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Nero  n.  A Roman emperor notorious for debauchery and barbarous cruelty; hence, any profligate and cruel ruler or merciless tyrant. Nero (originally Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, later Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus). Born at Antium, Italy, Dec. 15, 37 a. d.: committed suicide near Rome, June 9, 68. Roman emperor 54-68, son of Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina (daughter of Germanicus). He was adopted by his stepfather, the emperor Claudius, in 50, and in 53 married Octavia, the daughter of Claudius by Messalina. In 54 Claudius was poisoned by Agrippina, who caused her son to be proclaimed to the exclusion of Britannicus, the son of Claudius. His former tutors, the philosopher Seneca and Burrus, commander of the pretorian guards, were placed at the head of the government, and the early years of his reign were marked, on the whole, by clemency and justice. He caused his rival Britannicus to be removed by poison in 55. In 59 he procured the assassination of his mother, of whose control he had become impatient. Burrus died in 62, whereupon Seneca retired from public life. Freed from the restraint of his former advisers, he gave free rein to a naturally tyrannical and cruel disposition. He divorced Octavia in order to marry Poppaea, and shortly afterward put Octavia to death (62). Poppaea ultimately died from the effects of a kick administered by her brutal husband. Having been accused of kindling the fire which in 64 destroyed a large part of Rome, he sought to divert attention from himself by ordering a persecution of the Christians, whom he accused of having caused the Conflagration. He put Seneca to death in 65, and 66-68 visited Greece, where he competed for the prizes as a musician and charioteer in the religious festivals. He was overthrown by a revolt under Galba, and stabbed himself to death with the assistance of his secretary. But the imperial Reign of Terror was limited to a comparatively small number of families in Rome. The provinces ware undoubtedly better governed than in the later days of the Republic, and even in Rome itself the common people strewed flowers on the grave of Nero.






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"Nero" Quotes from Famous Books



... the care of them ourselves; also, that our care of God's truth may not be weakened by such sudden and strong doubts as will cause us faintingly to say, But what will become of my soul? When Paul had told his son Timothy that he had been before that lion Nero, and that he was at present delivered out of his mouth, he adds, And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom. He shall and will. Here is a man at liberty, here are no cumbersome fears. But how came the apostle by this confidence of his well-being ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... famous persecutions of Cordova under the reigns of Abderrahman II. and his son, which, to judge from the tone of Castilian writers, might vie with those of Nero and Diocletian, are admitted by Morales (Obras, tom. x. p. 74) to have occasioned the destruction of only forty individuals. Most of these unhappy fanatics solicited the crown of martyrdom by an open violation of the Mahometan laws and usages. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... Antony Milling in Pompeii Modern Architecture More Paternal Correspondence Mr. Sweeney's Cat Murray and the Mormons Mush and Melody My Dog My Experience as an Agriculturist My Lecture Abroad My Mine My Physician My School Days Nero No More Frontier On Cyclones One Kind of Fool Our Forefathers Parental Advice Petticoats at the Polls Picnic Incidents Plato Polygamy as a Religious Duty Preventing a Scandal Railway Etiquette Recollections of Noah Webster Rev. Mr. Hallelujah's Hoss Roller Skating Rosalinde Second Letter ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... as little as possible: as, Henry, Henrys; Mary, Marys; Cicero, Ciceros; Nero, Neros. 5. Most COMPOUND NOUNS form the plural by adding the proper sign of the plural to the fundamental part of the word, i.e., to the part which is described by the rest of the phrase: as, ox-cart, ox-carts; ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler

... you work for the good of the State as you find it,' he said gravely. 'That, too, is a doctrine of the Ancients.' He cited the case of Seneca, who supported the government of Nero, and she noted that he twisted to suit his purpose Tacitus' account of the ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... away in the springtime of her life. In these rustic sitting-rooms and the adjacent bedrooms and dressing-rooms we come again on many a portrait of the humble friends of the family—the dogs which we seem to know so well; the early group of little Dash and big Nero, and Hector with the parrot Lorey; Cairnach, Islay, Deckel, &c. [Footnote: An anecdote of the royal kennels states that when no notice has been given, the servants shall know of her Majesty's presence in the vicinity, and will say among themselves, "The ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... play although he could not quite appreciate Handel. For the ruin of one poor fellow! The poor fellow was Handel. The faction of fiddlers that could ruin that poor fellow had not been found in the world, even if we were to include Nero himself among the number. One poor fellow! We wonder how many sovereigns living in George's time the world could have spared without a pang of regret if by the sacrifice it could secure for men's ennobling delight the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... rocks, wildly overgrown with shrubs; and before us, seen more distinctly, are the statues of Hercules and Antaeus, and a Dying Gladiator—the Temple of Piety, in which are bronze busts of Titus Vespasian and Nero, and a fine bas-relief of the Grecian Daughter. In front of this temple the water assumes a variety of fantastical forms, ornamented at different points by statues of Neptune, Bacchus, Roman Wrestlers, Galatea, &c. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various

... the other side of the channel. The boat was rather a small one, belonging to the Zaratina company, with a crew which consisted of a captain, who also acted as supercargo, an engineer, a stoker, a cook, one deck-hand, and a cock. The cock's name was Nero, and he had voyaged with the boat for two months (as the engineer testified) without suffering even from the most tempestuous weather. There was an awning over the central portion of the boat and flapping pieces of sailcloth, apparently intended ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... people [the negroes] a physical delight in cruelty to beast as well as to man. The sight of suffering seems to bring them an enjoyment without which the world is tame; probably the wholesale murderers and torturers of history, from Phalaris and Nero downwards, took an animal and sensual pleasure in the look of blood, and in the inspection of mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the phenomena which meet my eye in Africa. In almost all the towns on the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... all; but somehow or other it ended at last; the old woman, "licking her whiskers," passed out, and the Duke, who had waited to hear the lecture, passed out after her, making (he hoped) a face like Nero or Saladin—at any rate, he showed ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... death. But quick as a flash, O'Dowd makes a dash. With all his might and the horse's mane, He brings the old plug to a halt again. Then every man there doffs his hat And cries "Well, what do you think of that?" Never since the days of Nero Has there been ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck

... polity to high and noble ends, educe from tragic imperfection some approach to perfection, and, in short, make the best of a bad business. We should thus have (let us say) Marcus Aurelius claiming a proconsulate under Nero, and, with very limited powers, gradually substituting order and humanity for oppression and rapine. This fairy-tale is not unlike Mr. Wells's; but I submit that it has the advantage of placing the Invisible King, or his equivalent, in a conceivable ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... onion gave strength to the human frame, but that it would also improve the pugnacious quality of their gamecocks. Horace, however, thought that garlic was a fit poison for anybody who committed parricide. The Emperor Nero, on the other hand, thought that eating leeks improved the human voice, and as he was ambitious of being a fine singer, he used to have a leek diet on ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... (Ep. I, 9), as brief as this is long, he recommends his friend Septimius to Tiberius Claudius Nero, stepson of Augustus, a young man of reserved unpleasant manners, and difficult to approach. The suasive grace with which it disclaims presumption, yet pleads his own merits as a petitioner and his friend's as a candidate for favour, with its dignified ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... 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

... in the east behold, And those who do remain In western lands or dwell under Booetes' wain And those whose skins are tanned With southern winds, which roast and burn the parched sand. What? Could this glorious might Restrain the furious rage of wicked Nero's spite? But oh! mishap most bad, Which doth the wicked sword to cruel ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... is furnished with a set of Roman emperors,—they are not placed in their proper order; for in the mad revelry of the evening, this family of frenzy have decollated all of them, except Nero; and his manners had too great a similarity to their own, to admit of his suffering so degrading an insult; their reverence for virtue induced them to spare his head. In the frame of a Caesar they have ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... the French lower classes, there were definite warnings from more careful observers.[418] As early as 1517 there were bitter complaints in France of the gabelle and other taxes, and a Cordelier denounced the French King as worse than Nero.[419] In 1519 an (p. 151) anonymous Frenchman wrote that Francis had destroyed his own people, emptied his kingdom of money, and that the Emperor or some other would soon have a cheap bargain of the kingdom, for he was more unsteady on his throne than people thought.[420] ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the senate. In like manner he will perceive in the case of Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, and ever so many more of those evil emperors, that all the armies of the east and of the west were of no avail to protect them from the enemies whom their bad and depraved lives raised up against them. And were the history ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... "He talks like a Christian Martyr and behaves like Nero. I might warn you to keep away from him, by the way, Florence. He says that either you or Herbert was over here yesterday and used his spectacles to cut a magazine with, and broke them. I wouldn't be around here much if I were you until ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... in that den— Far I think she juggled three cubs then, And a big "green" lion 'at used to smash Collar-bones far old Frank Nash; And I reckon now she hain't fergot The afternoon old "Nero" sot His paws on her!—but as far me, It's a sort-of-a ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... the Italians are now established firmly on the Monte Nero ridge across the Isonzo River; on the Carnia front an artillery duel is in progress; to check Italians who are advancing from the border northeast of Trent, Austrians are massing troops behind ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... of the great piazza, which slopes upwards, is an ancient Egyptian obelisk brought from the circus of Nero, and surrounded by points of the compass let into the pavement. This is flanked by two immense fountains, from which the water rises in a sparkling column to the height of seventy feet. They are supplied by an aqueduct from Lake Bramano, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... generals won all the southern part of the island, rooting out the cruel worship of the Druids in their groves of oak, and circles of huge stones. He died in the year 55, and was succeeded by his step-son, Nero, a half-mad tyrant, who used to show off like a gladiator; racing in a chariot before all the Romans at the games, collecting them all to listen to his verses, and putting those to death who showed their weariness. He was so ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... remarkably upright man. But he is a Seventh Day Adventist; that is, he does not hold the same religious views as the majority in his State. He stands in the same relation to his countrymen as that occupied by the early disciples of Christ to Roman society when Nero undertook to punish Christians by kindling nightly human fires for the delectation of conservative or majority thought. He is of the minority, even as the Huguenots were in the minority when the Church tortured, racked, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... another, nor who whipped; and as a picture, of living, raging, roaring battle, sho! why, it's pale and noiseless—just ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle?—the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, that ain't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of the high Patrician family followed on the same side; and no one had as yet ventured openly to urge the impunity of the parricides, although Tiberius Nero had recommended a delay in taking the question, and the casting of the prisoners meanwhile into actual incarceration under the safeguard of a ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... history as having been heated seven times hotter than it could be heated, in honor of the tripartite alliance of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. One of her most illustrious ancestors performed in Rome on the occasion of the Emperor Nero's famous violin obligato, and subsequently appeared in London when a large part of that large metropolis succumbed to the fiery element. This artist is known and respected in every community where there is a fire department, and the lurid flames of her genius, the burning eloquence of her ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... and down outside, coming in at odd moments to enliven the conversation with a witticism, in which exercise the good woman, unhappily, thinks she excels. She fears that Louise, who is not accustomed to the usages of society, may tire me. I am neither a Nero nor a Caligula, but many a time have I mentally condemned the honest post-mistress to the wild ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... the illustrious classes of Russia were enemies of that tyranny and were 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 ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... grotesque imitation of a boxer. And at the end of each of the six arms the spheres were clustered thick, studded with the pyramids—again in gigantic, awful, parody of the spiked gloves of those ancient gladiators who fought for imperial Nero. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... mineral's tempting hue, Which makes a patriot, can un-make him too.[2] Oh! Freedom, Freedom, how I hate thy cant! Not Eastern bombast, not the savage rant Of purpled madmen, were they numbered all From Roman Nero down to Russian Paul, Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base, As the rank jargon of that factious race, Who, poor of heart and prodigal of words, Formed to be slaves, yet struggling to be lords, Strut forth, as patriots, from their negro-marts, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... pattern from the point of view of a stitch. This attitude is exquisitely expressed by the reply of a dull student to the earnest teacher who strove to arouse in him some spontaneous opinion on human conduct. With enthusiasm and dramatic force, this instructor exhibited the career of Nero,—showed his list of crimes natural and unnatural, personal and political; his indecency, and cruelty, demanding what should be said of the monster. The student, spurred by questions, some-what fretfully responded, "He never did ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... seem as if political and military precedents of even a century ago could have no possible value. As for our present "anxious morality," as Maeterlinck calls it, it seems equally clear that the sinful extravagances of Sardanapalus and Nero, and the conspicuous public virtue of Aristides and the Horatii, are alike impotent ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... disquisitions on political justice: it does not say whether the title of Domitian to the supreme authority was a good title or no, or whether he should have been succeeded by Caligula, and Caligula by Claudius, or no; or whether or no the fact that Claudius was poisoned by the mother of Nero, derived to Nero any right to Claudius's throne. We hear nothing of these matters. The magistracy described by St. Paul is the magistracy conceived of by Sir Matthew Hale 'as necessary to be kept up at all times.' An application of this simple ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... pure heart is a well-spring of clear thought. Again, virtue promotes mental composure. It confers inward peace; it secures that tranquillity, without which no science can be successfully pursued. Sin disturbs the reason. Putting evil for good leads one to substitute error in general for truth. Nero was said to be as deficient in taste, as he was cruel and wicked. The imagination of a profligate cannot be other than depraved. And then, as regards the great objects of life, do good, and you perceive these with more and more clearness. Thus is "light" always "sown to the righteous." ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... emulation in the learned or brave; Nor virtue, male or female, can we name, But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame. Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride) The virtue nearest to our vice allied: Reason the bias turns to good from ill And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will. The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline, In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine: The same ambition can destroy or save, And makes a patriot as it makes a knave. This light and darkness in our chaos joined, What shall divide? The God ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... there a Bambino long since forgotten; flowers, too, flowers of the wayside, faded now, such as a little country girl will gather and toss into your vettura at any village corner in Tuscany; a terra-cotta of Luca della Robbia, and that would be a lily; a Madonna by Nero di Bicci, and that might have been a rose; a few panels by Lippo Lippi, and they were from the convent garden. In Via S. Margherita you come still upon a nosegay of such country blossoms, growing still by the wayside—Madonna with St. Anthony, S. Margherita, S. Costanza, and S. Stefano about her, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... evidence which clearly parts off the history of the fortress from the general history of the city. Jublains has no inscriptions to show, but its numismatic wealth is great. Among the many coins found, not many are earlier than the time of Nero, and those which there are are chiefly coins of Germanicus. From Nero to Constantine coins of all dates are common. It is M. Barbe's inference that it was in Nero's reign that the place began to be of importance, and that its great temple ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... interesting because their characters are so strongly marked in history. The position would seem to have made either brutes or heroes of them. Tiberius, who was no doubt the natural son of Augustus, resembles him as a donkey does a horse. Caligula, Nero, and Domitian had small, feminine features; Nero a bullet-head and sensual lips, but the others quite refined. During the first six years of Nero's reign he was not so bad as he afterwards became; and I saw an older bust of him in Paris which is too horrible ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... number of ten persecutions has been determined by the ecclesiastical writers of the fifth century, who possessed a more distinct view of the prosperous or adverse fortunes of the church, from the age of Nero to that of Diocletian. The ingenious parallels of the ten plagues of Egypt, and of the ten horns of the Apocalypse, first suggested this calculation to their minds.' Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... was told by an Italian antiquarian how the names 'White' (Bianca), 'Green' (Verdi) and 'Black' (Nero) first were given people. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... themselves, what they talked about, and what they believed as to the nature and origin of the universe and the probability of a future life. I hold that it is as important to know how the Romans told time as that Nero fiddled while his capital was burning. William the Silent was once just as much alive as P.T. Barnum, and a great deal more worth while. It is fatal to regard historical personages as lay figures and not as ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... Hartledon have borrowed somewhat of the easy indifference of the countess-dowager, he had been a happier man. That lady would have made a female Nero, enjoying herself while Rome was burning. She remained on in her snug quarters at Hartledon, and lived ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... that are not always probable; as for Example 'tis an allowed Truth in the Roman History that Nero put his Mother to Death, but 'tis a Thing against all Reason and Probability that a Son shou'd embrue his Hand in the Blood of his own Mother; it is also no less probable that a Single Captain shou'd at the Head of a Bridge stop a whole Army, although 'tis probable that ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various

... much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked Nero's death, 'Qualis artifex pereo!' better than most history. He worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and read a good deal about America. Landor's principle was mere rebellion, and that he feared was the American principle. The best ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... prize-ring is a little too near as yet to offer unimpeachable matter for romance; and people who can read of the bloodthirsty Umslopogaas and his semi-comic holocausts with an unshaken stomach, or feel a placid historic pleasure in the chronicles of Nero's eccentricities, will find 'Rodney Stone' objectionable because it chronicles a 'knuckle fight,' and because a 'knuckle fight' is still occasionally brought off in London, and more ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane. He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette, in which the new Governor was praised with immense enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose wife was not asked to Government House, declared that his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero was an enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used to like to get the papers and read ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... being created by damming up the valley of the Ampollina; the artificial lake thus formed will be enlarged by the additional waters of the Arvo, which are to be led into it by means of a tunnel, about three miles long, passing underneath Monte Nero. The basin, they tell me, will be some ten kilometres in length; the work will cost forty million francs, and will be completed in a couple of years; it will supply the Ionian lowlands with pure water and with power for ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... 'Oh Nero,' murmured the lady 'what if our intimacy should be discovered? yet you are discreet and trustworthy; for from the night I first hinted my desires to you, and admitted you into my chamber, you have behaved with prudence and caution. Yet you are aware of my situation; you know that ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... all through perfectly natural. The wonder would have been to have had a life of Christ without miracles. The air teems with them. The East is full of Messiahs. Even a Tacitus is superstitious. Even a Vespasian works miracles. Even a Nero cannot die, but fifty years after his death is still looked for as the inaugurator of a millennium of horror. The Resurrection is partly invented, partly imagined, partly ideally true—in any case wholly intelligible and natural, as ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Italy; at last his brother Hasdrubal started with the army of Spain to assist him, and made his way almost to central Italy. The two Carthaginian armies marched to unite their forces, each opposed by a Roman army under the command of a consul. Nero, facing Hannibal, had the audacity to traverse central Italy and to unite with his colleague who was intrenched against Hasdrubal. One morning Hasdrubal heard the trumpets sounding twice in the camp of the Romans, a sign that there were two ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... is to a circumstance not recorded of his earthly career, but belonging to the time following his resurrection. It is connected with a story told by St. Ambrose about the apostle Peter. St. Peter, it is believed, spent the latter part of his life in Rome, where the cruel emperor, Nero, was doing his best to exterminate ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... of a Poem on the reconciliation of the Lords of the Yorkist faction with King Henry the Sixth and his adherents; the one from the Cottonian MS. Nero A. VI., and the other from the ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... singularly cold and uncomfortable perch. And here was where Mrs. Carlyle had tried to build a tent and to imagine herself in the country. And here was the famous walnut tree—or at least the stumpy bole thereof. And here was where the dog Nero was buried, best known ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... mob clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been loosed in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of Allis. How like wild beasts they were, how like wolves! She closed her eyes, for she was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were wolves leaping at the throat of her father, and ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... the hardship which belongs to the common cause. "Come in with the rest of us," it means, "in bearing the hard times." There were plenty of hard times in those days. Paul was a prisoner in Rome; Nero's persecution was abroad. When the aged Paul, however, writes to the young man whom he affectionately calls his beloved child, he does not say to him: "I hope, my beloved child, that you will find life easier than I have, or that the times will clear up before you have to take the lead." He says, ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... new duke gave himself up to the most unbridled course of vice and cruelty. The profligacy of his life, and the horrible tortures which he inflicted on the hapless victims of his jealousy and anger, caused Milanese chroniclers to describe him as another Nero. He was commonly believed to have poisoned both his mother and Dorotea Gonzaga, the betrothed bride of whom he wished to rid himself when a more desirable marriage presented itself. These charges were probably groundless, but some of his actions went far to justify ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... years;—other virtues perhaps more than we know of. Probably no mortal ever had such things recorded of him: such facts, and also such lies. For he was a Jacobin Prince of the Blood; consider what a combination! Also, unlike any Nero, any Borgia, he lived in the Age of Pamphlets. Enough for us: Chaos has reabsorbed him; may it late or never bear his like again!—Brave young Orleans Egalite, deprived of all, only not deprived of himself, is gone to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... time and of 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 ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... said I—"if I may be so familiar with a millionaire, because I hate both the names Spencer and Grenville—your invitation is meant kindly, but—the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while the bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived— barring, thank heaven, the fiddling—while the city burns at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the zones wait upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically conjured up, blows upon me his Arctic breath. As for ...
— Options • O. Henry

... sweep-net for it (everriculum in provincia); and then presently, giving altogether another turn to his name, Others, he says, might be partial to 'jus verrinum' (which might mean either Verrine law or boar- sauce), but not he. Tiberius Claudius Nero, charged with being a drunkard, becomes in the popular language 'Biberius Caldius Mero.' The controversies of the Church with heretics yield only too abundant a supply, and that upon both sides, of examples of this kind. The 'royal- ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... fireplaces, and particularly steering clear of the great interior flue, was to conduct the enterprising traveler from the front door all the way into the dining-room in the remote rear of the mansion. Doubtless it was a bold stroke of genius, that plan of hers, and so was Nero's when he schemed his grand canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Nor will I take oath, that, had her project been accomplished, then, by help of lights hung at judicious intervals through the tunnel, some Belzoni or other might have succeeded in future ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... sang, and danced. His power was irresistible and electric. As a composer he ranks very high. His greatest works are the Ocean Symphony, Dramatic Symphony, and a character sketch for grand orchestra called "Ivan the Terrible;" his operas, "Children of the Heath," "Feramors," "Nero," "The Maccabees," "Dimitri Donskoi," and the "Demon;" the oratorios "Paradise Lost" and "Tower of Babel;" and a long and splendid catalogue of chamber, salon, and concert music, besides some beautiful songs which are ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... marrow of its bones, than the somber galvanism under the influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of Heliogabalus and Caracalla! What a beautiful thing that mummy of Rome, embalmed in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius! It had to do, messieurs the politicians, with finding the poor and giving them life and peace; it had to do with allowing the worms and tumors to destroy the monuments of shame, while drawing from the ribs of this mummy a virgin as beautiful ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... command of an all-powerful cardinal; that Racine, the idol of the French living in my day, who had now also become my idol (for I had got intimately acquainted with him when Schoeff Von Olenschlager made us children act "Britannicus," in which the part of Nero fell to me),—that Racine, I say, even in his own day, was not able to get on with the amateurs nor critics. Through all this I became more perplexed than ever; and after having pestered myself a long time with this talking backwards and forwards, and theoretical quackery of the previous ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... trumpets answering through all the city. Xenophon, you and I are in this death Eternally bound. This husband have I slain To lift unto the windy chair of the world Nero, my son. Your silence I will buy With endless riches; but a ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... of Tyana, who lived in the days of Nero and the apostles, has left an account of Babylon as he saw it, as late as the first century of our era. Still the Euphrates swept beneath its walls, dividing the city into halves, with great palaces on either side. ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... consequently in 360, after that prince had rejected his second request; but it was only published after the death of that emperor, in the following year, as is clear from St. Jerom: He says Constantius, by artifices and flattery, was a more dangerous persecutor than Nero and Decius: he tells him, "Thou receivest the priests with a kiss, as Christ was betrayed by one: thou bowest thy head to receive their blessing, that thou mayest trample on their faith: thou entertainest them at ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... 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

... insist on burning while Nero fiddled?" queried Peter smiling. "We should hear nothing of socialism and anarchy if Newport and ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... bluish mountains 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 ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... other hand, was the philosophic satirist, whose devotion to Stoicism caused him to see in it a panacea for all the evils which Nero brought on the empire. The shortness of his life, his studious tastes, and his exceptional moral purity all contributed to keep him ignorant of that world of evil which, as Professor Sellar has pithily ...
— English Satires • Various

... in the winter of 1828 that Mr. Longfellow first visited Rome, which "is announced," he wrote, "by Nero's tomb," and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... respects sexual anomalies often govern the acts of hysterical persons and other psychopaths. The Roman emperors, Nero, Tiberius and Caligula were almost certainly sadists and enjoyed sexual pleasure at the sight of the sufferings of their victims. Valerie, Messalina and Catherine de Medici were also female sadists. Under the hypocritical veil of religion, Catherine de Medici was the principal instigator ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... (Of course, my object in recording it here is simply to kill time; for, to speak like a true man, I linger shivering on the brink of the disclosures to which I am pledged. I feel something like the doomed Nero, when he stood holding the dagger near his throat, trying meanwhile to screw his courage to the sticking-place by the recitation of heroic poetry. Trust me to go on with the narrative as ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... the ancient Divvel's Chappels (for so the fathers style all play-houses) being five in number, are not sufficient to containe their troops, whence we see a sixth now added to them, whereas even in vitious Nero his raigne there were but three standing theatres in Pagan Rome (though far more splendid than Christian London), and those three too many." Having thus enumerated some of the saddest features of his age, the author of the 'Player's Scourge' again commends the piety and decorum of the Lincoln's ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... of age, and at his full height, he was hardly so tall as Helen. Swarthy of complexion, his hair dark as the night, his eyes large and lustrous, with what Milton calls "quel sereno fulgor d' amabil nero," his frame nervous and slender, he looked compact ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... man, you are quite out of it. You sit here reading up all that ancient lore about the cestus, and you could tell me the names of all Nero's gladiators, and yet here at this establishment we've got a gladiator who is going to make history, and you don't ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... before they found the horses. At last they found them feeding together at the edge of a grove of trees. There were two or three horses, and several long-tailed colts. The boy caught one of the horses, which he called Nero. Nero was a white horse. Marco mounted him and rode down, with the other horses and the colts following him. They put the horse in the stable until after breakfast, and then harnessed him into the wagon. When all was ready, the farmer told them to bring the sailor along with them to ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott

... said the king, mildly, "fame has no longer any attraction for me. Nero was also renowned; he burned cities and temples, and tortured Seneca to death. Erostratus succeeded in making his name imperishable I am utterly indifferent as to the world's admiration of my wisdom and power to govern. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... to her a faithful reflection of her loveliness as it is in truth. I found it— this will interest you—in the Catacombs. You would not think the early Christians had so much vanity! Yet it was a mirror into which the virgin-martyrs-to-be of the time of Nero looked each day. As they looked, let Donna Violante look. Say to her from me—'Look long and well into this mirror, and profit by what you see.'—Humbly your friend, Don Vincenzio." . . . Is not that ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... entered the service of William of Orange. To find the beginning of his ancestry, we must reach far back into history. The Rapins were supposed to have been driven from the Campagna of Rome during the persecutions of Nero. They took refuge in one of the wildest and most picturesque valleys of the Alps. In 1250 we find the Rapins established near Saint-Jean de la Maurienne, in Savoy, close upon the French frontier. Saint-Jean de la Maurienne was so called because of the supposed relic ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... Text of Dio and of Xiphilinus (the latter from Nero to Alexander Severus). Corrections of R. Stephanus in Dio proper, and of Xylander in both Dio and Xiphilinus, notes of Leunclavius on Dio, and notes of Orsini on Excerpts Concerning Embassies. Same Latin index as ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... the touch of that unlucky monarch. And as Grecian Helen was a queen, 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, ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of what was brewing. But Mr. Birrell, the Chief Secretary, who in frivolity seemed a contemporary embodiment of Nero, deemed cheap wit a sufficient reply to all remonstrances, and had to confess afterwards that he had utterly miscalculated the forces with which he had to deal. He was completely taken by surprise when, on the 20th of April, an attempt to ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... victims, waxed daily more intense. "Like things of another world," wrote Hoogstraaten, "seem the cries, lamentations, and just compassion which all the inhabitants of Brussels, noble or ignoble, feel for such barbarous tyranny, while this Nero of an Alva is boasting that he will do the same to all whom he lays his hands upon." No man believed that the two nobles had committed a crime, and many were even disposed to acquit Philip of his share in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... you remember, mother, and you, Ephraim, the curious little switch Nero used to give his tail whenever he was turned around? Well, this 'spook' horse did just the same thing. Oh, I know, I know ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... were still crowned at Nepata, Meroe gradually became the real capital and supported at one time four thousand artisans and two hundred thousand soldiers. It was here that the famous Candaces reigned as queens. Pliny tells us that one Candace of the time of Nero had had forty-four predecessors on the throne, while another Candace figures in the ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... of the chorus in the tragedy, Imported French enthusiasm, Vocal melody, textual accents and rhythms, Slavicism expressed in an Italian translation, Moussorgsky and Debussy, Political reasons for French enthusiasm, Rimsky-Korsakoff's revision of the score, Russian operas in America, "Nero," "Pique Dame," "Eugene Onegin," Verstoffeky's "Askold's Tomb," The nationalism of "Boris Godounoff," The Kolydda song "Slava" and Beethoven, Lack of the feminine element in the drama, The opera's lack of coherency, Cast ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... bloom. How different it was with material things! Where had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena? Where, the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by white gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the dainties ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... "if I had a choice of living under Nero or of living under that God you and Mrs. Reardon talk about, I'd take Nero and be thankful ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... boast of his successes to-day? So boasted Nero—sending Paul to his rags, crusts and the dungeon preparatory to the headman's axe. But it is Nero that lost out, and it is Paul who reigns ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the sick? Why teach us to honor an Aristides or a Regulus, and not one who pays an equitable, though to him ruinous, tax without a railing accusation? And why not teach us to help what the laws cannot help?—Why teach us to hate a Nero or an Appius, and not an underselling oppressor of workmen and betrayer of women and children? Why to love a Ladie in bower, and not a wife's fireside? Why paint or poetically depict the horrible race of Ogres and Giants, and not show Giant Despair dressed ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... unique in his disposition to ridicule such an attitude; in his drama on Nero, he causes ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... reinforcements for Hannibal. The attempt, however, was checked for the moment; and before it could be renewed, the fall of Capua released twelve thousand veteran Romans, who were sent to Spain under Claudius Nero, a man of exceptional ability, to whom was due later the most decisive military movement made by any Roman general during the Second Punic War. This seasonable reinforcement, which again assured the shaken grip on Hasdrubal's line of march, came ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... that at the death of Romulus there was darkness for six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet. So, too, in one of the Christian legends clustering about the crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. Neither the silence regarding it of the only evangelist who claims to have been present, nor the fact that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Nero, the most infamous of the emperors, committed rapes on the stage of the public theaters of Rome, disguised as a ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... instruments, and in several different ways, and from which they promised themselves effects that were "quite divine;" that is to say, superior to all the force of nature, even of "the power to converse with the shades and souls of the dead;" he adds, "But in our days the Emperor Nero has discovered that in all these things there is nothing but deceit and vanity." "Never prince," says he, a little lower down, "sought with more eagerness to render himself clever in any other art; and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... its desirability from a human standpoint; they do not see that with the Devil's power they will likewise assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed to remain as men among creatures who will no longer understand them. The Nero unknown to history who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his private entertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the boards of a theatre, does not suspect that if he had the power, Paris would become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac

... the reign 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: but whether his ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... antro dell' Aurora, ove sull' uscio E scritto: Lungi, ah lungi ite, profani? Diceva egli, e diceva che gliel disse Quel grande che canto l' armi e gli amori, Ch' a lui lascio la fistola morendo; Che laggiu nello 'nferno e un nero speco, La dove esala un fumo pien di puzza Dalle tristi fornaci d' Acheronte; E che quivi punite eternamente In tormenti di tenebre e di pianto Son le femmine ingrate ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... but the motive power to 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

... check the seeds of vice in Nero, his pupil, to whom incest and blood were afterwards so familiar[1], composed the Latin tragedy on the subject of OEdipus, which is alluded to by Dryden in the following preface. The cold declamatory rhetorical ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... procured peace to the Church, and gave her respite from her cruel persecutions, which was in Anno 309 (or thereabouts) after Christ; before which time the Church was miserably wasted and butchered with those ten bloody persecutions, by the tyranny of Nero, and other cruel emperors ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... could command them absolutely. As he was in a moribund condition and could make no use of them for himself, he sold them to Giuliano della Rovere, and Giuliano della Rovere was elected pope, under the name of Julius II. To the Rome of Nero ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... world,—a tendency altogether manifest in the last gigantic struggle through which mankind has just passed. Rome, finally, stands for Law, for the most marvelous social machine ever devised by human brains. But Rome is all that, and more than that, through Horace, Sulla, Cato, Caesar, Cicero, Nero, Caracalla ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... constitution. The verdict of 'guilty,' therefore, had been pronounced by the senate itself. [244] Sententiam rogatus. See Zumpt, S 393, note 1. [245] He had declared that at the voting, which took place after the members of the senate had expressed their opinions, he would vote for the opinion of Tib. Nero; for the voting took place by a division (discessio), only one proposal being voted upon at a time, so that those who supported it separated from those who did not support it, but intended to vote for any other opinion (alia omnia). [246] This opinion ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)



Words linked to "Nero" :   Roman Emperor, Emperor of Rome, Nero's crown, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar Augustus



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