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More "Spartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Thrush had a tall tumbler on his dressing-table, to help him shave for the evening of that fateful Friday. He was dressing for an early dinner before a first night. His dressing-room, in which he also slept in Spartan simplicity, was the original powder-closet of the panelled library out of which it led. There was a third room in which his man Mullins prepared breakfast and spent the day. But the whole was a glorified garret, at the top of such stairs as might ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... spoils taken from the Persians—as a coat of mail of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian cavalry; but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand; nor is it likely that the Lacedaemonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... the true Spartan breed, and played the hostess as well as if her heart had been at ease. It was an age in which the host struggled fiercely to entertain the guests; and Mrs. Gaunt was taxing all her powers of pleasing in the dining-room, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... the saying is, she is commonly a fool: if proud, scornful, sequiturque superbia formam, or dishonest, rara est concordia formae, atque pudicitiae, "can she be fair and honest too?" [5732] Aristo, the son of Agasicles, married a Spartan lass, the fairest lady in all Greece next to Helen, but for her conditions the most abominable and beastly creature of the world. So that I would wish thee to respect, with [5733]Seneca, not her person but qualities. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... law transgress'd, And snatch'd the infant from the parent's breast; But still for public good the boy was train'd, The mother suffer'd, but the matron gain'd: Here nature's outrage serves no cause to aid; The ill is felt, but not the Spartan made. Then too I own, it grieves me to behold Those ever virtuous, helpless now and old, By all for care and industry approved, For truth respected, and for temper loved; And who, by sickness and misfortune tried, Gave want its worth and poverty ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... girls; and in winter, when velvets and furs were in evidence, the contrast made by her coarse plain serge, and untrimmed cape of Irish frieze, was quite as strong; indeed, her plainness was more than Quakerish, it was Spartan, she was totally destitute of the knicknacks so dear to the girlish heart, and though she had grown used to looking at grapes like Reynard in the fable, I am sure she often felt the sting of her grandfather's needless, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... is a story of abuse. For ages men beat, sold, and abused their wives and daughters like cattle. The Spartan mother that gave birth to one of her own sex disgraced herself; the girl babies were often deserted in the mountains to starve; China bound and deformed their feet; Turkey veiled their faces; America denied them equal educational advantages with men. Most ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... get a rise or two out of that Mrs. Morton. I did get her to be confidential and to tell me how much better the honours would have sat upon her dear husband. I believe she thinks that if he were alive he would have shared them like the Spartan kings. She wishes that "her brother, Lord Northmoor" (you should hear the tone), "were more worldly, and she begs me to impress on him the duty of doing everything for her dear Herbert, who, in the nature of things, must be the heir ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inconvenience, the idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; and when the women are concerned in a public protest the men are—oh, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... The Spartan women, with a manly air, Fatigues and dangers with their husbands share: They in fantastic sports have no delight, Partners with them in exercise ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... are in Lacedaemon, and he appears to be the prince of them all; the manner of life, however, which he describes is not Spartan, but rather Ionian, and he seems quite to confirm what you are saying, when he traces up the ancient state of mankind by the help of tradition ...
— Laws • Plato
... hardships and dreariness of our sad situation; not a complaint, not a murmur, not a reproach. To see her so quietly resigned, you would have supposed that she had been both chamber-maid and cook all her life, that is if you never tasted her dishes! I shall always remember her first dinner. O, the Spartan broth of that day! She must have gotten the receipt from "The Good ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and resolves, with all the airs of a Spartan, to be calm. Nevertheless, he is not calm, and quite doubles the amount of minutes that really elapse before the drawing-room door is thrown open and Cecil, followed ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... were Spartan women, as the story-books say, I wonder if their blood died with them! ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... preserved the same Spartan simplicity. Eunice, however, carried her point in regard to the salad; for Abel, after tasting and finding it very palatable, decided that oil and vinegar might be classed in the catalogue of True Food. Indeed, his ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... were doing in their camp, the report was that some of them were engaged in gymnastics and warlike exercises, while others were merely sitting and combing their long hair. If the hypothesis already suggested is correct, the Spartan youths so engaged were perhaps not merely adorning themselves for death, but, as they thought, obtaining their full strength for battle. "The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition appears to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... his exile are to me very touching, though I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember the story of the Spartan boy who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. I think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... noise of a brawl.—There was that in the Admiral that would have when it could outward no less than inward magnificence. He could go like a Spartan or Diogenes the Cynic, but when the chance came—magnificence! With him from Spain traveled a Viceroy's household. He had no less than thirty personal servants and retainers. Hidalgos here at Isabella had also servants, but no one more than two ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... one another good-bye, and happiness, until we met again. And when the time should come for our resumption of those pursuits which (here a general depression set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits which;—then let us ever remember what was said by the Spartan General, in words too trite for repetition, at the battle it ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... King as he sat by the piano was anything but prepossessing. A little, crabbed, spare old man, attired with Spartan simplicity, in a faded blue coat, whose red facings were smudged brown with the Spanish snuff he so liberally took; thin lips, prominent jaws, receding forehead, and eyes of supernatural keenness glaring from under shaggy brows; a ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... practical, pure and powerful, delighting and troubling my memory—visions of new ties I longed to contract, of new duties I longed to undertake, had taken the rover and the rebel out of me, and had shown endurance of my hated lot in the light of a Spartan virtue. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... this best and meekest woman bore With such serenity her husband's woes, Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore, Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose Never to say a word about them more— Calmly she heard each calumny that rose, And saw his agonies with such sublimity, That all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a grave nod of her head. Ever since the artillery had commenced to roar she had been watching eagerly for her son's return, but she was a Spartan mother, and concealed her gnawing anxiety under a cloak of brave silence. And then she remembered what was the object of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... or any business, or any holiness of duty, other or loftier than that of war. If it were possible that, under the amenities of a Grecian sky, too fierce a memento could whisper itself of torrid zones, under the stern discipline of the Doric Spartan it was that you looked for it; or, on the other hand, if the lute might, at intervals, be heard or fancied warbling too effeminately for the martial European key of the Grecian muses, amidst the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... recovery of a leg sufficiently workable in the matter of climbing stairs, Dr. Farr's boarder had resigned the family couch in the sitting-room and had retired to his spartan chamber under the eaves. From its open window that night he watched the moon. Let nothing happen to the universe in the meantime, and there would be a full moon on Friday night. The professor hoped that nothing ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... friend, and faithless wife, Who sacrificed to impious lust thy life; Fast by Arcadia stretch these desert plains, And o'er the land a gloomy tyrant reigns. Next, Macronisi is adjacent seen, 270 Where adverse winds detain'd the Spartan queen; For whom, in arms combined, the Grecian host, With vengeance fired, invaded Phrygia's coast; For whom so long they labour'd to destroy The lofty turrets of imperial Troy; Here, driven by Juno's rage, the hapless dame, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... ON' I DAS, the celebrated Spartan leader who, with three hundred men, perished in the effort to resist the Persian hosts, at the mountain pass of ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... distinguish the expression upon the lineaments of your fellow passengers. A scoop net of green cloth on a wire springs back over the light to cover it when you want to sleep: Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The toilet room is Spartan in its simplicity, and the amount of water in the tanks depends upon the conscientiousness of a naked heathen of the lowest caste, who walks over the roofs of the cars and is supposed to fill them from a pig skin suspended on his back. You furnish your own towel and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... have arrived. I have no remarks to make on them, and cannot make out why he wrote them.' In the afternoon, indeed, he betrays some pity; but it is the pity of a man for a mouse. 'He is evidently not a Spartan... he will want some quarantine... one feels sorry for him.' The next day he is again inexorable, and gives his reasons clearly. 'I shall have nothing to do with Slatin's coming here to stay, unless he has the Mahdi's positive ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... since the training of the children of that sex, hardly yielded to that of the male in laboriousness and fatigue. Be this confessed to be an extreme: but then it was in some measure compensated by its being universally allowed, that the Spartan women owed to it that beauty in which they excelled the rest of the Grecian women, who were themselves held, in that point, preferable to the rest of the world. Hellen was a Spartan. Yet the legislator ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... leisure than the meanest brother.[5308] Over and above the austerities of ordinary discipline this or that superior imposed on himself additional mortifications which were so great as to astonish as well as edify his monks. Such is the ideal State of the theorist, a Spartan republic, and for all, including the chiefs, an equal ration of the same black broth. There is another resemblance, still more profound. At the base of this republic lies the corner-stone designed in anticipation by Rousseau, then hewn and employed, well or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pleaded to be released from their contracts or for special compensation; proprietors of Boarding Schools, or "Academies," as they were generally called, had to modify their terms and to plead for compensation, while the King on his throne found the Civil List insufficient even with that Spartan order adopted by His Majesty, George III., that the bread in his household was to be made of meal and rye mixed, and that the Royal family were to eat the same bread as ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... and shook his head violently in a Spartan effort to rouse himself; but what more effectively performed the task for him were certain sounds issuing from Harkless's room, across the hall. For some minutes, Meredith had been dully conscious of a rustle and stir in the invalid's chamber, and he began to realize ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... by the labour of their thin hands, the sweat of their brows, the masters were made rich; but they would not be utterly ground down to dust. No! they would fold their hands and sit idle, and smile at the masters, whom even in death they could baffle. With Spartan endurance they determined to let the employers know their ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the soldier's uniform and the barrack mess table are civilization's last word—would like no doubt to start a regime of National Kitchens and "Spartan Broth." They would point out the advantages thereby gained, the economy in fuel and food, if such huge kitchens were established, where every one could come for their rations of soup ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... appointments were Spartan in the extreme, and in their simplicity would have met the demands of any demagogue in the land. The nights were cold and damp, and General Sherman uncomfortably active in his preparations, so that the assistant adjutant-general had no very luxurious post just then. We were surrounded with ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... it was cast into a ravine and then left to perish. When the boys who were permitted to live were seven years old, they were taken from their mothers and made to endure cold, hunger, and inhuman severities. They were beaten until the blood flowed, simply to teach them endurance, and a Spartan boy would die under the lash rather than endure the disgrace of uttering a cry of pain. There was never any family ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty, who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with impunity; yet beyond this somewhat contracted region his thoughts strayed pleasantly afield into the far wider region of the things which he could not eat with impunity; but which, with a truly Spartan epicureanism, he did eat—and bravely accepted the bilious consequences! The slightly anxious, yet determined, expression that would appear upon Mr. Port's cleanshaven, ruddy countenance as he settled himself to the discussion of an especially good and especially dangerous ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... beautiful that they think, "Surely I love God. Why, of course I love God." But to love God involves something practical. It means something more than mere profession. It means rugged self-denial, Spartan heroism, perhaps the loss of an "arm" or the "plucking out of an eye." Base must have been the soul which was not attracted by One who "spake as never man spake"; low-minded the man who did not see in Him imperishable beauty and refinement of soul; but ah! discipleship means far more than that. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... home some day of the most Spartan simplicity, all our needs cut down to the lowest and plainest of possessions, and yet a spirit of hospitality, of contentment, of gaiety, of self-reliance and mutual ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... world! We were not free, our tawny hands were tied; But Belgium's plight and Serbia's woes we shared Each rise of sun or setting of the moon. So when the bugle blast had called us forth We went not like the surly brute of yore But, as the Spartan, proud to give the world The freedom that we never knew nor shared. These chains, O brothers mine, have weighed us down As Samson in the temple of the gods; Unloosen them and let us breathe the ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... soon after, the right of succession (as every one thought) rested in Lycurgus; and reign he did for a time, but declared that the kingdom belonged to the child of his sister-in-law the queen, and that he himself should exercise the regal jurisdiction only as his guardian; the Spartan name for which office is prodicus. Soon after, an overture was made to him by the queen, that she would herself in some way destroy the infant, upon condition that he would marry her when he came to the crown. Abhorring the woman's wickedness, he nevertheless did not reject her proposal, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... her husband that Emma revealed the real source of her Spartan calm. The wedding was over. There had been a quiet little celebration, after which Jock McChesney had gone West with his very lovely young wife. Emma had kissed her very tenderly, very soberly after ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... Spartan rigor and severity to which he was subjected in his youth, for the purpose of dispelling exaggerated pride of birth and station, he feels assured that the rights and privileges which he enjoys above his fellow-men are of Divine origin. Although a constitutional ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... turned cold, and a tremor ran through him; but he did not speak a word; and, with Spartan fortitude, suppressed all outward sign of emotion. He laid the paper down ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... not know where to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this. This is indeed, according to Milton, to "describe high passions and high actions". The fortitude of the Spartan boy who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dilaceration of the spirit and exenteration of the inmost mind, which Calantha with a holy violence ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... a small nail at the bottom. Instead of this, he affixed a good-sized spike, and one night Mary Anderson, coming out as usual, drove this right through her foot, in her sudden stop on the cliffs brink. Without flinching, or moving a muscle, with Spartan fortitude she played the scene to the end, though almost fainting with pain, till on the fall of the curtain the spiked staff was drawn out, not without force. Longfellow was much concerned at this accident, and ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... distasteful medicine in the solid—the girl tidied the room. It was the only really well-furnished room in the cottage; Nell's little chamber in the roof was as plain as Marguerite's in "Faust," and Dick's was Spartan in its Character; but a Wolfer—Mrs. Lorton was a distant, a very distant connection by a remote marriage of the noble family of that name—cannot live without a certain amount of luxury, and, as there was not enough ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... with us in broken English, and the others laugh and talk incessantly. My inkstand, pen, and small handwriting amuse them very much. Miss K., the typical American travelling lady, who is encountered everywhere from the Andes to the Pyramids, tireless, with an indomitable energy, Spartan endurance, and a genius for attaining everything, and myself, a limp, ragged, shoeless wretch, complete the group, and our heaps of saddles, blankets, spurs, and gear tell of real travelling, past and future. It is a most picturesque ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... favour in Umbrian palaces and convents. Thenceforward he painted but little else; and when, in the Sala del Cambio, he was obliged to treat the representative heroes of Greek and Roman story, he adopted the same manner[220]. Leonidas, the lionhearted Spartan, and Cato, the austere Roman, who preferred liberty to life, bend their mild heads like flowers in Perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy. Jove is a reproduction of the Eterno Padre, conceived ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... afterward these "never-surrender" Spartan chaps were brought into camp, the most hang-dog looking set ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan[199] fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Helen, with her Trojan swain— The royal youth that fed his amorous pain, With ardent gaze, on those destructive charms That waken'd half the warring world to arms— Yonder, behold Oenone's wild despair, Who mourns the triumphs of the Spartan fair! The injured husband answers groan for groan, And young Hermione with piteous moan Orestes calls; while Laodamia near Bewails her valiant consort's fate severe.— Adrastus' daughter there laments her spouse Sincere and constant to her nuptial vows; Yet, lured by her, with gold's seductive ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of a thick soup, rich in dark-hued garden produce, and a large hunk of bread—except on Thursdays, when a pat of butter was served out to each boy instead of that Spartan broth—that "brouet noir des Lacedemoniens," ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... came once more the dusty courier. Leonidas was holding the gate of Hellas. The Barbarians had perished by thousands. At Artemisium, Themistocles and the allied Greek admirals were making head against the Persian armadas. But still nothing was decided. Still the Spartan host lingered at the Isthmus, and Leonidas must fight his battle alone. The sun sank that night with tens of thousands wishing his car might stand fast. At gray dawn Athens was awake and watching. Men forgot to eat, forgot to drink. One ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the enlargement of woman's thought in all directions. From our laboratories, libraries, observatories, schools of medicine and law, universities of science, art and literature, she is advancing to the examination of the problems of life, with an eye single only to the glory of truth. Like the Spartan of old she has thrown her spear into the thickest of the fray, and will fight gloriously in the midst thereof till she regains her own. No specious sophistry or vain delusion—no time-honored tradition or untenable doctrine can ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency, which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is this the man who delights to paint the useful struggles of passion, the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic flights which carry the glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty sentiments lowered when he ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... A.B. Davidson, Esq., near the grave of his beloved wife, who, a short time before, preceded him to the tomb. Upon this lot was located the Queen's Museum College, receiving, in 1777, the more patriotic name of "Liberty Hall Academy." Within its walls were educated a Spartan band of young men, who afterward performed a noble part in achieving ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... truth! It was a comfort at least to remember that it had not been the fabrication of her own brain, she had respectable authority for the idea, and she trusted to its prompter to participate in her indignation, argue Ulick out of so poor a match, and at least put a decided veto upon Sophy's Spartan magnanimity— Sophy's health and feelings being the subject, she sometimes thought, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... within it, firing at random on the furious savages, who howled for their blood. The Iroquois fought like incarnate demons, and every stone they flung with unerring precision shattered a white man's skull. Like the Spartan three hundred, this brave French band determined not to be taken alive, so the living supplied the places of their fallen comrades until only five or six men remained. But the Indians at last effected an entrance within the barricade, ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... maturest thoughts on education, on government, on the type of man,—a rare type, alone fitted for leadership. The figure of his hero, Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, known to him by story and legend, is modelled on the Spartan king Agesilaus, whom he loved and admired, and under whom he served in Persia and in Greece (op. cit. Vol. II., see under Agesilaus, Index, and Hellenica, Bks. III.-V. Agesilaus, an Encomium, passim). Certain traits ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, thrift and morality, and the ceremonies at the end of rice planting, at harvest and at the maturity of the silk-worm. The fitting-up of the school is Spartan but the rooms are high and well lighted and ventilated. The students' hot bath accommodates a dozen lads at a time. The studies are also the dormitories, and in the corner of each there is stored a big mosquito netting. Except for a few square yards near the doors, these rooms consist ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... themselves of the serpent race. The Lacedaemonians likewise referred themselves to the same original. Their city is said of old to have swarmed with [509]serpents. The same is said of the city Amyclae in Italy, which was of Spartan original. They came hither in such abundance, that it was abandoned by the [510]inhabitants. Argos was infested in the same manner, till Apis came from Egypt, and settled in that city. He was a prophet, the reputed son of Apollo, and a person of great skill and ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... sleep squarely in the trail, just where we'd be sure to see you. Stand up now and march like a man, ready to meet any fate. Fortune has turned against you, but you still have the chance to show your Spartan ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow workmen there in God's eternity surviving those, they alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time. To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind. Heaven is kind, as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying, while she gave her son his shield, 'With it, my son, or upon it, thou, too, shalt return home in honour—to thy far distant home in honour—doubt it not—if in the battle thou keep thy ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... what little he did know he kept altogether to himself. He had no father or mother, no uncle, aunt, brother or sister, no cousin even whom he could mention in a cursory way to his dearest friend. He suffered, no doubt;—but with Spartan consistency he so hid his trouble from the world that no one knew that he suffered. Those with whom he lived, and who speculated often and wondered much as to who he was, never dreamed that the silent man's reticence was a burden to himself. At ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... in the Prussian system was astonishing to the Silesians, and soon gained a secret power over their minds. This was the Spartan spirit of devotion on the part of the King's servants, which appeared so frequently even among the humblest officials; for instance, the revenue collectors, never popular even before the introduction of the French system. In this ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... not inglorious in thy fate; For so Apollo, with unweeting hand Whilome did slay his dearly-loved mate Young Hyacinth born on Eurotas' strand, Young Hyacinth the pride of Spartan land; But then transform'd him to a purple flower Alack that so to change ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... subject, he was secretly very proud to recall the former grandeur of his ancestors, one of whom, in old Greek days, had been a famous king over the frogs, eels, and snakes, in a Spartan marsh. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... them caresses plumb up to his house—as well he may, they're that onreeserved an' earnest—an' thinks it's some one shootin' a rifle. It has the effect of bringin' out the old Spartan with his Hawkins; an' the first word of it that reaches me an' Sarah Ann is him, Marm Bender an' the whole b'ilin' of folks is down thar on the bank, tryin' to make out in the gen'ral dimness whatever ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... but as a writer and sage. "Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge." His great work is his "Republic," in which he pictures the ideal State and outlines his scheme of education, which is built on ideals of both Spartan and Athenian citizenship. From Sparta comes the thought of an education which shall be controlled by the State from birth; while Athens adds the aesthetical aspects to those ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... looked round the hut in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind, nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel? I ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... to his children in their early years, but his attitude toward himself was truly Spartan. He never visited the theater, for instance, but sought his recreation in various spiritual practices and in reading the BHAGAVAD GITA. {FN1-7} Shunning all luxuries, he would cling to one old pair of shoes until they were useless. His sons bought automobiles after they came into popular ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... life? And was she never to know how dear she was to him? Why not speak to her, why not tell her that he loved her? But Condy knew that Blix did not love him, and the knowledge of that must keep him silent; he must hug his secret to him, like the Spartan boy with his stolen fox, no matter how grievously it hurt him to do so. He and Blix had lived through two months of rarest, most untroubled happiness, with hardly more self-consciousness than two young and healthy boys. To bring that troublous, disquieting element of love ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... great fellow Dan is!" exclaimed Belle a few minutes later. "See how gayly he is chatting with Laura. I don't believe Laura guesses for a moment that Dan Dalzell is just as game a fellow as the Spartan boy of ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... to understand that the defeat of Waterloo was necessary for the liberty of Europe; but she not the less cherishes at the bottom of her heart a poignant grief and rage at having been marked out for a victim. On that plain where so many Spartan-like warriors fell for her sake—where the pyramid of the Prince of Orange, the tomb of Colonel Gordon, and the monument of the Hanoverians, serve as mementoes of the fight—no stone, or cross, or inscription recalls the name of France. But ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... reading-room, and a class-room; yet those who frequented it were bound by the rigorous laws of none of the three. There were no restrictions as to when, or what, or how one should study. It was a place in which originality was admired and research encouraged. As at a Spartan feast, youth and age commingled, men of all ages and diverse attainments exchanged views, and all ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... are of the citizens the eldest who are passing from the ranks of the "Horsemen," in each year five; and these are bound during that year in which they pass out from the "Horsemen," to allow themselves to be sent without ceasing to various places by the Spartan State. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... things forbidden by the schoolmaster,—these, I often notice in my Eton acquaintances, are the things that have done them good; these, and not their inconsiderable or considerable knowledge of the Greek accidence almost at all! What is Greek accidence, compared to Spartan discipline, if it can be had? That latter is a real and grand attainment. Certainly, if rebellion is unfortunately needful, and you can rebel in a generous manner, several things may be acquired in that operation,—rigorous mutual fidelity, reticence, steadfastness, mild stoicism, and other ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... in France, indeed, in much resembled that of the Spartan in Greece. He had forced a settlement with scanty numbers in the midst of a subjugated and sullen population, surrounded by jealous and formidable foes. Hence sobriety was a condition of his being, and the policy of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at rough inns, and on their arrival searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit and independence in all lands where ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... play hob with my book.—No time like the present. I'll go back with you to-day, Morty, and put my things together.—It 's been the best time of my life!" he sighed, already beginning to dramatize himself as the self-denying Spartan. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Rousseau debated whether he should keep tryst with his gay fellow-traveller, or return to Chamberi. Remorse and that intractable emptiness of pocket which is the iron key to many a deed of ingenuous-looking self-denial and Spartan virtue, directed him homewards. Here he had a surprise, and perhaps learnt a lesson. He found installed in the house a personage whom he describes as tall, fair, noisy, coxcombical, flat-faced, flat-souled. Another triple alliance seemed a thing odious in the eyes of a man whom his travelling ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... himself another Leonidas, and us his Spartan band, and want us to die around him, and start another Thermopylae down her in the mountains, some place," suggested Kent Edwards, "you would cheerfully pass in your checks along with the rest, so as to make the thing an ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... regrets are, and how the indulgence of sentiment only serves to make people more miserable, Mrs. Rebecca wisely determined to give way to no vain feelings of sorrow, and bore the parting from her husband with quite a Spartan equanimity. Indeed Captain Rawdon himself was much more affected at the leave-taking than the resolute little woman to whom he bade farewell. She had mastered this rude coarse nature; and he loved and worshipped her with all his faculties of regard and admiration. In all his life he had never ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... banner, and the field, Glory and Greece, around me see! The Spartan, borne upon his shield, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... destroyed, antiquated customs changed, depraved affections corrected, inveterate vices eradicated. For this, a strong force and a vehement impulse will be necessary.... Citizens, the inflexible austerity of Lycurgus created the firm basis of the Spartan republic. The feeble and trusting disposition of Solon plunged Athens into slavery. This parallel contains the whole science ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... the Athenians of all the advantages which they had acquired on the mainland of Greece. In every city of Greece there were always two parties, the wealthy and noble, called oligarchs, and the demos, or commons; and according as Spartan or Athenian influence was in the ascendant the balance of power in each city wavered between the nobles and the people, the Athenians favouring the Many, the Spartans the Few. Accordingly there was always a party living in exile, and waiting for a turn of affairs which might enable ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... decayed family, which had been rich for many generations. He despised money, and did not consider it to be one of the valuable things of life. Never having known want, he had few pretensions, and often denied himself to help others. It was said that he lived in a very Spartan fashion, and used a large proportion of his income for the relief of the poor. On many points he agreed with the lower classes, not only theoretically but purely organically; and Pelle saw, to his amazement, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... story of the Spartan prince's wanderings. And when he had finished, he pressed Telemachus to prolong his visit; but that prudent youth declined the invitation, pleading the necessity of a speedy return to Ithaca, that he ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... and it was only his early death that deposed him from his place of equality with Newman and Keble and Pusey. Anthony was a sickly child, and from his earliest years lacked the loving care of a mother. He was brought up with Spartan severity by his father and his aunt. The most venial self-indulgence was regarded as criminal. From the age of three he was inured to hardship by being ducked every morning in a trough of ice-cold water. Hurrell Froude felt no tenderness for the ailing lad. Once, in order to rouse a manly spirit ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be her reward. Had Othello any knowledge or experience in such matters to fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized doubt, until compass, bearings, and wisdom lost, he ends all ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... triumphant notes, 'Give me liberty,' electrified the assembly. It was not a prayer, but a stern demand, which would submit to no refusal or delay. The sound of his voice, as he spoke these memorable words, was like that of a Spartan paean on the field of Plataea; and, as each syllable of the word 'liberty' echoed through the building, his fetters were shivered; his arms were hurled apart; and the links of his chains were scattered to the winds. When he spoke the word 'liberty' with an emphasis never given it before, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... that the older boy had a bullet from| |a revolver embedded to a distance of three inches in| |the brain matter. | | | |The boy was shot by his younger brother Sunday | |afternoon, but after they had agreed to keep secret | |the story of the shooting, Stephen, with the | |stoicism of a Spartan, had refused to tell the | |story. When the X-ray picture revealed his secret he| |sobbed out, "He didn't mean to do it." Then he told | |the story. | | | | "Just Tired Out," He Says | | | |The two boys ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... would have been far more useful had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature made her,—that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family had they possessed that accomplishment,—that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor the Amazons, nor Penelope, nor Andromache, nor Lucretia, nor Joan of Arc, nor Petrarch's Laura, nor the daughters of Charlemagne, nor the three hundred and sixty-five wives of Mohammed; ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... by the priesthood. As Moses—the Hebrew law giver, is represented as having received the law from God on the holy mountains, so is Zoroaster, the Persian, Manu, the Hindoo, Minos, the Cretan, Lycurgus, the Spartan, and Numa, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... earned by these public services was equaled by the admiration he attracted to his private life; he captivated and won over everybody by his conformity to Spartan habits. People who saw him wearing his hair close cut, bathing in cold water, eating coarse meal, and dining on black broth, doubted, or rather could not believe, that he ever had a cook in his house, or had ever ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... these islands and then, what is more important, the whole of Europe, that there was nothing invincible about the troops of Napoleon, when they were faced by British regiments properly trained, as Moore trained them at Shorncliff. Just as the destruction of the Spartan Hoplites in the Island of Sphacteria broke the military spell cast by the armies of Sparta, so Moore's victorious retreat to, and action at, Corunna broke the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... peace again; four fat years of wantonness and riot preceding fourteen hungry famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war. The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in vice, if not in splendour, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry's Spartan grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth, whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother's lessons. A seraglio of maids of honour ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Plataea, that the Greeks under the command of Pausanias gained against Mardonius and the Persians, the conquerors, according to their custom, coming to divide amongst them the glory of the exploit, attributed to the Spartan nation the pre-eminence of valour in the engagement. The Spartans, great judges of virtue, when they came to determine to what particular man of their nation the honour was due of having the best behaved himself upon this occasion, found ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... commodore's widow, had tried in vain to get an offer from him. Said I, 'Carroll, is this another Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said I was a Spartan widow." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... you could! You are an angel, a Spartan, and a sport. Your nature is simply an extravagant profusion of the highest human attributes. And the worst of it is, you look it. You are too beautiful—in a superior, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... interrupted her with a grave nod of her head. Ever since the artillery had commenced to roar she had been watching eagerly for her son's return, but she was a Spartan mother, and concealed her gnawing anxiety under a cloak of brave silence. And then she remembered what was the object of her ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... occasion, when there was a great play at the principal theater in Athens, the seats set apart for strangers were filled with Spartan boys; and other seats, not far distant, were filled with Athenian youth. The theater was crowded, when an old man, infirm, and leaning on a staff, entered. There was no seat for him. The Athenian youth called to the old man to come to them, and with great difficulty ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... seen little of my uncle when I was home last, but he wrote to me twice—stern, military-toned letters, each of which was quite a despatch in itself. In these he laid down the law to me, giving me the best of advice, but it was all very Spartan-like. He insisted above all things upon my recollecting that I was to be a soldier, and that a soldier was always a gentleman and a man of honour, and each time he finished his ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... things than war; but duty is before everything. All my life I have sacrificed everything—peace, interest, happiness—to my destiny." These phrases in no way consoled Josephine who knew very well that her husband, in spite of his assumption of Spartan austerity; ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... cooking the toothsome buffalo hump, frying the fragrant bear's meat, and stewing the esculent bean for the braves. For a few favored ones spitted grasshoppers were reserved as a rare delicacy, although the proud Spartan soul of their chief scorned ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... acts of heroism which are both very numerous and very sublime, it has done so without presenting any prospect of personal immortality as a reward. Of all the forms of human heroism, it is probably the most unselfish. The Spartan and the Roman died for his country because he loved it. The martyr's ecstasy of hope had no place in his dying hour. He gave up all he had, he closed his eyes, as he believed, for ever, and he asked for no reward in this world or in the next. Even the hope of posthumous fame—the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... may have a cloak: If you've a friend o'er head and ears in debt: At once, to help him numbers you can get. You fancy these your rind regales and cheers She's better for it; more beautiful appears; The Spartan king, in Helen found new charms, When he'd ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... felt that all was placed, Their race and country's future honored or disgraced, Hence with Spartan courage they the charge renewed, And in hot haste the Nation's enemy pursued, And sweat and blood from pore and wound inveigh, Following Butler to New Market heights ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... 'Fine?' asks Mart, 'fine? I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I, 'it amounts to the same thing; she can't pay her fine, and that damn reform judge, wanting to make a record as a Spartan, has committed her to jail till it is paid!' 'So they go free, and she goes to jail, because she is poor,' says Mart.' That's what your reform means,' says I, 'or I let her and the boy loose and lose my job. And oh, Mart,' says I, 'the screams of that little boy at the disgrace ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Dr. Middleton made a Spartan stand against the offer of another bottle of Port. The regulation couple of bottles had been consumed in equal partnership, and the Rev. Doctor and his host were free to pay a ceremonial visit to the drawing-room, where they were not expected. A piece of work of the elder ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... already reasoned out, and some of it he reasoned out later. In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation except when he went to see Ruth, and living like a Spartan. He paid two dollars and a half a month rent for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and drowning her sorrow and fatigue at irregular ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... used it to gamble with, buying shares and selling them again, increasing it sometimes, sometimes diminishing it, and always running the risk of losing every penny of it in a day's disaster. But although she wondered, she could not help loving him the better for his odd combination of Spartan self-control and what appeared to her romantic and childish folly. Ralph interested her more than any one else in the world, and she often broke off in the middle of one of these economic discussions, in spite of their gravity, to consider ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... perish, I perish!' Think of the fair, soft lips set to utter that grand surrender, and of all the flowery and silken cords which bound the young heart to life, so bright and desirable as was assured to her. Note the resolute calmness, the Spartan brevity, the clear sight of the possible fatal issue, the absolute submission. No higher strain has ever come from human lips. This womanly soul was of the same stock as a Miriam, a Deborah, Jephthah's daughter; and the same fire burned in her,—utter ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... disturbed, and she was very hungry. Neither sensation was novel to her. Since first she had become paid companion to Mrs. Rastall-Retford there had hardly been a moment when she had not been hungry. Some time before Mrs. Rastall-Retford's doctor had recommended to that lady a Spartan diet, and in this Eve, as companion, had unwillingly to share. It was not pleasant for either of them, but at least Mrs. Rastall-Retford had the knowledge that she had earned it by years of honest self-indulgence. Eve had ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... expressions of this feeling, and in her letters to friends she says: "O, how tired and sick I am of boning down to facts and figures perpetually, and how I long to be set free from what to me has been a perfect prison for the last six months!" She stuck to it with Spartan heroism, however, knowing that otherwise it never would be done, but she was not unwilling occasionally to sally forth and fill a lecture engagement or attend a convention. At the Rhode Island annual meeting she made the principal address, and the next day went, with Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... bottle of disinfectant. I filled the tins with the tarry fluid, and in four carefully timed rushes I placed the tins in a chair-leg square. The fifth time I put the chair in place beneath the nest, but I had misjudged my distances and had to retreat with only two tins in place. Another effort, with Spartan-like disregard of the fiery bites, and my haven was ready. I hung a bag of vials, notebook, and lens on the chairback, and, with a final rush, climbed on the seat and curled up as comfortably ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... 'Dead!' she cried. She looked about her in terror, then, rising to her feet, she ran to others lying near. They were strangers. 'Thank God!' she cried—' thank God!' Aurora returned to Mike's side, and, kneeling there, gazed upon him with streaming eyes. Burton's face had assumed a Spartan dignity in death. 'Poor, poor boy!' she said, and with her fingers upon his eyelids she whispered a prayer for his soul. It was long since she had minded to pray for her own, but the dead are so helpless. They invite even the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... near the grave of his beloved wife, who, a short time before, preceded him to the tomb. Upon this lot was located the Queen's Museum College, receiving, in 1777, the more patriotic name of "Liberty Hall Academy." Within its walls were educated a Spartan band of young men, who afterward performed a noble part in achieving the independence ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... of light: My next desire is, void of care and strife, To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life. A country cottage near a crystal flood, A winding valley and a lofty wood; Some god conduct me to the sacred shades Where bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids, Or lift me high to Haemus hilly crown, Or in the vales of Tempe lay me down, Or lead me to some solitary place, And cover my retreat ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... bred out of the Spartan kinde, So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung With eares that sweepe away the morning dew, Crooke kneed, and dew-lapt, like Thessalian Buls, Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bels, Each vnder each. A cry more tuneable ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... letters were as shy and conveyed less information. The work was hard, the hours long, his accommodation Spartan. They were in huts on Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he confessed himself too tired to write more than a few lines. He had a bad cold in the head. He was better. They had inoculated him against typhoid and had allowed him two or three slack days. The first time he had ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... her into her cloak and out of her troubles. The days lengthened, and so did the faces at home; so would the bills have done had she ever yielded to the importunities of her Mrs.-Nickleby-like mother or Mart's weakling of a wife; but Jenny was Spartan in self-denial; what she couldn't pay for on the spot she ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was accosted thus by some airy stripling: "Had I been left alone with a young beauty, I would not have spent my time like your Spartan." "That sir," said Dryden, "perhaps, is true; but give me leave to tell you, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... out of the Spartan kind, So flu'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew. Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls, Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouths like bells, Each under each: ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... delay. They weren't interested in seeing other nations going over the top—the same nations who had been over so many times; they wanted to see their sons and brothers at once given the opportunity to share the wounds and the danger. Their attitude was Spartan and splendid; they demanded a curtailment of their respite that they might find themselves afloat on the crimson tide. The cry of the civilians in America was identical with that of their men in France. "Let ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency, which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is this the man who delights to paint the useful struggles of passion, the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic flights which carry the glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty sentiments lowered when ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... apparent connection of great success in art with subsequent national degradation. You find, in the first place, that the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by those who possessed none: you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede; the Athenian by the Spartan; the Greek by the Roman; the Roman by the Goth; the Burgundian by the Switzer: but you find, beyond this—that even where no attack by any external power has accelerated the catastrophe of the state, the period in which any given people reach ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... $3 American money. I paid for room, light, and food $1.20 a month; for tuition, 50 cents; for paper, books, etc., 30 cents; and this left me $1 for pocket money expenditures, including the occasional treat of eating potatoes with sugar!" In such Spartan simplicity the victors of Mukden, Liao-yang ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... short of it, at any rate. You speak like a Spartan. You come to the point at once. But why do you come to me? I have no control ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... appeared almost impracticable. He hastily retired towards the Forest, intending to penetrate through Bohemia into Saxony; but he was obliged to sacrifice three regiments at Neuburg. These with a truly Spartan courage, defended themselves for four days behind an old wall, and gained time for Banner to escape. He retreated by Egra to Annaberg; Piccolomini took a shorter route in pursuit, by Schlakenwald; and Banner succeeded, only by a single half hour, in clearing the Pass of Prisnitz, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... increased. His appetite for work at Dr. Shrapnel's writing-desk was voracious. He was ready for any labour, the transcribing of papers, writing from dictation, whatsoever was of service to Lord Avonley's victim: and he was not like the Spartan boy with the wolf at his vitals; he betrayed it in the hue his uncle Everard detested, in a visible nervousness, and indulgence in fits of scorn. Sharp epigrams and notes of irony provoked his laughter more than fun. He seemed to acquiesce in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Mark Antony, or—or—you know those old fellows' names, better than I do, Kit; but name the cleverest fellow that ever lived in Greece or Rome, and I shall say he is a dunce compared to you. 'Twas a real Spartan trick, both simple ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... my solitary apartment, and if I suffered somewhat of the torments of baffled hope and foiled ambition, the pang is not for the spectator. My lighter moments are for the world—my deeper for myself; and, like the Spartan boy, I would keep, even in the pangs of death, a mantle over the teeth and fangs which are fastening upon ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... make your city what it is, the aged have done the most. The middle aged may say we will improve upon what has been done; and the young, we shall accomplish still more than our fathers. That, fellow-citizens, was the boast in the ancient Spartan procession—a procession which was divided into three classes—the old, the middle-aged, and the young. They had a saying which each class repeated in turn. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... of the ancient Greeks and Romans, for so many centuries as their institutions retained their original purity, were cast in a mould of a similar nature. A Spartan was seldom alone; they were always in society with each other. The love of their country and of the public good was their predominant passion, they did not imagine that they belonged to themselves, but to the state. After the battle ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... yesterday altogether Oriental in habits and ideals, have produced a race of strong men, so far as physical daring and hardihood is concerned. The influence of women on these men ceased with childhood—even then it was a Spartan influence. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... very delicate, has been burnt biscuit color by some warmer sun than England's; and yet there is, for a very subtle observer, a link between them. For she has a glass of water in her hand, and a rapidly clearing cloud of Spartan obstinacy on her tiny firm set mouth and quaintly squared eyebrows. If the least line of conscience could be traced between those eyebrows, an Evangelical might cherish some faint hope of finding her a sheep in wolf's clothing - for her frock is recklessly ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... is too short," said a Spartan youth to his father. "Add a step to it, then," was the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... courage that expressed itself in sheer defiance of worldly prudence, that made him feel kindly towards the young Dane. Denmark's taking up arms, with its two million inhabitants, against a great power like Prussia, roused his enthusiasm. "It is great, it is Spartan!" he exclaimed. It must certainly be admitted that this human sympathy was not a prominent characteristic, and he wearied me with his hateful verdicts over all those whom I, and by degrees, all Europe, esteemed ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... suffering under the sting of tyranny and wrong. A mere remnant of the fugitive band gathered at the head of that mighty rift in the earth known as the Grand Canon of the Yellowstone—a remnant that had succeeded in escaping the bullets of the soldiery,—and with Spartan courage they resolved to die rather than be taken and carried away to pine in a distant prison. They built a raft and placed it on the river at the foot of the upper fall, and for a few days they enjoyed the plenty and peace that were their privilege in former times. A short-lived peace, however, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and right to the peoples or individuals who have practised them. There is hardly a vice or a crime (according to our own moral standard) which has not at some time or other in some circumstances been looked upon as a moral and religious duty. Stealing was accounted virtuous for the young Spartan, and among the Indian caste of Thugs. In the ancient world, piracy, that is, robbery and murder, was a respectable profession. To the mediaeval Christian, religious persecution was the highest ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Jews and Lacedemonians.—In the 12th chapter of the 1st Book of Maccabees the letter of Jonathan, the High Priest, to the Lacedemonians is given, in which he claims their amity. This is followed by a letter of Arcus, the Spartan king, in answer, and which contains ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... and a tremor ran through him; but he did not speak a word; and, with Spartan fortitude, suppressed all outward sign of emotion. He laid the paper down patiently, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... limited to a class grit and backbone outweigh intellectual ability and are far more requisite. When we consider the fact that many white newspaper men have "licked the dust" in the Southland because they dared to emerge from the trend of popular thought and opinion, the Spartan who without a tremor held his hand into the flames until it had burned away was not more a subject of supreme admiration than the little Octoroon editor of the Wilmington Record whose ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... developed a Kultur nation as the German Empire puts itself in a position where it is almost impossible to acquire any considerable degree of culture. Culture is the enemy of such a state—it must remain in the Spartan or Macedonian stage. Rome began to decline as soon as Hellenistic culture got the ascendency over the old Latin Kultur. Kultur, in short, galvanizes; culture liberates. A survey of modern Germany hardly warrants a desire for her ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... not take very long for J—— to work through the fifty pages of Keats reprinted in Professor Hidden Page's anthology; and then he, a lone and laughing faun among that pack of stern sophomores—so flewed, so sanded, out of the Spartan kind, crook-knee'd and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls—sped away into thickets of Landor, Tennyson, the Brownings. There I, an unprivileged and unsuspected hanger-on, lost their trail, returning to my own affairs. For some reason—I don't know just why—I ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge." His great work is his "Republic," in which he pictures the ideal State and outlines his scheme of education, which is built on ideals of both Spartan and Athenian citizenship. From Sparta comes the thought of an education which shall be controlled by the State from birth; while Athens adds the aesthetical aspects ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known, should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung promiscuously ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... battle of Thermopylae the Peloponnesian Greeks commenced to fortify the isthmus of Corinth with the view of defending it with their small army against the invading host of Xerxes. The Spartan troops were under the command of Cleombrotus, the brother of Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae. He had been consulting the oracles at Sparta, and Herodotus states that "while he was offering sacrifice to know if he should march out against the Persian, the Sun was suddenly darkened in mid-sky." ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... is fabled to have sprung from the tears of the Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, began as the Colewort, and was for six hundred years, according to Pliny and Cato, the only internal remedy used by the Romans. The Ionians had such a veneration for Cabbages that they ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... lacked penetration to divine. But the error serves the purpose of my argument; for I am sure, at least, that the heart of young Scotland will be always touched more nearly by paucity of number and Spartan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the mountains, and the terror of the plains. He therefore goes forth to distinguish himself in the fight, and bring home trophies of his prowess. If theft is held in esteem by the Circassian, as formerly by the Spartan warrior, it is so mainly for its adroitness, a quality so necessary in circumventing the enemy; and if he exults in stripping the discomfited Muscovite and Cossack of their arms and clothing, these are the tokens of his valor, and chiefly as such ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his army, and the few surviving Athenians ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Stephanopouli were of blood the emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina, and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was a man, Constantine Stephanopoulos, the grandfather of this ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... somewhat loose way of sneaking, for Wimperfield had been Ida's only house during her married life. Brian had his chambers in the Temple at a rent of a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, his sitting-room furnished with none of that Spartan ruggedness which so well became George Warrington, of Pump Court, but in the willow-pattern and peacock-feather style of art; the dingy old walls glorified by fine photographs of Gerome's Roman Gladiators, Phryne before her judges, Socrates searching for Alcibiades ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... ancient learned. I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the governor to call up Heliogabalus's cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... recital of Theodore's punishment and disgrace. And from that time Captain Yorke had become a marked figure with the boys. Before this, he had not been known to many of them; but now he was pointed out by the few who had been present at the scene at the fountain, as the Spartan grandfather who had not hesitated to deal out punishment to his own flesh and blood, when it seemed to him that justice demanded it. He was often to be seen now in the park, the centre of an admiring and appreciative group, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Having dispatched this Spartan composition by the post, Geoffrey lit his pipe, and waited the event of the interview between Lord ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the matter, dear?" asked auntie, tenderly. "Are you in such pain?" for she knew that Cricket was a little Spartan in respect to suffering. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... leaving your presence before he eats? If you pass by the clean place where he is about to cook his food in the morning, you will see a large pot of water on the fire. When this gets warm—for Rama is not a Spartan—he will stand on a smooth stone, as sparingly clad as it is possible to be, and pour the water on his head, polishing himself vigorously as it runs down his limbs; then, after dressing his long hair and tying it in a knot on the top of his head, he will sit down to eat, in a place by ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... a strong body, that could work hard all day, a big hate, and a mania for the possession of land. And so he led a truly Spartan life, and everybody in the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... relief of Miletus, etc. (Thuc. viii. 26, 27 foll.) At a later date, in 411 B.C., when the Peloponnesian sailors were ready to mutiny, and "laid all their grievances to the charge of Astyochus (the Spartan admiral), who humoured Tissaphernes for his own gain" (Thuc. viii. 83), Hermocrates took the men's part, and so ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... and his silence wounded Lady Lucy to the quick. Was it her fault if her husband, out of an eccentric distrust of the character of his son, and moved by a kind of old-fashioned and Spartan belief that a man must endure hardness before he is fit for luxury, had made her and not Oliver the arbiter and legatee of his wealth? But Oliver had never wanted for anything. He had only to ask. What right had she to thwart her ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moment upon his way to market, and Chris, who now greeted her lover, felt puzzled at the unusual gravity of his face. She turned pale when she heard his tremendous news; but the mother was of more Spartan temperament and received intelligence of Will's achievement without changing colour ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Adrian, seeing how the communications of Hippias were received, "that when our Nemesis takes lodgings in the stomach, it's best to act the Spartan, smile hard, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not even attempt now to hide his dislike of me, nor to draw for me that cloak of suave composure over the fierce temper that is always gnawing at his vitals as surely as fox ever gnawed little Spartan. He sees that it is useless, I suppose. As I went upstairs to greet Madeleine, I laughed to myself to think how Fate had ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... mingled feelings, but most of all because it was the 'thing to do,' the then accepted form of human action. When once the predominant type was determined, the copying propensity of man did the rest. The tradition ascribing Spartan legislation to Lycurgus was literally untrue, but its spirit was quite true. In the origin of states strong and eager individuals got hold of small knots of men, and made for them a fashion which they ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... stronghold of belligerent reformers, whence heresy sent forth its missionaries and promulgated subversive doctrines through the medium of an ever-active press. Transformed by Calvin from its earlier condition of a pleasure-loving and commercial city, it was now what Deceleia under Spartan discipline had been to Athens in the Peloponnesian war—a permanent epiteichismos, perpetually garrisoned and on guard to harry the flanks of Catholics. Faithful to the Roman See in a strict sense of the term, there remained only Spain, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... a helpless captive, given over to all sorts of coddling, laziness, and luxury, and there was a droll mixture of mirth and melancholy in his face, as he lay trussed up in bed, watching the comforts which had suddenly robbed his room of its Spartan simplicity. A delicious couch was there, with Frank reposing in its depths, half hidden under several folios which he was consulting for a history of the steam-engine, the subject of ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... three hundred years. I will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VII.) roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon; it is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that we cannot know, is itself of the greatest import. We cannot ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... tells us that numerous letters of this kind were written by this tutor to his pupil in after life, and adds with a ludicrous solemnity, "It will readily be imagined how efficacious they must have proved, in forming the character of the future statesman, and erecting Spartan and Roman virtues on the noble ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... relentless; on, on over the rolling hills swept the famishing troopers, and again the Spartan band turned at bay, firmly intrenched on a bluff as before. This was the last stand—nature was exhausted. The soldiers surrounded them, and Major Wessells turned the handle of the human vise. The command gathered closer about ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... Helen be there[44], With mirror of gold, Decking her face so fair, Girl-like; and hear, and stare, And turn death-cold: Never, ah, never more The hearth of her home to see, Nor sand of the Spartan shore, Nor tombs where her fathers be, Nor Athena's bronzen Dwelling, Nor the towers of Pitane For her face was a dark desire Upon Greece, and shame like fire, And her dead are welling, welling, From red Simois ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... brought the first coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the adorning of thy body. Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple, rather than the decoration of its outward walls. For, as the Spartan monarch said of old to his daughter, when he restrained her from wearing the rich dresses of Sicily, 'Thou wilt seem more lovely to me without them,' so shalt thou seem, in thy lowliness and humility, more lovely in the sight of Heaven and in the eyes ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... who ascends to mountain tops will find the loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow, he concealed his chilblains beneath a brave and smiling exterior. He was a lucky man and knew it, even though he were imitating the Spartan boy with an ice-cream freezer beneath his doublet frappeeing ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... that she was Fanny Gerard, and had come straight from South Carolina. Her father—she had no mother—had brought her to school and then returned to the city by the next train. Unfortunately, it had been Miss Hale, the Latin teacher—nicknamed the Spartan years before by Betty, the only unpopular teacher in Seddon Hall—who had shown Fanny to ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... in their sense of the beautiful that they think, "Surely I love God. Why, of course I love God." But to love God involves something practical. It means something more than mere profession. It means rugged self-denial, Spartan heroism, perhaps the loss of an "arm" or the "plucking out of an eye." Base must have been the soul which was not attracted by One who "spake as never man spake"; low-minded the man who did not see in Him imperishable beauty and refinement of soul; ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the lily and the privet pale Compared, and Tibur's whitest ivory fail; The Spartan swan, the Paphian doves deplore Their hue, and ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... to the cotton-spinners is interesting as showing how fresh his sympathy still was with the sons of toil, and what respect he had for their position. He congratulated himself on the Spartan training he had got at the Blantyre mill, which had really been the foundation of all the work he had done. Poverty and hard work were often looked down on,—he did not know why,—for wickedness was the only thing that ought to be a reproach to any man. Those that looked down on cotton-spinners ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... imprecations dire.— See! beauteous Helen, with her Trojan swain— The royal youth that fed his amorous pain, With ardent gaze, on those destructive charms That waken'd half the warring world to arms— Yonder, behold Oenone's wild despair, Who mourns the triumphs of the Spartan fair! The injured husband answers groan for groan, And young Hermione with piteous moan Orestes calls; while Laodamia near Bewails her valiant consort's fate severe.— Adrastus' daughter there laments her spouse Sincere and constant to her nuptial vows; Yet, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... an answer to this. They will argue it is well that life should be Spartan and hard, because of the discipline and its strengthening effects on the character. But the good effects of this sort of discipline will be mixed with sad wreckage. And only creatures incapable of disciplining themselves could thus argue. It is an odd expedient to get yourself ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. I may add that in the Hippolytus, beside the passage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished him with suggestions. Cf. for instance Hipp., 30 ff., with the lines about the Spartan hounds in Mids. Night's Dream, IV. i. 117 ff., and Hippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech in As ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... to do with the formation of the International Harvester Company. All the men who controlled these enterprises were individualists, with a natural loathing for trusts, combinations, and pools. They wished for nothing better than to continue fighting the Spartan battle that had made existence such an exciting pastime for more than half a century. But the simple fact was that these several concerns were destroying one another; it was a question of joining hands, ending the competition that was eating so deeply into ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... corners of it, and even Aunt Hitty was not proof against the magic of Araminta's smile. The girl's face had the creamy softness of a white rose petal, but her cheeks bloomed with the flush of health and she had a most disconcerting trick of blushing. With Spartan thoroughness, Miss Mehitable constantly strove to cure Araminta of this distressing fault, but as ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the Editor. "I never gave a picnic before, and I'm weighed down by responsibility. My brother refuses to help me, and Mrs McNab is a Spartan, and nips my suggestions in the bud. She thinks we ought to be satisfied with bread and butter; I want cakes and fruit; I want her to bake, and she says she has no time to bake; I want to send over to Rew on the chance of getting strawberries; she says she has no one to ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... part of any system to which he belonged; and why should he not plunder them? By force if he could: but, where that was out of the question, why should he not take the same credit for an undetected theft that the Spartan gloried in taking? To be detected was both shame and loss; but he was certainly entitled to any glory which might seem to settle upon success, not at all less than the more pretending citizen of Sparta. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... barn of a place with its cold north light, for Rooke, sybarite as he was in other respects, treated his work from a Spartan standpoint which permitted necessities ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the god of laughter in the Spartan eating-halls? There is no table sauce like laughter at meals. It is ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... manners, but not less virtuous habits of Lacedemon, maidens were there admitted as spectators and sharers of the gymnastic sports. Though clad only in the Spartan chiton, they took vigorous part in dancing and probably wrestling. The Athenian maid could not air even her modest garments in public with the consent of popular opinion. The girls were educated and the women stayed at home. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Leonore ceased. The colors gave place to the restful golden light. King had not collapsed yet, and his usual Spartan self-mastery prevented him then from betraying much in the way of symptoms. So I clutched my head and tried to look all-in, which gave me a chance to whisper to ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... for herself, according to his teachings, in a manner which American girls, in even moderately well-to-do families, would never dream of. She works for the peasants in various ways, and carries out her father's ideas in other matters as far as possible. Her Spartan (or Tolstoyan) treatment of herself may be of value in character- building, as mortification of the flesh is supposed to be in general. Practically, I think the relations between peasants and nobles render her ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... uniform and the barrack mess table are civilization's last word—would like no doubt to start a regime of National Kitchens and "Spartan Broth." They would point out the advantages thereby gained, the economy in fuel and food, if such huge kitchens were established, where every one could come for their rations of soup and bread ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... OFTENEST (as it ultimately grew to be), the peasant-soldier gets home for many months of the year, a soldier-ploughman; and labors for his living in the old way. His Captain (it is one of the Captain's perquisites, who is generally a veteran of fifty, with a long Spartan training, before he gets so high) pockets the pay of all these furloughs, supernumerary to the real work of the regiment;—and has certain important furnishings to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... no choice but either to submit or to evacuate Athens, removing their families and their goods to Troezen or Aegina or Salamis. In the fleet, their contingent was by far the largest and best, but the commanding admiral was the Spartan Eurybiades. Then the Persians, passing through Boeotia, but, being dispersed before Delphi by thunderbolts and other portents, took possession of Athens, after a fierce fight with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... liable to be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is felt, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... memorial days and ceremonies "that all the students should observe": the ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, thrift and morality, and the ceremonies at the end of rice planting, at harvest and at the maturity of the silk-worm. The fitting-up of the school is Spartan but the rooms are high and well lighted and ventilated. The students' hot bath accommodates a dozen lads at a time. The studies are also the dormitories, and in the corner of each there is stored a big mosquito ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the figure of Hagen, the real hero of the second half of the poem. Fully aware that he is going to his death, he nevertheless scorns to desert his companions-in-arms, and awaits the fate in store for him with a stoicism that would do honor to a Spartan. He calmly accepts the consequences of his crime, and to the last mocks and scoffs at Kriemhild, until her fury knows no bounds. No character shows so little the refining influences of Christianity as ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... own little estate, he must have been far removed from indigence, and we know that he was able to give his illustrious son the best education the time afforded. Trained in the simple virtues of the country, Virgil, like Horace, never lost his admiration for the stern and almost Spartan ideal of life which he had there witnessed, and which the levity of the capital only placed in stronger relief. After attending school for some years at Cremona, he assumed at sixteen the manly gown, on the very day to which tradition assigns the death of the poet Lucretius. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... thing by which an oath is taken is always originally divine. In the Hebrew ordeal of jealousy the sacred water decides whether the accused woman is guilty or not.[573] The sea is treated as a living thing, whose anger may be appeased by gifts; it is a monster, a dragon.[574] The Spartan Cleomenes, about to start on a voyage, sacrifices a bull to the sea.[575] Offerings to the sea are made in ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... again showing in this tone, "is the house of the Akitcita, our soldiers and policemen, the men between twenty and forty, the warriors of the first rank, who live here in common, and into whose house women and children may not enter. I have read in the books at your schools how the Spartan young men lived together as soldiers in a common house, eating rough food and doing the severest duty, and the whole world has long applauded. The Sioux, who never heard of the Spartans, have been doing the same far back into the shadowy time. We, too, are a ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilised Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapour, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;—often have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls; Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... earliest and the foremost of the patriots, found, when the battle of Lexington summoned them to common counsels, by the side of WARREN; a man who lived to serve his country at home and abroad, and to die in the second place in the government. There, too, is the inflexible, the upright, the Spartan character, ROBERT TREAT PAINE. He also lived to serve his country through the struggle, and then withdrew from her councils, only that he might give his labors and his life to his native State, in another relation. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... old blind sorrow-stricken bard chanting. The soul of a nation is rising, the beat of her wings keeping time to the music of olden proud resounding lines. Who led the Grecian fleet at Salamis?—Not Spartan Eurygiades, but an old blind man dead these centuries. Who led the victors at Marathon? Not sly Athenian Miltiades, but an old dead man who had only words for his wealth: blind Maeonides chanting; and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... education, on government, on the type of man,—a rare type, alone fitted for leadership. The figure of his hero, Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, known to him by story and legend, is modelled on the Spartan king Agesilaus, whom he loved and admired, and under whom he served in Persia and in Greece (op. cit. Vol. II., see under Agesilaus, Index, and Hellenica, Bks. III.-V. Agesilaus, an Encomium, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... letters? Whatever agreement you make with Murray, if satisfactory to you, must be so to me. There need be no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian himself (Shakspeare, to wit)—'that, like a Spartan, I would sell my life as dearly as possible'—it never was my intention to turn it to personal, pecuniary account, but to bequeath it to a friend—yourself—in the event of survivorship. I anticipated that period, because we happened to meet, and I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... of this evening takes the same view of the proclamation. The ultra Republican journals, on the other hand, support the policy of the Government. M. Felix Pyat, in his organ, Le Combat, urges war to the death, and proposes that we should at once have Spartan banquets, at which rich and poor should fare alike. A proposal has been made to start a national subscription for a musket of honour to be given to the man who shoots the King of Prussia. There are already 2,000 subscribers of one sou each to the testimonial. The latest ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... thousand francs with the lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... ranks of the "Horsemen," in each year five; and these are bound during that year in which they pass out from the "Horsemen," to allow themselves to be sent without ceasing to various places by the Spartan State. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... anything but beds of roses whilst pursuing the diplomacy adopted to checkmate the Bond. They had to gain national support without divulging their own proceeding, and were at the same time reduced to a situation which imposed a spartan fortitude in concealing and repressing involuntary perturbation in the presence of an impending national crisis, and also the stoical endurance of bitter recriminations on the part of an opposition comprising a large and honourable but ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... and then flushed. Mr. Baggs was a very big and strong man and the culprit knew that he must now prepare for the pangs that attended failure. But he bore pain well. He had been operated upon for faulty tendons when he was five and proved a Spartan patient. He stood now waiting for Mr. Baggs. Other victims had reported that it was Levi's custom to use a strap from his own waist when he beat a boy, and Abel, even at this tense moment, wondered whether he would now ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... leg sufficiently workable in the matter of climbing stairs, Dr. Farr's boarder had resigned the family couch in the sitting-room and had retired to his spartan chamber under the eaves. From its open window that night he watched the moon. Let nothing happen to the universe in the meantime, and there would be a full moon on Friday night. The professor hoped that ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Weeping ever, weeping low, On the holy mount of Ida, Where the pine and cypress grow. In the self-same hour Cassandra Shrieked her prophecy of woe, And into the Spartan dwelling Did the faithless ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Timaeus, when even men like Xenophon and Plato—the very demi-gods of literature—though they had sat at the feet of Socrates, sometimes forgot themselves in the pursuit of such paltry conceits. The former, in his account of the Spartan Polity, has these words: "Their voice you would no more hear than if they were of marble, their gaze is as immovable as if they were cast in bronze; you would deem them more modest than the very maidens in their eyes."[1] To ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... faint; and my limbs fail me.—O daughter, touch thy mother, stretch forth thy hand—give it me—leave me not childless—I am lost, my friends. Would that I might see the Spartan Helen, the sister of the twin sons of Jove, thus, for through her bright eyes that most vile woman destroyed ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... another good-bye, and happiness, until we met again. And when the time should come for our resumption of those pursuits which (here a general depression set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits which;—then let us ever remember what was said by the Spartan General, in words too trite for repetition, at the battle it were superfluous ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Apollo; others, of Hyacinthus; but it is much more probable, that it was intended to be in honour of both Apollo and Hyacinthus. The festival lasted for three days, and began on the longest day of the Spartan month, Hecatombaeus. On the first and last day, sacrifices were offered to the dead, and the fate of Hyacinthus was lamented. Garlands were forbidden to be worn on those days, bread was not allowed to be eaten, and no songs were recited in praise of Apollo. On the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... had a good deal of the Spartan in her nature, and received her son with a sense of another failure, and failures were not popular with her. "I did not hear from you—was anxious about you; but now, when you come back to the nothing for you here, I know you ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... slaughtered on the spot. Quarter had never been given in native wars, but the trained valour of the Zulus, and their habit of immediately engaging the enemy hand to hand, not only gave them an advantage like that which suddenly made the Spartan infantry superior to all their neighbours, but rendered their victories far more sanguinary than native battles had previously been Tshaka rapidly subjected or blotted out the clans that lived near, except the Swazis, a kindred tribe whose difficult country gave them some protection. He ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... preserved by the priesthood. As Moses—the Hebrew law giver, is represented as having received the law from God on the holy mountains, so is Zoroaster, the Persian, Manu, the Hindoo, Minos, the Cretan, Lycurgus, the Spartan, and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... story does not begin there. A like adventure chanced often at the parsonage, and, at nine years of age, I reigned king absolute over a nursery full of her Majesty's subjects who called me brother, and quailed before my nod like Helots before the crest of a Spartan. But, as I say, all that is neither here nor ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Journals: 'Oct. 16. The letters of Slatin have arrived. I have no remarks to make on them, and cannot make out why he wrote them.' In the afternoon, indeed, he betrays some pity; but it is the pity of a man for a mouse. 'He is evidently not a Spartan... he will want some quarantine... one feels sorry for him.' The next day he is again inexorable, and gives his reasons clearly. 'I shall have nothing to do with Slatin's coming here to stay, unless he has the Mahdi's positive leave, which he ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... believe that, but for one cruel memory, he might have learnt even to taste some humour in his situation. Thanks to Mr. Jope and Mr. Adams, who had taken a genuine fancy to him, he found life on board the Vesuvius cheerful if not comfortable. The fare was Spartan, indeed, but, for a short holiday, tolerable. The prospect of seeing some real fighting excited him pleasurably, for he was no coward. Here, before his eyes, lay the coast of France; the actual forts and guns with which his imagination had so often ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an angry exclamation, and resolves, with all the airs of a Spartan, to be calm. Nevertheless, he is not calm, and quite doubles the amount of minutes that really elapse before the drawing-room door is thrown open and Cecil, followed by Luttrell, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... South afforded these noble dames of Virginia had at the disposal of the wounded soldiers. How many thousands of Confederate soldiers have cause to bless these noble women of Virginia. They were the spartan mothers and sisters ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... fits her sword, and often eyes; And sometimes, as from rock to rock she bounds 265 The Patriot nymph starts at imagined sounds, And, wildly pausing, oft she hangs aghast, Whether some old Swiss air hath checked her haste Or thrill of Spartan fife is caught between ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... fellow workmen there in God's eternity surviving those, they alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time. To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind. Heaven is kind, as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying, while she gave her son his shield, 'With it, my son, or upon it, thou, too, shalt return home in honour—to thy far distant home in honour—doubt it not—if in the battle thou keep ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... suitable to his condition. When he dined with me he began to declaim violently against the luxury of the young men of the military school. After a little he turned the conversation on Mania, and the present education of the young Maniotes, drawing a comparison between it and the ancient Spartan system of education. His observations on this head be told me he intended to embody in a memorial to be presented to the Minister of War. All this, depend upon it, will bring him under the displeasure ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sailors, and in various inviting shapes during the following week to the inmates of the cabin. This loss of property was recorded by Mr. Thompson in the ship's log-book, with his accustomed accuracy, and with Spartan brevity. The language he invariably used was, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... respect of the young to the old was not paid to bachelors (Plut. Lyc. 15). At Athens there was no definite legislation on this matter; but certain minor laws are evidently dictated by a spirit akin to the Spartan doctrine (see Schoemann, Gr. Alterth. i. 548). At Rome, though there appear traces of some earlier legislation in the matter, the first clearly known law is that called the Lex Julia, passed about 18 B.C. It does not appear to have ever come into full operation; and in A.D. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... have,' answered my son. 'Every true-hearted American should be striking his blow. I couldn't travel fast enough. Mother, are you a Spartan?' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... portion of her salary at home for the support of her mother and sisters, she could not afford to live as the other lady agents did. She had to economise in every direction, and took to subsisting wholly on native food. It was in this way she acquired those simple, Spartan-like habits which accompanied her through life. Her colleagues attributed her desire for isolation and native ways to natural inclination, not dreaming that they were a matter of compulsion, for she was too ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... before them, were also freemen, all but those of one city, called Helos, which revolted, and was therefore broken up, and the people were called Helots, and became slaves to the Spartans. One of the Spartan kings, sons of Hercules, had twin sons, and these two reigned together with equal rights, and so did their sons after them, so that there were always two kings at Sparta. One line was called the Agids, from Agis, its second king; the ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought that cutting them down to the lowest point might have some effect. So, as the family at this time (April 1819) left Paris for a house some twenty miles out of it, she established her eldest son in a garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look after him. He did not literally stay in this garret for the ten years of his astonishing and unparalleled probation; but without too much metaphor it may be ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... to me, and even in this he thinks he is acting for my good. I have never disobeyed him, and were I to do so now I believe it would break his heart. I am all that he has left, and after what he has suffered in his silent, Spartan way, I must bring joy—not sorrow—to his declining years. And this will be my only reason ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Lafitau's Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains compares aux moeurs des premiers temps, tom. i., p. 526. He refers to Plutarch, in Lycurgo, for an account of similar Spartan dances.] ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... supreme of these Here ever shines the godlike Socrates; He whom ungrateful Athens could expel, At all times just but when he signed the shell: Here his abode the martyred Phocion claims, With Agis, not the last of Spartan names: Unconquered Cato shows the wound he tore, And Brutus his ill Genius meets no more. But in the centre of the hallowed choir, Six pompous columns o'er the rest aspire; Around the shrine itself of Fame they stand, Hold the chief honours, and the Fane command. High on the ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... under the dissatisfaction. It seemed too much fate's triumph to leave it like this. Not this surrender, but a little of the Spartan, a touch of sternness, a little defiance in the hunger, an understanding—that was it!—a submission in which there was the dignity of understanding. Ah—here it was!—a knowing that thousands had endured and must endure, but as an echo from ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... their duties with incredible insolence. The clergyman's life was made a burden to him, and the doctor's as well. Though he was the most luxurious and comfort-loving old wretch, his great text was the value of Spartan discipline for everyone else. If any dish was not exactly to his mind, he would allow no one to taste it, send it away, and complain bitterly that even his simple wants could not be supplied. Even when he got more infirm and took most of his food ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... passed, could not forbear to fling a turf at the mark; the turf fell at the foot of the pole, and when all the cars had passed, there was a heap left sufficient to reward the ingenuity of our little Spartan. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... about 1820 near the forks of the Platte River. He was one of a family of nine children whose father, an able and respected warrior, reared his son under the old Spartan regime. The young Red Cloud is said to have been a fine horseman, able to swim across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, of high bearing and unquestionable courage, yet invariably gentle and courteous ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... guilty fame, Fair Virtue's silent train: supreme of these 170 Here ever shines the godlike Socrates: He whom ungrateful Athens[66] could expel, At all times just, but when he sign'd the shell: Here his abode the martyr'd Phocion claims, With Agis, not the last of Spartan names: Unconquer'd Cato shows the wound he tore, And Brutus his ill Genius ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... constant and chafed spectator of his daily life. The strong self-restraint of it had been one of the main barriers between them. She knew that she was always jarring upon him, and that he was always blaming her recklessness and self-indulgence. She hated his Spartan ways—his teetotalism, the small store he set by any personal comfort or luxury, his powers of long-continued work, his indifference to the pleasures and amusements of his age, so far as Manchester could provide ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... against external strength, and for courage that expressed itself in sheer defiance of worldly prudence, that made him feel kindly towards the young Dane. Denmark's taking up arms, with its two million inhabitants, against a great power like Prussia, roused his enthusiasm. "It is great, it is Spartan!" he exclaimed. It must certainly be admitted that this human sympathy was not a prominent characteristic, and he wearied me with his hateful verdicts over all those whom I, and by degrees, all Europe, esteemed and ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... super-femininity of Henrietta Bryne-Stivers; pretending to be frivolous, to shock rigid Mrs. Pemberton; pretending to be a blue-stocking with a passion for the solid and heavy in literature; pretending to be a Spartan who must rise at dawn and, after a plunge in ice-cold mountain water, climb, with only big Don, the Newfoundland, for company, up to the sluice-box; there to pretend she was an esthete to whom the sunrise, while she communed alone with nature, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Need individuality suffer? It need fear only the restraint imposed by candid public opinion. That will not be irksome, because it will be frank. We shrink from it to-day, only because it takes the form of clandestine scandal and backbiting. Godwin contemplates no Spartan plan of common labour or common meals. "Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." To be sure, it may be indispensable in order to cut a canal or navigate a ship. But mechanical invention will gradually make it unnecessary. The Spartans used slaves. We shall make ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... generation before, it had flung back the onset of a political power which combined all the momentum of all the other contemporary civilizations in the world; and the victory had proved not merely the superiority of Greek arms—the Spartan spearman and the Athenian galley—but the superior vitality of Greek politics—the self-governing, self-sufficing city-state. In these cities a wonderful culture had burst into flower—an art expressing itself with equal ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... modern life these conditions are, the magnitude of States, the division of labor, the suppression of slavery and the requirements of personal comforts and prosperity. Neither the Girondists nor the Montagnards, who aimed to revive Athenian and Spartan ways, comprehended the precisely opposite conditions on which Athens and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hardly suffered delay from all the efforts of Socrates and Plato. Cosmopolitanism was already a point of union between the Cynics and Cyrenaics (see p. 128). And the march of politics was always tending in the same direction. First through great leagues, such as the Spartan or Athenian or Theban, each with a predominant or tyrannical city at the head; then later through the conquest of Greece by Alexander, and the leaguing of all Greek-speaking peoples in the great invasion of Asia; then through the spread of Greek letters all over the Eastern ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... developed a national character of a definite type. In its pride of birth and of blood, its tenacious clinging to traditional rights, and in its esteem of military prowess before intellectual culture, it resembled the old Spartan temper. Peter III.,(1276-1285), the son of James I., united with the three states Sicily, which, though it became a separate kingdom, gave to the house of Aragon its influence in Southern Italy. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; and when the women are concerned in a public protest the men are—oh, so mere! And the men in khaki were no exception to the rule; they were ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... guilty wretch—to love where he should not, to hazard the world's esteem, to grieve his wife, and to dishonour his name! And yet, I wonder, is he happier in his sinful indulgence than if he had played a Roman part, or, like the Spartan lad we read of, had let the wild-beast passion gnaw his heart out, and yet made no sign? To suffer and die, that is virtue, I take it, Mr. Evelyn; and you Christian sages assure us that virtue is happiness. A strange kind ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... thought that their art would be a glory at once to them and to himself. And, indeed, those artists used to make images of the person known to strangers: but if such had never existed, illustrious men would yet be no less illustrious. The Spartan Agesilaus, who would not allow a portrait of himself to be painted or a statue made, deserves to be quoted as an example quite as much as those who have taken trouble about such representations: for a single pamphlet of Xenophon's in praise of that ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Turkey and calls upon Hellas to liberate itself. The hero and his friend Alabanda are at the head of a band of volunteers, fighting the Turks. After several minor successes Hyperion lays siege to the Spartan fortress of Misitra. But at its capitulation, he is undeceived concerning the Hellenic patriots; they ravage and plunder so fiercely that he turns from them with repugnance and both he and Alabanda abandon the cause of liberty which they had championed. To his bride Hyperion ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... life, my dear madam; resignation! I endeavor to inculcate in my pupils the virtue of stoicism. I tell them of the Spartan boy, Mrs. Gage. Perhaps you have heard ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... afternoon of the third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... DAS, the celebrated Spartan leader who, with three hundred men, perished in the effort to resist the Persian hosts, at the mountain pass of Thermopylae, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... did not betray any open signs of anger against the Athenians at what they heard. The embassy, it seems, was prompted not by a desire to obstruct, but to guide the counsels of their government: besides, Spartan feeling was at that time very friendly towards Athens on account of the patriotism which she had displayed in the struggle with the Mede. Still the defeat of their wishes could not but cause them secret annoyance. The envoys of each state departed ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... kiss. This was decided by an umpire; as also at Megara, by the grave of Diocles. At Sparta, and at Lesbos, in the temple of Juno, and among the Parrhasii, there were contests for beauty among women. The general esteem for beauty went so far, that the Spartan women set up in their bedchambers a Nireus, a Narcissus, or a Hyacinth, that they might ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... detached and concealed. Inserted between his nether and outer shirts were two gilt "Directions to Travelers" which clung like mustard plasters to his back, while a jagged tin sign, wrenched from the home terminal, embraced his stomach with the painful tenacity of the historic Spartan fox. In his pockets were objects—small objects but precious and dangerous to unscrew ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... tumbling down headlong from the near neighbourhood of the sun, was not a greater. Battered, bruised, sore and aching all over, poor Leander, crestfallen and forlorn, limping painfully, and suppressing his groans with Spartan resolution, crept slowly back to his own room; but so overweening as his self-conceit that he never even suspected that a trick had been played upon him. He said to himself that without doubt Mme. la Marquise had been watched ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the labour of their thin hands, the sweat of their brows, the masters were made rich; but they would not be utterly ground down to dust. No! they would fold their hands and sit idle, and smile at the masters, whom even in death they could baffle. With Spartan endurance they determined to let the employers know their ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... whereas I should have returned homeward an' cast myse'f upon my parents as a sacred trust. Of course, when I'm in school I don't go impartin' my troubles to the other chil'en; I emyoolates the heroism of the Spartan boy who stands to be eat by a fox, an' keeps 'em to myself. But the views of my late enemy is not to be smothered; they appeals to my young companions; who tharupon puts up a most onneedful riot ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... public opinion has always been ready to serve the demands of the base nature below. It was the great lawgiver, Lycurgus, who taught Spartan youths the commercial economy of theft and the virtue and advantage of lying. It was not only when Rome was in decay, but when she was at the zenith of glory from the first Brutus to Octavius, ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... his body, Spartan-like, to all the fatigues and exposures of war. He indulged in no luxury of tents or carriages, and ate the flesh of horses and wild beasts, which he roasted himself, over the coals. In his campaigns the ground was his bed, the sky his curtain, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... vain by threats or promises to shake the constancy of the witnesses. The headmen manage their rogueries with so much ingenuity that charges can very seldom be proved against them. They send out their apprentices, under particular instructions, to commit robberies, and, like the Spartan youths, they consider the most expert thief to be the cleverest fellow: should any of these young men be caught, they are left to get out of the scrape in the best manner they are able, for unless it be to swear falsely to an alibi, or some other evasion ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the grave, yet he will not desert the charge imposed upon him by his friend, Sir Roderick Murchison. To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon—never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... immense sums of money; and finally forced to pay the cost of an armed police, headed by Wellington himself, which held her chief fortresses for three years, and saw that her chains were kept bright and strong. Never, since Lysander demolished the Long Walls of Athens to the music of the Spartan flute, had the world seen so bitter a spectacle of national humiliation, so absolute a reversal of fortune,—the long-conquering legions perishing by the sword, and him who had headed so many triumphal processions perishing as it were in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... was unfaithfulness, of however long duration, conclusively fatal against a wife; for we meet Helen, after a twenty years' elopement, again the quiet, hospitable mistress in the Spartan palace, entertaining her husband's guests with an easy matronly dignity, and not afraid even in Menelaus's presence to allude to the past—in strong terms of self-reproach, indeed, but with nothing like despairing prostration. Making the worst of this, however, yet even in this respect the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... very slight difference of color, had dug into the earth floor and come upon a small maple-wood chest, like a temple treasure-box. It was, outside, perhaps a foot wide and about as high, and not over a foot and a half long. He had forced it open with the hatchet and a heavy knife, like a Spartan wood-knife. The wood of the chest was so thick that the inside cavity was comparatively small. But it was big enough to have held, say, two quarts of wine. And it was almost full of jewels; opals, turquoises, topazes, amethysts, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... stage in which Beth at length began to meditate on Spartan remedies. The situation was not to be endured. No word had come from Searle. The world might have swallowed him up. She was sick of him—sick of his ways of neglect. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Agesilaus summarises the life of his Spartan friend and king, whom he met after the events of ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... the means of raising revenue, Paine sketched a plan of progressive taxation on incomes, ranging from 3d. in the pound on incomes less than L500 to punitive proportions after L10,000 was reached; while in his Spartan arithmetic great wealth appeared so dire a misfortune that he rid the possessors of the whole of incomes of L23,000 and upwards. As for Pitt's financial reforms, he laughed them to scorn. He also accused ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... a mere den, as plain as my bed-room," said Prince, who prided himself on the Spartan simplicity of his own habits, and was not averse to the exhibition. "Come this way." He crossed the hall, and entered a small, plainly furnished room, containing a table piled with papers, some of which were dusty and worn-looking. ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Incidentally they extolled paternalism in government, general conscription, compulsory military service, and, on the very eve of the greatest industrial revival known to history, a return to agricultural society! The sanction of all this was not moral suasion: essential to the system was Spartan simplicity and severity, compulsion was the means to their utopia.[40] The Jacobins were nothing if not thorough; and here was another new and awful thing—the "Terror"—which had broken loose with its foul furies of party against party through all the land. It seemed at last as if ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... indeed, how many of them ever got back to their Spartan or Athenian homes, for we know that most of them could not make up their minds to live quiet lives of peace again; but preferred fighting in behalf of the independence of the Ionian cities which Greece had planted on the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... blaze gather, Heed not sleet nor cold,— Ye are Spartan soldiers, Stout and brave and bold: Never Xerxian army Yet subdued a foe, Who but asked a blanket On a ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... Francesca, with Spartan stoicism, continued to wear an ingratiating smile, though the character of the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear and will not hearken, seemed to her at ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... me a repetition of your father's platitudes—I've heard them often enough. I don't know much about the war, but all I've heard has set me against it. But never mind! And now, good-bye, my Spartan sweetheart." ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... then of the murderers was a Greek ritual, their cult a Greek cult—preferably, perhaps, a South Greek one, a Spartan one, for it was here that the highly conservative peoples of that region clung longest and fondliest to this semi-barbarous worship. This then being so, I was made all the more certain of my conjecture that the central figures on the papyrus were drawn from ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... man, far shrewder than his brother gave him credit for. He was already richer than any two of the other children put together, but he chose to keep his counsel and to pretend modesty of fortune. He realized the danger of envy, and preferred a Spartan form of existence, putting all the emphasis on inconspicuous but very ready and very hard cash. While Lester was drifting Robert was working—working ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... more important, the whole of Europe, that there was nothing invincible about the troops of Napoleon, when they were faced by British regiments properly trained, as Moore trained them at Shorncliff. Just as the destruction of the Spartan Hoplites in the Island of Sphacteria broke the military spell cast by the armies of Sparta, so Moore's victorious retreat to, and action at, Corunna broke the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... great thy art, that while we viewed, Of Sparta's sons the lot severe, We caught the Spartan fortitude, And saw ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... little Indian pony, would accompany him a few miles, or as far as his road led toward the scene of her own labors; but no Spartan dame or Roman matron could more sternly have resisted the young man's frequent entreaties to be allowed to accompany her farther than the point at which ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... give to usurpation grace, And from his natural rights my son debar? Not so! let him—and none shall be more prompt Than I to help—raise his Messenian friends; Let him fetch succours from Arcadia, gain His Argive or his Spartan cousins' aid; Let him do this, do aught but recommence Murder's uncertain, secret, perilous game— And I, when to his righteous standard down Flies Victory wing'd, and Justice raises then Her sword, will be the first to bid it fall. If, haply, at this moment, such attempt Promise not fair, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency, which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is this the man who delights to paint the useful struggles of passion, the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic flights which carry the glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty sentiments ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... but the depression and weakness clung to her persistently. She fought it and was ashamed of it, true to her Spartan traditions, but was forced to realise that it was not in her own power to hurry her return ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... Greece for his virtue and patriotism with all the emblems of the highest possible distinction— monuments, statues, epigrams, histories; his deed met with their warmest gratitude. But little praise has been given to our tribune in comparison with his merits, though he acted just as the Spartan did, and saved the fortunes of the State." As to the title Origines, it is possible, as Nepos suggests, that it arose from the first three books having been published separately. It certainly is not applicable to the entire treatise, which was a genuine history on the same scale ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... should be compared with that of Sterope in the eastern pediment. There is a substantial resemblance in the drapery, even to the arbitrary little fold in the neck; but the garment here is entirely open on the right side, after the fashion followed by Spartan maidens, whereas there it is sewed together from the waist down; there is here no girdle; and the broad, flat expanse of cloth in front observable there is here narrowed by two ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... even Aunt Hitty was not proof against the magic of Araminta's smile. The girl's face had the creamy softness of a white rose petal, but her cheeks bloomed with the flush of health and she had a most disconcerting trick of blushing. With Spartan thoroughness, Miss Mehitable constantly strove to cure Araminta of this distressing fault, but as yet she had ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... of the Spartan resolution his little sister was forming, and good naturedly seeking to turn her tears into smiles, "I do declare, I thought Helen was a pumpkin, bursting into the room with such a noise, wrapped up in this yellow concern. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known, should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung promiscuously at all the great men ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... believe that the higher authorities in Germany earnestly desired that the people, and, especially, the officers of the army and navy, should learn not to enjoy themselves too much. A great endeavour was always made to keep them in a life, so far as possible, of Spartan simplicity. For instance, the army officers were forbidden to play polo, not because of anything against the game, which, of course, is splendid practice for riding, but because it would make a distinction in the ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... Apparently neither of them had calculated on this paltry little detail; they were game for theoretical departures; to impalpable universities: and "an air-drawn Bus, a Bus of the mind," would not have dejected for a moment their lofty Spartan souls on glory bent; safe glory. But here was a Bus of wood, and Edward going bodily away inside it. The victim kissed them, threw up his portmanteau and bag, and departed serene as Italian skies; the victors watched ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Smith's statement that such a rite was worked at Quiyough-cohanock, Strachey adds that Sir George Percy (who was with Smith) "was at, and observed" a similar mystery at Kecoughtan. It is plain that the rite was not a sacrifice, but a Bora, or initiation, and the parallel of the Spartan flogging of boys, with the retreat of the boys and their instructors, is very close, and, of course, unnoted by classical scholars except Mr. Frazer. Strachey ends with the critical remark that we shall not know all the certainty ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... a new name, a name with no very odious associations attached to it; just as they called lying "cramming," under which title it sounded much less repulsive. In fact, these young Noelites took a most Spartan view of these petty larcenies, confining the criminality to the incurring of detection. But they had never succeeded in making Charlie take this view; he never would adopt the change of language by which they altered the accepted meaning ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... had to develop the faculty of lying to a high point of efficiency, and no one who knows him will contend that he is inferior to the European in this respect. The natural education of the Natives include the art of lying as the education of Spartan boys included the practice of larceny. Lying, we know, develops the memory, for a good memory is essential to successful lying. Some of the ruses and stratagems thought out by Natives fleeing from the king's wrath or the witch doctor's doom, of which I have heard from the Natives ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush? Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred, grant but three, To make ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... general Marion with all the officers, British as well as American, to dine with her. Having now no better place of accommodation, she entertained us under a large arbor built in front of her log cabin, where, with great pleasure, I observed that the same lady could one day act the Spartan, and the next the Parisian: thus uniting in herself, the rare qualities of the heroine and the christian. For my life I could not keep my eyes from her. To think what an irreparable injury these officers had done her! and yet to see her, regardless ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... of the seven hills on which modern Constantinople stands. It was said to have been founded by Megarians and Argives under Byzas about 657 B.C., but the original settlement having been destroyed in the reign of Darius Hystaspes by the satrap Otanes, it was recolonized by the Spartan Pausanias, who wrested it from the Medes after the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.)—a circumstance which led several ancient chroniclers to ascribe its foundation to him. Its situation, said to have been fixed by the Delphic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... she was to him? Why not speak to her, why not tell her that he loved her? But Condy knew that Blix did not love him, and the knowledge of that must keep him silent; he must hug his secret to him, like the Spartan boy with his stolen fox, no matter how grievously it hurt him to do so. He and Blix had lived through two months of rarest, most untroubled happiness, with hardly more self-consciousness than two young and healthy boys. To bring that troublous, disquieting element of love between them—unrequited ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... salary at home for the support of her mother and sisters, she could not afford to live as the other lady agents did. She had to economise in every direction, and took to subsisting wholly on native food. It was in this way she acquired those simple, Spartan-like habits which accompanied her through life. Her colleagues attributed her desire for isolation and native ways to natural inclination, not dreaming that they were a matter of compulsion, for she was too loyal to her home and too proud of spirit to reveal ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... be applicable to many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and noble service: "Mrs. Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital. Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one's country. She read and talked to them of the world's history.... Every night, when ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's apartment—a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. Contrary to custom, ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... not twenty, years since my father commenced the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias, the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded, compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the gifts most peculiar to ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Oenone, Weeping ever, weeping low, On the holy mount of Ida, Where the pine and cypress grow. In the self-same hour Cassandra Shrieked her prophecy of woe, And into the Spartan dwelling Did the ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit and independence in all lands where the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... finally brought him around to their way of thinking. Markelov had read little, mostly books relating to the thing that chiefly interested him, and was especially attached to Herzen. He retained his military habits, and lived like a Spartan and a monk. A few years ago he fell passionately in love with a girl who threw him over in a most unceremonious manner and married an adjutant, also a German. He consequently hated adjutants too. He tried to write a series of special articles on the shortcomings of our artillery, but had ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... woman about Winkelberg. I became poignant and moving on the subject of Winkelberg's misfortunes, his trials, sufferings and, above all, his Spartan stoicism. It pleased me to do this. I felt that I was making some amends and that the thing reflected ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... plunged in a civil war. But for the courage and conduct of Agesilaues, which were conspicuously displayed, Tacho would have yielded to despair and have given up the contest. In two decisive battles the Spartan general completely defeated the army of the rebels, which far outnumbered that of Tacho, and replaced the king on ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, 5 Applauding Freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcaeus,[21] fancy-blest, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... the pony, and as he hated all dawdling and loitering in others, though he had become a perfectly undisciplined man himself, he would limit me strictly to the time necessary for my journey, a time that I never ventured to exceed. In some respects the education that he was giving me, though of Spartan severity, was not ill calculated for the formation of a manly character. He quite understood the importance of applying the mind completely to the thing which occupied it for the moment. If he saw me taking several ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... burst in upon the scene, like a meteor amidst the stars of midnight. A more bloody apparition never emerged from the sulphureous canopy of war. Having perfect contempt for all enervating pleasures, with an iron frame and the abstemious habits of a Spartan, he rushed through a career which has excited the wonder of the world. He joined the Austrian party; struck down Denmark at a blow; penetrated Russia in mid-winter, driving the Russian troops before him as dogs scatter wolves; pressed on triumphantly to Poland, through an ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... monarchies. But if the wars of kings are less cruel, their peace is terrible; better be their foe than their subject.] This defect is inevitable, but of little importance. The great thing is to be kind to our neighbours. Among strangers the Spartan was selfish, grasping, and unjust, but unselfishness, justice, and harmony ruled his home life. Distrust those cosmopolitans who search out remote duties in their books and neglect those that lie nearest. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... thick soup, rich in dark-hued garden produce, and a large hunk of bread—except on Thursdays, when a pat of butter was served out to each boy instead of that Spartan broth—that "brouet noir des Lacedemoniens," as we ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... with Jake. But, alas for the poor wife! In the most trying ordeal of her life her husband had basely deserted her. Neither Jake nor Joey was to be seen. The instrument of execution, a small, twig-like branch from the lilac bush, was lying upon the doorstep. Mrs. Sawyer took it up with a Spartan air. If Jake could so meanly fly from his duty then she must so ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... not reply, and his silence wounded Lady Lucy to the quick. Was it her fault if her husband, out of an eccentric distrust of the character of his son, and moved by a kind of old-fashioned and Spartan belief that a man must endure hardness before he is fit for luxury, had made her and not Oliver the arbiter and legatee of his wealth? But Oliver had never wanted for anything. He had only to ask. What right had she to thwart ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... second-class! A few weeks before he would have thought it impossible as well as disgusting to bunk with a stranger whom he had never seen; but as he said to himself, with a shrug of the shoulders which tried to be Spartan, "Misfortune makes strange bedfellows." Max was disciplining himself to put up with hardships of all sorts which would probably become a part of everyday life. His own hand-luggage, a suitcase with his name marked on it, had been dumped down ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Modeste's first letter had forced upon him. Though sorrow is said to develop virtue, it only develops it in virtuous persons; that cleaning-out of the conscience takes place only in persons who are by nature clean. La Briere vowed to endure his sufferings in Spartan silence, to act worthily, and give way to no baseness; while Canalis, fascinated by the enormous "dot," was telling himself to take every means of captivating the heiress. Selfishness and devotion, the key-notes ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... to submit or to evacuate Athens, removing their families and their goods to Troezen or Aegina or Salamis. In the fleet, their contingent was by far the largest and best, but the commanding admiral was the Spartan Eurybiades. Then the Persians, passing through Boeotia, but, being dispersed before Delphi by thunderbolts and other portents, took possession of Athens, after a fierce fight with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... too from Vannucci's design), and above these panels the master's frescoes. The 'Nativity' and 'Transfiguration' at the end of the room are among his finest, ripest works, and on each side are the Prophets and Sibyls, or heroes, kings, and sages of antiquity—Leonidas the Spartan, Trajan the wise Roman emperor, Fabius 'Cunctator,' Socrates, Horatius, who kept the bridge, and ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... wilderness is marked by transcendent ability on the part of Moses, and by the most disgraceful conduct on the part of the Israelites. They are forgetful of mercies, ungrateful, rebellious, childish in their hankerings for a country where they had been more oppressed than Spartan Helots, idolatrous, and superstitious. They murmur for flesh to eat; they make golden calves to worship; they seek a new leader when Moses is longer on the Mount than they expect. When any new danger threatens they lay the blame on Moses; they even ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... to feel quite tired and sleepy before the doctor returned for him, and his bruises ached badly. Once he would have cried and worried every one about him, if in such an uncomfortable state; but now he bore the pain like a Spartan. ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... the living-quarters of the crew, kept spotlessly clean and tidy, yet Spartan-like in their simplicity. Two of the men were sound asleep in their bunks. Three more, who were playing cards at a plain deal table, glanced up from their game as the British lads passed by; but their interest was of brief duration, and ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the foreign-born citizens served in much the same proportion, and from the same motives, as the native-born. Taken as a whole, it was, even more than the Revolutionary War, a true citizens' fight, and the armies of Grant and Lee were as emphatically citizen armies as Athenian, Theban, or Spartan armies in the great age of Greece, or as a Roman army in the ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... details of furniture, so recently imported into the dwelling of the notary, because it announces a complete revolution in the habits of Jacques Ferrand, who, until then was of Spartan avarice and meanness (above all as respected others) in all that concerned living. It is then upon this garnet tapestry, a strong background, warm in color, on which is delineated the picture we ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... the story of the Spartan prince's wanderings. And when he had finished, he pressed Telemachus to prolong his visit; but that prudent youth declined the invitation, pleading the necessity of a speedy return to Ithaca, that he might keep an eye on the doings of the suitors. ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... application to others besides slaves was really part of the slow mediaeval extinction of slavery. Torture, indeed, is a logical thing common in states innocent of fanaticism, as in the great agnostic empire of China. What was really arresting and remarkable about the Middle Ages, as the Spartan discipline was peculiar to Sparta, or the Russian communes typical of Russia, was precisely its positive social scheme of production, of the making, building and growing of all the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... of his tail."[C] When the Council heard this, the great members growl'd, And every little Dog pitiously howl'd. The clamour subsided—The wise Dog again, Resumed his harangue, in a tedious strain;— Spoke of Theseus's hounds, of the true Spartan breed;— And the hounds of Actaeon, so famed for their speed— Of three-headed Cerberus, Guardian of Hell, Whom Orpheus subdued with his musical spell. How Hecuba changed, seeing dead Polydore, And became—Vide Ovid—(here he heard the Dogs snore) "Your patience my friends, I no longer will ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... this little familiar corner, that she prefers to settle her progeny. But then the apartments are few in number and of all shapes and sizes. There are long and short ones, spacious ones and narrow. Short of expatriating herself, a Spartan course, she has to use them all, from first to last, for she has no choice. Guided by these considerations, I embarked on the experiments ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... war, hallowed by the very purity of motive and intention with which our American Manhood took up its burden, led us nationally unto those heights of moral perspective and spiritual vision known only to him who toils upon the hill of Sacrifice. No Spartan of Athenian fields, no Regulus of Rome or Nathan Hale, was nobler, higher motived or less afraid than our own ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... it raises my gorge. Nor have I any special relish for potatoes, unless they are of good quality and well cooked. I therefore munched the brown bread, and washed it down with cold water. It was a Spartan meal, but a very indigestible one, as I can certify from painful experience. Why a prisoner's stomach should be so grossly abused by a sudden change of diet passes my comprehension. Surely it would not be difficult to introduce the prison fare gradually. There is real danger in a shock to the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... what has been accomplished to make your city what it is, the aged have done the most. The middle aged may say we will improve upon what has been done; and the young, we shall accomplish still more than our fathers. That, fellow-citizens, was the boast in the ancient Spartan procession—a procession which was divided into three classes—the old, the middle-aged, and the young. They had a saying which each class repeated in turn. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... who spoke; he had been searching for me high and low, and was shocked to find me sitting there alone. I said nothing, but, like that Spartan boy, gathered the yellow waves of my cloak over the vulture that knawed at my poor heart, and followed my cousin out of the crowd—still looking eagerly for that one noble ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and in his speech likened the crown and parliament to dancers in a minuet, to a tune composed by the cabinet—the crown led off one way, the parliament to the opposite corner; and they then joined hands, when the dance ended as it began. He also compared ministers to the Spartan, (it was an Athenian,) who, in an engagement by sea, seized the stern with his right hand, which was instantly chopped off; and who then renewed the effort with his left, which shared the same fate, whereupon he seized the galley with his teeth. The ministry had lost two armies in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... game. "Look at Killancodlem," Dobbes had been heard to say—"a very fine house for ladies to flirt in; but if you find a deer within six miles of it I will eat him first and shoot him afterwards." There was a Spartan simplicity about Crummie-Toddie which pleased the Spartan ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... long narrow room and sat down to the banquet. Heavens! what a feast! There were omelettes and geese and eels and duck and tripe and onion soup and sausages and succulences inconceivable. Accustomed to the Spartan fare of vagabondage I plunged into the dishes head foremost like a hungry puppy. Should I eat such a meal as that to-day it would be my death. Hey for the light heart and elastic stomach of youth! Some fifty persons, the ban and arriere ban of the relations of the young couple, guzzled ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... and nobility of nature, and make love only with an eye to the sexual parts? Why, the lover of horses will take just as much pleasure in the good points of Podargus, as in those of AEthe, Agamemnon's mare,[134] and the sportsman rejoices not only in dogs, but also rears Cretan and Spartan bitches,[135] and shall the lover of the beautiful and of humanity be unfair and deal unequally with either sex, and think that the difference between the loves of boys and women is only their different ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... there[44], With mirror of gold, Decking her face so fair, Girl-like; and hear, and stare, And turn death-cold: Never, ah, never more The hearth of her home to see, Nor sand of the Spartan shore, Nor tombs where her fathers be, Nor Athena's bronzen Dwelling, Nor the towers of Pitane For her face was a dark desire Upon Greece, and shame like fire, And her dead are welling, welling, From ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... indeed, in much resembled that of the Spartan in Greece. He had forced a settlement with scanty numbers in the midst of a subjugated and sullen population, surrounded by jealous and formidable foes. Hence sobriety was a condition of his being, and the policy of the chief lent a willing ear to the lessons of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... even attempt now to hide his dislike of me, nor to draw for me that cloak of suave composure over the fierce temper that is always gnawing at his vitals as surely as fox ever gnawed little Spartan. He sees that it is useless, I suppose. As I went upstairs to greet Madeleine, I laughed to myself to think how Fate had ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... are not known and giving themselves over to the dubious delights of a spree. Publication of this fact alone would prove sufficient to injure Lawrence socially and in the commercial world. The old case of the Spartan lad—Carroll reflected. The disgrace lay in ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... thing—in gallantry, in conversation, in principle, and in heart. Nor has the deterioration of the gentleman been confined to England only—polite and ceremonious France has felt her change. The Revolution brought in coarse and uncivilised manners. The awkward and unsuccessful attempt at Spartan and Roman republican manners; the citizen succeeding to Monsieur; the blasphemous, incredulous, atheistical principles instilled into the then growing generation of all classes; the system of equality, subversive of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a bitter pang when she showed herself in public with Philip. She quivered under the open stare, or the look askance of members of her sex; if she showed a brave front, it was that of the Spartan boy! Philip was particularly fond of the opera and the play; he would not have gone without her; so she accompanied him, and made no demur. Of course every relation and friend she had in the world shunned ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... wildfowl was ignored by Colonel Hawker and the second Earl of Malmesbury, both of whom, gunning in the creeks and estuaries of the south coast, made immense bags of ducks and geese, working hard for every bird and displaying Spartan indifference to the rigours of wintry weather. To hardy sportsmen of their type, wildfowl offer red-letter days with punt or shoulder guns, not to be dreamt of under the aegis ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... out that she was very prudent and rather stingy; of Spartan simplicity in her diet, and a scorner of dress off the stage. To redeem this she was charitable, and her charity and her economy sometimes had a sore fight, during which she was ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... heart Billy asked herself what now was to be done. For herself, turn whichever way she could, she could see nothing but unhappiness. She determined, therefore, with Spartan fortitude, that to no one else would she bring equal unhappiness. She would be silent. Bertram and Marie loved each other. That matter was settled. As to William—Billy thought of the story William had told her of his lonely life,—of ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... bed, as formerly, but he wanted feathers and yielding mattresses, and goblets heavier than his sword, for he was now ashamed to drink out of earthenware; and he required marble houses, though it is recorded in ancient histories that a Spartan soldier was severely punished for venturing to appear under a roof at ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... culture, refinement, and wealth, we tried to recall the stories of her glorious past. The figures of legend, myth, and history,—mighty warriors, celebrated heroes, eloquent orators, illustrious painters, renowned architects, great historians, immortal poets, and wonderful deities; Spartan mothers, Thermopylae defenders, and Persian invaders; beautiful Helen, muscular Hercules, crusty Diogenes, deformed AEsop, silver-tongued Demosthenes, fleet-footed Mercury, drunken Silenus, stately Juno, and lovely Venus,—a confused procession of mortals and immortals ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... about your daughter?'—'Bah!' says he, 'she is only a woman! And she is quite too much of a Hulot. Valerie has a horror of them all.—My son-in-law has never chosen to come to this house; why has he given himself such airs as a Mentor, a Spartan, a Puritan, a philanthropist? Besides, I have squared accounts with my daughter; she has had all her mother's fortune, and two hundred thousand francs to that. So I am free to act as I please.—I shall judge of my son-in-law and Celestine by their conduct on my marriage; ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the bunkhouse behind him already hated him with a religious intensity; in ten minutes, they might have accepted him as a bunkie! For your true Western cowpuncher, when all is said and done, unites with Spartan stoicism ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... easy for himself as possible. The tenderfoot will not agree with this. With him there is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as that to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He believes that "roughing it" is synonymous with hardship, and in season and out of season he plays the Spartan. Any man who suffers discomforts he can avoid because he fears his comrades will think he cannot suffer hardships is an idiot. You often hear it said of a man that "he can rough it with the best of them." Any one can do that. The man I want for a "bunkie" is the ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... themselves (as many as could) to that natural fortress, the Pra del Torre, which God had provided in the upper part of the Val Angrogna. I shall have much to say about this sacred and glorious spot—the more than a Thermopylae to these Christian heroes, ennobled by a bravery equal to that of the Spartan, but radiant with brighter memories. But here I only digress to add that the invaders' attempt to get possession of this valley from the heights of Roccamanente were happily frustrated. The Vaudois had to endure a severe contest, for which they prepared themselves by prayer. Their enemies, with their ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... dawning morn must be the last Our fated band shall ever see. To life, but not to hope, farewell; Yon trumpet's clang and cannon's peal, And storming shout and clash of steel Is ours,—but not our country's knell. Welcome the Spartan's death! 'Tis no despairing strife— We fall, we die—but our expiring breath Is freedom's breath ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... any rate she can put on flesh and not be the scarecrow she is." And thus, while her more favoured sisters were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her beads and to spend Spartan days ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... perspicacity; and he used to lecture comparative strangers about their duties with incredible insolence. The clergyman's life was made a burden to him, and the doctor's as well. Though he was the most luxurious and comfort-loving old wretch, his great text was the value of Spartan discipline for everyone else. If any dish was not exactly to his mind, he would allow no one to taste it, send it away, and complain bitterly that even his simple wants could not be supplied. Even when he got more infirm and took most of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... motives, as the native-born. Taken as a whole, it was, even more than the Revolutionary War, a true citizens' fight, and the armies of Grant and Lee were as emphatically citizen armies as Athenian, Theban, or Spartan armies in the great age of Greece, or as a Roman army in the days of ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... set up the god of laughter in the Spartan eating-halls? There is no table sauce like laughter at meals. It is the great ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... matter, dear?" asked auntie, tenderly. "Are you in such pain?" for she knew that Cricket was a little Spartan in respect to suffering. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... entrancing beauty, and of inordinate extravagance. Her little retinue was composed of one hundred and fifty cavaliers, all Persians, who lived on the ground floor; with them she hunted and rode in the broad day—rather contrary to Arab notions. The Persian women are subjected to quite a Spartan training in bodily exercise; they enjoy great liberty, much more so than Arab women, but they are also more rude in ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the rest of that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty, who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if it had ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... your enemy; a classical deception, that is the very term for it! such a deception as Pompey, or Mark Antony, or—or—you know those old fellows' names, better than I do, Kit; but name the cleverest fellow that ever lived in Greece or Rome, and I shall say he is a dunce compared to you. 'Twas a real Spartan trick, both ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 1862 separated him from his father and elder brothers and only sister, and drove him with a remnant of the eastern Sioux into exile in Manitoba. There for over ten years he lived the original nomadic life of his people in the family of an uncle, from whom he received the Spartan training of an Indian youth of that day. The knowledge thus gained of life's realities and the secrets of nature, as well as of the idealistic philosophy of the Indian, he has always regarded as a most valuable ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... the theater to put a small nail at the bottom. Instead of this, he affixed a good-sized spike, and one night Mary Anderson, coming out as usual, drove this right through her foot, in her sudden stop on the cliffs brink. Without flinching, or moving a muscle, with Spartan fortitude she played the scene to the end, though almost fainting with pain, till on the fall of the curtain the spiked staff was drawn out, not without force. Longfellow was much concerned at this accident, and on nights she did not play would sit by her side in her box, and wrap the furred overcoat ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan[199] fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... they caught—won't they help?' and I says, 'They paid their tine and skipped.' 'Fine?' asks Mart, 'fine? I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I, 'it amounts to the same thing; she can't pay her fine, and that damn reform judge, wanting to make a record as a Spartan, has committed her to jail till it is paid!' 'So they go free, and she goes to jail, because she is poor,' says Mart.' That's what your reform means,' says I, 'or I let her and the boy loose and lose my job. And oh, Mart,' says I, 'the screams of that little boy at the disgrace ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... gave him admittance. [Footnote: Amphipolis was a city at the head of the Strymonic gulf, in that part of Macedonia which approaches western Thrace. It had been built formerly by an Athenian colony, and was taken by the Spartan general Brasidas in the Peloponnesian war. Ever since Athens regained her character of an imperial state, she had desired to recover Amphipolis, which was important for its maritime position, its exportation of iron, and especially from the vicinity of the forests near the Strymon, which ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... Secretary, who had asked him to luncheon. Doris was not included in the invitation. "But anybody may ask a husband—or a wife—to lunch, separately. That's understood. I shan't do it often, however—that I can tell them!" And justified by this Spartan temper as to the future, he wrote a charming note, accepting the delights of the present, so full of epigram that the Cabinet Minister to whom it was addressed had no sooner read it than he consigned it instanter to his ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... mother-love. She knew what this quest of the Cave of Gold might mean—hardships, dangers, even death for those she loved. But she was of pioneer stock, had often seen her dearest go forth to face the dangers of the unknown wilderness; and, at last, with something of Spartan-like fortitude, ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... friend. Dr. Parash, with conscientious soundness of judgment, had ordered her removal for a prolonged sojourn to city life in Toronto; a course which, in spite of heartbroken appeal on the girl's part, her mother insisted upon carrying out with Spartan-like resolution. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... spirits of Leonidas and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come home from battle "with the shield or on it"—either carrying it victoriously or borne upon it ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... in his short Account of the Spartan Commonwealth, [1] speaking of the Behavior of their young Men in the Streets, says, There was so much Modesty in their Looks, that you might as soon have turned the eyes of a Marble Statue upon you as theirs; and that in all their Behaviour they were more modest ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Greeks were doing in their camp, the report was that some of them were engaged in gymnastics and warlike exercises, while others were merely sitting and combing their long hair. If the hypothesis already suggested is correct, the Spartan youths so engaged were perhaps not merely adorning themselves for death, but, as they thought, obtaining their full strength for battle. "The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition appears to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans. Achilles ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the arm of stony-eyed duty, striking into the dust the crystal drops, withering the palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is felt, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... surrounded her with a certain amount of luxury, there was a laxity in his manners and conversation that jarred upon her. Geoffrey, she remembered, had not been addicted to mincing words, but, at least, he had lived in accordance with a Spartan moral code. Millicent was not a scrupulous woman, and her ideas of ethical justice were rudimentary, but she possessed in place of a conscience a delicate sense of refinement ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... offence? You must either accept this theory with all its consequences, or absolve illicit passion. French society hitherto has chosen the third and middle course of looking on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness. And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. 'Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a woman feels ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... head and laughed; his quandary was over, his course settled. He turned to Silvia with a genial smile. "Score one more victory for the Feminists," he said. "I wonder if there ever has been a time, anywhere on earth, where women were actually and aggressively noncombatants. The Spartan woman handing over her husband's shield is typical. Whenever and wherever there has been a cause worth fighting for, worth dying for—always and forever we can see the figure of the woman, shield on arm and javelin in hand, standing at ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... it, and even Aunt Hitty was not proof against the magic of Araminta's smile. The girl's face had the creamy softness of a white rose petal, but her cheeks bloomed with the flush of health and she had a most disconcerting trick of blushing. With Spartan thoroughness, Miss Mehitable constantly strove to cure Araminta of this distressing fault, but as yet ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... cause is the most sacred of duties. The character, thus formed, has two aspects. Seen on one side, it must be regarded by every well constituted mind with disapprobation. Seen on the other, it irresistibly extorts applause. The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what he well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to lend us the classical dresses for our marriage. Think of the effect of a real Athenian wedding procession cavorting through the streets of Speisesaal! Torches burning—cymbals banging—flutes tootling—citharae twanging—and a throng of fifty lovely Spartan virgins capering before us, all down the High Street, singing "Eloia! Eloia! Opoponax, Eloia!" It would have been tremendous! NOT. And he declined? LUD. He did, on the prosaic ground that it might rain, and the ancient Greeks ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... faltered Betty; 'I'm afraid I'm selfish, I'm not brave like you. I thought I should feel like the Spartan mothers, but I don't. I can't think of the country. I ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... And in effect, the Spartan boy with the fox gnawing into his side, did not acquit himself more heroically than my friend. The case was a clear one, no doubt, but Tom made a noble speech, and was highly complimented by the Judge upon his ability. No sooner, however, had he finished it than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... gradually rising from the sea to St. Elias, the highest peak of Taygetus. Yet among these rocks were upwards of a hundred villages, containing from thirty to forty thousand souls. Many of these were probably of true Spartan descent, and they had always maintained a degree of independence. The old Bey of Mane had prepared the way for the two brethren by letters from Athens, where he then resided, and they were gladly received, and soon decided on removing their families to Ariopolis; situated on the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... impulse, and set a bad example. Apparently neither of them had calculated on this paltry little detail; they were game for theoretical departures; to impalpable universities: and "an air-drawn Bus, a Bus of the mind," would not have dejected for a moment their lofty Spartan souls on glory bent; safe glory. But here was a Bus of wood, and Edward going bodily away inside it. The victim kissed them, threw up his portmanteau and bag, and departed serene as Italian skies; the victors watched the pitiless Bus quite out of sight; then went up to his bedroom, all disordered ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... flat of a somewhat spartan simplicity after Loudwater Castle, Quainton Hall, and the houses to which she was used. But she also found that it had been furnished with a keen regard for comfort. In particular, she observed that the easy chairs, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... lands (in the valley of the Mohawk and Susquehanna rivers), the extensive domains of the westernmost tribes of the confederacy (in the Genesee country) formed the granary of the whole. And in consequence of the superior social and political organization just referred to, and the Spartan-like character incident to the forest life, the Six Nations, though not the most numerous, were beyond doubt the most formidable of the tribes then in alliance with the Crown. It was justly considered, therefore, that the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... property should make law for property, and persons for persons; since persons and property mixed themselves in every transaction. At last it seemed settled that the rightful distinction was that the proprietors should have more elective franchise than non-proprietors, on the Spartan principle of "calling that which is just, equal; not ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Louis, unconscious of the Spartan resolution his little sister was forming, and good naturedly seeking to turn her tears into smiles, "I do declare, I thought Helen was a pumpkin, bursting into the room with such a noise, wrapped up in this yellow concern. Mother, what ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... he could eat with impunity; yet beyond this somewhat contracted region his thoughts strayed pleasantly afield into the far wider region of the things which he could not eat with impunity; but which, with a truly Spartan epicureanism, he did eat—and bravely accepted the bilious consequences! The slightly anxious, yet determined, expression that would appear upon Mr. Port's cleanshaven, ruddy countenance as he settled himself to the discussion of an especially good and especially dangerous ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... of Sparta is especially interesting because the Spartan mores were generally admired and envied in the fourth century B.C. They were very artificial and arbitrary. They developed into a catastrophe. The population declined to such a point that it was like group suicide. The nation ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... never been jealous of Davy, grows jealous of politics. Yet, fearing her husband may guess her secret and despise her, she appears more Spartan. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... do Raphael's "Disputa," and even rather more; for when abundant, beautiful possessions of this kind are almost always associated with vulgar luxury, and become then anything but indicative of noble character in their possessors. The ideal of human life is a union of Spartan simplicity of manners with Athenian sensibility and imagination; but in actual results, we are continually mistaking ignorance for simplicity, and sensuality ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks, to find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in store for them. If they have deliberately sought martyrdom, as some critics have been unkind enough to suggest, they have it now. And if their campaign, in the opinion of perhaps the great majority of the public, has been misguided, admiration for their ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... on to the alleged motion picture punch, when the Doctor is the god from the machine. There is no doctor on the stage in the original Ghosts. But there is a physician in the Doll's House, a scientific, quietly moving oracle, crisp, Spartan, sophisticated. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... if too oppressive, was capable of being corrected; but any advance gained by the democratic party, has never been retraced, and that it has been by the preponderance of power being thrown into its hands that nations have fallen. Of all the attempts at republics, that of the Spartan, perhaps, is the most worthy of examination, as Lycurgus went to work radically, and his laws were such as to obtain that equality so much extolled. How far the term republic was applicable to the Spartan form of government I will not pretend to say, but when Lycurgus was called ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... cutting them down to the lowest point might have some effect. So, as the family at this time (April 1819) left Paris for a house some twenty miles out of it, she established her eldest son in a garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look after him. He did not literally stay in this garret for the ten years of his astonishing and unparalleled probation; but without too much metaphor it may be said to have been his Wilderness, and his Wanderings ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... dear, you will have an opportunity to become more intimately acquainted with the mysteries of the culinary art," observed Mr. Everidge cheerfully. "It will be a splendid chance to evolve that finest of character combinations, Spartan endurance coupled with ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... up. David stepped hastily forward, his heart beating, seized her foot, never waited for her to spring, but went to work at once, and with a powerful and sustained effort raised her slowly and carefully like a dead weight, and settled her in the saddle. His gripe hurt her foot. She bore it like a Spartan sooner than lose the amusement of his simplicity and enormous strength, so drolly and unnecessarily exerted. It cost her a little struggle not to laugh right out, but she turned her head away from him a moment and was quit for a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... clear little head! and such a pretty hand and foot! She was always so cheerful, so unselfish, so devoted! When had he ever seen her angry, except when she had taken up some childish quarrel of his, and fought for him like a little Spartan? Then she was pious, too. She was born religious, thought our hero, who, in common with many men professing skepticism for their own particular part, set a great value on religion in that unknown future ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... coffee, with a chop or two of the delicious Persian lamb meat, put a less Spartan tinge on the morning, and gave Wallace and me more strength—we needed not incentive to leave the fire, hustle our saddles on the horses and get in line with our impatient leader. The hounds scampered over the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... always give money and aunts mostly give advice. Only, as the Head always says when he jaws our form, "I regret to see in this form a serious deterioration"—I mean in uncles. They come down here and trot us round and say what a luxurious place it is compared with the stern old Spartan days. They know something, though. They ask us to have meals with them at an hotel. They take care not to face a luxurious house-dinner. And while we dine they tell yarns about the hardness of the old days and how it toughened a fellow. And then, because about 1870 it was the custom to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... consisted, like breakfast, of a mug of tea and bread. Edgar found, however, that the Spartan breakfasts and teas could be supplemented by additions purchased at the canteen. Here pennyworths of butter, cheese, bacon, an egg, a herring, and many similar luxuries were obtainable, and two pence of his pay was ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... candour in admitting that a nation cannot adopt Prussianism piecemeal. It must take it as a whole, its lieutenants included, or not at all. Lieutenant von Foerstner is as typical a product of the Prussian system as the London policeman is of our own; and if we adopt Prussian or Spartan methods, we must run the risk of being ruled by him. "No other nation," says Dr. Sadler, "by imitating a little bit of German organisation can hope thus to achieve a true reproduction of the spirit of German ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... a live coal upon the wrist of his young guest and quietly watched. There was no flinching. The coal burned itself out upon the motionless wrist of a Spartan. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... quiet tears over Jacob Herapath's untoward fate when Mr. Tertius had left her and fell to thinking about him. The thoughts which came presently led her to go to the dead man's room—a simple, spartan-like chamber which she had not entered since his death. She had a vague sense of wanting to be brought into touch with him through the things which had been his, and for a while she wandered aimlessly about the room, laying ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... was able to cut to pieces a "mora" (brigade) of Spartan hoplites, in 392 B.C., by skillful use ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... she held in the monarchy of Sparta. We should touch upon the fact that the Athenian women were not only not in politics, but were not even in society, except a class which could be only fugitively mentioned, and we should freely admit that the Spartan women were the heroic inspiration of the men in all the virtues of patriotism at home as well as in the field. We should recognize the sort of middle station women held in the Roman republic, where they were not shut ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... enough now. There was something Spartan about that girl. She had such an utter recklessness of exposure—it was in failure that she felt ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... man moved. With one cry of "Close the gates!" they declared for death, if so be that the gods were against them. The chief smiled and prepared for the defence. Some cried that the shore was crowded with enemies. Kaupepee replied, in Spartan phrase, "Our spears will be the less likely to miss." A messenger arrived offering terms if Hina were given up. The answer was, "She is here. Come ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... his bag. This was the sort of thing one had to expect when one travelled second-class! A few weeks before he would have thought it impossible as well as disgusting to bunk with a stranger whom he had never seen; but as he said to himself, with a shrug of the shoulders which tried to be Spartan, "Misfortune makes strange bedfellows." Max was disciplining himself to put up with hardships of all sorts which would probably become a part of everyday life. His own hand-luggage, a suitcase with his name ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... astonishing health, his perspicacity; and he used to lecture comparative strangers about their duties with incredible insolence. The clergyman's life was made a burden to him, and the doctor's as well. Though he was the most luxurious and comfort-loving old wretch, his great text was the value of Spartan discipline for everyone else. If any dish was not exactly to his mind, he would allow no one to taste it, send it away, and complain bitterly that even his simple wants could not be supplied. Even when he got more infirm and took most of his food in seclusion, he ordered the meals for the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hexameters, and an old blind sorrow-stricken bard chanting. The soul of a nation is rising, the beat of her wings keeping time to the music of olden proud resounding lines. Who led the Grecian fleet at Salamis?—Not Spartan Eurygiades, but an old blind man dead these centuries. Who led the victors at Marathon? Not sly Athenian Miltiades, but an old dead man who had only words for his wealth: blind Maeonides chanting; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the race of Pericles and Leonidas, but who were a branch of that great Teutonic folk whose monogamous domestic life was sound at the core, and whose fearless, labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the men they followed to the ends of the earth, what Spartan women ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... Seneca on the transparent vestments of the Roman ladies, who, like these modern belles, were generous in the display of their charms to the public. No doubt these French republicanists act upon the true Spartan principle of modesty: they take the most efficacious method to prevent their influence from being too great over the imaginations of men, by renouncing all that insidious reserve which alone can ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... These, when the Spartan queen approach'd the tower, In secret own'd resistless beauty's power: They cried, "No wonder such celestial charms For nine long years have set the world in arms; What winning grace! what majestic mien! She moves a goddess and she looks ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... claims are justly great: Thy milder virtues could my muse relate, To thee alone, unrivall'd, would belong The feeble efforts of my lengthen'd song. Well canst thou boast, to lead in senates fit, A Spartan firmness with Athenian wit: Though yet in embryo these perfections shine, Lycus! thy father's fame will soon be thine. Where learning nurtures the superior mind, What may we hope from genius thus refin'd! When time at length matures thy growing years, How wilt thou tower above ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... their art would be a glory at once to them and to himself. And, indeed, those artists used to make images of the person known to strangers: but if such had never existed, illustrious men would yet be no less illustrious. The Spartan Agesilaus, who would not allow a portrait of himself to be painted or a statue made, deserves to be quoted as an example quite as much as those who have taken trouble about such representations: for a single pamphlet of Xenophon's in praise of that king ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... looked about her in terror, then, rising to her feet, she ran to others lying near. They were strangers. 'Thank God!' she cried—' thank God!' Aurora returned to Mike's side, and, kneeling there, gazed upon him with streaming eyes. Burton's face had assumed a Spartan dignity in death. 'Poor, poor boy!' she said, and with her fingers upon his eyelids she whispered a prayer for his soul. It was long since she had minded to pray for her own, but the dead are so helpless. They invite even the intercession ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... to school, whereas I should have returned homeward an' cast myse'f upon my parents as a sacred trust. Of course, when I'm in school I don't go impartin' my troubles to the other chil'en; I emyoolates the heroism of the Spartan boy who stands to be eat by a fox, an' keeps 'em to myself. But the views of my late enemy is not to be smothered; they appeals to my young companions; who tharupon puts up a most onneedful riot of coughin's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... one half a dozen spearmen appeared, all obviously very frightened and only moved by an apparently Spartan discipline. Promptly they saluted, whereupon the Hero—as his title appeared to be—uttered a number of brief commands in some guttural language entirely unintelligible ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... dreaded the news for after careful examination the eminent specialist had decided to take a single desperate chance and operate with the hope of success. Laurie, they were told, was a monument of courage and had the spirit of a Spartan. Unquestionably he merited the good luck that followed for fortune did reward his heroism,—smiling fortune. Of course, the miracle of health could not come all in a moment; months of convalescence must follow ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the children, messages to others of the Burton clan who were in town, but not a word was said of Harry Clavering. The very absence of his name was enough to make them all wretched, but Florence bore it as the Spartan boy bore the fox beneath his tunic. Mrs. Burton could hardly keep herself from a burst of indignation; but she had been strongly warned by her husband, and restrained herself till Florence was gone. "If he is playing her false," said she, as soon as she was alone with her old husband, "he ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Pollyooly's eyes brimmed over in her dismay and horror at this dreadful fate of her friend; and she, the dauntless, Spartan heroine of a hundred fights with the small boys ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... fair, as the saying is, she is commonly a fool: if proud, scornful, sequiturque superbia formam, or dishonest, rara est concordia formae, atque pudicitiae, "can she be fair and honest too?" [5732] Aristo, the son of Agasicles, married a Spartan lass, the fairest lady in all Greece next to Helen, but for her conditions the most abominable and beastly creature of the world. So that I would wish thee to respect, with [5733]Seneca, not her person but qualities. "Will you say that's a good blade which hath a gilded ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... him seem to me even more mysterious than before, if possible. A man travelling steerage, plastered with bank-notes! But, I reminded myself, he had a right to be Spartan if he liked: there was no crime in that, and if he'd stolen the money he wouldn't be likely to mention its existence, even for the sake of as pretty a ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... itself. On the contrary, so highly developed a Kultur nation as the German Empire puts itself in a position where it is almost impossible to acquire any considerable degree of culture. Culture is the enemy of such a state—it must remain in the Spartan or Macedonian stage. Rome began to decline as soon as Hellenistic culture got the ascendency over the old Latin Kultur. Kultur, in short, galvanizes; culture liberates. A survey of modern Germany hardly warrants a desire for ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... ordeal, rarely tried the steel of any man's endurance. No Spartan could have borne the change more mutely, more staunchly than did the "dandy of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... when Carthage obtained a general fit to command an army. An officer who had been sent to Greece for soldiers of fortune brought with him on his return a Spartan named Xanthippus, a man who had been trained in the rigid Spartan discipline and had played his part well in the wars of Greece. He openly and strongly condemned the conduct of the generals of Carthage; and, on ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... well then, really, gentlemen," he said to the courtiers, "since there is no more etiquette there is no more monarchy." This jocose mode of treating the thing had at once removed all the anger of the court, and all the effect of the Spartan pretensions ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... looked down upon his red-splashed clothes and grimy, soil-streaked hands, and for a moment half hated her. His comrades seldom spoke of her—instinctively fearing some temptation that might beset his Spartan resolutions, but he heard from time to time that she had been seen at balls and parties, apparently enjoying those very frivolities of her sex she affected to condemn. It was a Sabbath morning in early spring that he was returning ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the possibility of the liberty of thought was not even suspected, and when there was no greater and more exceptional crime than that of discussing the gods, the laws and the customs of the city? What did such a word as "fatherland" signify to an Athenian or Spartan unless it were the cult of Athens or Sparta, and in no wise that of Greece, composed of rival cities always at war with each other? What meaning had the same word "fatherland" among the ancient Gauls, divided into rival tribes and races, ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... troubles. The days lengthened, and so did the faces at home; so would the bills have done had she ever yielded to the importunities of her Mrs.-Nickleby-like mother or Mart's weakling of a wife; but Jenny was Spartan in self-denial; what she couldn't pay for on ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... the banner, and the field, Glory and Greece, around me see! The Spartan, borne upon his ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Of course there must be rich and poor; of course there must be servants and masters. Marcella's rebellion against the barriers of life had been a sort of fatigue and offence to Letty ever since she had been made to feel it. And daily contact with the simple, and even Spartan, ways of living that prevailed—for the owners of it, at least—in the vast house, with the overflowing energy and humanity that often made its mistress a restless companion, and led her into a fair percentage of mistakes—had roused a score of half-scornful protests ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yes, was the ship of Homistogetes the Spartan, long and swift, having both its masts covered with cowhide and two rows of oars. And he, Homistogetes, was born of Hermogenes and Ophthalmia and was at home in Syncope beside the fast flowing Paresis. And after him came the ship of Preposterus the Eurasian, son ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... bridge; he just let the blamed thing go. The boy did not stand on the burning deck, whence all but him had fled; he was among the first in the lifeboats. That other boy —the Spartan youth—did not have his vitals gnawed by a fox; the Spartan youth had been eating wild grapes and washing them down with spring water. Hence that gnawing sensation of which so much mention has been made. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... me thy claims are justly great: Thy milder virtues could my Muse relate, To thee, alone, unrivall'd, would belong The feeble efforts of my lengthen'd song. [xi] 290 Well canst thou boast, to lead in senates fit, A Spartan firmness, with Athenian wit: Though yet, in embryo, these perfections shine, LYCUS! thy father's fame [15] will soon be thine. Where Learning nurtures the superior mind, What may we hope, from genius thus refin'd; When ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Macaulay-flowers of literature?—There was a dead silence.—I said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If I have used any such, it has been only as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and in his turn engrossed every eye, every thought of that vast assembly. A triple round of applause hailed every speech uttered by the generous Spartan. The painter of the Sabines, of Brutus, of the Horatii, of the Coronation, seemed to heed neither the noisy acclamations nor the deep silence that succeeded each other. Mute, motionless, transfixed, he heard not the plaudits: it was not Talma he saw, not Talma he was listening to. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... life there partook of the gravity, almost the austerity, of convent life, tempered by youth and gaiety. The vast room was redolent of industry and quietude, warm with bright sunshine. However, what most particularly struck him was the Spartan training, the bravery of mind and heart among those sons who allowed nothing to be seen of their personal feelings, and did not presume to judge their father, but remained content with his message, ready to await events, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that his brave blood flows in their veins. For history does not record, that any other of its long and shining line of heroes and martyrs, ever met death, anywhere on this globe, in a holier cause or a sublimer mood, than died this Spartan-like slave, more than three quarters ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... excess, since the training of the children of that sex, hardly yielded to that of the male in laboriousness and fatigue. Be this confessed to be an extreme: but then it was in some measure compensated by its being universally allowed, that the Spartan women owed to it that beauty in which they excelled the rest of the Grecian women, who were themselves held, in that point, preferable to the rest of the world. Hellen was a Spartan. Yet the legislator of that people, did not so much as consider this advantage ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... pang when she showed herself in public with Philip. She quivered under the open stare, or the look askance of members of her sex; if she showed a brave front, it was that of the Spartan boy! Philip was particularly fond of the opera and the play; he would not have gone without her; so she accompanied him, and made no demur. Of course every relation and friend she had in the world shunned her as though she were a leper, which indeed, morally, she was in their eyes. She loved ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... holy persons found great favour in Umbrian palaces and convents. Thenceforward he painted but little else; and when, in the Sala del Cambio, he was obliged to treat the representative heroes of Greek and Roman story, he adopted the same manner[220]. Leonidas, the lionhearted Spartan, and Cato, the austere Roman, who preferred liberty to life, bend their mild heads like flowers in Perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy. Jove is a reproduction ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... identified himself with their philosophical opinions, and would have revived Greek customs and modes of life. He used to give suppers after the manner of the ancients, and used to astonish his guests by the ancient cookery of Spartan broth, and of mulsum. He was an enthusiastical Platonist. On a visit to Oxford, he was received with great respect by the scholars of the University, who were much interested in meeting with one who had studied Plato as a pupil and follower. In accordance with the old custom at learned ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... military virtue, to die stolidly where they stood, or to lead the 'Faugh-a-ballagh' boys, or the gallant 28th, in one last death-charge with empty rifles against the unseen enemy. They may have been right, these stalwarts. Leonidas and his three hundred did more for the Spartan cause by their memory than by their living valour. Man passes like the brown leaves, but the tradition of a nation lives on like the oak that sheds them—and the passing of the leaves is nothing if the bole be the sounder ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and much else, let us note only this small consequence, that young Barbaroux, Advocate, Town-Clerk of Marseilles, being charged to have these things remedied, arrived at Paris in the month of February 1792. The beautiful and brave: young Spartan, ripe in energy, not ripe in wisdom; over whose black doom there shall flit nevertheless a certain ruddy fervour, streaks of bright Southern tint, not wholly swallowed of Death! Note also that the Rolands of Lyons are again in Paris; for the second and final time. King's Inspectorship ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he hit the ball and worked hard enough to deserve it. The thought of the little boy whose mother gave him a nickle every time he took his castor oil manfully came to his mind as he sat and gazed out the window. When asked what he did with the nickles, the Spartan youth had replied: "Buy more castor oil with it." Joe wearily dragged one of his stock ledgers from the rack and ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... he ruminated. "Evidently the Louison dares not face this stony-faced Swiss Medusa. The felites histoires of Francois will fill up my mental notebook." Major Hawke then sat down at ease in the cafe of the Hotel National to indite a dispatch of spartan brevity to "Madame Louison" at the Hotel Faucon, Lausanne. "The Cook's Agency tell me that the London draft will be paid to-morrow. Francois will deliver me the photographs, and relate his selected historical excerpts, and then I will be ready to have a duel of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the Bible, and is ever willing to improve and conform its entire framework to the increased light of God's word and Providence? It was Luther's deep sense of obligation to the Bible, as paramount to all human authority, which enabled him and his Spartan band of coadjutors, under God, to reform the church of Germany from so many Romish errors, and nothing short of the same noble principle can conduct the church safely in her high and holy mission of converting the world. Whilst, therefore, we love Luther much, let us, ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... the boatmen; and, when the pebbles were hopping about them like hailstones, the boys below commonly succeeded in securing, under cover of the fire, the desired boathook or oar. And such were the ordinary circumstances and details of this piece of Spartan education; of which a townsman has told me he was strongly reminded when boarding, on one occasion, under cover of a well-sustained discharge of musketry, the vessel of an enemy that had been stranded on the shores ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... horses were practically common property also. Sparta, which kept its Communism almost to the end, was also the Republic from which came the immortal heroes who made the pass of Thermopylae one of the great inspirations of the world."[1062] The Spartans were barbarians among the Greeks. Spartan Communism was founded on slavery and on the virtual community of women. Slave-murder, child-murder, rape, and theft were legally enjoined, and that is the community which Mr. Keir Hardie bids us consider as our model. Mr. Keir Hardie concludes: "We have seen how ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... an ancient noble family. His father, a strangely whimsical man, determined that his son should grow up a Spartan. A gymnastic instructor was his principal teacher, although he also studied natural science, mathematics, and international law. Music, as a pursuit unworthy of a man, was discarded. The female sex he was taught to hold in contempt, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... whether he should keep tryst with his gay fellow-traveller, or return to Chamberi. Remorse and that intractable emptiness of pocket which is the iron key to many a deed of ingenuous-looking self-denial and Spartan virtue, directed him homewards. Here he had a surprise, and perhaps learnt a lesson. He found installed in the house a personage whom he describes as tall, fair, noisy, coxcombical, flat-faced, flat-souled. Another triple alliance seemed a thing ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... than the mere victory of party, as truth is more precious than the interest of any sect. You will hear this patriotism scorned as an impracticable theory, as the dream of a cloister, as the whim of a fool. But such was the folly of the Spartan Leonidas, staying with his three hundred the Persian horde, and teaching Greece the self-reliance that saved her. Such was the folly of the Swiss Arnold von Winkelried, gathering into his own breast the points of Austrian spears, making his dead body the bridge of victory for his countrymen. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Hebrew ordeal of jealousy the sacred water decides whether the accused woman is guilty or not.[573] The sea is treated as a living thing, whose anger may be appeased by gifts; it is a monster, a dragon.[574] The Spartan Cleomenes, about to start on a voyage, sacrifices a bull to the sea.[575] Offerings to the sea are made in the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... AGESILA'US, a Spartan king, victorious over the Persians in Asia and over the allied Thebans and Athenians at Coronea, but defeated by Epaminondas at Mantinea after a campaign in Egypt; d. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... trying the proportions of martial merit, but (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing to Europe the proclamation of French superiority—that is the object of French wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold that a state of peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls for apology; and that already from the first such an apology must wear a very suspicious ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... terror," discerns the deeper truth, the serener ideal which henceforth it pursues as if impelled by the fixed law of its being. There is a word coined by Aristotle which comes down the ages to us, bringing with it as it were the sound of the griding of the Spartan swords as they leapt from their scabbards on the morning of Thermopylae, the energeia tes psyches—the energy of the soul. This energy of the soul in Aristotle is the vertu of Machiavelli, the spring of political wisdom, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... any interest or any part in political affairs? In the history of Greece, let him read and examine the character of Aspasia, in a country in which the character and conduct of women were more restricted than in any modern nation, save among the Turks. Has he forgotten that Spartan mother, who said to her son, when going out to battle, 'My son, come back to me with thy shield, or upon thy shield'? Does he not remember Cloelia and her hundred companions, who swam across the river, under a shower of darts, escaping ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the cotton-spinners is interesting as showing how fresh his sympathy still was with the sons of toil, and what respect he had for their position. He congratulated himself on the Spartan training he had got at the Blantyre mill, which had really been the foundation of all the work he had done. Poverty and hard work were often looked down on,—he did not know why,—for wickedness was the only thing that ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... your fault, ain't it?" You oughtn't to have made so much money, and then they'd have had to work." She laughed at Lapham's Spartan mood, and went on to excuse the young people. "Irene's been up two nights hand running, and Penelope says she ain't well. What makes you so cross about the girls? Been doing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was not ridiculous, since the institutes of Lycurgus ordained that at solemn feasts and sacrifices the young women should dance naked and sing, the young men standing around in a circle to see and hear them. Aristotle says that in his time Spartan girls only wore a very slight garment. As described by Pausanias, and as shown by a statue in the Vatican, the ordinary tunic, which was the sole garment worn by women when running, left bare the right shoulder and breast, and only reached to the upper third ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... be compared with that of Sterope in the eastern pediment. There is a substantial resemblance in the drapery, even to the arbitrary little fold in the neck; but the garment here is entirely open on the right side, after the fashion followed by Spartan maidens, whereas there it is sewed together from the waist down; there is here no girdle; and the broad, flat expanse of cloth in front observable there is here narrowed by two ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... escape. This is the uncompromising minute in the Journals: 'Oct. 16. The letters of Slatin have arrived. I have no remarks to make on them, and cannot make out why he wrote them.' In the afternoon, indeed, he betrays some pity; but it is the pity of a man for a mouse. 'He is evidently not a Spartan... he will want some quarantine... one feels sorry for him.' The next day he is again inexorable, and gives his reasons clearly. 'I shall have nothing to do with Slatin's coming here to stay, unless he has the Mahdi's positive leave, which he is not ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... he hid it grandly, and once more was a Spartan gnawed beneath his robe by this little fox. "What," said he sternly, "after all I and mine have done for you and yours, would you be so base as to go and sell ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... an offer from him. Said I, 'Carroll, is this another Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said I was a Spartan widow." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... 1846, Jackson received the brevet rank of second lieutenant of artillery. He was fortunate from the very outset of his military career. The officers of the United States army, thanks to the thorough education and Spartan discipline of West Point, were fine soldiers; but their scope was limited. On the western frontier, far beyond the confines of civilisation, stood a long line of forts, often hundreds of miles apart, garrisoned by a few troops of cavalry ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... his counsel prevailed, the nation would have found in 1881 what they discovered only in 1897, that they needed training and concentration to hold their own, and that the path of conquest of their ancient estate was set with obstacles which only Spartan discipline and endurance could clear away. As it has happened, the lesson has been learned only after all the competing elements have had theirs and are on the way to the primacy in the Balkans which the Greeks thought the heritage of their race, but of which they can ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... influence, and that for four years (453-449) Pericles was not master in Athens (see PERICLES); this theory is corroborated by the fact that Pericles, in the alarm caused by the Egyptian failure of 454, was induced to remove the Delian treasury to Athens and to abandon his anti-Spartan policy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... generation like ours, in which senseless luxury, the result of wealth which has increased faster than the power of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions, and is threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all noble aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, and Christian self-devotion, in its muddy flood. Surely never was Gideon's test more wanted for the army of the Lord of hosts than it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
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