"Nero" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... related what had happened, Berenike exclaimed: "But you know that the panther lies still and gathers himself up before he springs; or, if you do not, you may see it to-morrow at the Circus. There is to be a performance in Caesar's honor, the like of which not even Nero ever saw. My husband bears the chief part cf the cost, and can think of nothing else. He has even forgotten his only child, and all to please the man who insults us, robs and humiliates us! Now that men kiss the hands which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... are named for various celebrities who flourished at a later date than the second Apicius. It is noteworthy, however, that neither such close contemporaries as Heliogabalus and Nero, notorious gluttons, nor Petronius, the arbiter of fashion of the period, are among the persons thus honored. Vitellius, a later glutton, is well represented in the book. It is fair to assume, then, that the author ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... somewhat of the easy indifference of the countess-dowager, he had been a happier man. That lady would have made a female Nero, enjoying herself while Rome was burning. She remained on in her snug quarters at Hartledon, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... now;— Pantheon and Coliseum In their spacious fate have sheltered All the world's swift evolution;— Where a Hermes from that corner Saw the footsteps firm of Cato, Pontifex in the procession,— Saw then Nero as Apollo Lifted up take sacrifices, Saw then Gregory, the wrathful, Riding forth to rule in spirit Over all the known world's kingdoms,— Saw then Cola di Rienzi Homage pay to freedom's goddess 'Mid the Roman people's paeans,— Saw ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... business house was left standing. Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and commission houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames. The scene was like that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome when set on fire by Nero's command, as tradition tells. In modern times there has been nothing to equal it except the conflagration at Chicago, when the flames swept to ruin that queen city ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... St. Agatha, and not a sick woman attending the sick? Why teach us to honor an Aristides or a Regulus, and not one who pays an equitable, though to him ruinous, tax without a railing accusation? And why not teach us to help what the laws cannot help?—Why teach us to hate a Nero or an Appius, and not an underselling oppressor of workmen and betrayer of women and children? Why to love a Ladie in bower, and not a wife's fireside? Why paint or poetically depict the horrible race of Ogres and Giants, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... continued at intervals with greater or less intensity for more than two centuries; the Christians were early persecuted by the Jews, later by the Romans. In the first century they were persecuted under Nero and Domitian, through personal spite or selfish interests. After {275} this their persecution was political; there was a desire to suppress a religion that was held to be contrary to law. The persecution ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... as a possible President. And the speeches of Clara Smith's counsel, who was known by the delightfully Oklahomite title of Wild Bill McLean, were wild enough in all conscience; but they left very little of my friend's illusion that members of the Upper Ten could not be accused of crimes. Nero and Borgia were quite presentable people compared with Senator Hamon when Wild Bill McLean had done with him. But the difference was deeper, and even in a sense more delicate than this. There is a certain tone about English trials, which does at least ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... garland in her left hand, and (legend) Victorii Aug.” {112b} Silver coins of Vespasian, Lucius Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, and Volusianus, a large brass coin of Trajan, middle brass of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian, Domitian, Antoninus Pius, Faustina the elder, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Lucius Verus, and Faustina the younger, and several more. {112c} In December, 1898, a coin was found by a son of Mr. W. K. Morton, bookseller, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... played like an imbecile, and Nero like a madman. The former would send for the persons whom he had executed the day before, to play with him; and the latter, lavishing the treasures of the public exchequer, would stake four hundred thousand sestertii (L20,000) on a single ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... from the tops of copra-trees. A comical old fellow, Pedro Pocpotoc (a name derived from chicken language), used to live here, and on moonlight nights, planting his fat feet on the window-sill, like a droll caricature of Nero, he would sing Visayan songs to the accompaniment of a cheap violin. A talkative old baker lived a short way down the street with his three daughters. They were always busy pounding rice in wooden mortars with long poles, thus making rice-flour, which they baked in clean banana-leaves and sweetened ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... in Chaeronea in Boeotia about 46 A.D.; died in 125; celebrated for his forty-six "Lives of Greeks and Romans," and for works on philosophical and moral subjects; settled at Athens at the time of Nero's visit in 66, and traveled in Greece, Egypt and Italy; being in Rome during the reign of Vespasian; lived at Chaeronea in the latter part of his life where he was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... Antiochus; Herod Antipas, who killed John Baptist; Herodias and Salmon the dancer came to fearful ends: Judas and Caiaphas became their own executioners; Pilate also ended his own wretched life; Herod Agrippa was eaten up of worms: Nero and all the succeeding emperors, authors of the ten persecutions; Philip II. of Spain, Charles IX. Henry III. and IV. kings of France, Dukes of Guise, Anjou, Austria, &c. the cardinals Wolsey and Pool, bloody Mary of England, bishop Gardiner, with ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Hamburg Handel's first two operas were composed, "Almira" and "Nero." Both of these were founded on dark tales of crime and sorrow, and, in spite of some beautiful airs and clever instrumentation, were musical failures, as might ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of a people whose governor calls the gentry 'the upper crust of society,' and who in their turn see an affinity between a Scotch and a Roman fiddle, and denounce him as a Nero? But then who looks, as he says, for taste in a colony? it is only us Englishmen who have any. Yes, he calls this place 'Epaigwit.' It has a distingu appearance on his letters. It has now a name, the next thing is 'a local habitation.' Well, we won't stop to describe ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... next tablet (192), with food before him, and the next (193) is that found before the great sphinx at Gizeh. On it the sun is represented, and a Greek inscription tells that it was erected in the time of Nero, by the inhabitants of Busiris to the Roman governor of Egypt, Tiberius Claudius Balbillus. The next tablet (194) is that discovered by Belzoni, near the temple of Karnak, on which a line of adoring deities ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... is said to have sanctioned castration of both male and female for social reasons. Negro eunuchs were common among the Romans. All the great emperors and conquerors had their eunuchs. Alexander the Great had his celebrated eunuch, Bagoas, and Nero, his Sporus, etc. Chevers says that the manufacture of eunuchs still takes place in the cities of Delhi, Lucknow, and Rajpootana. So skilful are the traveling eunuch-makers that their mortality is a small fraction of one per cent. Their method of operation is to encircle the external ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... properties were known to the Greeks and Romans. The pages of history record its undoing and its accessory to crime. Pliny says, alluding to this species, "very conveniently adapted for poisoning." This was undoubtedly the species that Agrippina, the mother of Nero, used to poison her husband, the Emperor Claudius; and the same that Nero used in that famous banquet when all his guests, his tribunes and centurions, and Agrippina herself, fell victims ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... appeared to St. Peter, saying to him: Simon Magus and Nero purpose against thee, dread thee not, for I am with thee, and shall give to thee the solace of my servant Paul, which to-morn shall come in to Rome. Then Peter, knowing that he should not long abide here, assembled all his brethren, and took Clement by the hand and ordained ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... learning in those happy days at Bethlehem of the slaughter of Christians by Nero? Very well; right here in the Paris of Marat and Robespierre, you may hear constantly the same brutal cry that filled the Rome of the Caesars—"DEATH TO THE CHRISTIANS!" Famine, anarchy, murder, are everywhere; and I live from moment to moment, trembling if ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... morning news arrived from Byron's villa, which already began to verify Mary's forebodings in her letter to Hunt, and proved the clear-sightedness of her forecast. Disturbances having taken place at his house at Monte Nero, Count Gamba and his family were banished by the Government from Tuscany, and there were rumours that Byron might be leaving immediately for America or Switzerland. This was indeed trying news for Shelley to ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... it may here be mentioned that I was permitted to take into my hand a lock of her golden hair and the bowl which a sculptor modelled from the curve of her perfect breast. Here, likewise, was the robe that smothered Agamemnon, Nero's fiddle, the Czar Peter's brandy-bottle, the crown of Semiramis, and Canute's sceptre which he extended over the sea. That my own land may not deem itself neglected, let me add that I was favored with a sight of the skull of King Philip, the famous Indian chief, whose ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... develop into absolute wickedness. Vanity can be savagely suspicious and diabolically cruel. What are the two typical names which stand revealed in history as the names of the two vainest men that ever lived? Nero and Robespierre. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... in the time of Augustus were either slaves or freedmen. Posts of responsibility and of honour were sometimes assigned to freedmen, as is shown by the appointment by Nero of Helius, a freedman, to the administration of Rome in the absence of his imperial master. Cicero wrote letters to his freedman Tiro in terms of friendship and affection. The master of a great household ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... understood nothing of the oracle, which denoted Cyrus descended from two different nations, from the Medes by Mandana his mother, the daughter of Astyages; and by the Persians by his father Cambyses, whose race was by far less grand and illustrious. Nero had for answer from the oracle of Delphos, that seventy-three might prove fatal to him, he believed he was safe from all danger till age, but, finding himself deserted by every one, and hearing Galba proclaimed ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Octavian proclaimed a general amnesty; and among these who profited by it was a certain member of the Claudian gens,—one of that Nero family to which Rome ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... in the minds of his simple followers he was regarded as more than a man, which shows us that the ideals of what a man should be, or might be, were not high. We are told that near Benedict's first monastery there was a very deep lake, made in the time of Nero by damming up a mountain stream. Along this lake the brambles and vines had grown in great confusion. Benedict set to work to clear the ground from this lake to his monastery, half a mile up the hillside. One day a workman dropped an ax into the lake. Benedict ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of his birth. Till 48, the date of his mother's execution, he was looked upon as the heir presumptive; but Agrippina, the new wife of Claudius, soon persuaded the feeble emperor to adopt Lucius Domitius, known later as Nero, her son by a previous marriage. After the accession of Nero, Agrippina, by playing on his fears, induced him to poison Britannicus at a banquet (A.D. 55). A golden statue of the young prince was set up by the emperor Titus. Britannicus ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... either the fine colonnade of Bernini, or the dancing fountains, or that Egyptian obelisk which, according to Pliny, was set up by the Pharaoh at Heliopolis, and transferred to Rome by Caligula, who set it up in Nero's Circus, where it remained till 1586. Now, as Nero's Circus was situate on the very ground where St. Peter's now stands, and the base of this obelisk covered the actual site where the vestry now is, it looked like a gigantic needle ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wealth, numbers, and resources, which the latter was trying to "coerce," Fabius would have been a most injudicious selection as commander-in-chief. Historians are agreed, I believe, that if the advice of this classic "Micawber," to the consuls Livius and Nero, had been followed by them, the battle of "The Metaurus" would not have been fought, the two sons of the "Thunder-bolt" would have effected their junction, and would, in all probability, have forced the legions to another and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... to the retreats of his "Europas," on the sides and on the summits of the classically-sounding hills of the city of his ministry,—all these things, and more, are known to the poorest retailers of interesting stories and anecdotes. In a word, he was as impure as Caligula, as cruel as Nero or Calvin himself, and as violent ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... crossed the Alps that any considerable reinforcement was sent to aid the Carthaginian general. Then his brother Hasdrubal, having raised an army in Spain and Southern Gaul, crossed the Alps to join him. But he was met, as he marched south, by the consuls Livius and Nero with an army greatly superior to his own; and was crushed by them on the river Metaurus, the Spanish and Ligurian troops being annihilated and Hasdrubal ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... Zerviah began to notice that things were somehow different. He found some flowers near his table. He was reading about Nero at the time; but he put aside his Gibbon, and fondled the flowers instead. Bernardine ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... of his body, till his pen pours out the most abject drivel that has ever degraded paper. Under similar circumstances, revive me the illustrious Newton. I guarantee that when he sees the apple fall he shall EAT IT, instead of discovering the principle of gravitation. Nero's dinner shall transform Nero into the mildest of men before he has done digesting it, and the morning draught of Alexander the Great shall make Alexander run for his life at the first sight of the enemy the same afternoon. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... series of Soliloquies in which famous men of antiquity—Julius Caesar, Nero, Alcibiades, etc., attempt to express themselves in the modes of thought ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... eruption. Mr. Scrope, whose opinion is entitled to great weight, thinks it not improbable that this may have been the eruption recorded by Tacitus, (13 lib. Annal.,) as having ravaged the country of the Initones, near Cologne, in the reign of Nero. I should not forget to mention that there is a cavern within the basin of the lake, the air of which is so stifling and noxious, that animals die if forced to remain in it, and lights are extinguished by the gas—phenomena ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... on behalf of the Republic, and were ended by its downfall. His political life contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to imperial rule; and Rome was then the world. Could there have been no Augustus, no Nero, and then no Trajan, all Europe would have been different. Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an Augustus or a Nero, or the need of a Trajan; and as we read of them we feel that, had success been possible, he would ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... speculative. Spinoza thinks otherwise; and he is at least true to the guide which he has chosen. Blyenburg presses him with instances of horrid crime, such as bring home to the heart the natural horror of it. He speaks of Nero's murder of Agrippina, and asks if God can be called the cause of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... lib. 2, witnesses, when he speaks, saying, That Nero the Emperors Nurse had been very much addicted to Drinking; which Habit Nero received from his Nurse, and was so very particular in this, that the People took so much notice of it, as instead of Tiberius Nero, they call'd him Biberius Mero. The same Diodorus also relates of Caligula, Predecessor to Nero, that his Nurse used to moisten the Nipples of her Breast frequently with Blood, to make Caligula take the better Hold of them; which, says Diodorus, was the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... The western main shook growling, and still gnawed. I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale. Of happy Atlantis, and heard Bjoerne's keel 190 Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore: I listened, musing, to the prophecy Of Nero's tutor-victim; lo, the birds Sing darkling, conscious of the climbing dawn. And I believed the poets; it is they Who utter wisdom from the central deep, And, listening to the inner flow of things, Speak to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Nero thrumming his violin from the vantage point of the crowning hill of Rome, had no such portraiture of the degradation of humanity as that which the Magnates nightly view from their balconies. A stranger ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... generation. The land of Great Britain is held by the nobility and the princely cormorants of trade, who exact rental which cannot be paid from the produce of the soil, so usurious is it, or who turn the rich acres into pleasure grounds and pasturages. As Nero fiddled while Rome was one vast blaze of conflagration and horror, so the nobility of Great Britain dance and make merry while the people starve or seek in other lands that opportunity to live which their country denies to them. For the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... calamity, and we have accepted the verdict of later scholarship, that this Apocalypse of St. John appeared about 68 or 69 A.D. Was this a time of trouble in that Eastern world? Verily it was; the most appalling hour perhaps in the world's history. The unspeakable Nero was either still upon the throne of the Roman Empire, or had just reeled from that eminence to the doom of a craven suicide. The last years of his life were gorged with horror. The murder of his brother, the burning of Rome, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... anger, but kept his passions well under control. His address was soft and winning, and he had the art of attracting respect and friendship from all who came in contact with him. Poppaea, the wife of Nero, had received him with much favor and, bravely as he fought against them, Vespasian and Titus were, afterwards, as much attached to him as were the Jews of Galilee. There can be no doubt that, had he been otherwise placed than as ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... iniquity, nor liberty with tyranny, nor purity and sweetness with filth and foulness. There is no skill by which John can ever live in peace with Herod. Paul, the author of the ode to love, was always at war with Nero, and at last had his head shorn off. William Tell could not get along smoothly with Gesler, the tyrant who robbed the Swiss of their rights. When doves learn to live peaceably with hawks, and lambs learn how to ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... saints in heaven by Ezzelino's fury. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian imagination, and, by the glamor of loathing that has strength to fascinate, proved in the end contagious. We are apt to ask ourselves whether such men are mad—whether in the case of a Nero or a Marechal de Retz or an Ezzelino the love of evil and the thirst for blood are not a monomaniacal perversion of barbarous passions which even in a cannibal are morbid.[2] Is there in fact such a thing as Haematomania, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... interrupted by Nero's joyous bark. He had caught sight of her, and came bounding up, and thrust his large head into her hand. As she stooped to caress the dog, happy at his honest greeting, and tears that had been long gathering to the lids fell silently on his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon the eight Batavian regiments. In their hands the scales of empire seem to rest. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... poor fellow!" said Marillac, with tears in his eyes; "it is not very manly I know, but I can not help it—Oh! these women! I adore them, of course; but just now I am like Nero, I wish that they all had but one head. It is for these little, worthless dolls that we kill ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... those men prepare a way of speaking negligently or irreverently of thee, that give themselves that liberty in speaking of thy vicegerents, kings; for thou who gavest Augustus the empire, gavest it to Nero too; and as Vespasian had it from thee, so had Julian. Though kings deface in themselves thy first image in their own soul, thou givest no man leave to deface thy second image, imprinted indelibly in their power. ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... things, it has of old been observ'd that the bay is ominous of some funest accident, if that be so accounted which Suetonius (in Galba) affirms to have happen'd before the death of the monster Nero, when these trees generally wither'd to the very roots in a very mild winter: And much later, that in the year 1629, when at Padoa, preceding a great pestilence, almost all the bay-trees about that famous University ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... together, he held them above the lamp chimney and watched them burn. He did not wear the expression of a Nero, but of an Abram offering up that which was part of himself. He was not burning sheets of paper, but leaves from his life: sheets that he declared must become ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... pretty features, though with rather a sensual development of the lower part of the face. The busts, it seemed to me, are usually superior as works of art to those in the Capitol, and either better preserved or more thoroughly restored. The bust of Nero might almost be called handsome here, though bearing his ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instance, she was very much in love with herself, and therefore called me the most egoistical of men. She drank, and called me a drunkard; she rarely changed her linen and said I was dirty; she was jealous, even of my men friends, and called me Othello. She was masterful and called me Nero. Niggardly and ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... "Down, Tiger! Silence, Nero, you overgrown brute!" he cried, with an angry oath. "Come along, Mrs. Sharpe. There's no occasion to be alarmed; they ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... battle as would have brought delight to the brute soul of a Nero. With fore-feet and teeth the two stallions engaged, circling madly about on their hind legs, tearing up great clods of turf, biting and striking as opportunity offered. At last, by a quick, desperate rush, the buckskin caught the thoroughbred fairly by the throat. Here the affair would ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... distance of some 33,000 paces. Appius Claudius continued the good work, and to him is due the completion of the celebrated Appian Way. In time, the gigantic waterways greatly multiplied, and, by the reign of Nero, there were constructed nine principal aqueducts, the pipes of which were of bricks, baked tiles, stone, lead, or wood. According to the calculation of Vigenerus, half a million hogsheads of water were conveyed into Rome every day, by upwards of 10,000 small pipes not one-third of an inch ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... lent him the cup, and Lucian says it was a sea-shell. Tradition affirms that the magnet originally was not on a pivot, but set to float on water in a cup. The old antiquarian is wildly theoretical on this point, and sees a compass in the Golden Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in everything else. Yet undoubtedly there are some curious facts connected with the matter. Osonius says that Gama and the Portuguese got the compass from some pirates at the Cape of Good Hope, A.D. 1260. M. Fauchet, the French antiquarian, finds it ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... (i.e. el emperador). The Roman emperor Nero (reigned A.D. 54-68) persecuted the Christians, burning them as torches before his palace and making them fight with wild beasts in ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... especially by the words, "This Jesus who hath been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same manner in which ye beheld him going into heaven." In the Apocalypse, written A. D. 68, just after the death of Nero, this second coming is described as something immediately to happen, and the colours in which it is depicted show how closely allied were the Johannine notions to those of the Pharisees. The glories of the New Jerusalem are to be reserved for Jews, while for the Roman tyrants of Judaea is reserved ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... "There's Dash!" and seemed to forget crown and sceptre in her girlish eagerness to greet her small friend. [Footnote: In the list of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures there is one, the property of the Queen, which was painted in 1838. It includes "Hector," "Nero," "Dash," ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... protesting against it. Where in Germany were the intellectual enemies of Prussian Czarism? They were either holding their peace, or breaking forth into adulation of the anointed of the Lord—a musician and comedian like Nero, of a sharp and superficial intelligence, who believed that by merely skimming through anything he knew it all. Eager to strike a spectacular pose in history, he had finally afflicted the world with the greatest ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Nero used to call mushrooms the relish of the gods, because Claudius, his predecessor, having been, as was supposed, poisoned by them, was, after his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... a un sobrino que llaman Manso Pacheco. Nero no fue mas cruel que este. Este paso adelante y llego a una provincia que llaman Chatemal, estando de paz, i sin dar guerra los naturales la robo i les comio los mantenimientos a los naturales, i ellos huyendo a los montes de miedo de los Espanoles porque ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... into yourself. But, if peace you seek there for, Your reception, beforehand, be sure to prepare for," Wrote the tutor of Nero; who wrote, be it said, Better far than he acted—but peace to the dead! He bled for his pupil: what more could he do? But Lord Alfred, when into himself he withdrew, Found all there in disorder. For more than an hour ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... 'A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more, pursued the Doctor; 'it is, Mr Feeder—if you are doing me the honour to attend—remarkable; VERY ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Then Nero said, "I ought to have had better luck," and throwing the dice he counted fifteen. "Nearly enough; now, Faustus, ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... Empress Irene, "I beseech you to be contented; be assured that we will not leave you in this dogged humour of blood- shedding, lest you make such materials for history as are fitter for the time of Nero than ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... window; moonlight and glooms and falling leaves. He remained there for some time. Brother Jacques waited patiently to learn the vicomte's determination. He was curious, too, to test this man's core. Was it rotten, or hard and sound? There was villainy, but of what kind? The helpless villainy of a Nero, or the calculating villainy of a Tiberius? When the vicomte presented his countenance to Brother Jacques, it had undergone a change. It was masked with humility; all the haughtiness was gone. He plucked nervously at ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... result—he made the world turn somersault. His life was a perpetual gamble for God. Daily he faced death for Christ. Again and again he stood fearless before crowds thirsting for his blood. He stood before kings and governors and "turned not a hair". He didn't so much as flinch before Nero, that vice-president of hell. His sufferings were appalling; read them. He trod in his Master's footsteps, and so received—God is always just in His favors—the same splendid compliment that Jesus did. "All forsook him." So there were some Chocolate ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... hand be feebled heere, That in your Chambers gaue you chasticement? No: know the gallant Monarch is in Armes, And like an Eagle, o're his ayerie towres, To sowsse annoyance that comes neere his Nest; And you degenerate, you ingrate Reuolts, You bloudy Nero's, ripping vp the wombe Of your deere Mother-England: blush for shame: For your owne Ladies, and pale-visag'd Maides, Like Amazons, come tripping after drummes: Their thimbles into armed Gantlets change, Their Needl's to Lances, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... over to Mr. Slade's tavern. When I knew this, I felt as strong as when I was well, and I got up and dressed myself, and started out after you. But I hadn't gone far, before I met Mr. Slade's great bull-dog, Nero, and he growled at me so dreadfully that I was frightened and ran back home. Then I started again, and went away round by Mr. Mason's. But there was Nero in the road, and this time he caught my dress in his mouth and tore a great piece out of the skirt. I ran back again, and ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... belfry And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon, And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on! Well, somehow or other it ended at last, And, licking her whiskers, out she passed; And after her,—making (he hoped) a face Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin, Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace Of ancient hero or modern paladin, From door to staircase—oh, such a solemn {330} Unbending of ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. This passage is surely remarkable. And so are the later ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... of Nero, that a cinical mock-philosopher, called Demetrius, saw, for the first time, one of these pantomime compositions. Struck with the truth of the representation, he could not help expressing the greatest marks of astonishment: ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... shown two spaces of ground, where part of Nero's golden house stood, for which the owner has been offered an extraordinary sum of money. What encouraged the undertakers, are several very ancient trees, which grow upon the spot, from whence they conclude that these particular tracts of ground must have lain untouched for ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Nero illuminated his gardens with live Christians soaked in tar, and we were now treated to a similar spectacle, probably for the first time since his day, only happily our lamps were not ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... true, as you say, the polls are only open once in four years—when men once get the habit—who knows where it will end—it is hard enough to keep them at home now! No, history is full of unhappy examples of men in public life; Nero, Herod, King John—you ask me to set these names before your young people. Politics has a blighting, demoralizing influence on men. It dominates them, hypnotizes them, pursues them even after their earthly career is ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... has twice occurred to the Greeks in the city of Corinth. Titus, then, and Nero again in our days, both at Corinth, and both alike at the celebration of the Isthmian games, permitted the Greeks to enjoy their own laws and liberty. The former (as has been said) proclaimed it by the crier; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... years an obelisk which the Emperor Caligula brought from Egypt to adorn Rome. It witnessed wonderful events long before the time of Moses. At its foot the children of Israel sang the melodies of their country during their servitude. It was a decoration of Nero's circus, and saw thousands of Christian martyrs torn to pieces by Gallic hounds and African lions; and still it lifts itself 80 feet into the air in a single block, untouched by time ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... his son Agrippa, during whose time Felix and Festus were procurators in Judea, while Nero was Roman emperor. This Agrippa finished the Temple by the work of 18,000 men. The war of the Jews and Romans began through the oppression by Gessius Florus, who secured the procuratorship by the friendship of his wife Cleopatra ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... produce by all his fine speeches.[281] Above all, the player is to study tranquil scenes, for it is these that are the most truly difficult. He commends a young actress to play every morning, by way of orisons, the scene of Athalie with Joas; to say for evensong some scenes of Agrippina with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of Phaedra with her confidante. Especially there is to be little emphasis—a warning grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers out of a hundred—for emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only a forced ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... nonsense; there was no meaning in them; people were hoodwinked by the silken robes and handsome mask, by the fluting and piping and the fine voices, which served to set off what in itself was nothing. The leading pantomime of the day—this was in Nero's reign—was apparently a man of no mean intelligence; unsurpassed, in fact, in wideness of range and in grace of execution. Nothing, I think, could be more reasonable than the request he made of Demetrius, which was, to reserve his decision till he had witnessed his performance, which he undertook ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... and vital drama, written when Racine was twenty-eight years old, brought him immediate fame. During the next ten years (1667-77) he produced a series of masterpieces, of which perhaps the most interesting are Britannicus, where the youthful Nero, just plunging into crime, is delineated with supreme mastery; Bajazet, whose subject is a contemporary tragedy of the seraglio at Constantinople; and a witty comedy, Les Plaideurs, based on Aristophanes. Racine's character was a complex one; he ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... spite of the fact that Duke himself often sat close by, a living lie, with the hope of peace in his heart. As for Penrod's father, that gladiator was painted as of sentiments and dimensions suitable to a super-demon composed of equal parts of Goliath, Jack Johnson and the Emperor Nero. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... was necessary for me to go from it several miles—to the Pincian hill, or a terrace of the beautiful Villa Doria-Pamfili. The latter view is one of the finest, as nothing else of all Rome is seen. The cathedral stands on the site of Nero's Circus, where many Christians were martyred, and where the Apostle Peter is said to have been buried after his crucifixion. In the year 90 an oratory was built there, and in 306 Emperor Constantine erected a church. It was the grandest ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... we have observed, in order to distinguish its circumstances, and trace its consequences: Whereas in the latter, the experienced event is exactly and fully familiar to that which we infer as the result of any particular situation. The history of a TIBERIUS or a NERO makes us dread a like tyranny, were our monarchs freed from the restraints of laws and senates: But the observation of any fraud or cruelty in private life is sufficient, with the aid of a little thought, to give us the same apprehension; while it serves as an ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... our species below the order of men. What an affront to the King of the universe, to maintain that the happiness of a monster, sunk in debauchery and spreading desolation and murder among men, of a Caligula, a Nero, or a Charles, is more precious in his sight than that of millions of his suppliant creatures, who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God! No, in the judgment of heaven there is no other ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Modern Greek stories are very like the skazka mentioned above. In one of these (Hahn, ii. p. 234), a Lamia guards the water of life (abanato nero) which flows within a rock; in another (ii. p. 280) a mountain opens at midday, and several springs are disclosed, each of which cries "Draw from me!" but the only one which is life-giving is that to ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... done me the favour of allowing me to build a nunnery for ladies here at the foot of Monte Cavallo, by the broken portico, where it is said that Nero saw Rome burning, so that the wicked footprints of such a man may be trodden out by others more honest of holy women. I do not know, M. Angelo, what shape and proportions to give to the house, where the door should be placed, and whether some of the old work may ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... all round, far enough to be visible, a great sense of air and space, for a valley. No vegetation, save a few olives and scrub oaks and the bitter herbs and euphorbus. No scented happy Tuscan things. And deep below, the arches of Nero's Villa—with demons no doubt galore. Those giottesque chapels hold in them, all hung with lamps, a small tufo grotto, the one down which, as in Sodoma's fresco, the angels sent baskets of provisions and the devils made ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... classical subjects of the last new school. Weak imitations of Alma Tadema. Nero admiring his mother's corpse; Claudius interrupting Messalina's marriage with her lover Silus; Clodius disguised among the women of Caesar's household; Pyrrha's grotto. Lady Kirkbank expatiated upon all the pictures, and generally made unlucky guesses at the subjects of them. Classical ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... pen cannot express with true ardour the terrifying scenes and cruel torments brought about by such fierce chieftains on such indefensive religious. It seems impossible that a fleshly heart could hold so much wickedhess, for these petty chiefs were veritable monsters of cruelty who surpassed a Nero; men who were entire strangers to noble and humane sentiments and who in appearance having the figure of a man were in reality tigers roaring in desperation, or mad dogs who ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... itself. Youth boasts of strength and prowess to do great deeds, not of skill to pile millions upon millions, a Pelion upon an Ossa of wealth. Nor in the vain luxury of New York can we detect anything save the signs of age. It is only in modern America that the mad extravagance of Nero's Rome may be matched. There the banquet of Trimalchio might be presented without surprise and without reproach. It differs from what are known as "freak dinners" only in the superiority of its invention and in the perfection ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... mistaken for a portion of the cathedral; it is, however, a relic of the old castle, the keep of which rested on a mound of sand and gravel, which was found to contain, upon its removal in 1833, Roman remains of the reigns of Augustus, Nero, Vespasian, and Constantine. In High Street, leading from the Cathedral to the Cross, is the Guildhall, erected from a design by a pupil of the great Sir Christopher Wren, and considered to be one of the most handsome ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he, I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of Lucian's, who employed an eagle's wing and a vulture's in his flight, I take to be a mere figment of the satirist's imagination. But what do you make of Simon ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... felicite and glory therof: but also for the permanent and stedfast state thereof. Aristotle and Plato setteth forthe, thother formes of gouernme[n]t. But in all those, no long co[n]tinuaunce of felicitee, nor of happy state can appere [Sidenote: Tirannis[.] Nero[.] Domicianus[.] Caligula.] in them, as for the contrarie to a Monarchie, is tirannis, pe- stiferous, and to be detested, where one man gouerneth to his priuate gaine, pillyng and polyng his subiectes, murderyng with all crueltie, neither Lawe nor reason, leadyng ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... especially that of the former, who was invested with the dignity of cardinal, every one discovered the most violent rage against the king; and numerous libels were published by the wits and orators of Italy, comparing him to Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and all the most unrelenting tyrants of antiquity. Clement VII. had died about six months after he pronounced sentence against the king; and Paul III., of the name of Farnese, had succeeded to the papal throne. This pontiff, who while cardinal, had always favored Henry's cause, had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... escape her wrath. So resistless was this power, that from the highest noble down to the meanest slave, all were subject to it. The dethroned emperor could not escape her vengeance, nor was such an escape even hoped for. When Nero fell, he could only go and kill himself in a neighboring villa. Yet here, amid these infinite labyrinths, even the power of Rome was unavailing, and her baffled emissaries faltered at the ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... than failure ever will. It's like a Santa Cruz rum milk punch on an empty stomach—there's very few people can stand it. Many a guy that's a regular fellow at a hundred a month, becomes a boob at a hundred a week. What beat Napoleon, Caesar and Nero—failure? No, success! Give the thing the once over some time and ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... heart of hearts, believed Fitzgerald guilty. But he was one of those persons, who having either tender hearts or obstinate natures—the latter is perhaps the more general—deem it incumbent upon them to come forward in championship of those in trouble. There are, doubtless, those who think that Nero was a pleasant young man, whose cruelties were but the resultant of an overflow of high spirits; and who regard Henry VIII. in the light of a henpecked husband unfortunate in the possession of six wives. These people delight in expressing their sympathy with great scoundrels ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it adieu forever; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that has ever happened to it from Nero's conflagration downward. In fact, I wish the very site of it had been obliterated before I ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Browning was, our critic thinks, a deliberate artist. The suggestion that Browning cared nothing for form is for Chesterton a monstrous assertion. It is as absurd as saying that Napoleon cared nothing for feminine love or that Nero hated mushrooms. What Browning did was always to fall into a different kind of form, which is a totally different thing to saying he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... where they are riding. If we and France, as you anticipate, Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself, Do you see for the master of the feast? There may be a place waiting on your head For laurel thick as Nero's. You don't know. I have not crossed your glory, though I might If I saw thrones ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... does not say "his empress") was Messalina, third wife of the Emperor Claudius, who was uncle of Caligula and foster-father to Nero. Furthermore, in her case the charge is that she copulated with twenty-five in a single night, and not twenty-two, as appears in the text. Montaigne is right in his statistics, if original sources are correct, whereas the author erred ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... Italy, and was coincident not with the murderous war against Hannibal and the subsequent campaigns, costly though they were, in Spain, Syria, and Macedonia, but with the Hellenisation of social life. Lucan, under Nero, complains that the towns have lost more than half their inhabitants, and that the country-side lies waste. Under Titus it was estimated that, whereas Italy under the Republic could raise nearly 800,000 soldiers, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge |
