"Pliny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gave a respite to the sufferings of the christians; but reigning only thirteen months, his successor Trajan, in the tenth year of his reign A. D. 108, began the third persecution against the christians. While the persecution raged, Pliny 2d, a heathen philosopher wrote to the emperor in favor of the Christians; to whose epistle Trajan returned this indecisive answer: "The christians ought not to be sought after, but when brought before the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... contemporary authority. Expressions and incidents which to some might seem startlingly modern, are in reality suggested by passages in the satirists, epigrammatists, and romancers of the (Roman) Empire, or by anecdotes preserved in the grave pages of Seneca and the elder Pliny.' ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... heathen historians and controversialists make statements equally false and quite as ridiculous with reference to the religion and history of the Jews [268:1]. Even the credulity of a Papias may be more than matched by the credulity of an Apion or an AElian. The work of the sceptical Pliny himself abounds in impossible stories. On the other hand individual writers may be singled out among the Christian fathers, whom it would be difficult to match in their several excellences from their own or contiguous generations. No heathen contemporary shows such a power ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... its name from gorse or goss, a prickly shrub that grows wild in thickets and on hillsides in Europe, Asia, and America. It was known to the ancients, and is mentioned in the writings of Theocritus and Pliny. Gooseberries were a favorite dish with some of the emperors, and were extensively cultivated in gardens during the Middle Ages. The gooseberry is a wholesome and agreeable fruit, and by cultivation may be brought to a high state of perfection in ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Yamuna of Sanskrit writers. Ptolemy's and Pliny's versions, Diamouna and Jomanes, do not deviate much from the original. It rises in the Kumaon Himalaya, and, where it first meets the frontier of the Simla Hill States, receives from the north a large tributary called ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... certain that it was a companion of the mammoth and of the woolly rhinoceros. The aurochs, or European bison, whose remains are found in the river gravel and the older bone caves, is mentioned by Pliny and Seneca. They speak of it as existing in their time; it is also named in the Niebelungen Lied. It existed in Prussia as late as 1775, and is still found wild in the Caucasus. The present Emperor of Russia has twelve herds, which are protected in the forests of Lithuania. During the session of ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... Toti morimur nullaque pars manet nostri." both Scripture and philosophy, could not expel the poison of his error. There are a set of heads that can credit the relations of mariners, yet question the testi- monies of Saint Paul: and peremptorily maintain the traditions of AElian or Pliny; yet, in histories of Scrip- ture, raise queries and objections: believing no more than they can parallel in human authors. I confess there are, in Scripture, stories that do exceed the fables of poets, and, to ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... historians, the Adam's fig was the plant, which the messengers brought from the promised land to Moses, who had sent them out to reconnoitre. "It is under the shade of the musa sapientium, that," as recorded by Pliny, "the learned Indians seated themselves to meditate over the vicissitudes of life, and to talk over different philosophic subjects, and the fruit of this tree was their only food." The Oriental Christians, up to the present date, regard the banana almost with reverence; their active fancy ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... together.[83] At an earlier date, the first day of the week after the crucifixion, in the evening, "when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus, and stood in the midst," &c.[84] When Pliny was proconsul in Judea, such charges were made against the Christians on account of their secrecy, as caused severe persecution, not for matters of religion, but for supposed cannibalism. He writes to Trajan, that he took ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... preserved by the river into which she is said to have been changed, and is still recognized in the corrupted forms Kusa and Kusi. The river flows from the heights of the Himalaya towards the Ganges, bounding on the east the country of Videha (Behar). The name is no doubt half hidden in the Cosoagus of Pliny and the Kossounos of Arrian. But each author has fallen into the same error in his enumeration of these rivers (Condochatem, Erannoboam, Cosoagum, Sonum). The Erannoboas, (Hiranyavaha) and the Sone are not different streams, but well-known ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... of the nation is completely linked to that of the soil which they occupy. In remote times, when the inhabitants of this plain were few and uncivilized, the country formed but one immense morass, of which the chief part was incessantly inundated and made sterile by the waters of the sea. Pliny the naturalist, who visited the northern coasts, has left us a picture of their state in his days. "There," says he, "the ocean pours in its flood twice every day, and produces a perpetual uncertainty whether the country may be considered as a part of the continent or of the sea. The ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... below. Slow glides the sail along th' illumin'd shore, And steals into the shade the lazy oar. Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs, And amourous music on the water dies. 115 Heedless how Pliny, musing here, survey'd Old Roman boats and figures thro' the shade, Pale Passion, overpower'd, retires and woos The thicket, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the edge of Pliney's Pond; so called because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons, Pliny, the eldest, having ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the different fortunes and characters of men born at the same time must have occurred to many before Cicero dwelt upon it. Pliny, who followed Cicero in this, does not employ the argument quite correctly, for he says that, 'in every hour, in every part of the world, are born lords and slaves, kings and beggars.' But of course, according to astrological ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... distressed; the salamander, living in fire, typifies the strong passions, natural, yet destructive to their victim; the young stork, carrying the old one, illustrates filial piety; the crane, which, according to Pliny, holds a stone in its claw to avert sleep, is a fit emblem of watchfulness; the pomegranate, king of fruits, wears a regal crown; the crocodile, symbol of hypocrisy, sheds deceitful tears. In short, almost everything that was in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... MASTER DOCTOR HOLLAND.—The once well-known Philemon Holland, Physician, and "Translator-General of his Age," published translations of Livy, 1600; Pliny's "Natural History," 1601; Camden's "Britannica," &c. He is said to have used in translation more paper and fewer pens than any other writer before or since, and who "would not let Suetonius be Tranquillus." Born at ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... mouth of his grandson Hasen soon after birth. Theocritus, Sophocles, and Plutarch testify to the ancient Grecian customs of spitting to cure and to curse, and also to bless when children were named. Pliny has expressed belief in the efficacy of the fasting spittle for curing disease, and referred to the custom of spitting to avert witchcraft. In England, Scotland, and Ireland spitting customs are not ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... talents of his nephew, Talos, whom Ovid here calls Perdix; and, envying his inventions of the saw, the compasses, and the art of turning, he killed him privately. Flying to Crete, he was favourably received by Minos, who was then at war with the Athenians. He there built the Labyrinth, as Pliny the Elder asserts, after the plan of that in Egypt, which is described by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Strabo. Philochorus, however, as quoted by Plutarch, says that it did not resemble the Labyrinth of Egypt, and that it ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the east with Aurora was ruddy; Took a plunge in my Pliny; collated a play; No breakfast I ate, for I found in each study A collation which lasted me all ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... of a very constipating character, and it was observed, by the earliest naturalists, to suck up the water of the river and using its long bill for a syringe, inject it into its anus, thus relieving itself. Pliny says this habit of the Ibis first suggested the use of clysters to the ancient Egyptian doctors, known to be the first medical practitioners of any nation, not excepting the Chinese. [See Naturalis Historia, Lib. VIII., ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... this reign that HERCULANEUM and POMPEII were destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius. In this eruption perished PLINY THE ELDER, the most noted writer of his day. His work on Natural History, the only one of his writings that is preserved, shows that he was a true student. His passion for investigation led him to approach too near the ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... the "comitialis morbus," "epilepsy," or "falling sickness: " "The person seized, suddenly falls down; foam drops from the mouth; then, after a little time, he comes to himself, and gets up again without any assistance." Pliny, in his Natural History, B. 38, c. 4, says: "Despuimus comitiales morbos, hoc est, contagia regerimus," "We spit out the epilepsy, that is, we avert the contagion." This is said, probably, in reference to a belief, that on seeing an epileptic person, ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... well be mentioned in connection with the emperor, as a striking illustration of the truth, that goodness and amiableness towards one class of men is often turned into cruelty towards another. History can hardly show a more gentle and lovely character than Pliny. While pleading at the bar, he always sought out the grievances of the poorest and most despised persons, entered into their wrongs with his whole soul, and never took a fee. Who can read his admirable letters without being touched by their tenderness and warmed ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... coctus, or Fr. bis-cuit]. Bread intended for naval or military expeditions is now simply flour well kneaded, with the least possible quantity of water, into flat cakes, and slowly baked. Pliny calls it panis nauticus; and of the panis militaris, he says that it was heavier by one-third than the grain from which it ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the mansion are tapestried with books. The green secluded alleys, the gentle knolls, the glades, the spacious meadows of the park, recall at every step the younger Pliny's incomparable picture of his Tuscan villa. 'Placida omnia et quiescentia.' 'A spirit of pensive peace broods over the whole place, making it not lovelier only, but more salubrious, making the sky more pure, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... though it often vexed her, she acknowledged that she derived a benefit from his robust antagonism of opinion. And Italy had grown tasteless to her. She could hardly simulate sufficient curiosity to serve for a vacant echo to Mr. Austin's historic ardour. Pliny the Younger might indeed be the model of a gentleman of old Rome; there might be a scholarly pleasure in calculating, as Mr. Austin did, the length of time it took Pliny to journey from the city to his paternal farm, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tongue Salutes, nay licks, the feet of those he stung; What knot can bind him, his evasion such? One knot he well deserves, which might do much. The flood, flame, swine, the lion, and the snake, Those fivefold monsters, modern authors make: The snake reigns most; snakes, Pliny says, are bred When the brain's perish'd in a human head. Ye grov'ling, trodden, whipt, stript, turncoat things, Made up of venom, volumes, stains, and stings! Thrown from the tree of knowledge, like you, curst To scribble in the dust, was snake the first. What if the figure should ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... enjoyed living in heathen times, it must have been Pliny the Younger. A friend of ours calls him the gentlemanly letter writer, and so he was. He wrote letters which must have been treats to his correspondents. It is well that some of his notes did not require answers, for, as the letters of "the parties of the second part" are irretrievably lost, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... post brought him a large heavy envelope, the aspect of which for a moment puzzled him. But he recognised the handwriting, and understood. The editor of The Wayside, in a pleasantly-written note, begged to return the paper on Pliny's Letters which had recently been submitted to him; he was sorry it did not strike him as quite so interesting as the other ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... theory which has not entirely been abandoned at the present day. For him Stonehenge and other stone circles were temples of the druids. This was in itself by no means a ridiculous theory, but Stukeley went further than this. Relying on a quaint story in Pliny wherein the druids of Gaul are said to use as a charm a certain magic egg manufactured by snakes, he imagined that the druids were serpent-worshippers, and essayed to see serpents even in the forms ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... with some certainty the hymn itself composed by the Virgin Mary, but when it first became a song of the Christian Church no one can tell. Its thanksgiving may have found tone among the earliest martyrs, who, as Pliny tells us, sang hymns in their secret worship. We can only trace it back to the oldest chant music, when it was doubtless sung by both the Eastern and Western Churches. In the rude liturgies of the 4th and 5th centuries it must have begun to assume ritual form; but it remained for the more ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Praet must be now approaching his sixtieth year; but his age sits bravely upon him—for his step is rapid and firm, and his physiognomical expression indicative of a much less protracted period of existence.[17] He is a Fleming by birth; and, even in shewing his first Eustathius, or first Pliny, UPON VELLUM, you may observe the natural enthusiasm of a Frenchman tempered by the graver emotions of a ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... asunder, are described from a statue in the Museum Florentinum, and from an antique gem; and the grasping Anteus to death in his arms as he lifts him from the earth, is described from another antient cameo. The famous pillars of Hercules have been variously explained. Pliny asserts that the natives of Spain and of Africa believed that the mountains of Abyla and Calpe on each side of the straits of Gibraltar were the pillars of Hercules; and that they were reared by the hands of that god, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... con amore, and his remarks are generally characterised by a degree of good taste and correct feeling, which indicates a higher degree of appreciation of the pictorial art than is generally ascribed to the age in which Achilles Tatius wrote. Even in the latter part of the first century of our era, Pliny, when enumerating the glorious names of the ancient Greek painters, laments over the total decline, in his own days, of what he terms (Nat. Hist. xxxv. 11) "an aspiring art;" but the monarchs of the Macedonian dynasties in Asia, and, above all, the Egyptian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... of the word by Pliny the elder bears the title of 'Natural History', while in the letters of his nephew it is designated by the nobler term of 'History of Nature.' The earlier Greek historians did not separate the description of countries from the narrative ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... wont, when she sat by the fire with us, to tell us who were children many childish tales. But as Pliny saith that there is no book lightly so bad but that a man may pick some good thing out of it, so think I that there is almost no tale so foolish but that yet in one matter or another, it may hap to ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... raise in others. He that thinks, says Cicero, to warm others with his eloquence, must first be warm himself. And Quintilian says, We must first be affected ourselves, before we can move others. This made Pliny's panegyric upon Trajan so well received by his hearers, because every body knew the wonderful esteem and affection which he had for the person he commended: and therefore, when he concluded with a prayer to Jupiter, that he would take care of the life and safety of that great and good ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... knives. The Gold Coast is a long way off; but not only do black women there paint themselves white in their sacred rites, white women in Britain have painted themselves, if not black, at least a dark blue. Pliny records that both matrons and unmarried girls among the Britons in the first century of the Christian era were in the habit of staining themselves all over with the juice of the woad; and he adds that, thus rivalling the swarthy hue of the AEthiopians, they go on these occasions in a state of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... eagerly and with a ferreting motion from place to place on the parchment, she was filled with pity and with admiration for the man's talent. It was as if Seneca were writing to his master, or Pliny to the Emperor Trajan. And, being a very tender woman ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... ostentation. And amongst those arts, there is none better than that which Plinius Secundus speaketh of, which is to be liberal of praise and commendation to others, in that, wherein a man's self hath any perfection. For saith Pliny, very wittily, In commending another, you do yourself right; for he that you commend, is either superior to you in that you commend, or inferior. If he be inferior, if he be to be commended, you much more; if he be superior, if he be not to be commended, you much less. Glorious ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... yourself. I have bestowed attention not only upon the arguments which support Christianity, but upon the actual condition of the Christian community, here and throughout the empire. It is prosperous at this hour, beyond all former example. If Pliny could complain, even in his day, of the desertion of the temples of the gods, what may we now suppose to be the relative numbers of the two great parties? Only, Varus, allow the rescript of Gallienus to continue ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... According to Pliny, the entire height of the statue was twenty-six cubits (about forty feet), and the artist, Phidias, had ingeniously contrived that the gold with which the statue was encrusted might be removed at pleasure. The battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae was carved upon the sandals; the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... "Pliny declares, as I hear, that he does not believe in the gods, but he believes in dreams; and perhaps he is right. My jests do not prevent me from thinking at times that in truth there is only one deity, eternal, creative, all-powerful, Venus Genetrix. She ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Greece for fifty years was that grammarian Philetas, who was so small and so thin that he was obliged to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind. There stood on the great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion and catalogued by Pliny; this statue represented Episthates. What did Episthates do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let us pass on to others. Shall I admire England? Shall I admire France? France? Why? Because of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of Athens. England? Why? Because ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... calls for a certain better disposition, both of mind and of body, that are rarely found together, whereas painting contents itself with any feeble temperament, so long as it has a hand, if not bold, at least sure; and that this their contention is proved by the greater prices cited in particular by Pliny, by the loves caused by the marvellous beauty of certain statues, and by the judgment of him who made the statue of sculpture of gold and that of painting of silver, and placed the first on the right and the second on the left. Nor do they even refrain from quoting ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... true as long as they last, and none the less so because they have given rise to occasional varieties. The tailless Manx cats, like the curtailed fox in the fable, have not induced the normal breeds to dispense with their tails, nor have the Dorkings (apparently known to Pliny) affected the permanence of the common sort ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... labour in observing nature and recording their observations. Another point is clear, namely, that the results of these early observations, crude as they were, contributed powerfully to give stability to the societies in which they arose. The younger Pliny points out later the calming effect of Greek astronomy on the minds of the Eastern peoples, and we are bound to carry back the same idea into the ancient settled communities where astronomy ...
— Progress and History • Various
... layer, and assumes naturally an oval shape. This growth of the pearl, as it is incorrectly termed, can be seen by breaking open a $500 gem, when the nacre will be seen in layers, resembling the section of an onion. The Romans were particularly fond of pearls, and, according to Pliny, the wife of Caius Caligula possessed a collection valued at over $8,000,000 of our money. Julius Caesar presented a jewel to the mother of Brutus valued at $250,000, while the pearl drank by Cleopatra was estimated at $400,000. Tavernier, the famous traveler, sold a pearl to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... is, that there follows a hazard of life to them that pull it up, that some evil fate pursues them, and that they live not very long hereafter. Therefore the attempt hereof among the ancients was not in ordinary way; but, as Pliny informeth, when they intended to take up the root of this plant, they took the wind thereof, and with a sword describing three circles about it, they digged it up, looking toward the west. A conceit not only injurious unto truth and confutable by daily experience, but somewhat derogatory ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... they possess or not a great central cavity, as in Palma. Where this cavity is present, it has probably been due to one or more great explosions similar to that which destroyed a great part of ancient Vesuvius in the time of Pliny. Similar paroxysmal catastrophes have caused in historical times the truncation on a grand scale of some large cones in Java and elsewhere. (Principles volume 2 ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... for Heaven's sake, counsel me. Ladies;—servant, you have read Pliny and Paracelsus; ne'er a word now to comfort a poor gentlewoman? Ay me, what fortune had I, to marry ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... afraid I have nothing to offer you in exchange, except Pliny, perhaps. And still—you know what he said of Igharghar, according to King Juba. However, come help me put my traps in place and you will see ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Iota. By his particular application to this language above the rest, he attained so great a proficiency therein, that Gronovius ingenuously confesses he durst not confer with this child in Greek at eight years old; and at fourteen he composed a tragedy in the same language, as the younger Pliny ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the hands of Nature, who does not only set him up for a mark for others to shoot at, but delights herself to blow him up like a glass, till she see him break, even with her own breath? Nay, if this infectious vapour were sought for, or travelled to, as Pliny hunted after the vapour of AEtna and dared and challenged Death in the form of a vapour to do his worst, and felt the worst, he died; or if this vapour were met withal in an ambush, and we surprised with it, out of a long ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... travels, Montesquieu resolved to restore his tone by intercourse with the past. "I confess my liking for the ancients," he used to say; "this antiquity enchants me, and I am always ready to say with Pliny, 'You are going to Athens; revere the gods.'" It was not, however, on the Greeks that he concentrated the working of his mind; in 1734, he published his Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur et de la decadence des Romaine. Montesquieu ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... we possess, scattered through Pliny and Dionysius Cassius, agree in stating that the Druids chose dark places for their ceremonies, like the depths of the woods with "their vast silence." And as Carnac is situated on the coast, and surrounded by a barren ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... dene-holes, and have assisted in fixing the date of their formation to pre-Roman times. Very few relics of antiquarian value have been discovered in any of the known dene-holes which have assisted in fixing the date or determining the uses of these prehistoric excavations. Pliny mentions pits sunk to a depth of a hundred feet, "where they branched out like the veins of mines." This has been used in support of the theory that dene-holes were wells sunk for the extraction of chalk; but no known dene-hole branches out in this ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... to Egypt, from the fact, which is quite indisputable, that at that time, for two centuries or perhaps more, it emitted in the early morning a musical sound, which was regarded as a sort of standing miracle. The fact is mentioned by Strabo, Pliny the elder, Pausanias, Tacitus, Juvenal, Lucian, Philostratus, and others, and is recorded by a number of ear-witnesses on the lower part of the colossus itself in inscriptions which may be seen at the present day. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... in his hand and examined it minutely: "It is the Rosa Blanda," he said, "five cleft sepals that terminate in a tube. Pliny tells us that in ancient days the warriors used the petals of this rose to garnish their choicest meats. Who is that quaint ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... produces barley on a scale not known elsewhere, for the return is said to be three hundred-fold. All other wants are supplied by the palm, which furnishes not only bread, but wine, vinegar, honey, and meal." Pliny follows Theophrastus, with the exception that he makes the return of the wheat-crop, where the land is well farmed, a hundred and fifty-fold. The wealth of the region was strikingly exhibited by the heavy demands ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites, "wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon." My journal for the last year or two has been selenitic in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... valley of El Ghor , not far from the junction of the latter with the Jordan. I am doubtful to what ancient city the ruins of Om Keis are to be ascribed.[It was probably Gamala, which Josephus describes as standing upon a mountain bordered by precipices. Gadara appears from the authorities of Pliny and Jerom to have been at the warm baths, mentioned below, on the north side of the Sheriat el Mandhour; Gadara Hieromiace praefluente. Plin. Nat. Hist. l.i.c.18. Gadara, urbs trans Jordanem contra Scythopolin et Tiberiadem, ad orientalem plagam, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... work of Discord makes the temple of Concord.' That year there was a famous vintage, and nearly two centuries afterwards there was some wine which had been made at the time that Caius Gracchus died. The wine, says the elder Pliny, tasted like and had the consistency of bitterish honey. But the memory of the great tribune has lasted longer than the wine, and will be honoured for ever by all those who revere patriotism and admire ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... brimstone! Such enlivening whiffs of hot steam and sulphuric fumes! Then too the grand veil of impenetrable white smoke that hung over the yawning abyss! No wonder people rave about this crater and no wonder poor Pliny lost his life coming too near the fascinating monster. The ascent of Vesuvius is no mean undertaking, and I advise all American parents to train their children especially for it by drilling them ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... an ancient nation inhabiting the mountainous parts of Asia Minor, between Lycia and Pisidia. Pliny mentions them as having become extinct in ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... to live in fine houses, and to indulge in luxuries. But, above all, they had begun to be envious, and quarrelsome, and to dissemble, and to cheat, and to falsify their word, so that they lost the character, which Pliny, an adversary to their religion, had been obliged to give of them, and which they had retained for more than a century, as ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Pliny thus describes him: "He does not impel his body, like other serpents, by a multiplied flexion, but advances lofty and upright. He kills the shrubs, not only by contact, but by breathing on them, and splits the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... eyes who sat in state in the front parlour and received his visitors. The books in their cases gave evidence of little use for many years, although their character indicated the tastes of a man of culture. His Pliny, Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, Sophocles, and Homer had evidently been read by a man who knew their beauties and loved them for ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... cedar tree, fair flourishing, On whose top branches kingly eagles perch, And by the bark a canker creeps me up, And gets unto the highest bough of all; The motto, AEque tandem. K. Edw. And what is yours, my Lord of Lancaster? Lan. My lord, mine's more obscure than Mortimer's. Pliny reports, there is a flying-fish Which all the other fishes deadly hate, And therefore, being pursu'd, it takes the air: No sooner is it up, but there's a fowl That seizeth it: this fish, my lord, I bear; The motto this, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... in an age given over to ecclesiastical dreamings. Yet in some regards there is matter for surprise as to the works preserved. Thus, as we have seen, the very extensive works of Aristotle on natural history, and the equally extensive natural history of Pliny, which were preserved throughout this period, and are still extant, make up relatively bulky volumes. These works seem to have interested the monks of the Middle Ages, while many much more important scientific books were allowed to perish. A considerable ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... M. Monceaux confines his identification to equatorial Africa and to India, he does not omit to state that Pliny and other writers speak of dwarf tribes in other localities, and among these are "the vague regions of the north, designated by the name of Thule." This area, vague enough certainly, is the territory with which Fians and Picts are both ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... advantage in Pliny's entering the employ of a stranger. He was paid four dollars a week, whereas Mr. Tarbox paid his boy but two. Here, then, was a clear gain of two dollars ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... The word means "seat of the muses." Translation: "O sea! O shore! my own Helicon, / How many things have you uncovered to me, how many things suggested!" Pliny, Letters, Book I, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... to tell you. Eleven o'clock is striking. I will content myself with offering you a bet. Your copy of Pliny against my Quintilian, that you have not judged rightly, and that the ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... India of such a size as to be capable of swallowing stags and bulls; and Valerius Maximus, quoting a lost portion of Pliny's work, narrates the alarm into which the troops under Regulus were thrown by a serpent which had its lair on the banks of the river Bagradas, between Utica and Carthage, and which intercepted the passage to the river. It resisted ordinary ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... "Pez muy comun en los mares setentrionales de Espana, de un pie de largo, comprimido, de color por el lomo azul claro, y por el vientre bianco." (Diccionario de la Academia.)—Probably the Sparus of Pliny. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... were vessels of commerce and gilded galleys for the pleasures of the rich citizens. The boats of the fishermen glided to and fro, and afar off you saw the tall masts of the fleet under the command of Pliny. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... insulated like its neighbor, is called Procida, a scion of ancient Greece. Its people still preserve, in dress and speech, marks of their origin. The narrow strait conducts you to a high and naked bluff! That is the Misenum, of old. Here Eneas came to land, and Rome held her fleets, and thence Pliny took the water, to get a nearer view of the labors of the volcano, after its awakening from centuries of sleep. In the hollow of the ridge, between that naked bluff and the next swell of the mountain, lie the fabulous Styx, the Elysian ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... must recall everything, to the minutest trace left in your memory. You will win the gratitude of after-times by leaving a record of the aspect Greece bore while yet the barbarians had not swept away every trace of the structures that Pausanias and Pliny described: you will take those great writers as your models; and such contribution of criticism and suggestion as my riper mind can supply shall not be wanting to you. There will be much to tell; for you have travelled, you said, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... merrily and happily enough, till, in the year A.D. 79 (that was eight years, you know, after the Emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem), there was stationed in the Bay of Naples a Roman admiral, called Pliny, who was also a very studious and learned man, and author of a famous old book on natural history. He was staying on shore with his sister; and as he sat in his study she called him out to see a strange cloud which had been hanging for some time over the top of Mount Vesuvius. ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... than F. vesca, more hairy, and its fruit a deeper red; the flavour, like that of the garden-hautboy, rather musty; in its uses and qualities, it resembles F. vesca. The strawberry does not seem to have been noticed by the ancients, though it is slightly named by Virgil, Ovid, and Pliny. It appears to have been cultivated in England early, as an old writer, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... known to the Egyptians. Pliny says they held in their mouths, as a remedy for toothache, wine in which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Pliny,[S] who tells us that not only the remembrance of this event, but that the stone itself was preserved to his days, says, it was of a dark burnt colour. And though he does indeed speak of it as being ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... 318. Many males, many females. Pliny says this flower never opens its petals but when the wind blows; whence its name: it has properly no calix, but two or three sets of petals, three in each set, which are folded over the stamens and pistil in a singular and beautiful ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... month alone, and then tried to sift until they found something typical. Mrs. Comstock was a great help. Her mother had been Dutch and had brought from Holland numerous quaint sayings and superstitions easily traceable to Pliny's Natural History; and in Mrs. Comstock's early years in Ohio she had heard much Indian talk among her elders, so she knew the signs of each season, and sometimes they helped. Always her practical thought and sterling common sense ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... admonishing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God" (Col. iii. 16). The Jesuit, Father Arevalo, in his Hymodia Hispanica, cites many witnesses, such as Clement of Alexandria, the Apostolic Constitutions, Pliny the younger, to prove that hymns were used in the first and second centuries. But a much-debated question is, whether those hymns were really made part of the Office, as hymns stand there to-day. Some scholars deny that they were; others assert that they were ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions of impending calamities, inspired the Pagans with the apprehension of some danger, which would arise from the new sect, the more alarming as it was the more obscure. "Whatever," says Pliny, "may be the principle of their conduct, their inflexible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and Jewish colonists, who brought with them the methods of manufacture peculiar to their own countries, and founded workshops which soon developed into flourishing establishments. It is to the Alexandrians that Pliny ascribes the invention of weaving with several warps, thus producing the stuff called brocades (polymita); and in the time of the first Caesars, it was a recognised fact that "the needle of Babylon was henceforth surpassed by the comb ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... their fancies or their prejudices, very different degrees of antiquity. Those who are most disposed to do it honor in this respect, contend that it was the capital of the tribe mentioned by Caesar, in his Commentaries, under the name of Unelli; and called by Pliny, Venelli; and by Ptolemy, Veneli. They are guided in this opinion exclusively by locality. Others, with a greater appearance of probability, at least as far as any reliance may be placed upon etymology, maintain that Coutances had no existence before the days of the Emperor, Constantius ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... describes the effect of earthquakes upon coast-lines of the Grecian Archipelago, similar to that which took place in the case of the earthquake of Lisbon, the sea first retiring and afterwards inundating the shore. Pliny supposed that it was by earthquake avulsion that islands were naturally formed. Thus Sicily was torn from Italy, Cyprus from Syria, Euboea from Boeotia, and the rest; but this view was previously enunciated by Aristotle in his "Peri kosmou," where ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... an argument unlooked for, unthought of, and sells better than a scurrile pamphlet," tum maxime cum novitas excitat [53]palatum. "Many men," saith Gellius, "are very conceited in their inscriptions," "and able" (as [54]Pliny quotes out of Seneca) "to make him loiter by the way that went in haste to fetch a midwife for his daughter, now ready to lie down." For my part, I have honourable [55]precedents for this which I have done: I will cite one for all, Anthony Zara, Pap. Epis., his Anatomy of Wit, in four sections, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... used in sauces and other culinary preparations; yet there are numerous instances on record of the deleterious effects of some species of these fungi, almost all of which are fraught with poison.[114] Pliny already exclaims against the luxury of his countrymen in this article, and wonders what extraordinary pleasure there can be in eating such ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... deambulationes, i. e. subterranean parades. Vitruvius treats of this luxurious class of apartments in connection with the Apothecae, and other repositories or store-rooms, which were also in many cases under ground, for the same reason as our ice-houses, wine-cellars, &c. He (and from him Pliny and Apollonaris Sidonius), calls them crypto-porticus (cloistral colonnades); and Ulpian calls them refugia (sanctuaries, or places of refuge); St. Ambrose notices them under the name of hypogaea and umbrosa penetralia, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... I.22: ——I saw him fumble with the sheets,] Pliny, in his chapter on the signs of death, makes mention of "a fumbling and pleiting of the bed-clothes." The same indication of approaching death is enumerated by ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... say a word of the Latin comedy. When the arts passed from Greece to Rome, comedy took its turn among the rest; but the Romans applied themselves only to the new species, without chorus or personal abuse; though, perhaps, they might have played some translations of the old or the middle comedy; for Pliny gives an account of one which was represented in his own time. But the Roman comedy, which was modelled upon the last species of the Greek, hath, nevertheless, its different ages, according as its authors were rough or polished. The pieces ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the famous bald men in the history of human society, and this list has grown until it includes the names of thousands, representing every profession and vocation. Homer, Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Pliny, Maecenas, Julius Caesar, Horace, Shakespeare, Bacon, Napoleon Bonaparte, Dante, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Israel Putnam, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry—these geniuses all were bald. But the baldest of all was the philosopher Hobbes, of whom the revered John Aubrey has recorded that ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... "These canals however flowed, not from the Tigris into the Euphrates, but from the Euphrates into the Tigris, as is shown not only by Herodotus, Diodorus, Arrian, Pliny, Ammianus, but by later writers." Kuehner. But "the difference in the level of the rivers is so slight that —— it is probable that by merely altering the diagonal direction of a canal, the waters could be made to flow either way; certainly so at ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... attributed to Plato, which was a favourite in Renaissance days. Also he completed the chief composition of his lifetime, the De inuentione dialectica, a considerable treatise on rhetoric. His favourite books, Geldenhauer tells us, were Pliny's Natural History, the younger Pliny's Letters, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, and selections from Cicero and Plato. These were his travelling library, carried with him wherever he went; two of them, Pliny's Letters and Quintilian, he had copied out with his own hand. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... brought to England in the sixteenth century, to the South downs of Surrey, and Sussex, and to Box Hill by an Earl of Arundel for his Countess, who had them dressed, and ate them because of her consumptive disease. Likewise in Pliny's time Snails beaten up with warm water were commended for the cure of coughs. Gipsies are great Snail eaters, but they first starve the creatures, which are given to devour the deadly Night Shade, and other poisonous ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Arabs have told me that the fat of the hyena is used by native thieves and burglars to smear on their bodies when they go marauding. The dogs, they say, are so terrorized by the smell of it, so numbed with fear and loathing, that they have not the heart to bark. (Pliny records an ancient notion to the effect that dogs, on coming in contact with the ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to tell you about Muttra, which is a very ancient place. It is mentioned by Pliny, the Latin historian, Ptolemy, the Egyptian geographer, and other writers previous to the Christian era, and is associated with the earliest Aryan migrations. Here Krishna, the divine herdsman, was born. He spent his childhood tending cattle in the village of Gokul, where ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... any temptation, it should not be in favor of giving noxious agents, as it clearly must be in the case of English druggists and "General Practitioners." The complaint against the other course is a very old one. Pliny, inspired with as truly Roman horror of quackery as the elder Cato,—who declared that the Greek doctors had sworn to exterminate all barbarians, including the Romans, with their drugs, but is said to have ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to our times. The first writer after Aristotle whose works arrest attention is Caius Plinius Secundus, whose so-called "Natural History," in thirty-seven volumes, remains to the present day as a monument of industrious compilation. But, as a biologist properly so called, Pliny is absolutely without rank, for he lacked that practical acquaintance with the subject which alone could enable him to speak with authority. Of information he had an almost inexhaustible store; of actual knowledge, the ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... ancient republican form.[304] This difference of opinion laid the foundation of a lasting quarrel between the rival advisers, to which Philostratus makes frequent allusion in the course of his history. Euphrates is mentioned by the ancients in terms of high commendation; by Pliny especially, who knew him well.[305] He seems to have seen through his opponent's religious pretences, as we gather even from Philostratus;[306] and when so plain a reason exists for the dislike which Apollonius, in his Letters, and Philostratus, manifest towards him, their censure ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... emancipation has been tried, and where a detailed result of it has been made known, I cannot confirm it by other similar examples. I must have recourse therefore to some new species of proof. Now it is an old maxim, as old as the days of Pliny and Columella, and confirmed by Dr. Adam Smith, and all the modern writers on political economy, that the labour of free men is cheaper than the labour of slaves. If therefore I should be able to show that this maxim would ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... The word has been in use since the time of Pliny, who lived neighbor to Paul in Rome, when the Apostle abided in his own hired house, awaiting trial under an indictment for saying things about the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... military sentiment has been echoed by the approving voice of many a general and statesman of antiquity. See Pliny's Panegyric on Trajan. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... and methods of the early printers. Among the first books so acquired was a copy of Leonard of Arezzo's History of Florence, printed at Venice by Jacobus Rubeus in 1476, in a Roman type very similar to that of Nicholas Jenson. Parts of this book and of Jenson's Pliny of 1476 were enlarged by photography in order to bring out more clearly the characteristics of the various letters; and having mastered both their virtues and defects, William Morris proceeded to design the fount of type which, in the list of December, 1892, he named the ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... Aix [55] quotes the testimony of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Olympiodorus, and Photius. Under Vespasian and Titus, Pliny, the naturalist, exclaimed: "Large estates have ruined Italy, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... actualities, and by beginning with the secret of what they are, make sure that you take them with you. So then the latent human vanity, must needs be confessed, and instead of taking it all to himself this time, poor Cicero and Pliny are dragged up, the latter very unjustly, as the commentator complains, to stand the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... themselves in these matters with the wisest of kings. Father, if you are led by me you will not consult them in regard to the pious Orberosia. When they have given their opinion you will not be a bit farther on than before. Virginity is not less difficult to prove than to keep. Pliny tells us in his history that its signs are either imaginary or very uncertain.* One who bears upon her the fourteen signs of corruption may yet be pure in the eyes of the angels, and, on the contrary, another who has ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... "to furnish us with their standard of style;" for the accounts are so contradictory, that we should have little to rely upon. The works of the ancient artists are all lost: we must be content with the "hasty compilations of a warrior," Pliny, or the "incidental remarks of an orator," (rhetorician,) Quintilian. The former chiefly valuable when he quotes—for then, as Reynolds observed, "he speaks the language of an artist:" as in his account of the glazing method of Apelles; the manner in which Protogenes embodied his colours; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Crescenzi he names as an author of the fifteenth century; he should be credited to the fourteenth. He also commits the very common error in writers on gardening, of confounding the Tuscan villa of Pliny with that at Tusculum. These two places of the Roman Consul ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Montaigne took his facts is the elder Pliny, who, in his Natural History, Book X, Chapter 83, says, "Other animals become sated with veneral pleasures; man hardly knows any satiety. Messalina, the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a palm quite worthy of an empress, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kind are related.[587] In the "Causes Celebres," they make mention of a girl who became enceinte during a long swoon; we have already noticed this. Pliny cites[588] a great number of instances of persons who have been thought dead, and who have come to life again, and lived for a long time. He mentions a young man, who having fallen asleep in a cavern, remained ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... may not be so well aware from whence that name is derived. It had long been the fashion among ancient geographers to compare the shape of this region to a platane leaf; [Footnote: Strabo, viii. 2; Pliny, H.N. iv. 5; Agathemerus, I.i. p. 15; echein de omoion schaema phullps platanan] and a glance at the map will show that the general outline of that leaf, with its sharply- incised edges, justified the comparison. This, however, had remained merely as a comparison; but at the shifting ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... mood lies one of the most significant changes that has ever passed over the human mind. The medieval age was tempted to look backward for its knowledge of everything. Philosophy was to be found in Aristotle, science in Pliny and his like. It was the ancients who were wise; it was the ancients who had understood nature and had known God. The farther back you went the nearer you came to the venerable and the authoritative. As, therefore, in every other realm folk looked back for knowledge, so it was most natural ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the most important of all colours in the gradations of society. A licensed beggar in Scotland, called a bedesmen, is so privileged on receiving a blue gown. Pliny informs us that blue was the colour in which the Gauls clothed their slaves; and blue coats, for many ages, were the liveries of servants, apprentices, and even of younger brothers, as now of the Blue Coat Boys, and of other Blue Schools in the country. Women used ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various |
