"Gladiator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vast and motley throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless war. He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life. He has lived the life of savage men—has trod the forest's silent depths, and in the desperate name of life or death has matched his thought against the instinct of the beast. He has sat beneath the bo tree's contemplative ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... poor in quality, but the score is put together in a workmanlike manner, and the orchestration is often clever. The libretto, which recounts the intrigues of the Empress Messalina with two brothers, Hares and Helion, a singer and a gladiator, is in the highest degree repellent, and it would need far better music than Mr. de Lara's to reconcile a London audience to so outrageous a subject. Mr. de Lara's latest production, 'Sanga' (1906), does not seem to have ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... this quip would leave us cold. The 'Isles of Greece' seem rather tawdry too; but on the 'Address to the Ocean,' or on 'The Dying Gladiator,' 'time ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gladiator; he whose especial task it was to cut the throats of the conquered victims on the arena; he looked eagerly and curiously at the wound for a moment, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... instant, saw before her an apparition that might well have alarmed the boldest. His head was uncovered—his dark hair shadowed in wild and disorderly profusion the pale face and features, beautiful indeed, but at that moment of the beauty which an artist would impart to a young gladiator—stamped with defiance, menace, and despair. The disordered garb—the fierce aspect—the dark eyes, that literally shone through the shadows of the room-all conspired to increase the terror of so ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this manifestation of weakness without sympathy, and gave directions for 'a young man to be got in' to wrestle with the luggage. When that gladiator had disappeared from the arena, peace ensued, and the new ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough to see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put upon his vanity and pride, he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator, he had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human life and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest, brain and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... One may recall to mind the effect of bull-fights, also the irresistible fascination which Saint-Augustin experienced on first hearing the death-cry of a gladiator in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... gladiators who fought with men and not with beasts were in the position of professionals, who might be slaves, condemned brigands, mutineers, prisoners of war, or volunteers. The picture drawn by Byron, although the so-called "Dying Gladiator" which inspired him is in reality no gladiator but a Gaulish warrior, perhaps fairly represents one class of combatant, but it represents only one. In the case of these "swordsmen" a number of successful fights might in the end secure freedom and something more for slave or prisoner, and ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... pure man into her toils, and then throws him over for the next man she meets who is handsomer and lustier. In Bizet's opera the men are the soldier Don Jos, and the bullfighter, Escamillo; in De Lara's Hars, a singer, and Helion, a gladiator. Both operas end with the arena as a background—the Plaza de Toros in Seville, on the one hand, the Roman Circus, on the other. But here the resemblances end unless we pursue the traces of Bizet's music into De Lara's score, and this I shall not do, out of respect for the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the hall! Oh!' cried Violet, springing towards it, 'this really is the Dying Gladiator. Just ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of sets of gladiators at private festivals, particularly at funeral celebrations, was not suppressed. Still less could the public be prevented from preferring the comedian to the tragedian, the rope-dancer to the comedian, the gladiator to the rope-dancer; or the stage be prevented from revelling by choice amidst the pollution of Hellenic life. Whatever elements of culture were contained in the scenic and artistic entertainments were from the first thrown aside; it was by no means the object of the givers ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to his feet. "It serves me right for associating with a lot of freshmen. Good-night, Fletcher, my wounded gladiator. Get well and come back to ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... on a thousand acres o' land here in New England. Dan has eight gangs o' human oxen from Italy at work for him getting in his fertilizers. He rides a horse all day an' is as cordy as a Roman gladiator. Do you know what it means? Ten thousand like him are going into the same work, the greed o' the middleman will be checked, an' one o' these days the old earth 'll be lopsided with the ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... harm possessed by any intelligent being, whom hatred, or fanaticism, or suffering has wound up to that point of desperation where it is willing to throw away its own life in order to reach that of an adversary, —such desperation as inspired the gladiator Maternus, in his romantic expedition from the woods of Transylvania through the marshes of Pannonia and the Alpine passes, to strike the lord of the Roman world in the recesses of his own palace, and in the presence of his thousand guards. He who has provoked such hostility can know ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... forcing-houses. Even the Jesuits themselves have acknowledged this, and perhaps the strongest of all arguments supplementary to those given by Father Paul were uttered by Padre Curci, eminent in his day as a Jesuit gladiator, but who realized finally the impossibility of accomplishing great things with men moulded by ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... objected that in every particular species there are various central forms, which are separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably beautiful; that in the human figure, for instance, the beauty of the Hercules is one, of the gladiator another, of the Apollo another, which makes so many ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... received, Caius being beloved by them because of the money he gave them, by which he had purchased their kindness to him; so they drew their swords, and Sabinus led them on. He was one of the tribunes, not by the means of the virtuous actions of his pro genitors, for he had been a gladiator, but he had obtained that post in the army by his having a robust body. So these Germans marched along the houses in quest of Caesar's murderers, and cut Asprenas to pieces, because he was the first ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... little scrupulous, though not so skilful as himself, that he is necessarily an infamous character. What if, at eighteen years of age, without a friend in the world, trusting to the powerful frame and intrepid spirit with which Nature had endowed me, I flung myself into the ring? Who should be a gladiator if I were not? Is that a crime? What if, at a later period, with a brain for calculation which none can rival, I invariably succeeded in that in which the greatest men in the country fail! Am I to be branded ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... about the law of opposition. The arm and the head should move in inverse directions [illustrating]; also the arm and the hand. The statue of the Gladiator is a beautiful example of this law of opposition. He is what we French call "well based;" you cannot overthrow him. In contrast to him, my father used to cite Punchinello, the children's toy, an object of ridicule. Punchinello, when the string is pulled, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... short, hard coat, turning black on his throat, legs, and tail—as if he had walked in black somewhere—and finished off with patches of creamy white on head and ears. There was an extraordinary air of hard, tough, cool, cruel, fighting-power and slow ferocity about the beast—a very natural born gladiator ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... me, and my heart warmed to the old gladiator. He was a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age and wrinkled and lame, and bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put on trails, or at least to be made chase bear. He loved a camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames. This fact, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... was the proud figure of the victorious strong man. The expression on his face was worth painting, but it is wholly beyond me to describe it. Such exultation and glorious pride was worthy of the mightiest gladiator that ever fought in ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... something useful. I'll guarantee Isabel only got in the way. But you, Lawrence," he measured his cousin with an admiring eye, much as a Roman connoisseur might have run over the points of a favourite gladiator, "I should have liked to see you tackle the Dane. You're a big chap—deeper in the chest than I ever was, and longer in the reach. What's your chest measurement?— Yes, you look it. And nothing in your hand but a stick? By Jove, it must have been ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... attentively after he has come to maturity, he can hardly imagine how fine was that admirable company. They were men of high aims and strong sense; they talked at their very best, and they talked because they wished to attain clear views of life and fate. The old gladiator sometimes argued for victory, but that was only in moments of whim, and he was always ready to acknowledge when he was in error. Those men may sometimes have drunk too much wine; they may have spoken platitudes on occasion; ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... upon him)—Ver. 698. "Hoc habet." Literally, "he has it;" a term used by the Spectators, when a gladiator received a ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... his hands, and once he chanced to take up, and then read with the closest attention, Godwin's Caleb Williams. From Monticello he received the hot and clamorous journals of the day, Federalist and Republican. He studied the conditions they portrayed with the intentness of a gladiator surveying his arena. The Examiner, the Argus, the Aurora, the Gazette gave, besides the home conflict, the foreign news. He ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... character and rule of the emperor resembled that of Nero and Domitian. He was weak, cruel, pleasure-seeking, and dissolute. His time was divided between private vices and disgraceful public exhibitions. He fought as a gladiator more than seven hundred times, and against antagonists whose only weapons were tin and lead. He also laid claim to divinity, and was addicted to debasing superstitions. He destroyed the old ministers of his father, and decimated the Senate. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... ill-gotten possessions. Renewed aggressions upon the rights of others justified retaliation and invited attack. Justice, prudence, firmness, wisdom of internal administration were desirable in the son of Philip and the rival of Louis. These attributes the gladiator lacked entirely. His career might have been a brilliant one in the old days of chivalry. His image might have appeared as imposing as the romantic forms of Baldwin Bras de Fer or Godfrey of Bouillon, had he not been misplaced in history. Nevertheless, he imagined himself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Wrangham's prize-poems are excellent; Richard's 'Aboriginal Brutus' is a powerful and picturesque performance; Chinnery's 'Dying Gladiator' magnificent; and Milman's 'Apollo Belvedere' splendid, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... then stood the famous group which now adorns the frieze of the Capitol at Washington, and by actual observation agreed in thinking his Indian not unworthy of comparison with the famous statue of the Dying Gladiator. We stood together on the Tarpeian Rock, and, looking down upon the mutilated Column of Trajan and all the ruins of ancient Rome, read out of the same copy of Horace the famous ode beginning, "Exegi monumentum aere perennius." We were both passionately ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Orient loom, Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom, She floated with delicious arms outspread. There was no pose she took, no move she made, But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh Wrapped round as in the gladiator's mesh And smote ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... Susan Sharpe, and she rejoices in red hair and green glasses, and the blood and brawn and muscle of a gladiator—a treasure who doesn't object to a howling wilderness or a raving-mad patient. I ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Believe me, it's serious. The little girls were white as paper, and Carnegie looked like the marble gladiator. I tell ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... golden box, in which Nero had on the preceding day deposited poison prepared against the last extremity. Wounded to the heart by this general desertion, and perhaps by some special case of ingratitude, such as would probably enough be signalized in the flight of his personal favorites, he called for a gladiator of the household to come and dispatch him. But none appearing,—"What!" said he, "have I neither friend nor foe?" And so saying, he ran towards the Tiber, with the purpose of drowning himself. But that paroxysm, like all the rest, proved transient; and he expressed a wish ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... to oppose his last wish. The gladiator wanted to make his last toilet and be elaborately arrayed in order to fall in the arena of life as a hero falls, and even in death to excite the wonder and the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... had been a commissary, or perhaps a spy. I remember his picturesque account of seeing a party of the Black Hussars bringing in some forage carts which they had taken from a body of the Cossacks, whom he described as lying on the top of the carts of hay, mortally wounded, and, like the Dying Gladiator, eyeing their own blood as it ran down through the straw. I afterwards took lessons from Walker, whom we used to call Blue-beard. He was one of the most conceited persons in the world, but a good teacher—one of the ugliest countenances he had too—enough, as we say, to spean weans.[199] ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... unprecedented. Frailty struggling against the invulnerable. The gladiator of flesh attacking the beast of brass. On one side, brute force; on ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Up in the Bronx, maybe—" I turned and basely fled. I went out in front and found my place. The orchestra rollicked through the overture and people poured in and ushers slid down the aisles and snapped down the seats. I studied the people's faces as a gladiator might have done in the arena. Thumbs up? Thumbs down? A row behind me, across the aisle, sat Michael Daragh, but he did not see me. Two petulantly pretty girls in regal furs sank into seats beyond me, and a white-spatted, rosy-wattled gentleman in ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... gladiator about to step sword in hand into the arena, the Sandra, though a ship never designed for space duels, girded her loins and made herself ready for what at its best could only be an unequal struggle. She was outclassed in weapons, weight and speed—in all ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... as deep-hearted as the gladiator's it is for another cause and unto other ends that the empires of the world have striven, fulfilled their destiny and disappeared, that this Empire of Britain now strives, fulfilling its destiny. Fixed in her resolve, the ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... nomadulo. Giraffe gxirafo. Gird zoni. Girdle zono. Girl knabino. Give doni. Give back redoni. Give up forlasi. Give evidence atesti. Give notice sciigi. Glacier glaciejo. Glad gxoja. Gladden gxojigi. Glade maldensejo. Gladiator gladiatoro. Glance ekrigardi. Gland glando. Glare brilego. Glass (substance) vitro. Glass (vessel) glaso. Glass, pane of vitrajxo. Glass-case vitromeblo. Glass, looking spegulo. Glass-works vitrofarejo. Glassy vitreca. Glaucous (colour) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... his quarrel with Walpole; but it is likely enough that even if no quarrel had ever taken place and he never had been Walpole's friend and colleague, he would sooner or later have become the foremost gladiator of opposition all ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Hugh, stepping back, for he had been standing over the fallen boy in a threatening attitude, like a Roman gladiator who had thrown his rival, and was waiting to see what signal the emperor gave so as to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... indifference, five bulls and many more horses killed. The sense that this was the last survival of all the glories of the amphitheater, the illusion that the riders on the caparisoned horses might have been knights of a tournament, or the matadore a slightly armed gladiator facing his martyrdom, and all the rest of the obscure yet vivid associations of an historic survival, had carried me beyond the endurance of any of the rest of the party. I finally met them in the foyer, stern and pale with disapproval of my brutal endurance, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... cruelty; it curbed passion; it branded suicide; it punished and repressed an execrable infanticide; it drove the shameless impurities of heathendom into a congenial darkness. There was hardly a class whose wrongs it did not remedy. It rescued the gladiator; it freed the slave; it protected the captive; it nursed the sick; it sheltered the orphan; it elevated the woman; it shrouded as with a halo of sacred innocence the tender years of the child. In every region of life its ameliorating influence was felt. It changed pity from a vice into a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... his character, he never allows himself to grow dull over his work. Therefore Mr. Chaffanbrass bullies when it is quite unnecessary that he should bully; it is a labour of love; and though he is now old, and stiff in his joints, though ease would be dear to him, though like a gladiator satiated with blood, he would as regards himself be so pleased to sheathe his sword, yet he never spares himself. He never spares himself, and he never spares ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... started, however, in the "hold up" industry, when he was captured by the Romans, sold at cost and trained as a gladiator, in a school at Capua. Here he succeeded in stirring up a conspiracy and uniting two hundred or more of the grammar department of the school in a general ruction, as it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Lizard-slayer, after a bronze by Praxiteles. The colossal Pallas, in a recess to the R., was found at Velletri in 1797: it is another Roman reproduction of a Greek bronze. Near the entrance to the next room stands a pleasing Venus, 525, and in the centre the famous "Borghese Gladiator" or Heros Combattant, actually, a warrior attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be flayed alive by order ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... one attributed to Scaurus—was very curious, owing to the gladiatorial scenes carved on it, and which, according to custom, represented real combats. Each figure was surmounted with an inscription indicating the name of the gladiator and the number of his victories. We know, already, that these sanguinary games formed part of the funeral ceremonies. The heirs of the deceased made the show for the gratification of the populace, either around the tombs or ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... exhaust the thinking of the profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment," the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book. Handel's Israel in Egypt—the wonder of the scientific musician in his closet—yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the hearts ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... they consider nothing but the giving satisfaction to their masters or to the people! for when covered with wounds, they send to their masters to learn their pleasure: if it is their will, they are ready to lie down and die. What gladiator, of even moderate reputation, ever gave a sigh? who ever turned pale? who ever disgraced himself either in the actual combat, or even when about to die? who that had been defeated ever drew in his neck to avoid the stroke of death? ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... will speak. Is he not, after all, a pleasing youth? Did Tisiphon so surely deceive me as he intended, when he gave the man to me? See! there is but little brawn and muscle to him, I grant; and therefore he will not make a good gladiator or even spearman; but he has a comely shape, which will fit him well for a page or palace usher. And, therefore, I will sell him for such. He should bring a good price, indeed, when the marks of his toil and sickness have gone off from him, and he has been fattened into better condition. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inflicted terrible suffering upon both Macedonia and Greece. But they were at last expelled from Europe, and settling in Asia Minor, they there gave name to the province of Galatia. The celebrated Greek sculpture, The Dying Gaul, popularly but erroneously called The Dying Gladiator, is a most interesting memorial of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... us like the ruins of some mighty arena, in which the throngs of eager men and women and the blood of the dying gladiator had long given place to the purifying snow; the summits around uplifted towards the blue sky; the cascade, no longer dashing as full of life and hope, but frozen in its course and hanging in icicles between the rocks; the few uncovered crags scattered here and there, relieving the dazzling whiteness ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... been playing for the last sixteen days at the Broadway Theater, but I never went to see him till last night. The play was the "Gladiator." I did not like parts of it much, but other portions were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where the "Gladiator" (Forrest) dies at his brother's feet (in all the fierce pleasure of gratified revenge), the man's ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hero-shrine there were all sorts of contests, and the children of the nobles performed the Troy equestrian exercise. Men who were their peers also contended on chargers and pairs and three-horse teams. A certain Quintus Vitellius, a senator, fought as a gladiator. All kinds of wild beasts and kine were slain by the wholesale, among them a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus, then seen for the first time in Rome. Many have described the appearance of the hippo and it has been ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... upturned to the foggy skies. When he essayed to rise and continue the contest, Flaherty kicked him in the ribs and Hicks cursed them; so Mr. Gibney, realizing that all was over, beat the deck with his hand in token of surrender. Hicks and Flaherty waited until the fallen gladiator had recovered sufficient breath to sit up; then they pounced upon him, lifted him to the rail, and dropped him overboard. Captain Scraggs shrieked in protest at this added touch of barbarity, and Dan Hicks, turning, beheld Scraggsy's white face ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... door and window of the imperial house regarding the adulterers who knocked at them, or quietly left their lovers' garlands there. Was not that likeness of the husband, in the boy beside her, really the effect of a shameful magic, in which the blood of the murdered gladiator, his true father, had been an ingredient? Were the tricks for [219] deceiving husbands which the Roman poet describes, really hers, and her household an efficient school of all the arts of furtive love? Or, was the husband too aware, like every one beside? Were certain sudden deaths which ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... three hundred African hyenas and ten Indian tigers in the arena. Every corner of the earth was ransacked for these wild animals, which were so highly valued that, in the time of Theodosius, it was forbidden by law to destroy a Getulian lion. No one can contemplate the statue of the Dying Gladiator which now ornaments the capitol at Rome, without emotions of pity and admiration. If a marble statue can thus move us, what was it to see the Christian gladiators contending with the fierce lions of Africa. The "Christians to the lions," was the watchword ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... woodcutter. "If it amuses him to stay, he is quite welcome. If not, I imagine him to be capable of walking. Let me see. At the present moment the only wants I can suggest are both few and simple; a million pounds invested in Government stock, the constitution of a gladiator, and to be as wise as the greatest fool on earth imagines himself—these are the lot. But no doubt I shall recollect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... "nihil ad rem;" the "[Greek: phantasias]" of the Greek, and "visiones" of the Romans. Who that ever saw even one work of Hogarth, the "Marriage a la Mode," would for a moment think the question worth a thought. "The misnamed gladiator of Agasias," seems forced into this treatise, for the sole purpose of showing Mr Fuseli's reading, and after all, he leaves the figure as uncertain as he finds it. He once thought it might have been an Alcibiades rushing from the flames, when his house was fired; but is more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... tried to argue the matter with his son-in-law; but the attempt was quite useless. Mr. Whitelaw had always been the most obstinate of men—and lying on his bed, maimed and helpless, was no more to be moved from his resolve than if he had been a Roman gladiator who had just trained himself for an encounter with lions. So the bailiff was compelled to obey him, unwillingly enough, and dispatched one of the men to Malsham in quest of Mr. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... hand and foot which redeemed the great frame from any suggestion of grossness. The stranger's head was bare, for he held in one gloved hand a hard black felt hat, flat topped and narrow of brim; and his small head, with close tight curls, set upon a neck like that of a gladiator, was markedly Neronian. The hue of this virile curling hair was a most uncompromising and fiery red, and equally red were the short moustaches and close-cut curling beard. It was a remarkable head, the head of a pagan emperor, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... they plod in sluggish misery, Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, Bequeathing their hereditary rage To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage War for their chains, and rather than be free, Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage Within the same arena where they see Their fellows fall before, like ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... a lurid eclipse some years ago: and I have been there in spirit for these twenty lines past, under a vast gusty awning, now with twenty thousand fellow-citizens looking on from the benches, now in the circus itself, a grim gladiator with sword and net, or a meek martyr—was I?—brought out to be gobbled up by the lions? or a huge, shaggy, tawny lion myself, on whom the dogs were going to be set? What a day of excitement I have had to be sure! But I must get away from Verona, or who ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over the heads of the smaller men, and the next moment the Canadians swarmed on the fallen gladiator like flies, lifted him and tossed him into the road. The rest of the mob escaped. Niles's emblematic buck sheep, cropping the grass in the fence corner, was tossed out ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... first-rate oarsman, a fair billiard-player, and a distinguished thrower of the hammer. He was just what a country gentleman should be in the popular idea—handsome, broad-shouldered, long-limbed, with the fist and biceps of a gladiator, and a brain totally unburdened by the scholiast's dry-as-dust rubbish: sharp and keen enough where the things that interested him were in question, and never ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and a joke like this cuts deeply. But just as he was about to yield, and drop the tell-tale tear of a sensitive, mortified boy, he caught the eye of Abel Newt. It was calmly studying him as a Roman surgeon may have watched the gladiator in the arena, while his life-blood ebbed away. Gabriel remembered Abel's words in the play-ground—"There's more ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... royal will. The story of this famous tour exhibits alike the greatness of his powers and the littleness of his character.[121] The homage paid to him was not undeserved, for he was assuredly the foremost gladiator of the whig party, and had given proofs of more varied ability than any living politician or lawyer. But the dignified eloquence of which he was capable on rare occasions was here submerged in a flood of egotistical rhetoric, which carried him ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... yet we educate him in such a manner that he shall enter the world as ignorant of the existence of the methods and facts of science as the day he was born. The modern world is full of artillery; and we turn out our children to do battle in it, equipped with the shield and sword of an ancient gladiator. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... that! You and your wife are brave; I must say that for you. She has the courage of a gladiator. You can do this if ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... get possession of him and Cornaro wanted a bishopric for a friend, so the pope and cardinal made a bargain and Cellini was surrendered.[2253] "Italian society admired the bravo almost as much as imperial Rome admired the gladiator. It also assumed that genius combined with force of character released men from the shackles of ordinary morality."[2254] Cellini was a specimen man of his age. He kept religion and morality far separated from each other.[2255] Varchi wrote a sonnet ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... eyebrows more prominent. Behind these his round deepset eyes seemed to flash like lightning at the end of summer behind the fading foliage. He was of small stature, but very broad-shouldered; in fact, built like a gladiator. The rags in which he was clad were defiantly filthy. His face was short and of a vulgar type, like that of Socrates; and if the fire of genius glowed in his strongly marked features, I certainly could not perceive it. He appeared to me a wild beast, an unclean animal. Filled with ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... yesterday morning. I did so want to have a good talk with you about Plato's theory of the separate existence of ideas. But first I must ask you, have you heard whether the report is true that Terentia, Caius Glabrio's wife, has run off with a gladiator?" ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... she deliberated and alternately put her foot forward and withdrew it again in a fruitless attempt to muster courage to run the gauntlet, two men emerged from the wine shop, and staggered toward her—a slave and a gladiator, linked arm in arm, and singing a wild song in discordant keys. Both appeared to be under the influence of wine, though in different degrees; for while the former had set no bounds to his license, the latter had somewhat restrained ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... legs two in each hand before his head, and strode through the storm, subduing the battling snow with as much ease as he did the bellowing calf. His mother met him at the woodshed door. Behind the gladiator rose the forbidding background of a stark mountain range; but to her astonished and unfocussed sight, her son seemed greater than the mountain, and more compelling than its peaks. From that hour his whisper ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... 8. When a gladiator was wounded, or in any way disabled, he fled to the extremity of the stage, and implored the pity of the spectators; if he had shown good sport, they took him under their protection by pressing down their thumbs; but if he had been found deficient in courage or ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... GLADIATOR. What matters it to us who he may be? Lentulus pays our hire; the blame is his: He must himself defend the act ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... turning down the thumb, as was done in the Circus, in sign that the gladiator had received a blow and was to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... consequence of this crime. His heroism, his fertility of resources, his unflagging energy, and his amazing genius in overcoming difficulties won for him the admiration of that class who idolize strength and success; so that he stands out in history as a struggling gladiator who baffled all his foes,—not a dying gladiator on the arena of a pagan amphitheatre, but more like a Judas Maccabaeus, when hunted by the Syrian hosts, rising victorious, and laying the foundation of a powerful monarchy; indeed, his fame ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... see before me the Gladiator lie; He leans upon his hand; his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low; And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... sorts took place—the light-armed soldier and the netsman —the lasso and the javelin—the two heavy-armed warriors—all combinations of single combat, and sometimes a general melee. When a gladiator wounded his adversary, he shouted to the spectators, Hoc habet! 'He has it!' and looked up to know whether he should kill or spare. If the people held up their thumbs, the conquered was left to recover, if he could; if they turned them down, he was to die: ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one of the multitude who look on. It was good to sit in the flooding sunlight and know that he was no longer a gladiator in the arena. There was higher work for him to do, away from the merciless stabbing sword and the cunning ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... see a huge, partially clothed figure on the floor, reclining very much as The Wounded Gladiator. Leaning above him, with an arm passed beneath his ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... some members of the same family were pagans, others were Christians? it is not then surprising if in the same house we find both Christian and Pagan emblems: we may suppose, that some such persons may have been inmates of the same house as Mr. Bulwer's pagan gladiator Lydon and his Christian father Medon. Pompeii was overwhelmed by ashes in the year of Christ 79: and if Vesuvius still occasionally lay waste the surrounding country, we are indebted to it for the preservation not only of a thousand classical ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Swiftian gift of sarcasm, but, unlike the Dean of St. Patrick's, and the forensic gladiator alluded to above, he never employed it in a spirit of hatred and contempt towards ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... farther, his legs being formed on much more slender proportions. His tastes were decidedly athletic; he had rings let into the wall for the purpose of practising gymnastics, and delighted in posing before his amused pupils in the character of "The Dying Gladiator," "Hercules," and other antique statues. The few patients he possessed had small chance of professional attendance when Mr. Whittle was in training for a walking or running match, or any other amateur athletic engagement. "When," says Shirley Brooks, "lady patients, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... picture by Raphael that you consider perfect. Let us say that upon a close examination you discover in one of the figures a gross defect of design, a limb distorted, or a muscle that belies nature, such as has been discovered, they say, in one of the arms of an antique gladiator. You would experience a feeling of displeasure, but you would not throw that picture in the fire; you would merely say that it is not perfect, but that it has qualities that are ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... that is tossed high in air, like thousands of white fingers seeking to clutch the granite barrier. Then receding like a roaring lion baffled of its prey, it gathers new strength, and flings itself again and again against the rocks, like a gladiator striving ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... beauty; the swaying poise of the Discobulus, caught forever as he drew his breath for the throw; the smooth-limbed, brooding Antinous; the terrible Laocoon, which fascinated me, though it always repelled me, too; the austere simplicity of the Dying Gladiator's stoop to death—the most human of all the great statues; the heads of heroic Miltiades, of Antony, of solitary Caesar, of indifferent Augustus; the tranquil indolence of mighty Nile, clambered over by his many children—these, and a hundred others, spoke to ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... it ne'er forsakes the soul That yields obedience to her blest control, Proves how of her unjustly we complain, When she vouchsafes her gracious aid in vain In vain the self-abandon'd shift the blame Upon their stars, or fate's perverted name. Ne'er did a gladiator shun the stroke With nimbler turn, or more attentive look; Never did pilot's hand the vessel steer With more dexterity the shoals to clear Than with evasion quick and matchless art, By grace and virtue arm'd in head and heart, She wafted ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Once under an unsparing attack by Lloyd George, Chamberlain winced, leaped to his feet, and asked permission to make a second speech in reply. That was the first occasion which caused members to say among themselves that Chamberlain, gladiator that he was, had met his match in ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... more barren, wild, and terrible than the surrounding scenery, unillumined by a single trace of culture. The city stood like the last gladiator in an amphitheatre ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... Marcus Antoninus provided fourteen governors all at once to superintend his son Commodus's education,—and in six weeks he cashiered five of them;—I know very well, continued my father, that Commodus's mother was in love with a gladiator at the time of her conception, which accounts for a great many of Commodus's cruelties when he became emperor;—but still I am of opinion, that those five whom Antoninus dismissed, did Commodus's temper, in that short ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to wear the things. In the amphitheatre, Vivia Perpetua and Felicitas were put into a net, and allowed to be attacked by a wild cow. Then the two martyrs gave each other the kiss of peace, and a gladiator killed them." ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... statues made by the Greeks are small in proportion to the body. The "Gladiator" wears a Number Six hat, and the "Discobolus" one size smaller; yet the figures represent men weighing one hundred eighty pounds each. The Greeks aimed to satisfy the eye, and as the man is usually seen clothed, they reduced the size of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... the middle of the portico, without troubling himself to examine their cases he ordered them to be dragged away, from "bald-pate to bald-pate." [428] Of one person who had made a vow for his recovery to combat with a gladiator, he exacted its performance; nor would he allow him to desist until he came off conqueror, and after many entreaties. Another, who had vowed to give his life for the same cause, having shrunk from the sacrifice, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Capitol; the Tomb of Cecilia Metella; the Palatine; the "nameless column" of the Forum; Trajan's pillar; Egeria's Grotto; the ruined Colosseum, "arches on arches," an "enormous skeleton," the Colosseum of the poet's vision, a multitudinous ring of spectators, a bloody Circus, and a dying Gladiator; the Pantheon; S. Nicola in Carcere, the scene of the Romana Caritas; St. Peter's "vast and wondrous dome,"—are all celebrated in due succession. Last of all, he "turns to the Vatican," to view the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere, the counterfeit presentments ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... than that we may trace the cruelties of Marius, Sylla, and their worthy imitators through the long line of our Emperors, to these schools where they had their early training. Why were Domitian and his fly worse than Gracchus, or Piso, or Fausta, and their gored elephant, or dying gladiator?' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... speech of Lily's be, and absurd as said by a fragile girl to a gladiator like Kenelm, it lit up a whole world of womanhood: it showed all that undiscoverable land which was hidden to the learned Mr. Emlyn, all that land which an uncomprehended girl seizes and reigns over when she becomes ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... westering; the shadow of the Palatine begins to creep across the Forum, and the villas on the Alban hills burn in the setting rays, and the Romans, before retiring to their homes, demand their last grand spectacle,—the death of some poor unhappy captive or gladiator. The victim steps upon the arena amid the deep stillness of the overwhelming multitude. It is no mimic combat his: he is "appointed to death." This lets us into the peculiar force of Paul's words, "I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were, appointed to death; for ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... standing on a bridge which carried a by-road over the stream, a shock passed through him: the stillness was broken as by thunder, the vision fled, and the entanglements fell over him like a gladiator's net. A motor, coming round a dangerous bend, had just missed him; and he stood covered with dust. Chandrapal saw and understood, and then, closing his eyes and making a mighty effort, shook the entanglements from his soul, and ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... and first gave up his spirit, for he was waiting for Perpetua. But Perpetua, that she might taste some pain, being pierced between the ribs, cried out loudly and she herself placed the wavering right hand of the youthful gladiator to her throat. Possibly such a woman could not have been slain unless she herself had willed it, because she was ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... which was ornamented, internally, with the most perfect elegance. The saloon was decorated with copies, in plaster, of the best statues in Italy—Niobe, Laocoon, Venus de Medicis, and the Dying Gladiator. In the apartment where Corinne received company were instruments of music, books, and furniture not more remarkable for its simplicity than for its convenience, being merely arranged so as to render the conversation easy, and to draw the circle more closely ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... m., son (filial) fluvius, fluvi:, m., river (fluent) /gladius, gladi:, m., sword (gladiator) /praesidium, praesi'di:, n., garrison, guard, protection /proelium, ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... knack to keep your balance while some one is pounding you with a large pillow. You are not allowed to touch the spar with your hands, hence the difficulty of holding a difficult position. When a man begins to waver the other redoubles his attack, and slowly at first, but surely, the defeated gladiator tumbles off the spar into a canvas stretched several feet below. It is lots of fun, especially for ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... gladiator, struck by Death, Whose reeling vision scarce a foe defines, For one last effort gathers all his breath, England draws in ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... delivery by every species of grimace and buffoonery, and a fierceness of dramatic action and posture far more ludicrously affecting than the classic attitudes of Gen. Tom Thumb, who was defying the lightning, as Ajax, dying like the Gladiator, and taking snuff like Napoleon, in the room overhead. At the bottom of all this ridiculous exhibition, which drew repeated shouts of laughter from the very large and respectable audience, lay two principles upon which Mr. Freeman might have erected an imposing argumentative structure. These were, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... her attributive victim for the next twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... into prison; but my husband's wealth, most of it except that which the priests and Romans stole, stayed with my father. For many months we were held in prison here in Caesarea; then they took my husband to Berytus, to be trained as a gladiator, and murdered him. Here I have stayed since with this beloved servant, Nehushta, who also became a Christian and shared our fate, and now, by the decree of Agrippa, it is my turn and hers ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard |
