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More "Nero" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it may be understood more clearly what I call "old" and what "ancient," the "ancient" were the works made before Constantine in Corinth, in Athens, in Rome, and in other very famous cities, until the time of Nero, the Vespasians, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus; whereas those others are called "old" that were executed from S. Silvester's day up to that time by a certain remnant of Greeks, who knew rather how to dye than ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... vital drama, written when Racine was twenty-eight years old, brought him immediate fame. During the next ten years (1667-77) he produced a series of masterpieces, of which perhaps the most interesting are Britannicus, where the youthful Nero, just plunging into crime, is delineated with supreme mastery; Bajazet, whose subject is a contemporary tragedy of the seraglio at Constantinople; and a witty comedy, Les Plaideurs, based on Aristophanes. Racine's character was a complex one; ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... Osiris claimed the world's {91} worship. In the new form of the Osir-hapi of Memphis, or Serapis, the Ptolemies identified him with Zeus, both in appearance and by attributes. And, by the time of Nero, Isis and Osiris were said to be the deities of all the world. An interesting outline of this subject will be found in Professor Dill's Roman Society ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... 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, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... his father and the Duke promises to avenge himself on Gloucester. Then the scene shifts back to Lear. Kent, Edgar, Gloucester, Lear, and the fool are at a farm and talking. Edgar says: "Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness...." The fool says: "Tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman?" Lear, having lost his mind, says that the madman is a king. The fool says no, the madman is the yeoman who has allowed his son to become a gentleman. Lear screams: ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... people—the mad caprices and horrid deeds of the Romanoffs, who, in centuries gone by, surpassed in restless melancholy and atrocity the insane Caesars, and were more to be pitied, as well as detested, than Tiberius or Nero—the nature of the landscape, the waste of steppes, the dreariness of winter, and the loneliness of summer—the barbaric extravagance of aristocratic life—the red tape, extortion, and cruelty of officers—the sublime patience of the common people—the devotion of the enduring, starving multitude ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... philosopher L. Annaeus Seneca was born at Corduba (Cordova), in Spain, about the beginning of the Christian era. While the date of his birth is a matter for conjecture, the circumstances of his death are notorious. He was a victim of Nero's jealousy and ingratitude in 65 A.D., when the emperor seized upon a plot against himself as the pretext for sentencing Seneca to enforced suicide. In the vivid pages of the historian Tacitus, there are few more pathetic descriptions than that recounting the slow ebbing of the old philosopher's ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Nero used to call mushrooms the relish of the gods, because Claudius, his predecessor, having been, as was supposed, poisoned by them, was, after his death, ranked ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... years old. I have no pets now, but I had a Newfoundland dog named Nero, and a pussy named Major. On the 14th of April I was in the woods, and I found two buttercups. They were the first wild flowers I have seen ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... attentive as 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 ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... Gracious Heart: Let them commend | Annal. l. 13.] their Wit, Wealth, Beautie, | Nobilitie, and other Gifts of | Fortune (as they call them) in | stead of Vertues[f]. Wee the | [Note f: Laudauit ipse Nero apud Ministers of Christ, and Stewards | rostra formam eius & quod diuinae of the Mysteries of God, must | formae parens fuisset, aliaque adorne none with the Honourable | fortunae munera pro Virtutibus. ...
— The Praise of a Godly Woman • Hannibal Gamon
... priestly chair for twenty-five years." On the same venerable authority it is known that Peter suffered two years after the death of the great Roman philosopher, Seneca, who was executed by order of Nero in the sixty-fifth year of the Christian era. In the same work (de viris illustribus), St. Jerome says that SS. Peter and Paul were put to death in the fourteenth year of Nero's reign, which corresponds with ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... pedagogy. 2. Seneca,—the teacher of Nero, great orator, writer, etc., pedagogical writings. 3. Quintilian,—his school, his "Institutes of Oratory," pedagogical principles. 4. Plutarch ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... trip I was told by an Italian antiquarian how the names 'White' (Bianca), 'Green' (Verdi) and 'Black' (Nero) first were ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... the action, Nero saw an opportunity in it whereof he took advantage, for he pounced upon the well-bitten tart, and bore ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the youngest children in my family; only Sammy and Millie was younger than I was. My big brothers was Adam, August and Nero, and my big sisters was Flora, Nancy and Rhoda. We could work a mighty big patch for our own selves when we was all at home together, and put in all the work we had to for the old Master too, but after the War the big children ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... born at Sparta among those pretended heroes who made it a virtue to insult nature, practised theft, and gloried in the murder of a Helot; or at Carthage, the scene of human sacrifices, or at Rome amid the proscriptions or under the rule of a Nero or a Caligula? Let as agree that man advances, though ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... think Rosie does anything of the kind, Lulu," said Max, patting Nero's head; "she may not be very fond of you, and certainly does not admire your behavior at times, but I don't believe it amounts ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... the infancy of the Roman Empire, we find a counterfeit Agrippa, after him a counterfeit Nero; and before them two counterfeit Alexanders, in Syria. But never was a nation so troubled with these mock kings as England; a counterfeit Richard II. being made in the time of Henry IV.; a counterfeit Mortimer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... much maligned potentate the Emperor Nero had any real notion of the capabilities of glass when he established the first glassworks at Rome, the lamentation with which he took farewell of the world, 'qualis artifex pereo,' may have been inspired ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... A. D. 64. The occasion was the great fire which destroyed a large part of the city of Rome. To turn public suspicion from himself as responsible for the fire, Nero attempted to make the Christians appear as the incendiaries. Many were put to death in horrible and fantastic ways. It was not, however, a persecution directed against Christianity as an unlawful religion. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Aurelius, the philosopher who although bound up in learning himself allowed his family free rein in their vices and finally turned the Empire over to his son Commodus, one of the most vicious men of all time. But take Caligula and Nero if you will. Both of them stepped into power comparatively clean and with the best of prospects. Well approved, well loved. What happened to them ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... the imagination alike of exploiters and exploited. Reformers and pacifists yearned for it as a means of establishing a well-knit society of progressive and pacific peoples and setting a term to sanguinary wars. Some financiers may have longed for it in a spirit analogous to that in which Nero wished that the Roman people had but one neck. And the Conference chiefs seemed to have pictured it to themselves—if, indeed, they meditated such an abstract matter—in the guise of a pax Anglo-Saxonica, the distinctive feature of which would lie in the transfer to the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... at the same moment striking the match on the tense seat of his trousers and holding it to the aperture. "Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness . . . Eh? . . . Good Lord!"— he drew back and dropped the ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... government the sense to let these people alone? After all their revolutions and convulsions, they have sunk into perfect political indifference, and literally care not a straw whether they are governed by Napoleon, Nero, or Nebuchadnezzar. To be always appealing to them with Bonapartist demonstrations and manifestoes, is to awaken political sentiments, in them, and so to create a danger which does ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... am," Cesario 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 ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... value. The son of ado the Goldsmith, Edward, was the "king's beloved clerk," and was made "keeper of the shrine." Most of the little statuettes were described as having stones set somewhere about them: "an image of St. Peter holding a church in one hand and the keys in the other, trampling on Nero, who had a big sapphire on his breast;" and "the Blessed Virgin with her Son, set with rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and garnets," are among those cited. The whole shrine was described as "a basilica adorned with ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... were very prosperous, and a Latin strain was introduced into the land. Though Fezzan was occupied by them, the Romans elsewhere found the Sahara an impassable barrier. Nubia and Abyssinia were reached, but an expedition sent by the emperor Nero to discover the source of the Nile ended in failure. The utmost extent of geographical knowledge of the continent is shown in the writings of Ptolemy (2nd century A.D.), who knew of or guessed the existence of the great lake reservoirs of the Nile ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... tyrant old, The mocking witness of his crime, In thee shall loathing eyes behold The Nero ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with all ardour and industry. That the distinction I have made between old and ancient may be better understood I will explain that I call ancient the things produced before Constantine at Corinth, Athens, Rome and other renowned cities, until the days of Nero, Vaspasian, Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus; the old works are those which are due to the surviving Greeks from the days of St Silvester, whose art consisted rather of tinting than of painting. For the original artists of excellence had perished in the wars, as I have said, and the ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... "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 quite ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kitchin-garden at the plain at Chalke is a monosyllabicall Echo; but it is sullen and mute till you advance .... paces on the easie ascent, at which place one's mouth is opposite to the middle of the heighth of the house at right angles; and then, - to use the expression of the Emperor Nero,- ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... "You think a great deal about blood nowadays," he commented. "People will be mistaking you for such a poet as was crowned Nero, who, likewise, gave his time to ballad-making and to murdering fathers of the Church. Eh, dear Ahenabarbus, let us first see what the Rue Saint Jacques has to say about your recent gambols. After that, I think you will ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... theory that Petronius may have had the composition of his Satirae suggested to him by plays of this type is greatly strengthened by the fact that the mime reached its highest point of popularity at the court in the time of Nero, in whose reign Petronius lived. In point of fact Petronius refers to the mime frequently. One of these passages is of peculiar significance in this connection. Encolpius and his comrades are entering the town ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... Junie in Britannicus, with Mounet-Sully, who played admirably as Nero. In this delicious role of Junie I obtained ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the crown must first bear the cross, and these early Christians had to pass through dreadful days of persecution. Some of them were made food for the torches of the atrocious Nero, others were thrown into the Imperial fish-ponds to fatten lampreys for the Bacchanalian banquets, and many were mangled to death by savage beasts, or still more savage men, to make sport for thousands ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... intellectual art. Humor exerts an emotional appeal, produces smiles or laughter; wit may be amusing, or it may not, according to the circumstances, but it always provokes an intellectual appreciation. Thus, Nero made a pun on the name of Seneca, when the philosopher was brought before him for sentence. In speaking the decree that the old man should kill himself, the emperor used merely the two Latin words: "Se neca." We admit the ghastly cleverness of the jest, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... is, that the source of all the misfortune which now weighs so heavily upon my bleeding fatherland, is in two ladies—Catharine of Russia, and Sophia of Hapsburg, the ambitious mother of this second Nero, Francis-Joseph. You know that one hundred and fifty years ago, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, the bravest of the brave, foreseeing the growth of Russia, and fearing that it would oppress and overwhelm civilization, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... Herod, was headed with the sword: The rest of the apostles did suffer much turmoil. Good Paul was murthered by Nero his word: Domitian devised a barrel full of oil, The body of John the Evangelist to boil, The Pope at this instant sundry torments procure, For such as by God's holy word will endure. By these former stories two things we may learn And profitably record in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... 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 ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... was held ill-omened, and not permitted to become a priest (Seneca Controv. ii. 4), a practice perpetuated in the various Christian churches. The manufacture was forbidden, to the satisfaction of Martial, by Domitian, whose edict Nero confirmed; and was restored by the Byzantine empire, which advanced eunuchs, like Eutropius and Narses, to the highest dignities of the realm. The cruel custom to the eternal disgrace of mediaeval Christianity was revived in Rome for providing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... what is righteous.... Thereupon Osiander, in order to say something also concerning forgiveness of sins, tears remission of sins from righteousness. He expressly declares that the sins are forgiven to all men; Nero however, is damned because he does not possess the essential righteousness; and this, he says, is God Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.... Osiander contends that man is just on account of the indwelling of God, or on account of the indwelling God, not on account ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... you, great, wonderful chief, Roderick, the Terrible, and fierce Soar superior over all, bloody villain, Force with gold and silver alone— Dictating thy generous onslaughts! Caesar, Pompey and Scipio Could not compete with thy valor; Only Nero, paragon of infamy, Could match the renown of Roderick, Thy fame, great chief, boundless as the globe! Italy, Spain, France and England Pay constant tribute to thy purse, Travelers and pilgrims, seeking glory By kissing the pope's ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... so by 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 ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... rather than by any mortal man, such as were her husband and lovers. But the wiser heads, notably the Fra Battista, whose successor I am as Superior of Santa Croce, held that such exceeding beauty of the flesh came of the operation of the Devil, who is an artist in the sense the dying Nero understood the word when he said, "Qualis artifex pereo!"[1] And we may be sure Satan, the enemy of God, who is cunning to work the metals, excels likewise in ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... in the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of that name, who suffered—at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits,—some few years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red hot iron; and nearly starved forty of us, with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) he had ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... having 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
... force, but always, if we can, conquer by persuasion. In their mythology St George did not conquer the dragon: he tied a pink ribbon round its neck and gave it a saucer of milk. According to them, a course of consistent kindness to Nero would have turned him into something only faintly represented by Alfred the Great. In fact, the policy recommended by this school for dealing with the bovine stupidity and bovine fury of this world is accurately summed up in the celebrated ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... that his Abbotsford, Monte Cristo, was no more a palace than the villa which a retired tradesman builds to shelter his old age. But the money disappeared as fast as if Monte Cristo had really been palatial, and worthy of the fantasy of a Nero. He got into debt, fled to Belgium, returned, founded the Mousquetaire, a literary paper of the strangest and most shiftless kind. In "Alexandre Dumas a la Maison d'Or," M. Philibert Audebrand tells the tale of this Micawber of newspapers. Everything went into it, good or bad, and the name of ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... permit me to call your attention to our jumping dog, Nero. He is the greatest jumping dog in the world, and he will ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... aristocracy, and it embodies the ideas and traditions of the vanquished as they existed far down into the Imperial age. It testifies to the original vitality of the aristocratical faction, when we find a youthful contemporary of Nero dedicating his genius to its service more than a century after the contest had been decided on the battlefield. Whether Lucan was a patriot, or a selfish, but disappointed courtier, we may feel certain that he never could have written in the Pompeian spirit, if that spirit was not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... called the Tiberian, in his own house, consisting 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 ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... emperor that received the faith, procured peace to the Church, and gave her respite from her cruel persecutions, which was in Anno 309 (or thereabouts) after Christ; before which time the Church was miserably wasted and butchered with those ten bloody persecutions, by the tyranny of Nero, and other cruel ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... singularly equable and, whatever the circumstances, he never gave way to anger, but kept his passions well under control. His address was soft and winning, and he had the art of attracting respect and friendship from all who came in contact with him. Poppaea, the wife of Nero, had received him with much favor and, bravely as he fought against them, Vespasian and Titus were, afterwards, as much attached to him as were the Jews of Galilee. There can be no doubt that, had he been otherwise placed than as one of a people on the verge of destruction, Josephus would have ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... heights looking westward toward Trento, all the valleys in the labyrinth of the Dolomites, and several footholds in the Alps of Carinthia. The eastern army was well inside Austrian territory, its left at Caporetto on the Isonzo just under Monte Nero, its center looking down on Gorizia from the heights between Indria and the Isonzo, and its right between Cormons and Terzo. Losses on both sides were surprisingly small considering the extent of territory covered by the fighting. The Austrians, after slight resistance, withdrew ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... wholly justifiable by their results. The manager detected the claque system as a pervading element in almost all conditions of life. To influence large bodies or assemblies, dexterity and stratagem, he declared, were indispensably necessary. The applause exacted by Nero, when he recited his verses or played upon the lute, or Tiberius, posing himself as an orator before the senate, was the work of a claque, moved thereto rather by terror, however, than by pecuniary considerations. Parliamentary ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... youthful flaxen to venerable gray, were bent over their labors. Hecubas and Helens worked side by side; maulsticks everywhere gave the scene the appearance of a winter-denuded thicket; plaster hands, feet and torsos hung upon the walls; bull-headed Nero swelled upon a shelf beside the mutilated Venus which is a revelation of the glory that merely human beauty can attain without a gleam borrowed from the divine; fat Vitellius seemed to snore open-eyed beside lean and wakeful Julius Caesar; a mask of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... who have converted their husbands. Besides, the women are always for Jesus—even the idolaters—as witness Procula, the wife of Pilate, and Poppaea, the concubine of Nero. Don't ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... '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!' She ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to refer at present to the MS. of Oxenedes (Cotton, Nero, D 2), which appears to give the erroneous reading of Tirualli for Triualli or Trivalli; but Mr. Turner might have avoided the mistake by comparing that MS. with the printed text of Hoveden, in which Richard is ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... house full of citrus tables made of veined wood brought from Mount Atlas. While he framed moral precepts which we are besought to substitute for the Sermon on the Mount, he was openly accused of constant and shameless iniquity, and was leading his distinguished and tender pupil, Nero, into those practises and preparing him for those atrocities which Seneca himself had upon his own soul while he wrote his book on clemency. At that hour the Bible Christianity offered to the world's ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... attending the sick? Why teach us to honor an Aristides or a Regulus, and not one who pays an equitable, though to him ruinous, tax without a railing accusation? And why not teach us to help what the laws cannot help?—Why teach us to hate a Nero or an Appius, and not an underselling oppressor of workmen and betrayer of women and children? Why to love a Ladie in bower, and not a wife's fireside? Why paint or poetically depict the horrible race of Ogres and Giants, and not show Giant Despair dressed in that modern ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... 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 at ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... showed us a room in which were heaped up bits of marble of all sorts and sizes, fragments of columns and friezes; and he told us that they never excavated without finding something. And Titus's Baths, less magnificent but equally curious, because they contain the remains of the Golden House of Nero, on which Titus built his Thermae. The ruins are, in fact, part of the Golden House, for the Thermae have been altogether destroyed. Then to the Capitol, Forum, Temple of Vesta, Fortuna Virilis, and other places with Morier. The Capitol contains an interesting collection of busts and statues of all ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... from that time it was pretty well known through the neighbourhood that Dick Lawson had given out that he could make his Rover whip Markland's Nero, a noble animal that had never been matched by any dog around. Markland's son felt his pride in his dog touched at this, and challenged Dick to a battle. The time was set, and the place, a neighbouring field, chosen. Old and young seemed to take an interest ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... us back from fire to store. No fine firm fabric ever yet grew like a gourd. Nero's House of Gold was not raised in a day; nor the Mexican House of the Sun; nor the Alhambra; nor the Escurial; nor Titus's Amphitheater; nor the Illinois Mounds; nor Diana's great columns at Ephesus; nor ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... 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 stoop ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... and charm. The most distinct idea we have of the Roman emperors, even in regard to their individual characters, is derived from their busts at the Vatican and elsewhere. The benignity of Trajan, the animal development of Nero, and the classic rigor of young Augustus are best apprehended through these memorable effigies which Time has spared and Art transmitted. And a similar permanence and distinctness of impression associate most of our illustrious moderns with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... and the south of Scotland; and Britannia Bar'bara or Caledo'nia, the northern part of Scotland, into which the Romans never penetrated. Britain was first invaded by Julius Caesar, but was not wholly subdued before the time of Nero. As for Hiber'nia or Ier'ne, Ireland, it was visited by Roman merchants, but never by ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... (Ep. I, 9), as brief as this is long, he recommends his friend Septimius to Tiberius Claudius Nero, stepson of Augustus, a young man of reserved unpleasant manners, and difficult to approach. The suasive grace with which it disclaims presumption, yet pleads his own merits as a petitioner and his friend's as a candidate for favour, with its dignified deference, implied not ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... the wearing of long haire should make men abominable unto God himselfe, since it was an abomination even among heathen men. Witnesse the examples of Heliogabalus, Sardanapalus, Nero, Sporus, Caius ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... him. He had been her friend, the only one she could claim among them all. And yet, beneath his genial allegiance, she could detect the air of condescension, the bland attitude of a superior who defends another's cause for the reason that it gratifies Nero. She experienced a thrill of malicious joy in contemplating the fall of Nero. He would bring down his house about his head, and there would be no Rome to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... Propertius[12], who are proud of the weak beginnings whence has sprung the mistress of the world. Mount Palatine was in itself the whole of Rome for some time, but afterwards the palace of the Emperors filled the space which had before sufficed for a nation. A poet, in the time of Nero, made the following epigram upon this occasion.[13] Rome will soon be only a palace. Go to Veii Romans, if this palace does not now occupy ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... that the ancients had never written any thing finer; that neither Tacitus nor Corneille had ever produced any thing more forcible. He had like to have quarrelled with Subligny, because in the scene where Nero hides behind a curtain to listen to Junia, he could not restrain a burst of laughter, which was echoed all over the house. Perhaps this bad play will furnish him with the materials for another 'Folle Querelle,'[3] which will ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... procession stopped, at a sign from the man who walked apart, and who seemed to command its progress. He was tall, thin, sallow; he wore a long black robe, with a cap of the same material and color; he had the face of a Don Basilio, with the eye of Nero. He motioned the guards to surround him more closely, when he saw with affright the dark group we have mentioned, and the strong-limbed and resolute peasants who seemed in attendance upon them. Then, advancing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... weapon of war. He 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 pride. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... of his private parts. The fact was reported to the emperor by those who were on the lookout for such features and the man was suddenly snatched away from the games and taken to Rome, accompanied by an immense procession, larger than Abgarus had in the reign of Severus or Tiridates in that of Nero. He was appointed cubicularius before he had been even seen by the emperor, [was honored by the name of his grandfather, Avitus, was adorned with garlands as at a festival,] and entered the palace the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... the Supreme Power with a cruelty deliberate, ruthless, serene. Nero the tyrant once commanded a representation in grim earnest of the Flight of Icarus; and the unhappy boy who took the part, at his first attempt to fly, fell headlong beside the Emperor's couch and spattered him with blood and brains. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of Dio and of Xiphilinus (the latter from Nero to Alexander Severus). Corrections of R. Stephanus in Dio proper, and of Xylander in both Dio and Xiphilinus, notes of Leunclavius on Dio, and notes of Orsini on Excerpts Concerning Embassies. Same Latin index as in ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... Pagans of the earlier time as a matter of course, the justice of which was not contested, and the procedure of the government was in principle the same under humane and conscientious rulers like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius as under tyrants like Nero and Domitian. Here again it is evident how firmly rooted in the mind of antiquity was the conviction that denial of the gods was a ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... wrote. He had a purpose to serve; and in an age when to act like a freeman was no longer possible, he determined at least to write in that character. It is probable, also, that he wrote with a vindictive or a malicious feeling towards Nero; and, as the single means he had for gratifying that, resolved upon sacrificing the grandeur of Csar's character wherever it should be found possible. Meantime, in spite of himself, Lucan for ever betrays his lurking consciousness ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... 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, "as ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... them, who styled himself "Lord and God of the Earth," could not tell how to pass his whole day pleasantly, without spending constant two or three hours in catching of flies, and killing them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been Beelzebub. One of his predecessors, Nero (who never put any bounds, nor met with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime more agreeable than to run about the streets all night in a disguise, and abuse the women and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by them. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... enough to dry her eyes." With absurdly unconscious offensiveness and egotism Knox began acquaintance with his sovereign by remarking that he was as well {366} content to live under her as Paul under Nero. Previously he had maintained that the government was set up to control religion; now he informed Mary that "right religion took neither original nor authority from worldly princes but from the Eternal God alone." "'Think ye,' quoth she, 'that subjects, having power, may resist their princes?' ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... daring. He had discovered a room to the walls of which he dared speak aloud. Here we see the respectable man liberated. He no longer needs to be on his official behaviour, but may play the part of a small Nero, if he wishes, behind the safety of shorthand. And how he takes advantage of his opportunities! He remains to the end something of a Puritan in his standards and his public carriage, but in his diary he reveals himself as a pig from the sty ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... I am never to go to London again; but not just yet. Here I live with tolerable content: perhaps with as much as most people arrive at, and what if one were properly grateful one would perhaps call perfect happiness. Here is a glorious sunshiny day: all the morning I read about Nero in Tacitus, lying at full length on a bench in the garden, a nightingale singing, and some red anemones eyeing the sun manfully not far off. A funny mixture all this, Nero, and the delicacy of spring, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... me his heir 'should he find me worthy,' which, to succeed Caius, whatever my faults, indeed I am not, since of all men, as I have told him in past days, I hold him the worst. Still, he has forwarded a sum of money to enable me to journey to him in haste, and with it a letter from the Caesar, Nero, to the procurator Albinus, commanding him to give me instant leave to go. Therefore, lady, it seems ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... was such a one. He might not look like a Viking, but after all it is the soul that counts and, as this afternoon's experience had taught her, Ramsden Waters had a soul that seemed to combine in equal proportions the outstanding characteristics of Nero, a wildcat, and the second mate of ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... thing. But it also involved the paradox that even a bad king is a good king, for his oppression weakens the nobility and relieves the pressure on the populace. If he is a tyrant he chiefly tortures the torturers; and though Nero's murder of his own mother was hardly perhaps a gain to his soul, it was no great loss to his empire. Bolingbroke had thus a wholly rationalistic theory of Jacobitism. He was, in other respects, a fine and typical eighteenth-century intellect, a free-thinking Deist, a ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... understood nothing of the oracle, which denoted Cyrus descended from two different nations, from the Medes by Mandana his mother, the daughter of Astyages; and by the Persians by his father Cambyses, whose race was by far less grand and illustrious. Nero had for answer from the oracle of Delphos, that seventy-three might prove fatal to him, he believed he was safe from all danger till age, but, finding himself deserted by every one, and hearing Galba proclaimed emperor, who was seventy-three years of age, he was sensible ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... freedman and favourite of the Emperor Nero, was the master of Epictetus, the lame slave and Stoic philosopher, who was amongst the greatest of pagan moralists. Epaphroditus, who treated his slave with great cruelty, is said to have been one day twisting ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... to beast as well as to man. The sight of suffering seems to bring them an enjoyment without which the world is tame; probably the wholesale murderers and torturers of history, from Phalaris and Nero downwards, took an animal and sensual pleasure in the look of blood, and in the inspection of mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the phenomena which meet my eye in Africa. In almost all the towns on the Oil ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... following his resurrection. It is connected with a story told by St. Ambrose about the apostle Peter. St. Peter, it is believed, spent the latter part of his life in Rome, where the cruel emperor, Nero, was doing his ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... flattered beauty. . . . In a word, Madame Guiccioli was a kind of buxom parlour-boarder, compressing herself artificially into dignity and elegance, and fancying she walked, in the eyes of the whole world, a heroine by the side of a poet. When I saw her at Monte Nero, near Leghorn, she was in a state of excitement and exultation, and had really something of this look. At that time, also, she looked no older than she was; in which respect, a rapid and very singular change took place, to the surprise of everybody. In the course of a few months she seemed ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... foot. At that moment I felt myself; I had something to live for. I knew my appetite, and felt that it was native. I had acquired a knowledge of a new luxury, and ceased to wonder at the crimes of a Nero and a Caligula. Think you, Munro, that the thousands who assemble at the execution of a criminal trouble themselves to inquire into the merits of his case—into the justice of his death and punishment? Ask they whether he is the victim ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Roman 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... many places it appears just finished. These baths are difficult of access somehow; I never could quite understand how we got in or out of them, but they did belong to the Imperial palace, which covered this whole Palatine hill, and here was Nero's golden house, by what I could gather, but of that I thank Heaven there is no trace left, except some little portion of the wall, which was 120 feet high, and some marbles in shades, like women's worsted work upon canvass, very curious, and very wonderful; as all are natural marbles, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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 ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... borrowed 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, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... cried for help; the earlier and truer-hearted of them, at least. Some here, surely, have read Epictetus, the heathen whose thought most exactly coincides with that of the Psalmist. If so, do they not see what enabled him, the slave of Nero's minion, to assert himself, and his own unconquerable personality; to defy circumstance; and to preserve his own calm, his own honour, his own purity, amid a degradation which might well have driven a good man to suicide? And was it not this—The intensity of his ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... religious or national works was the cause of their destruction as soon as they were withdrawn and superseded by something of a newer fashion. The intrinsic value in precious metals of such works is proved by Pliny's statement that Nero gave four millions of sesterces for covers of couches in a banqueting-hall.[452] The hangings or carpets taken by the Caliph Omar from Kosroes' white palace (A.D. 651) must have been some of the finest and most valuable embroideries ever known. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... pass in Rome. The head of a small commonwealth, such a one as was that of Syracuse or Fermo, is easily brought to the block; but that a populous nation, such as Rome, had not such a one, was the grief of Nero. If Sylvia or Caesar attained to be princes, it was by civil war, and such civil war as yielded rich spoils, there being a vast nobility to be confiscated; which also was the case in Oceana, when it yielded earth by earldoms, and baronies to the Neustrian for the plantation ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... Browning was, our critic thinks, a deliberate artist. The suggestion that Browning cared nothing for form is for Chesterton a monstrous assertion. It is as absurd as saying that Napoleon cared nothing for feminine love or that Nero hated mushrooms. What Browning did was always to fall into a different kind of form, which is a totally different thing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... June 22, under the influence of the disappointment caused by the indifference of the public to his pictures, the final instance of which was its flocking to see General Tom Thumb and neglecting Haydon's large pictures of 'Aristides' and 'Nero,' which were being exhibited in an adjoining room ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Verona, Battlefield of Marengo, Pestachio, and some other cities in Northern Italy. 2 from Venice. 1 about Bologna. 1 from Florence. 1 from Pisa. 1 from Leghorn. 1 from Rome and Civita Vecchia. 2 from Naples. 1 about Pazzuoli, where St. Paul landed, the Baths of Nero, and the ruins of Baia, Virgil's tomb, the Elysian Fields, the Sunken Cities and the spot where Ulysses landed. 1 from Herculaneum and Vesuvius. 1 from Pompeii. 1 from the Island of Ischia. 1 concerning the Volcano of Stromboli, the city and Straits of Messina, the land of Sicily, Scylla ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... caepit uti. Of this sort of dedication, Gaspar Sanctius writeth thus: Alia dedicatio est, non solum inter prophanos, sed etiam inter Haebreos usitata, quae nihil habet sacrum sed tantum est auspicatio aut initium operis, ad quod destinatur locus aut res cujus tunc primum libatur usus. Sic Nero Claudius dedicasse dicitur domum suam cum primum illam habitare caepit. Ita Suetonius in Nerone. Sic Pompeius dedicavit theatrum suum, cum primum illud publicis ludis et communibus usibus aperuit; de quo Cicero, lib. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... had no need of praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the senate. In like manner he will perceive in the case of Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, and ever so many more of those evil emperors, that all the armies of the east and of the west were of no avail to protect them from the enemies whom their bad and depraved lives raised up against them. And were the history of these emperors rightly studied, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... days of Attica, the gymnasium was in its perfection. It degenerated with the license of later times. It was absorbed and sunk in the fashions and vices of imperial Rome. Though Nero built a public gymnasium, and Roman gentlemen attached private ones to their country-seats, it gradually fell into disuse, or existed only for ignoble purposes. The gladiator succeeded naturally to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Born B.C. 148.] in the time of Marius, an age when freedom of speech was tolerated. Horace was the first to gain immortality in this department. Persius comes next, born A.D. 34, the friend of Lucan and Seneca in the time of Nero; and he painted the vices of his age when it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign of Domitian when Juvenal appeared, who, disdaining fear, boldly set forth the abominations of the times, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... up by fire. From the civil war it waged in Judea, it emerged to enter on a war of invasion and foreign annexation. In succession, Cyprus, Phrygia, Galatia, and all Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, were penetrated. The persecutions of Nero, incident on the burning of Rome, did not for a moment retard its career; during his reign it rapidly spread, and in every direction Petrine and Pauline, or Judaizing and Hellenizing churches were springing up. The latter gained the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... 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 ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... said I—"if I may be so familiar with a millionaire, because I hate both the names Spencer and Grenville—your invitation is meant kindly, but—the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while the bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived— barring, thank heaven, the fiddling—while the city burns at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the zones wait upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically conjured up, blows upon me his Arctic breath. As for trout, you ...
— Options • O. Henry
... fireplaces, and particularly steering clear of the great interior flue, was to conduct the enterprising traveler from the front door all the way into the dining-room in the remote rear of the mansion. Doubtless it was a bold stroke of genius, that plan of hers, and so was Nero's when he schemed his grand canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Nor will I take oath, that, had her project been accomplished, then, by help of lights hung at judicious intervals through the tunnel, some Belzoni or other might ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... His was that colossal physique that develops in the South; his shoulders were mighty under his mean coat, and his chained wrists were square and knotty. He held his head up with a sort of truculence in its poise; it was the head, massive, sensuous- lipped, slow-eyed, of a whimsical Nero. It was weariness, perhaps, that give him his look of satiety, of appetites full fed and dormant, of lusts grossly slaked. A murmur ran through the hall as he passed; it was as though the wretched men and women who knew him uttered an ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... very Soul; when I consider my unfortunate miserable Country has been for almost twelve Years, burning in the Flames of Civil War. But much more am I griev'd, when I reflect that so many have not only been idle Spectators of these dreadful Fires (as Nero was of flaming Rome) but have endeavour'd by their wicked Speeches and Libels to blow the Bellows, whilst few or none have contributed their Assistance ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been loosed in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of Allis. How like wild beasts they were, how like wolves! She closed her eyes, for she was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... French Eleventh, bursting into tears. But: "All the great battles of this war have been fought, and I have managed to keep out of them!" might the shoulder-strapped, belted, fatigue-capped, strutting mock-soldier of our own time say with a corresponding chuckle. God help us!—Rome had but one Nero fiddling when it burned, if history tells us true: we have had ten thousand military fiddlers playing away to ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... skeleton form of its present appearance, muscles and skin being added, in a detailed filling up and finishing of these mere sketches, if only time and opportunity were given to me. But I much fear at my time of life that my Tragedy of Nero must remain unwritten, as also my Novel of Charlotte Clopton, and that thrilling Handbook of the Marvellous; not to mention my abortive Epic of Home, and sundry essays, satires, and other lucubrations which, alas! may now be considered ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... brilliance there was, and a fair show of material life, beautiful shoulders generously exposed to view, and a genius for making their beauty and even their ugliness a lure for the men. An artist would have recognized in some of them the old Roman type, the women of the time of Nero, down to the time of Hadrian. And there were Palmaesque faces, with a sensual expression, heavy chins solidly modeled with the neck, and not without a certain bestial beauty. Some of them had thick curly hair, and bold, fiery eyes: they seemed ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... hands with money. Simon, indeed, crazed by his incantations and ecstasies, developed megalomania in an acute form, arrogating to himself divine honours and aspiring to the adoration of the whole world. According to a contemporary legend, he eventually became sorcerer to Nero and ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... province, and from this time the Jews possessed but little civil authority. Justice was administered in the name and by the laws of Rome, and taxes were paid immediately to the emperor. Several of the Roman governors severely oppressed and persecuted the Jews, and at length, in the reign of Nero they openly revolted from the Romans. Then began the Jewish war, which was terminated after an obstinate defence and unparalleled suffering, on the part of the Jews, by the total destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, by Titus son of Vespasian the Roman emperor. ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... and a clamorous throng With braying bugles and with bragging drums— Bards and bardies laboring at a song. One lifts his locks, above the rest preferred, And to the buzzing flies of fashion thrums A banjo. Lo him follow all the herd. When Nero's wife put on her auburn wig, And at the Coliseum showed her head, The hair of every dame in Rome turned red; When Nero fiddled all Rome danced a jig. Novelty sets the gabbling geese agape, And fickle fashion follows like an ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... 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 ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... any first aid to the annihilated in its chest. Besides, Professor Sillcocks hadn't played the game. He had just grabbed the cards. It was about to pass resolutions hailing Sillcocks as the modern Nero, when Rearick began to come down with an idea. Nowadays people pay him five thousand dollars apiece for ideas, but he used to fork them out to us gratis—and they had twice the candle-power. As soon as we saw Rearick begin to ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... Other instances might be added to those given by Prof. Ehrlich. African tourists say that the Dahomans, although passionately fond of singing and of instrumental music, are probably the most cruel of all negroes. Nero, the cruelest of emperors, is said to have regaled his ears with music after setting fire to Rome; and you have all heard the story of the two famous prima donnas whose vicious temper and jealousy drove them to a tooth and ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... of the Republic, and were ended by its downfall. His political life contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to imperial rule; and Rome was then the world. Could there have been no Augustus, no Nero, and then no Trajan, all Europe would have been different. Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an Augustus or a Nero, or the need of a Trajan; and as we read of them we feel that, had success been ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... calls the Cretians liars, doth it but in- directly, and upon quotation of their own poet. It is as bloody a thought in one way as Nero's was in another. For by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow assassin the honour of a nation. It is as complete a piece of madness to miscall and rave against the times; or think to recall men to reason by a fit of passion. Democritus, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... ruins. Not a business house was left standing. Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and commission houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames. The scene was like that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome when set on fire by Nero's command, as tradition tells. In modern times there has been nothing to equal it except the conflagration at Chicago, when the flames swept to ruin that queen city ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Fitzgerald guilty. But he was one of those persons, who having either tender hearts or obstinate natures—the latter is perhaps the more general—deem it incumbent upon them to come forward in championship of those in trouble. There are, doubtless, those who think that Nero was a pleasant young man, whose cruelties were but the resultant of an overflow of high spirits; and who regard Henry VIII. in the light of a henpecked husband unfortunate in the possession of six wives. These ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... chosen. Yet, so far as I know, there exists no sufficiently popular work dealing with this period alone and presenting in moderate compass a clear general view of the matters of most moment. My endeavour has been to represent as faithfully as possible the Age of Nero, and nowhere in the book is it implied that what is true for that age is necessarily as true for any other. The reader who is not a special student of history or antiquities is perhaps as often confused by descriptions of ancient life which cover too many ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... that the infamous are more famous than the famous. Byron noted, with his own misanthropic moral, that we think more of Nero the monster who killed his mother than of Nero the noble Roman who defeated Hannibal. The name of Julian more often suggests Julian the Apostate than Julian the Saint; though the latter crowned his canonisation with ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... burning of the city, and Nero's attempt to transfer the odium of it to the sect "commonly known by the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... manuscript from the drawer and handed it to her. She ran her eyes over the pages, murmuring to herself. "Uh, huh, 'wavering, weak, vaciliating adminstration, have not given us the protection our rights as citizens demanded—while our brothers were murdered in the South. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, while this modern'—uh, huh, oh, yes, just as I thought," and with a sudden twist Miss Kirkman tore the papers across and pitched them into ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and gross the inherent defects of democratic governments, and fatal as the results finally and inevitably are, we need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula, of Heliogabalus and Caracalla, of Domitian and Commodus, to recognize that the difference between freedom and despotism is as wide as that between Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness, and insanity of tyrants are incredible. Let him who complains of the fickle ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Black Nero was a magnificent mastiff, with not a white hair on his back. He had run into Dame Dorothy's one Fifth of November from the forest, when quite a little puppy; and she had housed him and fed him ever since; and now she was so much attached to him that she ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 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 ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... understand it, the history of the apostles, the state of the Christian 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. Everything ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... related what had happened, Berenike exclaimed: "But you know that the panther lies still and gathers himself up before he springs; or, if you do not, you may see it to-morrow at the Circus. There is to be a performance in Caesar's honor, the like of which not even Nero ever saw. My husband bears the chief part cf the cost, and can think of nothing else. He has even forgotten his only child, and all to please the man who insults us, robs and humiliates us! Now that men kiss the hands which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... are named for various celebrities who flourished at a later date than the second Apicius. It is noteworthy, however, that neither such close contemporaries as Heliogabalus and Nero, notorious gluttons, nor Petronius, the arbiter of fashion of the period, are among the persons thus honored. Vitellius, a later glutton, is well represented in the book. It is fair to assume, then, that the author ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... 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, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... now;— Pantheon and Coliseum In their spacious fate have sheltered All the world's swift evolution;— Where a Hermes from that corner Saw the footsteps firm of Cato, Pontifex in the procession,— Saw then Nero as Apollo Lifted up take sacrifices, Saw then Gregory, the wrathful, Riding forth to rule in spirit Over all the known world's kingdoms,— Saw then Cola di Rienzi Homage pay to freedom's goddess 'Mid the Roman people's paeans,— Saw ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... business house was left standing. Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and commission houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames. The scene was like that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome when set on fire by Nero's command, as tradition tells. In modern times there has been nothing to equal it except the conflagration at Chicago, when the flames swept to ruin that queen city ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... St. Agatha, and not a sick woman attending the sick? Why teach us to honor an Aristides or a Regulus, and not one who pays an equitable, though to him ruinous, tax without a railing accusation? And why not teach us to help what the laws cannot help?—Why teach us to hate a Nero or an Appius, and not an underselling oppressor of workmen and betrayer of women and children? Why to love a Ladie in bower, and not a wife's fireside? Why paint or poetically depict the horrible race of Ogres and Giants, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... continued at intervals with greater or less intensity for more than two centuries; the Christians were early persecuted by the Jews, later by the Romans. In the first century they were persecuted under Nero and Domitian, through personal spite or selfish interests. After {275} this their persecution was political; there was a desire to suppress a religion that was held to be contrary to law. The persecution ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... as a possible President. And 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 ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... garland in her left hand, and (legend) Victorii Aug.” {112b} Silver coins of Vespasian, Lucius Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, and Volusianus, a large brass coin of Trajan, middle brass of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian, Domitian, Antoninus Pius, Faustina the elder, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Lucius Verus, and Faustina the younger, and several more. {112c} In December, 1898, a coin was found by a son of Mr. W. K. Morton, bookseller, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... played like an imbecile, and Nero like a madman. The former would send for the persons whom he had executed the day before, to play with him; and the latter, lavishing the treasures of the public exchequer, would stake four hundred thousand sestertii (L20,000) on a single ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... from the tops of copra-trees. A comical old fellow, Pedro Pocpotoc (a name derived from chicken language), used to live here, and on moonlight nights, planting his fat feet on the window-sill, like a droll caricature of Nero, he would sing Visayan songs to the accompaniment of a cheap violin. A talkative old baker lived a short way down the street with his three daughters. They were always busy pounding rice in wooden mortars with long poles, thus making rice-flour, which they baked in clean banana-leaves and sweetened ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... in Chaeronea in Boeotia about 46 A.D.; died in 125; celebrated for his forty-six "Lives of Greeks and Romans," and for works on philosophical and moral subjects; settled at Athens at the time of Nero's visit in 66, and traveled in Greece, Egypt and Italy; being in Rome during the reign of Vespasian; lived at Chaeronea in the latter part of his life where he was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... Antiochus; Herod Antipas, who killed John Baptist; Herodias and Salmon the dancer came to fearful ends: Judas and Caiaphas became their own executioners; Pilate also ended his own wretched life; Herod Agrippa was eaten up of worms: Nero and all the succeeding emperors, authors of the ten persecutions; Philip II. of Spain, Charles IX. Henry III. and IV. kings of France, Dukes of Guise, Anjou, Austria, &c. the cardinals Wolsey and Pool, bloody Mary of England, bishop Gardiner, with ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Hamburg Handel's first two operas were composed, "Almira" and "Nero." Both of these were founded on dark tales of crime and sorrow, and, in spite of some beautiful airs and clever instrumentation, were musical failures, as might ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of a people whose governor calls the gentry 'the upper crust of society,' and who in their turn see an affinity between a Scotch and a Roman fiddle, and denounce him as a Nero? But then who looks, as he says, for taste in a colony? it is only us Englishmen who have any. Yes, he calls this place 'Epaigwit.' It has a distingu appearance on his letters. It has now a name, the next thing is 'a local habitation.' Well, we won't stop to describe ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... next tablet (192), with food before him, and the next (193) is that found before the great sphinx at Gizeh. On it the sun is represented, and a Greek inscription tells that it was erected in the time of Nero, by the inhabitants of Busiris to the Roman governor of Egypt, Tiberius Claudius Balbillus. The next tablet (194) is that discovered by Belzoni, near the temple of Karnak, on which a line of adoring deities ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... is said to have sanctioned castration of both male and female for social reasons. Negro eunuchs were common among the Romans. All the great emperors and conquerors had their eunuchs. Alexander the Great had his celebrated eunuch, Bagoas, and Nero, his Sporus, etc. Chevers says that the manufacture of eunuchs still takes place in the cities of Delhi, Lucknow, and Rajpootana. So skilful are the traveling eunuch-makers that their mortality is a small fraction of one per cent. Their method of operation is to encircle the external ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... properties were known to the Greeks and Romans. The pages of history record its undoing and its accessory to crime. Pliny says, alluding to this species, "very conveniently adapted for poisoning." This was undoubtedly the species that Agrippina, the mother of Nero, used to poison her husband, the Emperor Claudius; and the same that Nero used in that famous banquet when all his guests, his tribunes and centurions, and Agrippina herself, fell victims ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... appeared to St. Peter, saying to him: Simon Magus and Nero purpose against thee, dread thee not, for I am with thee, and shall give to thee the solace of my servant Paul, which to-morn shall come in to Rome. Then Peter, knowing that he should not long abide here, assembled all his brethren, and took Clement by the hand and ordained ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... learning in those happy days at Bethlehem of the slaughter of Christians by Nero? Very well; right here in the Paris of Marat and Robespierre, you may hear constantly the same brutal cry that filled the Rome of the Caesars—"DEATH TO THE CHRISTIANS!" Famine, anarchy, murder, are everywhere; and I live from moment to moment, trembling if ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... morning news arrived from Byron's villa, which already began to verify Mary's forebodings in her letter to Hunt, and proved the clear-sightedness of her forecast. Disturbances having taken place at his house at Monte Nero, Count Gamba and his family were banished by the Government from Tuscany, and there were rumours that Byron might be leaving immediately for America or Switzerland. This was indeed trying news for Shelley to ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... it may here be mentioned that I was permitted to take into my hand a lock of her golden hair and the bowl which a sculptor modelled from the curve of her perfect breast. Here, likewise, was the robe that smothered Agamemnon, Nero's fiddle, the Czar Peter's brandy-bottle, the crown of Semiramis, and Canute's sceptre which he extended over the sea. That my own land may not deem itself neglected, let me add that I was favored with a sight of the skull of King Philip, the famous Indian chief, whose ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 and Robespierre. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... in the time of Augustus were either slaves or freedmen. Posts of responsibility and of honour were sometimes assigned to freedmen, as is shown by the appointment by Nero of Helius, a freedman, to the administration of Rome in the absence of his imperial master. Cicero wrote letters to his freedman Tiro in terms of friendship and affection. The master of a great household ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Octavian proclaimed a general amnesty; and among these who profited by it was a certain member of the Claudian gens,—one of that Nero family to which Rome ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... in the minds of his simple followers he was regarded as more than a man, which shows us that the ideals of what a man should be, or might be, were not high. We are told that near Benedict's first monastery there was a very deep lake, made in the time of Nero by damming up a mountain stream. Along this lake the brambles and vines had grown in great confusion. Benedict set to work to clear the ground from this lake to his monastery, half a mile up the hillside. One day a workman dropped an ax into the lake. Benedict ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of his birth. Till 48, the date of his mother's execution, he was looked upon as the heir presumptive; but Agrippina, the new wife of Claudius, soon persuaded the feeble emperor to adopt Lucius Domitius, known later as Nero, her son by a previous marriage. After the accession of Nero, Agrippina, by playing on his fears, induced him to poison Britannicus at a banquet (A.D. 55). A golden statue of the young prince was set up by the emperor Titus. Britannicus ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... either the fine colonnade of Bernini, or the dancing fountains, or that Egyptian obelisk which, according to Pliny, was set up by the Pharaoh at Heliopolis, and transferred to Rome by Caligula, who set it up in Nero's Circus, where it remained till 1586. Now, as Nero's Circus was situate on the very ground where St. Peter's now stands, and the base of this obelisk covered the actual site where the vestry now is, it looked like a gigantic needle ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wealth, numbers, and resources, which the latter was trying to "coerce," Fabius would have been a most injudicious selection as commander-in-chief. Historians are agreed, I believe, that if the advice of this classic "Micawber," to the consuls Livius and Nero, had been followed by them, the battle of "The Metaurus" would not have been fought, the two sons of the "Thunder-bolt" would have effected their junction, and would, in all probability, have forced the legions to another and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... to the retreats of his "Europas," on the sides and on the summits of the classically-sounding hills of the city of his ministry,—all these things, and more, are known to the poorest retailers of interesting stories and anecdotes. In a word, he was as impure as Caligula, as cruel as Nero or Calvin himself, and as violent ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... crossed the Alps that any considerable reinforcement was sent to aid the Carthaginian general. Then his brother Hasdrubal, having raised an army in Spain and Southern Gaul, crossed the Alps to join him. But he was met, as he marched south, by the consuls Livius and Nero with an army greatly superior to his own; and was crushed by them on the river Metaurus, the Spanish and Ligurian troops being annihilated and Hasdrubal ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... 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
... of his body, till his pen pours out the most abject drivel that has ever degraded paper. Under similar circumstances, revive me the illustrious Newton. I guarantee that when he sees the apple fall he shall EAT IT, instead of discovering the principle of gravitation. Nero's dinner shall transform Nero into the mildest of men before he has done digesting it, and the morning draught of Alexander the Great shall make Alexander run for his life at the first sight of the enemy the same afternoon. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... series of Soliloquies in which famous men of antiquity—Julius Caesar, Nero, Alcibiades, etc., attempt to express themselves in the modes of thought ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... eruption. Mr. Scrope, whose opinion is entitled to great weight, thinks it not improbable that this may have been the eruption recorded by Tacitus, (13 lib. Annal.,) as having ravaged the country of the Initones, near Cologne, in the reign of Nero. I should not forget to mention that there is a cavern within the basin of the lake, the air of which is so stifling and noxious, that animals die if forced to remain in it, and lights are extinguished by the gas—phenomena ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... on behalf of the Republic, and were ended by its downfall. His political life contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to imperial rule; and Rome was then the world. Could there have been no Augustus, no Nero, and then no Trajan, all Europe would have been different. Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an Augustus or a Nero, or the need of a Trajan; and as we read of them we feel that, had success been possible, he would ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... speculative. Spinoza thinks otherwise; and he is at least true to the guide which he has chosen. Blyenburg presses him with instances of horrid crime, such as bring home to the heart the natural horror of it. He speaks of Nero's murder of Agrippina, and asks if God can be called the cause of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... lib. 2, witnesses, when he speaks, saying, That Nero the Emperors Nurse had been very much addicted to Drinking; which Habit Nero received from his Nurse, and was so very particular in this, that the People took so much notice of it, as instead of Tiberius Nero, they call'd him Biberius Mero. The same Diodorus also relates of Caligula, Predecessor to Nero, that his Nurse used to moisten the Nipples of her Breast frequently with Blood, to make Caligula take the better Hold of them; which, says Diodorus, was the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... The western main shook growling, and still gnawed. I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale. Of happy Atlantis, and heard Bjoerne's keel 190 Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore: I listened, musing, to the prophecy Of Nero's tutor-victim; lo, the birds Sing darkling, conscious of the climbing dawn. And I believed the poets; it is they Who utter wisdom from the central deep, And, listening to the inner flow of things, Speak to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... generation. The land of Great Britain is held by the nobility and the princely cormorants of trade, who exact rental which cannot be paid from the produce of the soil, so usurious is it, or who turn the rich acres into pleasure grounds and pasturages. As Nero fiddled while Rome was one vast blaze of conflagration and horror, so the nobility of Great Britain dance and make merry while the people starve or seek in other lands that opportunity to live which their country denies to them. For the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... calamity, and we have accepted the verdict of later scholarship, 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, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... anger, but kept his passions well under control. His address was soft and winning, and he had the art of attracting respect and friendship from all who came in contact with him. Poppaea, the wife of Nero, had received him with much favor and, bravely as he fought against them, Vespasian and Titus were, afterwards, as much attached to him as were the Jews of Galilee. There can be no doubt that, had he been otherwise placed than as ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... iniquity, nor liberty with tyranny, nor purity and sweetness with filth and foulness. There is no skill by which John can ever live in peace with Herod. Paul, the author of the ode to love, was always at war with Nero, and at last had his head shorn off. William Tell could not get along smoothly with Gesler, the tyrant who robbed the Swiss of their rights. When doves learn to live peaceably with hawks, and lambs learn how to ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... saints in heaven by Ezzelino's fury. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian imagination, and, by the glamor of loathing that has strength to fascinate, proved in the end contagious. We are apt to ask ourselves whether such men are mad—whether in the case of a Nero or a Marechal de Retz or an Ezzelino the love of evil and the thirst for blood are not a monomaniacal perversion of barbarous passions which even in a cannibal are morbid.[2] Is there in fact such a thing as Haematomania, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... interrupted by Nero's joyous bark. He had caught sight of her, and came bounding up, and thrust his large head into her hand. As she stooped to caress the dog, happy at his honest greeting, and tears that had been long gathering to the lids fell silently on his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon the eight Batavian regiments. In their hands the scales of empire seem to rest. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... poor fellow!" said Marillac, with tears in his eyes; "it is not very manly I know, but I can not help it—Oh! these women! I adore them, of course; but just now I am like Nero, I wish that they all had but one head. It is for these little, worthless dolls that we kill ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... those men prepare a way of speaking negligently or irreverently of thee, that give themselves that liberty in speaking of thy vicegerents, kings; for thou who gavest Augustus the empire, gavest it to Nero too; and as Vespasian had it from thee, so had Julian. Though kings deface in themselves thy first image in their own soul, thou givest no man leave to deface thy second image, imprinted indelibly in their power. ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... 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 University ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... together, he held them above the lamp chimney and watched them burn. He did not wear the expression of a Nero, but of an Abram offering up that which was part of himself. He was not burning sheets of paper, but leaves from his life: sheets that he declared must become ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... pretty features, though with rather a sensual development of the lower part of the face. The busts, it seemed to me, are usually superior as works of art to those in the Capitol, and either better preserved or more thoroughly restored. The bust of Nero might almost be called handsome here, though bearing his ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instance, she was very much in love with herself, and therefore called me the most egoistical of men. She drank, and called me a drunkard; she rarely changed her linen and said I was dirty; she was jealous, even of my men friends, and called me Othello. She was masterful and called me Nero. Niggardly and ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... "Down, Tiger! Silence, Nero, you overgrown brute!" he cried, with an angry oath. "Come along, Mrs. Sharpe. There's no occasion to be alarmed; they ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... battle as would have brought delight to the brute soul of a Nero. With fore-feet and teeth the two stallions engaged, circling madly about on their hind legs, tearing up great clods of turf, biting and striking as opportunity offered. At last, by a quick, desperate rush, the buckskin caught the thoroughbred fairly by the throat. Here the affair would ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... distance of some 33,000 paces. Appius Claudius continued the good work, and to him is due the completion of the celebrated Appian Way. In time, the gigantic waterways greatly multiplied, and, by the reign of Nero, there were constructed nine principal aqueducts, the pipes of which were of bricks, baked tiles, stone, lead, or wood. According to the calculation of Vigenerus, half a million hogsheads of water were conveyed into Rome every day, by upwards of 10,000 small pipes not one-third of an inch ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... lent him the cup, and Lucian says it was a sea-shell. Tradition affirms that the magnet originally was not on a pivot, but set to float on water in a cup. The old antiquarian is wildly theoretical on this point, and sees a compass in the Golden Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in everything else. Yet undoubtedly there are some curious facts connected with the matter. Osonius says that Gama and the Portuguese got the compass from some pirates at the Cape of Good Hope, A.D. 1260. M. Fauchet, the French antiquarian, finds it ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... (i.e. el emperador). The Roman emperor Nero (reigned A.D. 54-68) persecuted the Christians, burning them as torches before his palace and making them fight with wild beasts in ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... especially by the words, "This Jesus who hath been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same manner in which ye beheld him going into heaven." In the Apocalypse, written A. D. 68, just after the death of Nero, this second coming is described as something immediately to happen, and the colours in which it is depicted show how closely allied were the Johannine notions to those of the Pharisees. The glories of the New Jerusalem are to be reserved for Jews, while for the Roman tyrants of Judaea is reserved ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... "There's Dash!" and seemed to forget crown and sceptre in her girlish eagerness to greet her small friend. [Footnote: In the list of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures there is one, the property of the Queen, which was painted in 1838. It includes "Hector," "Nero," "Dash," ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... protesting against it. Where in Germany were the intellectual enemies of Prussian Czarism? They were either holding their peace, or breaking forth into adulation of the anointed of the Lord—a musician and comedian like Nero, of a sharp and superficial intelligence, who believed that by merely skimming through anything he knew it all. Eager to strike a spectacular pose in history, he had finally afflicted the world with the greatest ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a un sobrino que llaman Manso Pacheco. Nero no fue mas cruel que este. Este paso adelante y llego a una provincia que llaman Chatemal, estando de paz, i sin dar guerra los naturales la robo i les comio los mantenimientos a los naturales, i ellos huyendo a los montes de miedo de los Espanoles porque ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... into yourself. But, if peace you seek there for, Your reception, beforehand, be sure to prepare for," Wrote the tutor of Nero; who wrote, be it said, Better far than he acted—but peace to the dead! He bled for his pupil: what more could he do? But Lord Alfred, when into himself he withdrew, Found all there in disorder. For more than an hour ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... '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 to attend—remarkable; VERY ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Then Nero said, "I ought to have had better luck," and throwing the dice he counted fifteen. "Nearly enough; now, Faustus, ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... Empress Irene, "I beseech you to be contented; be assured that we will not leave you in this dogged humour of blood- shedding, lest you make such materials for history as are fitter for the time of Nero than ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... window; moonlight 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 at ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... result—he made the world turn somersault. His life was a perpetual gamble for God. Daily he faced death for Christ. Again and again he stood fearless before crowds thirsting for his blood. He stood before kings and governors and "turned not a hair". He didn't so much as flinch before Nero, that vice-president of hell. His sufferings were appalling; read them. He trod in his Master's footsteps, and so received—God is always just in His favors—the same splendid compliment that Jesus did. "All forsook him." So there were some Chocolate ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... hand be feebled heere, That in your Chambers gaue you chasticement? No: know the gallant Monarch is in Armes, And like an Eagle, o're his ayerie towres, To sowsse annoyance that comes neere his Nest; And you degenerate, you ingrate Reuolts, You bloudy Nero's, ripping vp the wombe Of your deere Mother-England: blush for shame: For your owne Ladies, and pale-visag'd Maides, Like Amazons, come tripping after drummes: Their thimbles into armed Gantlets change, Their Needl's to Lances, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... over to Mr. Slade's tavern. When I knew this, I felt as strong as when I was well, and I got up and dressed myself, and started out after you. But I hadn't gone far, before I met Mr. Slade's great bull-dog, Nero, and he growled at me so dreadfully that I was frightened and ran back home. Then I started again, and went away round by Mr. Mason's. But there was Nero in the road, and this time he caught my dress in his mouth and tore a great piece out of the skirt. I ran back again, and ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... 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 ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... of Nero, that a cinical mock-philosopher, called Demetrius, saw, for the first time, one of these pantomime compositions. Struck with the truth of the representation, he could not help expressing the greatest marks of astonishment: ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... shown two spaces of ground, where part of Nero's golden house stood, for which the owner has been offered an extraordinary sum of money. What encouraged the undertakers, are several very ancient trees, which grow upon the spot, from whence they conclude that these particular tracts of ground must have lain untouched for ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... true, as you say, the polls are only open once in four years—when men once get the habit—who knows where it will end—it is hard enough to keep them at home now! No, history is full of unhappy examples of men in public life; Nero, Herod, King John—you ask me to set these names before your young people. Politics has a blighting, demoralizing influence on men. It dominates them, hypnotizes them, pursues them even after their earthly career is ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... has twice occurred to the Greeks in the city of Corinth. Titus, then, and Nero again in our days, both at Corinth, and both alike at the celebration of the Isthmian games, permitted the Greeks to enjoy their own laws and liberty. The former (as has been said) proclaimed it by the crier; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... years an obelisk which the Emperor Caligula brought from Egypt to adorn Rome. It witnessed wonderful events long before the time of Moses. At its foot the children of Israel sang the melodies of their country during their servitude. It was a decoration of Nero's circus, and saw thousands of Christian martyrs torn to pieces by Gallic hounds and African lions; and still it lifts itself 80 feet into the air in a single block, untouched by time ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... produce by all his fine 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 a forced ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... nonsense; there was no meaning in them; people were hoodwinked by the silken robes and handsome mask, by the fluting and piping and the fine voices, which served to set off what in itself was nothing. The leading pantomime of the day—this was in Nero's reign—was apparently a man of no mean intelligence; unsurpassed, in fact, in wideness of range and in grace of execution. Nothing, I think, could be more reasonable than the request he made of Demetrius, which was, to reserve his decision till he had witnessed his performance, which he undertook ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... and vital drama, written when Racine was twenty-eight years old, brought him immediate fame. During the next ten years (1667-77) he produced a series of masterpieces, of which perhaps the most interesting are Britannicus, where the youthful Nero, just plunging into crime, is delineated with supreme mastery; Bajazet, whose subject is a contemporary tragedy of the seraglio at Constantinople; and a witty comedy, Les Plaideurs, based on Aristophanes. Racine's character was a complex one; he ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... 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
... was necessary for me to go from it several miles—to the Pincian hill, or a terrace of the beautiful Villa Doria-Pamfili. The latter view is one of the finest, as nothing else of all Rome is seen. The cathedral stands on the site of Nero's Circus, where many Christians were martyred, and where the Apostle Peter is said to have been buried after his crucifixion. In the year 90 an oratory was built there, and in 306 Emperor Constantine erected a church. It was the grandest ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... we have observed, in order to distinguish its circumstances, and trace its consequences: Whereas in the latter, the experienced event is exactly and fully familiar to that which we infer as the result of any particular situation. The history of a TIBERIUS or a NERO makes us dread a like tyranny, were our monarchs freed from the restraints of laws and senates: But the observation of any fraud or cruelty in private life is sufficient, with the aid of a little thought, to give us the same apprehension; while it serves as an ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... our species below the order of men. What an affront to the King of the universe, to maintain that the happiness of a monster, sunk in debauchery and spreading desolation and murder among men, of a Caligula, a Nero, or a Charles, is more precious in his sight than that of millions of his suppliant creatures, who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God! No, in the judgment of heaven there is no other ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Modern Greek stories are very like the skazka mentioned above. In one of these (Hahn, ii. p. 234), a Lamia guards the water of life (abanato nero) which flows within a rock; in another (ii. p. 280) a mountain opens at midday, and several springs are disclosed, each of which cries "Draw from me!" but the only one which is life-giving is that to ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... done me the favour of allowing me to build a nunnery for ladies here at the foot of Monte Cavallo, by the broken portico, where it is said that Nero saw Rome burning, so that the wicked footprints of such a man may be trodden out by others more honest of holy women. I do not know, M. Angelo, what shape and proportions to give to the house, where the door should be placed, and whether some of the old work may ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... all round, far enough to be visible, a great sense of air and space, for a valley. No vegetation, save a few olives and scrub oaks and the bitter herbs and euphorbus. No scented happy Tuscan things. And deep below, the arches of Nero's Villa—with demons no doubt galore. Those giottesque chapels hold in them, all hung with lamps, a small tufo grotto, the one down which, as in Sodoma's fresco, the angels sent baskets of provisions and the devils made ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... pen cannot express with true ardour the terrifying scenes and cruel torments brought about by such fierce chieftains on such indefensive religious. It seems impossible that a fleshly heart could hold so much wickedhess, for these petty chiefs were veritable monsters of cruelty who surpassed a Nero; men who were entire strangers to noble and humane sentiments and who in appearance having the figure of a man were in reality tigers roaring in desperation, or mad dogs who ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... itself. Youth boasts of strength and prowess to do great deeds, not of skill to pile millions upon millions, a Pelion upon an Ossa of wealth. Nor in the vain luxury of New York can we detect anything save the signs of age. It is only in modern America that the mad extravagance of Nero's Rome may be matched. There the banquet of Trimalchio might be presented without surprise and without reproach. It differs from what are known as "freak dinners" only in the superiority of its invention and in the perfection ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... mistaken for a portion of the cathedral; it is, however, a relic of the old castle, the keep of which rested on a mound of sand and gravel, which was found to contain, upon its removal in 1833, Roman remains of the reigns of Augustus, Nero, Vespasian, and Constantine. In High Street, leading from the Cathedral to the Cross, is the Guildhall, erected from a design by a pupil of the great Sir Christopher Wren, and considered to be one of the most handsome ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he, I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of Lucian's, who employed an eagle's wing and a vulture's in his flight, I take to be a mere figment of the satirist's imagination. But what do you make of Simon ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... felicite and glory therof: but also for the permanent and stedfast state thereof. Aristotle and Plato setteth forthe, thother formes of gouernme[n]t. But in all those, no long co[n]tinuaunce of felicitee, nor of happy state can appere [Sidenote: Tirannis[.] Nero[.] Domicianus[.] Caligula.] in them, as for the contrarie to a Monarchie, is tirannis, pe- stiferous, and to be detested, where one man gouerneth to his priuate gaine, pillyng and polyng his subiectes, murderyng with all crueltie, neither Lawe nor reason, leadyng ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... especially that of the former, who was invested with the dignity of cardinal, every one discovered the most violent rage against the king; and numerous libels were published by the wits and orators of Italy, comparing him to Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and all the most unrelenting tyrants of antiquity. Clement VII. had died about six months after he pronounced sentence against the king; and Paul III., of the name of Farnese, had succeeded to the papal throne. This pontiff, who while cardinal, had always favored Henry's cause, had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... escape her wrath. So resistless was this power, that from the highest noble down to the meanest slave, all were subject to it. The dethroned emperor could not escape her vengeance, nor was such an escape even hoped for. When Nero fell, he could only go and kill himself in a neighboring villa. Yet here, amid these infinite labyrinths, even the power of Rome was unavailing, and her baffled emissaries faltered at the ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... than failure ever will. It's like a Santa Cruz rum milk punch on an empty stomach—there's very few people can stand it. Many a guy that's a regular fellow at a hundred a month, becomes a boob at a hundred a week. What beat Napoleon, Caesar and Nero—failure? No, success! Give the thing the once over some time and ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... heart of hearts, believed Fitzgerald guilty. But he was one of those persons, who having either tender hearts or obstinate natures—the latter is perhaps the more general—deem it incumbent upon them to come forward in championship of those in trouble. There are, doubtless, those who think that Nero was a pleasant young man, whose cruelties were but the resultant of an overflow of high spirits; and who regard Henry VIII. in the light of a henpecked husband unfortunate in the possession of six wives. These people delight in expressing their sympathy with great scoundrels ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it adieu forever; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that has ever happened to it from Nero's conflagration downward. In fact, I wish the very site of it had been obliterated before I ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... where they are riding. If we and France, as you anticipate, Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself, Do you see for the master of the feast? There may be a place waiting on your head For laurel thick as Nero's. You don't know. I have not crossed your glory, though I might If I saw thrones ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... does not say "his empress") was Messalina, third wife of the Emperor Claudius, who was uncle of Caligula and foster-father to Nero. Furthermore, in her case the charge is that she copulated with twenty-five in a single night, and not twenty-two, as appears in the text. Montaigne is right in his statistics, if original sources are correct, whereas the author erred ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... Italy, and was coincident not with the murderous war against Hannibal and the subsequent campaigns, costly though they were, in Spain, Syria, and Macedonia, but with the Hellenisation of social life. Lucan, under Nero, complains that the towns have lost more than half their inhabitants, and that the country-side lies waste. Under Titus it was estimated that, whereas Italy under the Republic could raise nearly 800,000 soldiers, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
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