae, all belong to the period of the Empire. They are now in the museum of the Baths of Diocletian. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the conflict if we would get a glimpse of the strength of the Christian religion and of the religious element in man's nature, from the amount of resistance which they have defied. Eusebius says, "The swords became dull and shattered" under Diocletian. "The executioners became weary and had to relieve each other." This would not look as though Christianity would take the throne in four score years, but it did in spite of all those cruel murders. Through Constantine it became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Paganism ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... the senate they abandoned the baser metal of bronze or copper: [38] the emblems and legends were inscribed on a more ample field by the genius of flattery; and the prince was relieved from the care of celebrating his own virtues. The successors of Diocletian despised even the flattery of the senate: their royal officers at Rome, and in the provinces, assumed the sole direction of the mint; and the same prerogative was inherited by the Gothic kings of Italy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald, In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field, He called to him Hobdenius—a Briton of the Clay, Saying: 'What about that River-piece for layin' in ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling |
