"Actium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down to them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered flight, as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of Anthony's soldiership, he had easily brought Anthony down.—Why did Cleopatra lose Actium for Anthony? ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... autumn's gentle eve, Childe Harold hailed Leucadia's cape afar; A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave: Oft did he mark the scenes of vanished war, Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar: Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight (Born beneath some remote inglorious star) In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight, But loathed the bravo's trade, and ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... broken in three places, the hieroglyphics are still legible. This obelisk was first erected in Egypt as a part of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, in a period preceding that of Rameses II. After the battle of Actium, Augustus transported it to Rome, and it was first placed in the Circus Maximus, but during the reign of Valentinian it fell from its pedestal and lay buried in the earth, until in the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus V had it placed ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... and Lecheus, those excellent ports, drew all that traffic of the Ionian and Aegean seas to it; and yet the country about it was curva et superciliosa, as [560]Strabo terms it, rugged and harsh. We may say the same of Athens, Actium, Thebes, Sparta, and most of those towns in Greece. Nuremberg in Germany is sited in a most barren soil, yet a noble imperial city, by the sole industry of artificers, and cunning trades, they draw the riches ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... attributed to him. Another very celebrated work of Scopas was the statue of the Pythian Apollo playing on the lyre, which Augustus placed in the temple which he built to Apollo, on the Palatine, in thanksgiving for his victory at Actium. An inferior Roman copy of this statue is in the Vatican. He was also celebrated for his heads of Apollo. Of these many excellent copies are still extant, the finest being that formerly in the Giustiniani collection, and now in the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... most august, the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, have made puns. Jesus Christ made a pun on St. Peter, Moses on Isaac, AEschylus on Polynices, Cleopatra on Octavius. And observe that Cleopatra's pun preceded the battle of Actium, and that had it not been for it, no one would have remembered the city of Toryne, a Greek name which signifies a ladle. That once conceded, I return to my exhortation. I repeat, brothers, I repeat, no zeal, no hubbub, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that the assassination of a ruler is a blunder as well as a crime. In vain does Mark Antony desert the movement, rally Egypt and the barbaric East, and seek to transfer the seat of empire from the Tiber to the banks of the Nile or the Orontes; plebeian and imperial Rome wins a final victory at Actium, and definitively secures the empire of the civilized world ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... tempest that only plays at ferocity; but you are very pretty. That is why I am thinking, light-headedly, it would be a fine and past doubt an agreeable exploit to give up everything for such a woman, and am complacently comparing myself to Antony at Actium. I am thinking it would be an interesting episode in one's Life and Letters. You see, my dear, I honestly believe the world revolves around John Charteris—although of course I would never admit that to you if I thought for a moment ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... enemy's, fastened together by landing-bridges, and the glory of victory was due not to Neptune but to Mars. It was not until the civil wars at the close of the republic that real naval battles occurred, and that Neptune received his share of glory for the victory at Actium in B.C. 31, and later over Sextus Pompeius, in a temple erected by Agrippa in the Campus Martius, behind the beautiful columns of which the Roman ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... consulship of Servius Galba, in which Titus Vinius was his colleague. Many historians have dealt with the 820 years of the earlier period beginning with the foundation of Rome, and the story of the Roman Republic has been told with no less ability than truth. After the Battle of Actium, when the interests of peace were served by the centralization of all authority in the hands of one man, there followed a dearth of literary ability, and at the same time truth suffered more and more, partly ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... last, the great cemetery declaimer and long distance assassin, Mark Antony, was driven out of his vast dominions after a big naval defeat at Actium, in September, 31 B.C., retreated to Alexandria, called for more reinforcements and didn't get them. Deserted by his fleet, and reduced to a hand-me-down suit of clothes and a two-year-old plug hat, he wrote a poetic wail addressed to Cleopatra and sent it to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... will we burn; And, with the rest full-mann'd, from the head of Actium Beat the approaching Caesar. But if we fail, We then can ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... found a seal wrapped in a woollen cloth. 5th. A figure of Hercules, by Lysimachus, of such vast dimensions that the thumb was equal in circumference to the waist of a man. 6th. The Ass and his Driver, cast by order of Augustus after the battle of Actium, in commemoration of his having discovered the position of Anthony through the means of an ass-driver. 7th. The Wolf suckling the Twins of Rome. 8th. The gladiator in combat with a lion. 9th. The Hippopotamus. 10th. The Sphinxes. 11th. An Eagle fighting with a Serpent. 12th. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... a great student in my youth," said he. "Once I could tell you all the kings of Rome and the date of the battle of Actium. But pressure of weightier concerns has driven my erudition from me. Pardon me. I have not yet asked after your health. You are looking sad and troubled. What is ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... of Italy, and the supporter of the sovereignty of the Eternal City. Both parties made the most gigantic preparations. Octavius met the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra just off the promontory of Actium, on the Grecian coast. While the issue of the battle that there took place was yet undecided, Cleopatra turned her galley in flight. The Egyptian ships, to the number of fifty, followed her example. Antony, as soon as he perceived the withdrawal ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... knew at once, as by instinct, which of course it could not have been, that it was the life-boat. But in its gorgeous colours, red and white and green, it looked more like the galley that bore Cleopatra to Actium. Nor, floating so light on the top of the water, and broad in the beam withal, curved upward and ornamented at stern and stem, did it look at all like a creature formed to battle with the fierce elements. A pleasure-boat for floating between ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Southward lay the Ionian Islands; he looked for Ithaca, and grieved that it had been passed in the hours of darkness. But the nearest point of the main shore was a rocky promontory; it reminded him that in these waters was fought the battle of Actium. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... support of the East in the conflict. He made alliance with a Median king who betrothed his daughter to Cleopatra's infant son Alexander; but he made the fatal mistake of allowing Cleopatra to accompany him to Samos, where he gathered his army, and even to Actium, where she led the way in flying from the fight, and so persuading the infatuated Antony to leave his army and join in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... made over its carcass. That struggle was neither a Pharsalia, in which two great men contended for supremacy in a republic, nor a Philippi, in which parties fought deliberately in support of certain principles, but an Actium; and the question to be decided was, With which of two energetic forms of force should the victory be? Louis Napoleon contended for the imperial form, for the rehabilitation of the scheme of his uncle, and for an opportunity to develop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... significant roll might be made of those who have been great intellectually and pitiful failures morally! It has often been affirmed that Hannibal might have conquered Rome, and been the master of the world except for the fatal winter at Capua. Antony, possibly, would have been victor at Actium if it had not been for something in himself that made him susceptible to the fascination of the fair but treacherous Egyptian queen. Achilles was a symbolical as well as an historical character. There was one place—with him in the ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... pity for things human of the Aeneid—has sung the tranquil beauty of the Saturnian age; yet the peace which suggests his prophetic memory or hope is but the peace of Octavianus, the end of civil discord, of the proscriptions, the conflicts of Pharsalia, Philippi, Actium, a moment's respite to a ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... quarters flows a golden sea; But foaming surges there in silver play. The dancing dolphins with their tails divide The glitt'ring waves, and cut the precious tide. Amid the main, two mighty fleets engage Their brazen beaks, oppos'd with equal rage. Actium surveys the well-disputed prize; Leucate's wat'ry plain with foamy billows fries. Young Caesar, on the stern, in armor bright, Here leads the Romans and their gods to fight: His beamy temples shoot their flames afar, And o'er his head is hung the Julian star. Agrippa seconds ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil |
