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Domitian   Listen
Domitian

noun
1.
Emperor of Rome; son of Vespasian who succeeded his brother Titus; instigated a reign of terror and was assassinated as a tyrant (51-96).  Synonym: Titus Flavius Domitianus.






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"Domitian" Quotes from Famous Books



... same source we learn that the usage was till then uncommon, and was held to be inherited by the ancient Romans from the Greeks. The most recent source to which the practices could be referred is to be found in the Capitoline contests of musicians, poets, and other artists, founded by Domitian in imitation of the Greeks and celebrated every five years, which may possibly have survived for a time the fall of the Roman Empire; but as few other men would venture to crown themselves, as Dante ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... about her, as I was bound to do, and at first Domitian, Caesar's son, being curious to see her, prompted Vespasian to order that she should be brought to the palace. Almost Caesar spoke the word, then a thought seemed to strike him and he was silent, whereon I said that she had been very ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... business—a heavily solemn oath this!—I am, and have been, ever since I came to Edinburgh, as unfit to write a letter of humour, as to write a commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, who was banished to the Isle of Patmos, by the cruel and bloody Domitian, son to Vespasian and brother to Titus, both emperors of Rome, and who was himself an emperor, and raised the second or third persecution, I forget which, against the Christians, and after throwing the said Apostle John, brother to the Apostle James, commonly called James the Greater, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... DOMITIAN was the opposite of his brother Titus,—cruel, passionate, and extravagant. He was murdered after a reign of fifteen years, during which he earned the hatred and contempt of his subjects ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... the intestabilis or intestatus was held ill-omened, and not permitted to become a priest (Seneca Controv. ii. 4), a practice perpetuated in the various Christian churches. The manufacture was forbidden, to the satisfaction of Martial, by Domitian, whose edict Nero confirmed; and was restored by the Byzantine empire, which advanced eunuchs, like Eutropius and Narses, to the highest dignities of the realm. The cruel custom to the eternal disgrace of mediaeval Christianity was revived in Rome for providing the choirs in the Sistine Chapel ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... though by what precise machinery he was to be arraigned was left uncertain; probably constitutional resistance was thought of, as far as practicable, and tyrannicide was considered as a last resort. "If you ask anyone," says our author, "what he thinks of the punishment of {604} Caligula, Nero or Domitian, I think no one will be so devoted to the royal name as not to confess that they rightly paid ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... and casting loose before Lucius could descend from the upper terrace. The young Domitian ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, "Ancient Greece," ch. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... The suffimenta are described by Zosimus, l.c. There is a coin of Domitian, who also celebrated Ludi saeculares, in which he appears seated and distributing the suffimenta, as the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... write a history of the Principate from Augustus to Trajan. He began with his own times, and wrote in twelve or fourteen books a full account of the period from Nero's death in 68 A.D. to the death of Domitian in 96 A.D. These were published, probably in successive books, between 106 and 109 A.D. Only the first four and a half books survive to us. They deal with the years 69 and 70, and are known as The ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... for, according as Agricola was Consul A.D. 76 or 77, he would be 24 or 25. But it is by no means reconcilable with the time when he administered the several offices in the State. He tells us himself that he "began holding office under Vespasian, was promoted by Titus, and still further advanced by Domitian": "dignitatem nostram a Vespasiano inchoatam, a Tito auctam, a Domitiano longius provectam" (Hist. i. 1). To have "held office" under Vespasian he must have been quaestor; to have been "promoted" by Titus he must have been aedile; and as for his further advancement we know ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... for want of better did supplie a turne. There are also taken vp in such works, certaine little tooles heads of Brasse, which some terme Thunder-axes, but they make small shew of any profitable vse. Neither were the Romanes ignorant of this trade, as may appeare by a brasse Coyne of Domitian's, found in one of these workes, and fallen into my hands: and perhaps vnder one of those Flauians, the Iewish workmen made here their ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... legends; for though, according to the old accounts, Tullus Hostilius destroyed the city proper of Alba Longa, yet afterwards another town grew on its site, and all around rose up the splendid villas of the Roman nobility. Here, too, Tiberius and Domitian had palaces, where they sought relaxation from the cares of empire in a ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... ordinary form of salutation throughout ancient times. Plutarch recalls that the conspirators, before killing Caesar, kissed his face, hand and breast. Tacitus says that when Agricola, his father-in-law, returned from Rome, Domitian received him with a cold kiss, said nothing to him, and left him confounded in the crowd. The inferior who could not succeed in greeting his superior by kissing him, put his mouth to his own hand, and sent him a kiss that the other returned in the same ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... attention off onto the Caesars, Augustus and Domitian, and quite a few on 'em. Nero's bust I despised lookin' at—brutal tyrant—as Josiah truly said anybody that would kill his wife and grandmother would do anything and wuz too mean to be looked at. If I could covered up his face I'd been willin' to used my best crape veil ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... Italy, the testimony of these authors not being, perhaps, of authority enough to restrain us. But what if Plutarch, besides several examples that he produces out of antiquity, tells us, he knows of certain knowledge, that in the time of Domitian, the news of the battle lost by Antony in Germany was published at Rome, many days' journey from thence, and dispersed throughout the whole world, the same day it was fought; and if Caesar was of opinion, that it has often happened, that the report has preceded the incident, shall ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... is known with any kind of certainty. Dio relates that a sophist, of that name, was put to death by Domitian, for a school declamation against tyrants: but not one of the commentators ventures to assert that he was the Curiatius Maternus, who makes so conspicuous a figure ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... described by Pliny, are stated in both these authors to have come from Ethiopia; but whether they were the same, and their exact nature, are not known. The opsian is described as capable of receiving a high polish, and on that account as having been used by the Emperor Domitian to face a portico. Pliny describes it as employed to line rooms in the same manner as mirrors; he distinguishes it from a spurious kind, which was red, but not transparent. The dye extracted from the purple shell fish was ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... would be equally unimportant were it not for the note that it struck. Subsequently, when he leaped on the throne, he shouted that those who opposed him he would smash. "There is no other law than mine"; he later announced—a fine phrase and yet but a modern variant of Domitian's: "Your god and master orders it." Incidentally, in addition to the Garter, an honorific which the Duke of Cambridge admirably summarised as "having, sir, none of the damned nonsense of merit about it," he had other distinctions. He had—and has—uranomania, that ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... relatives were leaders of the most profligate set in Rome, cronies of Vitellius and his coterie. But although Cornelia was bred and raised in the same social atmosphere, I am quite as sure of her innocence as all the world was the day she was buried and as everybody has been ever since. Domitian just murdered her without a trial, for political reasons and for moral effect. So likewise Marcia and the second Licinia were judicially murdered by that fierce old Cassius Longinus Ravilla. He was elected to convict them, not to try them, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... is extant, the author of which is called in the MSS. 'Claudius Caesar,' or 'Germanicus.' He is generally identified with Germanicus, the adopted son of Tiberius (so Jerome and Lactantius), though in modern times the poem has been ascribed to Domitian, who had the title of 'Germanicus' from A.D. 84. There are also fragments of Prognostica, which are independent ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... men, which vse warme bathings, delicate fare, hot wines, sweet oiles, soft beds, fine musicke, and so vnkindlie lusts) who are altogither giuen to couetousnesse and crueltie, as their dooings doo declare. Let not I beseech thee, the Neronian or Domitian tyrannie anie more preuaile vpon me, or (to saie truth) vpon thee, but let them rather serue thee, whose heauie oppression thou hast borne withall a long season, and that thou wilt still be our helper onlie, our defender, our fauourer, and our ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed

... of whom were relatives of the Flavian emperors; and of the Acilii Glabriones, the noblest among the noble, as Herodianus calls them (2, 3). Their fortunes and death are described only by the Roman historians and biographers of the time of Domitian. It seems that when the official feriale, or calendar, was resumed, after the end of the persecutions, preference was given to names of those confessors and martyrs whose deeds were still fresh in the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... enough we know to exact a yearly tribute from Domitian: it was for this insult that Trajan marched upon Dacia, defeating Decebalus at Klausenburg, in the heart of Transylvania, which was at the time their greatest strong-hold. It was after this that the Dacian king retreated upon Sarmisegethusa, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... centre of Roman London. In a gravel-pit, which afterwards seemed to have been a pond (perhaps the fountain of a grand Roman courtyard), were found heaps of rubbish, coins of copper, yellow brass, silver, and silver-plated brass, of Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, &c., Henry IV. of England, Elizabeth, &c., and stores of Flemish, German, Prussian, Danish, and Dutch money. They also discovered fragments of Roman stucco, painted shards of delicate Samian ware, an amphora and terra-cotta ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... marginal note in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall." It will be remembered that Tacitus published his History and wrote his Annals during the reign of Trajan, whom he undoubtedly respected and admired. He referred to the reigns of Nerva and Trajan in suggested contrast to that of Domitian as "times when men were blessed with the rare privilege of thinking with freedom, and uttering what they thought."[76] It fell to both Tacitus and Gibbon to speak of the testament of Augustus which, after his death, was read in the Senate: and Tacitus wrote, Augustus "added a recommendation to ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Domatilla, Vespasian had three children—Titus, Domitian, and Domatilla. When she died he formed an inferior kind of marriage with Coenis, a woman of low station, who, however, seems to have deserved his esteem. He died 23d of June, A.D. 79, at the age of seventy. Although never a refined or cultivated man, Vespasian, by his hardy virtues, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence



Words linked to "Domitian" :   Roman Emperor, Emperor of Rome



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