"Gladiatorial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to merchants advertising their wares, we owe the three thousand or more graffiti found at Pompeii. The ephemeral inscriptions which were intended for practical purposes, such as the election notices, the announcements of gladiatorial contests, of houses to rent, of articles lost and for sale, are in prose, but the lovelorn lounger inscribed his sentiments frequently in verse, and these verses deserve a passing notice here. One ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... shrine containing silver Lares, a marble Venus, and a golden casket by no means small, which held, so they told us, the first shavings of Trimalchio's beard. I asked the hall-porter what pictures were in the middle hall. "The Iliad and the Odyssey," he replied, "and the gladiatorial games given under Laenas." There was no time in ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... rather closely together, and with entablatures of stone or marble, and construct walks above in the upper story. But in the cities of Italy the same method cannot be followed, for the reason that it is a custom handed down from our ancestors that gladiatorial shows should be given in ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... the skies by a smile. I can cast him into the depths by a frown. If I but touch his hand, the giant trembles. He would be a Hercules in my service, and yet I've got him just there"; and she depressed her little thumb with the confidence of a Roman empress desiring to show favor to some gladiatorial slave. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... provided games, at great expense, for the entertainment of the populace. In the room of the invigorating and of the intellectual contests, which had been in vogue among the Greeks, the Romans acquired an increasing relish for bloody gladiatorial fights of men with wild beasts, and of men against one another. Slaves multiplied to an enormous extent: "as cheap as a Sardinian" was a proverb. The race of plain farmers dwindled away. The trade in slaves ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... frequent pleasant intercourse to such an extent, that our friends the boon companions of the conspiracy, the young chin-tufts, speak of him in ordinary conversation as Gnaeus Cicero. Accordingly, both in the circus and at the gladiatorial games, I received a remarkable ovation without a single cat-call. There is at present a lively anticipation of the elections, in which, contrary to everybody's wishes, our friend Magnus is pushing the claims of Aulus's son;[104] ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... oblong in shape, used for public games, races, and beast-fights. The Theatra were edifices designed for dramatic exhibitions: the Amphitheatra (double theatres, buildings in an oval form) served for gladiatorial shows and the fighting of wild animals. That which was erected by the Emperor Titus, and of which there still exists a splendid ruin, was called the Coliseum, from a colossal statue of Nero that stood near it. With an excess of luxury, perfumed liquids were conveyed in secret tubes round these ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... a long interval when the ball gets dangerously near a goal, someone on the imperiled side kicks it half the length of the field, and the scrimmages are renewed. But it is rarely kicked at all except at such junctures. Foot-ball! I say to myself that it is a gladiatorial combat with an occasional punt thrown in by way of identification. But every one around me is declaring that the play of both sides is magnificent, that the team work is perfection, and the head qualities displayed unique in the annals of the game. Sam tells me again and again that Fred is doing ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... frontier I have pushed forward." He turned away from her and stood for a moment at the window in a flood of yellow radiance. The clarity of his eyes and luster of his dark hair and the hue of his cheeks were all declarations of gladiatorial perfection of condition. His ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... coffers were replenished, from the drained resources of exhausted provincials. Every young man of active ambition or noble birth, whose resources had been impoverished by debauchery and extravagance, had but to borrow fresh sums in order to give magnificent gladiatorial shows, and then, if he could once obtain an aedileship, and mount to the higher offices of the State, he would in time become the procurator or proconsul of a province, which he might pillage almost at his will. Enter the house of a Felix or a Verres. Those splendid pillars of mottled ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the deadly game went on, till about a hundred bodies were stretched in rows behind us. I have heard of the gladiatorial shows of the Caesars, and of the Spanish bull-fights, but I take the liberty of doubting if either of them could be half so horrible as this Kukuana witch-hunt. Gladiatorial shows and Spanish bull-fights at any rate contributed ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... has reached a critical hour, not for herself merely, but for the world at large, which regards her with tense anxiety. Let America beware. Even a just war may give rise to all possible iniquities. Vestiges of ancient fierceness linger within us; the human animal licks its chops as it watches the gladiatorial combats. We veil these cannibal appetites under highsounding names, speaking of Right and of Liberty. The last hope of our day lies in youth. Let youth claim for the future the individual's prerogative to judge good and evil for himself, to be the ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... it condemned the wife. The evangelical method is this: it has not occupied itself with communities, yet has wrought the profoundest of the social revolutions; it has not demanded any reform, yet has accomplished all of them; the atrocities of war and of torture, the gladiatorial combats and immodest spectacles, the despotism of fathers and the debasement of women, all have disappeared before a profound, internal action, which attacks the very roots ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... similarly-named city founded by his father on the sea-coast. Here Christ gave His charge to Peter (Matt. xvi. 13). Many Greek inscriptions have been found here, some referring to the shrine. Agrippa II. changed the name to Neronias, but this name endured but a short while. Titus here exhibited gladiatorial shows to celebrate the capture of Jerusalem. The Crusaders took the city in 1130, and lost it to the Moslems in 1165. Banias is a poor village inhabited by about 350 Moslems; all round it are gardens of fruit-trees. It is well watered and fertile. There are not many remains of the Roman city ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... These baths were generally very extensive, and fitted up with every possible convenience;—the passages and apartments were paved with marbles of every hue, and the tesselated floors were adorned with representations of gladiatorial engagements, hunting, racing, and a variety of subjects from the mythology. In the Thermae at Rome, ingenuity and magnificence seem exhausted; and the elegance of the architecture, and the vast range of rooms and porticos, create in the beholder ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... enrichment that a tour through college gives the least absorbent mind. He was determined to provide it for his boy, though Joel felt that every moment's delay in leaping into the commercial arena was so much delay in arriving at gladiatorial eminence. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... met Cavenaugh in the entrance hall, serenely going forth to or returning from gladiatorial combats with joy, or when he saw him rolling smoothly up to the door in his car in the morning after a restful night in one of the remarkable new roadhouses he was always finding. Eastman had seen a good many young men disappear on Cavenaugh's route, and he admired ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... from history and the romantic fables of the poets. Marc Antony, at one of his breakfasts with Cleopatra, had eight wild boars roasted whole; and though the Romans do not appear to have been addicted to hunting, wild-boar fights formed part of their gladiatorial shows in the amphitheatre. In France, Germany, and Britain, from the earliest time, the boar-hunt formed one of the most exciting of sports; but it was only in this country that the sport was conducted without dogs,—a real hand-to-hand contest of man ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of a child; the delineation of childhood was one of the latest triumphs of art." Even in the time of those latest triumphs, however, the same fault was committed in another way; and a boy of eight or ten was commonly represented—even by Raffaelle himself—as a dwarf Hercules, with all the gladiatorial muscles already visible in stunted rotundity. Giotto probably felt he had not power enough to give dignity to a child of three years old, and intended the womanly form to be rather typical of the Virgin's advanced mind, than an actual representation ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... a fellow altogether!" In public life, a fighter, wily and skilled; compassionate to the poor, yet exacting, implacably, practical recognition of his compassion. In his own house, easy-going and autocratic; in his Church, a slave; a confidential slave, whose gladiatorial gifts were valued, and whose idiosyncrasies might be humoured, but none the less, a slave. He was like an elephant in his hugeness, and suppleness, his dangerousness, and his gentleness. His head was not crowned with the bald benevolence that an elephant ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... rapier, saber, scimiter, brand, curtana, claymore, smallsword, glaive, broadsword, cutlass, Damascus blade, spadroon, creese. Associated Words: scabbard, sheathe, unsheathe, forte, hilt, sheath, foible, foil, fence, fencer, gladiatorial, gladiatorism, gladiature. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... his feet, and displayed a figure in which the grace of an Antinous met with the columnar strength of a Grecian Hercules,— presenting, in its tout ensemble, the majestic proportions of a Jupiter. He stood—a breathing statue of gladiatorial beauty, towering above all who were near him, and eclipsing the noblest specimens of the human form which the martial assembly presented. A buzz of admiration arose, which in the following moment was suspended by the dubious recollections investing his past appearances, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the sombre gallery and made their way into the open air. After they had gone about twenty yards the guides came to an abrupt halt and one of them pointed to the centre of the vast gladiatorial arena. ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... causes, underlying and strengthening all others, is the slowly changing social conscience which, as each generation passes, appreciates more fully warfare's inconsistency with justice and antagonism to right. This same cause found civilized society taking keen delight in the heathen barbarity of a gladiatorial combat, and has transformed and lifted it up to where it is horrified at a bull-baiting or a prize fight. It found human beings with absolute power of life and death over other human beings and has evolved the view that all men are created free and equal. It found individuals ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... strong contrast to the plain and worn garment of the man who waited under the high arch of the Beautiful Gate with arms folded across his breast. An intense stillness fell over the gathering—such a hush as marked the circus arena in Rome when gladiatorial combatants came together in the death-struggle. As Annas, the All-Powerful head of God's elect priesthood, neared the end of the open path cut through the throng, the Galilean lifted his eyes from the surrounding scene and entered ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... right side was offered to the point. The centurion fell heavily on his breast, clanging the pavement, and Ben-Hur had won. With his foot upon his enemy's back, he raised his shield overhead after a gladiatorial custom, and saluted the imperturbable soldiers ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... indulged his gladiatorial propensities he disappeared into the forest whence he came, and being a free man of mental independence equal to his nerve, he merely waited in his lonely cabin until Meshach Milburn sent him word to return. Then silently the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... time, though man may kill the lower animals for his own convenience, he is bound not to inflict needless suffering on them. The torture of an animal, for no adequate purpose, is absolutely indefensible. Cock-fights, bull-fights, and the like seem to me to admit of no more justification than the gladiatorial shows. Are field-sports, then, in the same category? The answer, I think, depends on three considerations: (1) would the animal be killed any way, either for food, or as a beast of prey; (2) what is the amount of suffering inflicted on it, in addition to that which would be inflicted by killing ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... disposed to question the effect produced by the heroic, or rather saintly, death of Telemachus. No prohibitory law of Honorius is to be found in the Theodosian Code, only the old and imperfect edict of Constantine. But Muller has produced no evidence or allusion to gladiatorial shows after this period. The combats with wild beasts certainly lasted till the fall of the Western empire; but the gladiatorial combats ceased either by common consent, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... they appear at the Capitol to acknowledge their submission to Rienzi: but Adriano, who has been among them, warns Rienzi that they have plotted to kill him. Festal dances, processions, and gladiatorial combats follow, in the midst of which Orsini rushes at Rienzi and strikes at him with his dagger. Rienzi is saved by a steel breastplate under his robes. The nobles are at once seized and condemned to death. Adriano pleads with Rienzi to spare his father, and moved by his eloquence he ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... recently plundered every temple in Hellas, so that hardly any religious service can be held there? The oracles are dumb, the poets are silent like song-birds in a storm, the great tragedies are no longer performed; people rather go to see farces and gladiatorial shows. Hellas is a ruin, and Rome will soon ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... battling against foes seen and unseen, Perry was engaged in gladiatorial combat with a savings ledger. In the space of a week he had developed a singularly profane vocabulary. Probably the contiguity of Watson had something to do with it. He was under the special tutelage of Watson, and the handling he received ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... this volume of sketches. They are interesting in what they promise, rather than in what they present, though some of them are still delightful enough. "The Killing of Julius Caesar Localized" is an excellent forerunner of his burlesque report of a gladiatorial combat in The Innocents Abroad. The Answers to Correspondents, with his vigorous admonition of the statistical moralist, could hardly have been better done at any later period. The Jumping Frog itself was not originally of this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the time when the picture was taken. The contrast of the vast Roman structure, with its massive arched masonry, and the scattered assembly, which seems almost lost in the spaces once filled by the crowd of spectators who thronged to the gladiatorial shows, is one of the most striking we have ever seen. At Quimperle is a house so like the curious old building lately removed from Dock Square in Boston, that it is commonly taken for it at the first view. The Roman tombs at Arles and the quaint streets at Troyes are the only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... resolutions but also on the speeches and votes of the senators. Cicero, when proconsul, received through his friend, M. Caelius, the reports of a certain Chrestus, but seems not to have been particularly well satisfied with the latter's accounts of gladiatorial sports, law-court proceedings, and the various pieces of city gossip. As in this case, such correspondence never extended beyond a rude relation of facts that required supplementing through letters ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... mimic naval combats and regattas here in the desert, for they are always at heart a seafaring people. Beyond the pool there is a Circus, with four rows of stone seats and an oval arena, for wild-beast shows and gladiatorial combats. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... life or death of Rebecca. It was a scene of bustle and life, as if the whole vicinity had poured forth its inhabitants to a village wake, or rural feast. But the earnest desire to look on blood and death, is not peculiar to those dark ages; though in the gladiatorial exercise of single combat and general tourney, they were habituated to the bloody spectacle of brave men falling by each other's hands. Even in our own days, when morals are better understood, an execution, a bruising match, a riot, or a meeting ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... goal to strive toward, had long been corrupting the upper classes. Now, a terrible plague swept the world from end to end, so that laborers became scarce, lands went untenanted, taxes unpaid. The drain of supporting Rome's boundless extravagance, in buildings, feasts, and gladiatorial displays, began to tell upon the provinces at last. Newer and ever harsher methods had to be employed to wring money from exhausted lands. Driven by their sufferings to cling to religion as a support, men thought of it more seriously; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... authority, and sanctioned; as in war, by the state. Now what conclusion are we to draw from these premises? Can we think it possible, that those, who refused to strike again, or to go to law with those who injured them, and who thought an attendance at the gladiatorial spectacles criminal on the principle, that he who stood by was a murderer, though the murder was sanctioned by law; should not have an objection to the military service, on the principle, that it ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson |
