"Nero" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the horse. He was well acquainted with the beauties and virtues of the herb mandragora, which, as every one knows, is of both sexes. He had many recipes. He cured burns with the salamander wool, of which, according to Pliny, Nero had a napkin. Ursus possessed a retort and a flask; he effected transmutations; he sold panaceas. It was said of him that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the honour to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... sporting-phrase,—the animal being chained to a barrel, from the recesses of which he contends savagely with the fierce little dogs pitted against each other to drag him out within a given time. Nero looked on at the sport with a majestic air of contempt, as dog after dog was withdrawn from the conflict. At length, disgusted with the failures, he watched his opportunity until the badger made a dive from his den ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... speak 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
... looked anywhere but at his questioner, and a picture passed before the commander's eyes—a memory, perhaps, of something he had read about at school—of Christians in Nero's day being ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... circumstance connected with the history of Nero, that every spring and summer, for many years after his death, fresh and beautiful flowers were nightly scattered upon his grave ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... legends held that at the death of Romulus there was darkness for six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet. So, too, in one of the Christian legends clustering about the crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. Neither the silence regarding it of the only evangelist who claims to have been present, nor the fact that observers like Seneca and Pliny, who, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... somewhat of the easy indifference of the countess-dowager, he had been a happier man. That lady would have made a female Nero, enjoying herself while Rome was burning. She remained on in her snug quarters at Hartledon, and lived ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that this Apocalypse of St. John appeared about 68 or 69 A.D. Was this a time of trouble in that Eastern world? Verily it was; the most appalling hour perhaps in the world's history. The unspeakable Nero was either still upon the throne of the Roman Empire, or had just reeled from that eminence to the doom of a craven suicide. The last years of his life were gorged with horror. The murder of his brother, the burning of Rome, probably by his connivance, if not by his command, in order that ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... that the best thing I could do was to take up some fad to relieve my overworked (?) brain and radiate some of my pent-up energy. I had read of the fads of great men, but I could not decide after which one to pattern. Nero was a great fiddler and went up and down Greece, challenging all the crack violinists to a contest; the king of Macedonia spent his time in making lanterns; Hercalatius, king of Parthia, was an expert mole-catcher and spent ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... some sadness. "Perhaps I am a coward,—perhaps my faith is unsteady; but this is my own reserve. What I argue here is that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma absolute, and persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic burns a Jew, or Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or Mary a Papist or Protestant; or their father both or either, according to his humour; and acting without any pangs of remorse,—but, on the contrary, notions of duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute, and to inflict or to suffer death becomes easy and necessary; ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lindisfarne Gospels or Durham Book is described in Planta's Catalogue (Nero, D 4), as "Liber praeclarissimus, elegantissimis characteribus et curiosissimus pro istius seculi arte picturis et delineationibus ornatus." See also Wanley's Catalogue, Codd. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... along with that which will shatter them to pieces—as if he said, 'Oh, yes! go on, talk your fill about making the best of this world, and rejoicing and doing as you like, dancing on the edge of a precipice, and fiddling, like Nero, whilst a worse fire than that of Rome is burning'? Well, I do not think that is the meaning of it. Though there is irony to be found in the Bible, I do not think that fierce irony like that which might do for the like of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of looking at life, for a pagan slave of the time of Nero!" thought Walden, as his eyes wandered from the thrush on the almond tree, back to the volume in his hand,—"With all our teaching and preaching, we can hardly do ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... politics, must be very nearly happy;—and to think there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out of the calm satisfaction of their instincts, and give them passions! The philanthropist is the Nero of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... in the first century A. D. He was a Greek military surgeon of Cilician origin who served under Nero, and in him the Greek intellect is obviously beginning to flag. His work is prodigiously important for the history of botany, yet so far as rational medicine is concerned he is almost negligible. He begins at the wrong end, either giving lists of drugs with ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... brink of a precipice, or the pangs of sickness without seeking a remedy. But to poetize the tragedy of others, to fiddle while Rome is burning, is brutal. Nevertheless, though it is not commonly possible to do things on Nero's scale, precisely the same attitude is the commonest thing in the world, and is fostered by the whole aesthetic bias of the race. The meanness of savage life, the squalid poverty of the slums, suffice in their picturesqueness to make a holiday for ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... readiness at Woodlawn for the reception of Mrs. Graham, who came up early in October, bringing with her a larger train of house servants than was often seen in Woodford county. About three weeks after her arrival, invitations were issued for a party or "house warming," as the negroes termed it. Nero, Durward's valet, brought the tiny notes to Mr. Livingstone's, giving them into the care of Carrie, who took them immediately to ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... Looking in their dark, haughty eyes, one seemed to pass back through the terrible picturesqueness of mediaeval Italy, with its Borgias and Bella Donnas, its Lorenzos and Fornarinas, to the Rome of Nero, Augustus, Scipio, and Tarquin. Eddy and I would sometimes make excursions across the river to Transtevere, and stroll up and down those narrow streets, imagining all manner of suitable adventures and histories for the inhabitants, stalking there ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... what he feels like, but Vernabelle is now greeting Oswald Cummings, the pagan of splendid sins, from the Elite Bootery. She tells Oswald there is a cold cruelty in the lines of his face that reminds her of the emperor Nero. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 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
... in which famous men of antiquity—Julius Caesar, Nero, Alcibiades, etc., attempt to express themselves in the modes of thought and language ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... Agrippina, in her rage with her son Nero, threatens to take her stepson, Britannicus, to the camp of the Legion, and there assert his right to the throne, she invokes the spirit of his father, whom she had poisoned, and the manes of the Silani, whom she had murdered. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the daughter of his brother German'icus, a woman of a cruel and ambitious spirit, whose only aim being to procure the succession of Nero, her son by a former marriage, she treated Claudius with such haughtiness, that he was heard to declare, when heated with wine, that it was his fate to smart under the disorders of his wives, and to be their executioner. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... to be a great beautifier and preserver of the skin. Poppaea, wife of the Emperor Nero, used it for that purpose, having four or five hundred asses constantly in her retinue, to furnish her every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... 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, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... "Nero —- & lo'n dit qu'on entendoit un son de trumpette dans les collines d'alentour, des gemissemens sur le tombeau ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... when one writes a Nero, it's absolutely indispensable that at least in his heart he shall have set fire to ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... but I would not have them back again if they were to be employed in the old service. When Senesino, Farinelli, Sassarelli, Ferri, and their tribe dominated the stage, it strutted with sexless Agamemnons and Caesars. Telemachus, Darius, Nero, Cato, Alexander, Scipio, and Hannibal ran around on the boards as languishing lovers, clad in humiliating disguises, singing woful arias to their mistress's eyebrows—arias full of trills and scales and florid ornaments, but void of feeling as ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... took time out to reply. "You know who I was about fifty reincarnations ago? Nero, burning Rome." Theosophists never hesitated to make fun of their religion, that way. The way they see it, a thing isn't much good if it can't stand being made fun of. "And look at the job I did on Moscow, a ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... "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 ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I only knew where to go to," soliloquized Moggs, as he strolled slowly along the deserted streets; "but when there's nowheres to go to, then I suppose a person must go home—specially of cold nights like this, when the thermometer is down as far as Nero, and acts cruel on the countenance. It's always colder, too, when there's nobody about but yourself—you get your own share and every body else's besides; and it's lucky if you're not friz. Why don't they have gloves for people's noses? I ought ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... sympathy, which are its reproach among the Greeks. In practical life they preferred a mixed constitution to a purely popular government. Chrysippus thought it impossible to please both gods and men; and Seneca declared that the people is corrupt and incapable, and that nothing was wanting, under Nero, to the fulness of liberty, except the possibility of destroying it. But their lofty conception of freedom, as no exceptional privilege but the birthright of mankind, survived in the law of nations and purified the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... be found noble, it will be estimated great, it will be ranked good, it will be considered sublime, in a Socrates, in an Aristides, in a Cato: it will be thought abject, it will be viewed as despicable, it will be called corrupt, in a Claudius, in a Sejanus, in a Nero: its energies will be admired, we shall be delighted with its manner, fascinated with its efforts, in a Shakespeare, in a Corneille, in a Newton, in a Montesquieu: its baseness will be lamented, when we behold mean, contemptible men, who flatter tyranny, or who ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... which we have been conjecturing has been a mere cloud city. The first mention of real London is by Tacitus, who, writing in the reign of Nero (A.D. 62, more than a century after the landing of Caesar), in that style of his so full of vigour and so sharp in outline, that it seems fit rather to be engraved on steel than written on perishable paper, says that Londinium, though not, indeed, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 'please' and 'thank you,' he only spoke once, and then it was the most extraordinarily long sentence I have ever heard. It began about pork, which Miss Davenport said was more wholesome than people imagined, it went on about the Jews, and finished up with a tale about Nero. He chuckled over his tale, but I didn't see much point in it, and Miss Davenport looked as if ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Italy many years hath lien untill'd And chok'd with thorns; that greedy earth wants hinds;— Fierce Pyrrhus, neither thou nor Hannibal 30 Art cause; no foreign foe could so afflict us: These plagues arise from wreak of civil power. But if for Nero, then unborn, the Fates Would find no other means, and gods not slightly Purchase immortal thrones, nor Jove joy'd heaven Until the cruel giants' war was done; We plain not, heavens, but gladly bear ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the speeches of Clara Smith's counsel, who was known by the delightfully Oklahomite title of Wild Bill McLean, were wild enough in all conscience; but they left very little of my friend's illusion that members of the Upper Ten could not be accused of crimes. Nero and Borgia were quite presentable people compared with Senator Hamon when Wild Bill McLean had done with him. But the difference was deeper, and even in a sense more delicate than this. There is a certain tone about English trials, which does at least begin with ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Birth there were living three great writers who were united in close friendship, viz. the younger Pliny, and the historians Tacitus and Suetonius. Suetonius wrote lives of the first twelve Caesars, and, in his history of Nero (A.D. 54-68), mentions the punishment of Christians, "a set of men of a new and mischievous superstition." Tacitus, describing the same reign[1], and the burning of Rome (A.D. 64), {107} shows that Nero ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... comprehending. It was not often that she understood her lover's meaning, nor did he particularly care that she should understand him. He talked to her rather in the same spirit in which one talks to a faithful canine companion—as Napoleon III. may talk to his favourite Nero; "I have great plans yet unfulfilled, my honest Nero, though you may not be wise enough to guess their nature. And we must have another Boulevard, old fellow; and we must settle that little dispute about Venetia; ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... and glooms and falling leaves. He remained there for some time. Brother Jacques waited patiently to learn the vicomte's determination. He was curious, too, to test this man's core. Was it rotten, or hard and sound? There was villainy, but of what kind? The helpless villainy of a Nero, or the calculating villainy of a Tiberius? When the vicomte presented his countenance to Brother Jacques, it had undergone a change. It was masked with humility; all the haughtiness was gone. He plucked nervously ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... does Prof. Stuart assure himself that Christianity will destroy slavery? Are we, as American citizens, under the sceptre of a Nero? When, as integral parts of this republic—as living members of this community, did we forfeit the prerogatives of freemen? Have we not the right to speak and act as wielding the powers which the principle of self-government has put in our possession? And without asking leave ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... got into the back yard cannot get out again. She is in a Quandary, for she fears the dogs will bite her—though their chains are not long enough. Keeper, the mastiff, is a noble fellow, and would not hurt women or children; neither would Nero, the bull-dog; he would rather face a lion or a wild ox: whilst Snap, the terrier, barks and snarls in the company ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... is but the same perpetuity of fools and rascals; and even were justice desirable at their hands, they could not deal it. Do men agree whether Charles Stuart was a liar or a martyr? For how many ages have we believed Nero a monster! A writer now asks, as if demonstrating a problem, what real historian could doubt that Nero was a paragon? The patriarchs of Scripture have been declared by modern philosophy to be a series of astronomical hieroglyphs; ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he continues the struggle in the fen-country. Ultimately Beric is defeated and carried captive to Rome, where he succeeds in saving a Christian maid by slaying a lion in the arena, and is rewarded by being made the personal protector of Nero. Finally, he escapes and returns to Britain, where he becomes a wise ruler ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... mankind should be! When Reason shall no longer blindly bow To the vile pagod things, that o'er her brow, Like him of Jaghernaut, drive trampling now; Nor Conquest dare to desolate God's earth; Nor drunken Victory, with a NERO'S mirth, Strike her lewd harp amidst a people's groans;— But, built on love, the world's exalted thrones Shall to the virtuous and the wise be given— Those bright, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... answering through all the city. Xenophon, you and I are in this death Eternally bound. This husband have I slain To lift unto the windy chair of the world Nero, my son. Your silence I will buy With endless riches; ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... Herbert Tree revived the play, he repaired the poet's omission by means of an inserted tableau. Even Shakespeare had not the hardihood to let Caesar fall without saying, "The Ides of March are come" and "Et tu, Brute!" Nero is bound to fiddle while Rome burns, or the audience will know the reason why.[4] Historic criticism will not hear of the "Thou hast conquered, Galilean!" which legend attributes to Julian the Apostate; yet Ibsen not only makes him say it, but may almost be said to find in the phrase the keynote ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... will, one were suddenly to give an idea of his many- sidedness by relating how he actually found time to compile a catechism which was used for some years in the elementary schools of France. What sidelights might be thrown in this way on such characters as Nero, Caesar, Henry VIII, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... The Roman octopus from that moment had fastened its tentacles upon the hapless land; and in 45 A.D., under the Emperor Claudius, it became a Roman province. In vain did the Britons struggle for forty years. In vain did the heroic Boadicea (during the reign of Nero, 61 A.D.), like Hermann in Germany, and Vercingetorix in France, resist the destruction of her nation by the Romans. In vain did this woman herself lead the Britons, in a frenzy of patriotism; and when the ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... men into monsters should have few apologists in our day. The mind recoils from the enumeration of the horrors of that "bloody Easter." Human depravity, goaded on by every motive which spiritual wickedness could suggest, celebrated such a carnival as must have staggered even a Nero. Men, women, and children were torn limb from limb, after suffering every possible outrage and indecency. Some were rolled from their native rocks to afford merriment to their butchers. Others were impaled on the trees by the wayside. Neither ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... the successors of Augustus splendor increased to almost fabulous limits, as, for instance, in the vast extent and the prodigality of ivory and gold in the famous Golden House of Nero. After the great fire in Rome, presumably kindled by the agents of this emperor, amore regular and monumental system of street-planning and building was introduced, and the first municipal building-law was decreed by him. To the reign of Vespasian (68-79 ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... other things, it has of old been observ'd that the bay is ominous of some funest accident, if that be so accounted which Suetonius (in Galba) affirms to have happen'd before the death of the monster Nero, when these trees generally wither'd to the very roots in a very mild winter: And much later, that in the year 1629, when at Padoa, preceding a great pestilence, almost all the bay-trees about that famous ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... long, in breadth from 25 to 30 feet, and varying from about 90 feet in height near the entrance, to little more than 20 feet at points of the interior. Petronius and Seneca mention its narrow gloomy passage with horror, in the reign of Nero, when it was so low that it could only be used for foot-passengers, who were obliged to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... speeches.[281] Above all, the player is to study tranquil scenes, for it is these that are the most truly difficult. He commends a young actress to play every morning, by way of orisons, the scene of Athalie with Joas; to say for evensong some scenes of Agrippina with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of Phaedra with her confidante. Especially there is to be little emphasis—a warning grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers out of a hundred—for emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... exclaimed aloud: "My God! what a power to lie in the hands of one man! I stand here the arbiter of five destinies. It is for me to say whether four people shall be happy or wretched, saved or ruined. I might say, with Nero, 'I am God!'" He laughed. "I am famed for my power to save where others have failed. I am famed in the comic weeklies for having ruined the business of more undertakers than any physician of my day. That has been my role, my professional ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... over to his mother to learn her duty, and hear the truth. She learned it all, she heard it all; but somehow or other it ended at last; the old woman, "licking her whiskers," passed out, and the Duke, who had waited to hear the lecture, passed out after her, making (he hoped) a face like Nero or Saladin—at any rate, he showed a ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... before he fell dead at our feet; which must make a great difference in her feelings. And besides, she hated that overbearing nobleman, who pursued her so cruelly with his violent and scandalous gallantries. The prince himself was far from being satisfied with his wretched son—who was ferocious as Nero, dissolute as Heliogabalus, and perverse as Satan himself, and who would have been hanged ten times over if he had not been a duke. Do not be so disheartened! things may turn out a great deal better than ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... neither malignant nor vindictive. I 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, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and kisses, and I lived for some weeks with that sense of having been a Nero, till two months after I received a much glazed and silvered card ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... entirely to the contemplative life which he loved; and throughout the latter portion of his life he was the public defender as well as the teacher of his people. He probably died before the reign of Nero, between 50 and 60 C.E. In Jewish history his life covered the reigns of King Herod, his sons, and King Agrippa, when the Jewish kingdom reached its height of outward magnificence; and it extended probably up to the ill-omened conversion of Judaea into a Roman province under ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... ignoring the worst. Certainly, as your poet says, 'Distance makes the heart grow fonder'; or, at any rate, softer. There is a tendency to side with the angels where we are dealing with historic dead. Nero, Caligula, Calvin, Alva, Napoleon, Torquemada—all these monsters and portents, and a thousand such blood-bespattered figures are growing whiter as they grow fainter. They will have wings and haloes presently. Yet not for me. I am a good hater, my friends. But Prince Djem—I wander so. You should ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... by his son Agrippa, during whose time Felix and Festus were procurators in Judea, while Nero was Roman emperor. This Agrippa finished the Temple by the work of 18,000 men. The war of the Jews and Romans began through the oppression by Gessius Florus, who secured the procuratorship by the friendship of his wife Cleopatra with Poppea, wife of Nero. Florus filled Judea ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... other things. As she had stood before the window she had felt that her soul had never been so black as it was when she turned away from Miles Hugo's portrait—never, never. She wanted to hurt people. Perhaps Nero had felt as she did and was not so ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... doubt, hard to know ourselves. One may entertain demons unawares, and have calcined blood without being a bit the wiser. Still, I do not find the likeness striking. It would have done just as well to call me Nero, Torquemada, Iago, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... but such a mistake, can we attribute the many attempts to ridicule the blackest villainies, and what is yet worse the most dreadful calamities? What could exceed the absurdity of an author, who should write the comedy of Nero, with the merry incident of ripping up his mother's belly, or what would give a greater shock to humanity than an attempt to expose the miseries of poverty and distress to ridicule? And yet, the reader will not want much learning ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 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 ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... martyrdom as a whole. The high and the low, the wise and the unlettered, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, strong men and delicate women, surrendered themselves to the most cruel tortures for the love of Christ. This spectacle, while it may have served only to enrage a Nero and urge him on to even more Satanic cruelty, could not be wholly lost upon the more thoughtful Marcus Aurelius and others like him. It was impossible to resist the moral force of so calm and resolute a surrender unto torture and death. Moreover, an age which produced such ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... great piazza, which slopes upwards, is an ancient Egyptian obelisk brought from the circus of Nero, and surrounded by points of the compass let into the pavement. This is flanked by two immense fountains, from which the water rises in a sparkling column to the height of seventy feet. They are supplied by an aqueduct from Lake ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... fine! and you got to your brother all right? I wonder—is he—are you any relation of Carlos Montfort? Not his sister? You don't mean it. Why, I was at school with Carlos, the first school I ever went to. An old priest kept it, in Plaza Nero. Carlos was a good fellow, and gave me the biggest licking once—I'm very glad we met, Miss Montfort. And—I don't mean to be impertinent, I'm sure you know that; but—what are you going to ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... came on an embassy to Rome 39 The works of Philo are saturated with Stoic ideas and he displays an exact acquaintance with their terminology Seneca Exiled to Corsica 41 Recalled from exile 49 Forced by Nero to commit suicide 65 His Moral Epistles and philosophical works generally are written from the Stoic standpoint though somewhat affected by Eclecticism Plutarch Flor. 80 The Philosophical works of Plutarch which have most bearing upon ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... out to carouse in a belfry And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon, And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on! Well, somehow or other it ended at last, And, licking her whiskers, out she passed; And after her,—making (he hoped) a face Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin, Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace Of ancient hero or modern paladin, From door to staircase—oh, such a solemn {330} Unbending of the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... says: "Take thy part in suffering hardship;" take, that is to say, your share of the hardship which belongs to the common cause. "Come in with the rest of us," it means, "in bearing the hard times." There were plenty of hard times in those days. Paul was a prisoner in Rome; Nero's persecution was abroad. When the aged Paul, however, writes to the young man whom he affectionately calls his beloved child, he does not say to him: "I hope, my beloved child, that you will find life ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... Hudelist, with a smile which distorted his face strangely, and caused two rows of large yellow teeth to appear between the pale lips of his enormous mouth. "It is true he stands firm as yet, and rebukes his ministers as Nero did his freedmen. Talleyrand was still thunderstruck at what the emperor had told him, when he had an interview with Count Metternich and myself in Fouche's green-house. To be sure, the phrases which he repeated to us were well calculated to make even the blood of a patient ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... free. Oh, Rome, thou eternal one! thou who hast bowed thy neck to imperial pride and priestly craft; thou who hast suffered sorely, even to this hour, from Nero down to Pio Nono,—the days of thine oppression are over. Gone from thy enfranchised ways for ever is the clang of the Praetorian cohorts and the more odious drone of meddling monks!" And yet, as Mackinnon observed, ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... chiefly of works relating to the empire and the acts of its sovereigns. Vespasian, following the example of his predecessors, established a library in the Temple of Peace, which he erected after the burning of the city by order of Nero; and even Domitian, in the commencement of his reign, restored at great expense the libraries which had been destroyed by the conflagration, collecting copies of books from every quarter, and sending persons to Alexandria to transcribe volumes ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Then it was, that her very zone gave way in her eagerness to pluck his Pagan life from gloom, and wed her day unto his night. But what of all this now?—The sin that is "worse than witchcraft" is upon him! His hands are stained with innocent blood! He has spurned his benefactress with the foot of Nero, "removed her candlestick", and left her in hunger, cold and darkness upon ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... 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 ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... "It is fanaticism," he says in an elaborately wrought passage, "that puts arms into the hands of Christian princes; it orders Catholics to massacre heretics; it brings out upon the earth again those tortures that were invented by such monsters as Phalaris, as Busiris, as Nero; in Spain it piles and lights up the fires of the Inquisition, while the pious Spaniards leave their ports and sail across distant seas, to plant the Cross and spread desolation in America. Turn your eyes to north or south, to east or west; on every side you see the consecrated knife ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Nodot. "Show us your Ms. of Petronius, which you say was found at Belgrade, or consent that nobody shall believe you. It is as false that you have the genuine satire of Petronius in your hands, as it is false that that ancient satire was the work of a consul, and a picture of Nero's conduct. Desist from attempting to deceive the learned; you can ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... 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 two ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... prize-ring is a little too near as yet to offer unimpeachable matter for romance; and people who can read of the bloodthirsty Umslopogaas and his semi-comic holocausts with an unshaken stomach, or feel a placid historic pleasure in the chronicles of Nero's eccentricities, will find 'Rodney Stone' objectionable because it chronicles a 'knuckle fight,' and because a 'knuckle fight' is still occasionally brought off in London, and more occasionally suppressed ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... 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 ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... novel that it would seem as if political and military precedents of even a century ago could have no possible value. As for our present "anxious morality," as Maeterlinck calls it, it seems equally clear that the sinful extravagances of Sardanapalus and Nero, and the conspicuous public virtue of Aristides and the Horatii, are ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... 'The Emperor Nero,' said Janet. 'He killed Harry's friend Seneca in the eighty-somethingth year of his age; an old man, and—hush, grandada!' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... length, the mineral's tempting hue, Which makes a patriot, can un-make him too.[2] Oh! Freedom, Freedom, how I hate thy cant! Not Eastern bombast, not the savage rant Of purpled madmen, were they numbered all From Roman Nero down to Russian Paul, Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base, As the rank jargon of that factious race, Who, poor of heart and prodigal of words, Formed to be slaves, yet struggling to be lords, Strut forth, as patriots, from their negro-marts, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... in spite of the fact that Duke himself often sat close by, 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
... I saw during that first eventful visit to the capital was the famed Don Eusebio, the court jester or fool of the President or Dictator Rosas, the "Nero of South America," who lived in his palace at Palermo, just outside the city. I had been sent with my sisters and little brother to spend the day at the house of an Anglo-Argentine family in another part of the town, and we were in the large courtyard playing with the children of the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... this couple had a tolerably easy time of it. The Captain was not exigeant, and allowed them to run the establishment pretty much as they chose. He always rose late, and went out immediately after breakfast, accompanied by his large Newfoundland dog Nero, the only living possession he had brought with him from beyond the sea. Master and dog were seen no more until dinner-time, which was five o'clock. Between seven and eight in the evening the pair would betake themselves to the George, where the Captain drank and howled himself hoarse ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... certain Volusius Proculus was one of the infamous agents in the murder of Agrippina, and afterwards betrayed the fearless woman Epicharis who confided to him the secret of Piso's conspiracy; but no one of this name was executed by Nero. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... [Footnote 1: Nero on the night when he died was going to try a water-organ, when the news of the revolt of Galba and the defection of the troops reached him. I am puzzled about this organ on the tomb of Julia Tyranna. Sir George Grove, in his 'Dictionary of Music,' gives an illustration of this same ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... makes you dearer to yourself?" When the tyrant ordered the philosopher to commit suicide, his wife insisted on opening her veins, and dying with him. After long resistance, he consented, saying, "I will not deprive you of the honor of so noble an example." But Nero would not allow her to die thus, and had her veins bound up; not, however, until she had lost so much blood that her blanched face, for the rest of her days, gave rise to the well known rhetorical comparison, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... hand, was the philosophic satirist, whose devotion to Stoicism caused him to see in it a panacea for all the evils which Nero brought on the empire. The shortness of his life, his studious tastes, and his exceptional moral purity all contributed to keep him ignorant of that world of evil which, as Professor Sellar has pithily remarked, ...
— English Satires • Various
... 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 to the service ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... still keeping strait watch over her, lest peradventure some other should teach her to know working-days, even as he had taught her holidays. Things standing thus, it chanced that, the heat being great and Messer Ricciardo having a mind to go a-pleasuring to a very fair country-seat he had, near Monte Nero, and there abide some days to take the air, he betook himself thither, carrying with him his fair lady. There sojourning, to give her some diversion, he caused one day fish and they went out to sea in two boats, he in one with the fishermen, and she ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... help or encouragement from man; which was a great trial to his spirit, and proof of the truth of his faith, and tended much to the perfection of his patience. Somewhat like this was that of Paul, who had no man stood with him when he stood before Nero. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gave the name of England to this land of ours; but before this time East Anglia had attained, by means of its sons and daughters, to fame far and near. If we may believe Gildas, a Christian church was planted in England in the time of Nero. Claudia, to whom Paul refers in Philippians and Timothy, was a British lady of great wit and greater beauty, celebrated by the poet Martial. She may have been converted by Paul, argued the Rev. Mr. Hollingsworth, a local historian, Rural Dean and Rector of Stowmarket; nor ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... heirs! Bills turn the lenders into debtors: The wish of Nero[3] now is theirs, "That they ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... having been the first person in the French republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the situation which he held involved more contradictions than perhaps attach to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded tyrant was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a people, whose anxiety ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... endurable ennui for three long months, during which there was no going out from nine to five P.M. Our society afforded little resource, our reading less. When the weather permitted—that is, in the delicious, incomparable month of October—we made little excursions to Barga, Ponte Nero, &c. &c., and always returned delighted; nor were our walks of shorter distance unproductive of interest. The Lucchese are the most industrious people in the world, and their agriculture made us, pro tempore, amateurs of rural economy. We ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... 'A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more, pursued the Doctor; 'it is, Mr Feeder—if you are doing me the honour ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... imaginary terrors around it. Cain fled when no one pursued. Nero heard invisible trumpets ringing his death-knell around the tomb of his mother. How often has the mountain bandit, whose hand trembled not at murder, shuddered with fear, as he hastened through the forest, at the sound of a branch waving in the wind, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the Roman navy rode at anchor; Baiae, where once all Roman luxury loved to pass the summer season; Puteoli, where St. Paul landed when on his way to Caesar's throne. There were the waters in which Nero thought to drown Agrippina, and over which another Roman emperor built that colossal bridge which set at defiance the prohibition of nature. There was the rock of Ischia, terminating the line of coast; and out at sea, immediately ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... that heavenly orchestration is going on while Xerxes is possibly in an Apocalyptic hell, and his hosts either bearing him company or wandering aimlessly about in the same stupid, stolid, unmoral, unspiritual condition in which they were the moment they were engulfed in those blue waters. Why, Nero fiddling while Rome was burning is a ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... conscience during the weeks which followed the death of Jesus, the formation of the cycle of legends concerning the resurrection, the first acts of the Church of Jerusalem, the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation of the Gospels, and the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor originated by John. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... who had dared to take off the judges in the open theatre. Next day all Paris believed that he was in prison." He had a triumph, on the contrary, with Britannicus, after which the, king gave up dancing in the court ballets, for fear of resembling Nero. Berenice was a duel between Corneille and Racine for the amusement of Madame Henriette. Racine bore away the bell from his illustrious rival, without much glory. Bajazet soon followed. "Here is Racine's piece," wrote ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... breaking into the spasms of delirium, is quite peculiar to the 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 idealises 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 a great sculptor, by but few strokes, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... point of remoteness from the original spirit of historic romance. Archdeacon Farrar's figures and descriptions are worked out upon the pattern of a mosaic, by piecing together the loose fragmentary bits of our knowledge regarding life and society under Nero. A glance at these books shows that they belong to the latest school of nineteenth-century fiction, to a period when careful scholarly accumulation of accessories and adroit adaptation of history have taken the place, not only of convention ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the town-house, where it was formerly placed, though, I hope, some royalist has taken possession of it, and deposited it in safety till better times. This once popular Prince is now associated with Nero and Caligula, and it is "leze nation" to speak of him to a thorough republican.—I know not if the French had before the revolution reached the acme of perfection, but they have certainly been retrograding very ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 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
... arose with Lucilius, 148 B.C., in the time of Marius, an age when freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain immortality in this department. Next Persius comes, born 34 A.D., the friend of Lucian and Seneca in the time of Nero, who painted the vices of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign of Domitian, when Juvenal appeared. The latter, disdaining fear, boldly set forth the abominations of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... serious mistake. Vanity wants 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 ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... the Party System does not govern the country to the content of most citizens. I answer that Englishmen are happy under the Party System solely and exactly as Romans were happy under Nero. That is, not because government was good, but because Life is good, even without good government. Nero's slaves enjoyed Italy, not Nero. Modern Englishmen enjoy England but certainly not the British ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... sermon, or in conversation, or read them cited in an English book, each reader must decide for himself. Nor do I doubt that Shakespeare could pick out what he wanted from the Latin if he cast his eye over the essay of the tutor of Nero. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... what they call a Coronach over him. And indeed Women, both young and old, are so good when there's any thing pitiful to be done, that I make no doubt that the Coronach would have been sung if the old Rebel had gone back to Scotland; and if there were found those to weep for Nero, I see no reason why some tears should not have been shed for Simon, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... constantly by the side of the Pope, and Faustus and Lucretia were inseparable. Every one abandoned himself at Ostia to pleasure, and in the course of a few days excesses were committed there from which even Tiberius and Nero might have learnt something. Faustus had now an excellent opportunity of examining man in his nakedness, as the Devil had expressively termed it; but what were all these scenes of wickedness when compared with the plans which the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... which was a circular to the Principal Officers of State, Sheriffs of Counties, &c. four original copies are preserved in the British Museum; three among the Harleian MSS., Nos. 283, and 2131; and one, from which the above is copied, Cotton. MSS, Nero, C. x. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... doctor. "Nero was nothing to me.—Now, gentlemen, just a word or two with the rest of my nursery folk, and then I must order ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... which everywhere, in every form of luxurious ease, invite to repose. Gold, too, once prohibited, but now wrought into every kind of cloth, or solid in shape of dish, or vase, or cup, or spread in sheets over the very walls and ceilings of the palace, has rendered the traditions of Nero's house of gold no longer fabulous. The customs of the eastern monarchs have also elevated or perverted the ambition of Aurelian, and one after another are taking place of former usages. He is every day more difficult ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... de suoi lacci spesso mi ridea Gia caddi, ov'huom dabben talhor s'impiglia. Ne treccie d'oro, ne guancia vermiglia M' abbaglian si, ma sotto nova idea Pellegrina bellezza che'l cuor bea, Portamenti alti honesti, e nelle ciglia Quel sereno fulgor d' amabil nero, Parole adorne di lingua piu d'una, 10 E'l cantar che di mezzo l'hemispero Traviar ben puo la faticosa Luna, E degil occhi suoi auventa si gran fuoco Che l 'incerar gli oreechi mi ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... thirty men and women were making the ground quake and the woods ring with their unrestrained jollity. Marc Antony was rattling away at the bones, Nero fiddling as if Rome were burning, and Hannibal clawing at a banjo as if the fate of Carthage hung on its strings. Napoleon, as young and as lean as when he mounted the bridge of Lodi, with the battle-smoke still on his face, was moving his legs even faster than in the Russian retreat; ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... uomo nero?-neither Mr. Chute nor I can recollect the term. Though you are in the season of the villegiatura, believe me, Mr. Conway will not find Florence duller than he would London: our diversions, politics, quarrels, are buried all in our Alphonso's grave!(289) The only thing ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... these rooms recall! Here Nero watched his brother drain The fatal draught, then lifeless fall; Here, too, Caligula was slain, When, shrieking, with disordered brain, He pleaded for his ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... head, large as that of a lioness, was distinguished by a rare expression of refinement. The cold cruelty of a tiger was dominant, it was true, but there was also a vague resemblance to the face of a sensual woman. Indeed, the face of this solitary queen had something of the gaiety of a drunken Nero: she had satiated herself with blood, and she ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... witching time of night, When Churchyards yawne, and Hell it selfe breaths out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter businesse as the day Would quake to looke on. Soft now, to my Mother: Oh Heart, loose not thy Nature; let not euer The Soule of Nero, enter this firme bosome: Let me be cruell, not vnnaturall, I will speake Daggers to her, but vse none: My Tongue and Soule in this be Hypocrites. How in my words someuer she be shent, To giue them Seales, neuer my Soule consent. Enter King, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... stop the horse means sudden death. But quick as a flash, O'Dowd makes a dash. With all his might and the horse's mane, He brings the old plug to a halt again. Then every man there doffs his hat And cries "Well, what do you think of that?" Never since the days of Nero Has there been a ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... copies of a 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 |
