"Caligula" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... considered anything as a greater wonder. And then we see Alexander the Great, Demetrius, and Ptolomy, famous kings, together with many other princes, who readily boast of understanding it; and amongst the Caesars, Augustus the divine Caesar, Octavian Augustus, M. Agrippa, Claudius, and Caligula and Nero, in this alone virtuous, likewise Vespasian and Titus, as was shown in the famous retable of the Temple of Peace, which he built after having vanquished the Jews and their Jerusalem. What shall I say of the great Emperor ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... more moved at the hearing of old stories than of those of the present time; we are not shocked at what we see with our own eyes, and I question whether our surprise would be as great as we imagine at the story of Caligula's promoting his horse to the dignity of a consul were he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the five thousand we here speak of were cut off from a body of no more than nineteen thousand; for the entire number of citizens was no greater at that time. Could the tyrant who wished the Roman people but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself have done, nay, he could scarcely wish for, a greater mischief than to have cut off, at one stroke, a fourth of his people? Or has the cruelty of that series of sanguine tyrants, the Caesars, ever presented such a piece of flagrant and extensive wickedness? The whole history of this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... travel, sometimes in half-civilised districts, but to 'all the cruelty of the fanaticism which rages like a consuming fire through the religious history of the East from the slaughter of Baal's priests to the slaughter of St. Stephen, and from the butcheries of Jews at Alexandria under Caligula to the massacres of Christians at Adana, Tarsus, and Antioch in the year 1909'—(Deissmann). It is one evil result of such furious bigotry that it kindles hatred and resentment in its victims, and tempts them to reprisals. St. Paul does speak bitterly of his opponents, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and monte game. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico, just like selling forty-eight cents' worth of postage-stamps ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... height appears as nothing in presence of the cupola of St Peter's. The form of an obelisk alone has something in it that pleases the imagination; its summit is lost in the air, and seems to lift the mind of man to heaven. This monument, which was constructed in Egypt to adorn the baths of Caligula, and which Sixtus Quintus caused to be transported to the foot of the temple of St Peter, this cotemporary of so many centuries, which have spent their fury upon it in vain, inspires us with a sentiment of respect; man, sensible of his own fleeting existence, cannot contemplate ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... were the circus and the stadium. The Circus Maximus between the Palatine and Aventine hills was the oldest of those in Rome. That erected by Caligula and Nero on the site afterward partly occupied by St. Peter's, was more splendid, and is said to have been capable of accommodating over three hundred thousand spectators after its enlargement in the fourth century. The long, narrow race-course ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Italian Renaissance, I hesitated when I heard this answer. The associations seemed too ominous. And yet the man himself was so attractive—tall, stalwart, and well-looking—no feature of his face or limb of his athletic form recalling the gross tyrant who concealed worse than Caligula's ugliness from sight in secret chambers—that I shook this preconception from my mind. As it turned out, Filippo Visconti had nothing in common with his infamous namesake but the name. On a long and trying journey, he showed neither sullen nor yet ferocious tempers; ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... blunders, follies, and ferocious inhumanities of convict discipline than volumes of concocted reports and oracular despatches. From his position, Dr. Hampton must know that under the name of discipline, deeds have been done sufficiently atrocious to glut the soul of a Caligula. He knows that the perjuries and punishments about tobacco were sins that cried to heaven for abolition. He knows that in every seven cases out of ten the convicts at a penal station are more sinned against than sinning. Nothing is required to prove this ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... extinguished, but they will revive and rush upon a man at least under some sharp affliction. Amazing judgments will make them question their own apprehensions." (Charnock's Works, vol. 1, p. 42 Lond. 1682). An ancient historian relates, concerning Caligula the Emperor of Rome, whose licentiousness knew no bounds, and who professed the utmost contempt for the gods of his country, that, when it thundered, he was accustomed from fear of the gods he derided, to shut his ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... ambition—lovelorn, deserted, heartbroken. It was Napoleon, not Josephine, except in her pride, who suffered. Who shall tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about Hamilton; about Burr; about Caesar, Caligula and Cleopatra? Did Washington, when he was angry, swear like a trooper? What ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... fell in a rage with his wife and strung her up: did he do any killing? You killed Messalina, whose great-uncle I was no less than yours. 'I don't know,' did you say? Curse you! that is just it: not to know was worse than to kill. Caligula he went on persecuting even when he was dead. Caligula murdered his father-in-law, Claudius his son-in-law to boot. Caligula would not have Crassus' son called Great; Claudius gave him his name back, and took away his head. In one family he destroyed Crassus, Magnus, ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... knaves become saints, and the most besotted characters are glorified when they try their vile mouths and pens against Luther. (19, 1347.) The easiest way for any man to become a canonized saint even during his lifetime, though he were a person of the stripe of a Nero or Caligula, is by hating Luther. (18, 2005.) On the cover of the pamphlet containing his Sermon on the Sacrament Luther ordered a picture consisting of two monstrances printed; this was promptly explained to mean that ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... quantity in the island of Siphnos, and also from Pangaeus. It was found in abundance in Turdeltania in Spain; it was brought down by the rivers Tagus and Duoro; and it was plenty in Dacia, Transylvania, and the Asturias. Caligula caused his guests to be helped with gold (which they carried away), instead of bread and meat. The dresses of Nero were stiff with embroidery and gold; he fished with hooks of gold, and his attendants wore necklaces, and bracelets of gold. The Egyptians obtained large quantities ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... proved a worldwide advertisement for this sanitarium. Dr. Stanwood has almost effected a cure; her disease has had to be named and her symptoms have been written up in all the medical journals. I don't know what sort of person she was before she became a case, but she is now a greater tyrant than Caligula or Catherine of Russia. As to her disease, she has those things that she ought not to have, and she has not those things that she ought to have, and there is no health in her; or at least there was not until she came here a year ago. Now she is strong enough ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of conceited man has misled him into making himself "the image of God," claiming an "eternal life" for his ephemeral personality, and imagining that he possesses unlimited "freedom of will." The ridiculous imperial folly of Caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant assumption of divinity. Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the Riddle of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... ancient and remarkable light at Boulogne. It was said to have been first built by the Emperor Caligula, in order to perpetuate the victories he meant to win. It became, however, of great service as a lighthouse-tower, and it is thought that, as early as the year A.D. 191, it flashed a friendly light across the sea. Time, however, and the repeated assaults ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... vindictive. I cannot certainly defend him against all the reproaches which he incurred through the imperious law of war and cruel necessity; but I may say that he has often been unjustly accused. None but those who are blinded by fury will call him a Nero or a Caligula. I think I have avowed his faults with sufficient candour to entitle me to credit when I speak in his commendation; and I declare that, out of the field of battle, Bonaparte had a kind and feeling heart. He was very fond of children, a trait which seldom distinguishes a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... frequently manifested by criminals and epileptics towards the members of their own families is in many cases accompanied by an extraordinary fondness for animals as is shown by the cases of Caligula, Commodus, Lacenaire, Rosas, Dr. Francia, and La Sola,—who preferred kittens to her own children. A morally insane individual known to my father would spend months in training dogs, horses, birds, geese, and other fowls. He was wont to remark ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... acolytes sunning themselves on the slopes of Monte Cavo; on again, to the rocky terraces from which one looks down on Alba Longa and the depths of Lago di Nemi, beneath whose waters is still supposed to be the barque of Caligula, and across the expanse of the green Campagna to ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... dated its birth from me. As it is, things have long ago come to such a pass that neither I in my old age can give the Roman people any better gift than a good successor, nor you in your prime anything better than a good emperor. Under Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius, Rome was the heirloom of a single family. There is a kind of liberty in the free choice we have begun to exercise. Now that the Julian and Claudian houses are extinct, by the plan of adoption the best man will always be discovered. Royal ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Robespierre, after having been the first person in the French republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the situation which he held involved more contradictions than perhaps attach to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded tyrant was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a people, whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before rendered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... follows: "the tribunes gave as their decision that the aedile had been lawfully driven from that place, as being one that he ought not to have visited with his officer." If we compare this passage with Livy, xl, 35, we find that this took place in the year 180 B C. Caligula inaugurated a tax upon prostitutes (vectigal ex capturis), as a state impost: "he levied new and hitherto unheard of taxes; a proportion of the fees of prostitutes;—so much as each earned with one ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be had. Yet, for your comfort, the lineaments are true: and though he sat not five times to me, as he did to B. yet I have consulted history; as the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a Caligula; though they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spared one side of your medal: the head would be seen to more advantage, if it were placed on ...
— English Satires • Various
... due not to luxury, effeminacy or corruption, not to Nero's or Caligula's wickedness, nor to the futility of Constantine's descendants. It began at Philippi, where the spirit of domination overcame the spirit of freedom. It was forecast still earlier in the rise of consuls and triumvirs incident to the thinning out of the sturdy and self-sufficient ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... say, he would have used the name of one who had been in his day such a champion of the Jewish people, and had suffered such insults from Caligula on ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... the seventh century. Of whatever material the pen was made, it was called a calamus, whence our familiar saying, "currente calamo" ("with a flowing pen"). The use of styles, or iron pens, must have been very prevalent in ancient days, as Suetonius tells us that the emperor Caligula incited the people to massacre a Roman senator with their styles; and, previous to that, Caesar had wounded Cassius with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... wars and rumors or threats of wars, see Josephus, Antiquities xviii, ch. 9, and Wars, ii, ch. 10. The latter reference is to the account of the decree issued by Caligula that his statue be set up and duly reverenced in the temple, in consequence of which the Jews protested so strenuously that war was declared against them, but was averted by the death of the emperor. Concerning ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... enough to point to the sad history of the world. It would not even need that she should turn back the pages of history to the chapters written by Tacitus: that she should recite the incredible horrors of despotism under Caligula and Domitian, Caracalla and Commodus, Vitellius and Maximin. She need only point to the centuries of calamity through which the gay French nation passed; to the long oppression of the feudal ages, of the selfish ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... quorum etiam meminit Winzerus. Horum unus est, Si regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur, quod is nempe senatum populumque Romanum, atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro flammaque vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quaerere decrevisset. Et de Caligula, quod palam denunciarit se neque civem neque principem senatui amplius fore, inque animo habuerit interempto utriusque ordinis electissimo quoque Alexandriam commigrare, ac ut populum uno ictu interimeret, unam ei cervicem optavit. Talia cum rex aliquis meditator ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... Diana's Temple was by me, And more than bruitish London, for her lust With neighbouring Towns, I did consume to dust What shall I say of Lightning and of Thunder Which Kings & mighty ones amaze with wonder, Which make a Caesar, (Romes) the world's proud head, Foolish Caligula creep under 's bed. Of Meteors, Ignus fatuus and the rest, But to leave those to th' wise, I judge it best. The rich I oft made poor, the strong I maime, Not sparing Life when I can take the same; ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... do put us in prison without being sure,' he said, trembling more and more, 'you are a horrible tyrant like Caligula, and Herod, or Nero, and the Spanish Inquisition, and I will write a poem about it in prison, and people ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... a Roman orator and advocate, born at Nemausus (Nimes) in Gallia Narbonensis, flourished in the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. His pupil Quintilian calls him the greatest orator he had ever known; but he disgraced his talents by acting as public informer against some of the most distinguished personages ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... defence, she is sure to call me Holofernes, and ten to one takes the first opportunity to read aloud, with a suppressed emphasis, of an evening, the first newspaper paragraph about some tyrannic day-laborer, who, after being for many years the Caligula of his family, ends by beating his long-suffering spouse to death, with a garret door wrenched off its hinges, and then, pitching his little innocents out of the window, suicidally turns inward towards the broken wall scored with the butcher's and baker's bills, and so rushes ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... (Caligula). Gaudentius. geometricians. Germanicus. Giants. Gilbert de la Porree. Glory. God, categories applied to, without difference; is what He is; is Pure Form; is [Greek: ousia, ousiosis, huphistasthai]; One; Triune; is good; goodness; happiness; everlasting; omnipresent; just; omnipotent; incomprehensible; ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... contrasts and vicissitudes. Under his mother Helvia's watchful care he received the best education Rome could give. Through the influence of his mother's family he passed into the Senate through the quaestorship, and his successes at the bar awakened the jealousy of Caligula (37-41 A.D.) By his father's advice he retired for a time and spent his days in philosophy. On the accession of Claudius (41-54 A.D.) he was banished to Corsica at the instance of the Empress Messalina, probably because he was ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... than Caligula; Messalina's infamy surpassed Nero's, and the furthest reaching, the one irresistible Power ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... children, Agrippa Postumus went mad through his vices; Julia inherited her mother's tendencies, and came to a like end. Agrippina, a bitter and violent woman, became the evil genius of the next reign. Of this Agrippina's children, Drusus and Caligula went mad and her daughter was the mother of the madman Nero. To me the record suggest this: that the marriage with, not the divorce of, Scribonia was a grave mistake on the part of Octavian; bringing down four generations of terible karma. He was afloat in ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... attempt at Roman austerity; but he was fair-minded enough to see that the middle-class doctor or lawyer who tries to play the Cicero is, after all, a more respectable figure than the Marquess who apes Caligula or Commodus. Still, his lurking dilettantism made him doubly alive to the elegance of the Palazzo Tournanches when he went thither from a coarse meal in the stuffy dining-parlour of one of his new acquaintances; as he never relished the discourse of the latter ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... find it stated in Anstis' Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, who quotes from Caligula, L. 6., in Bib. Cott., that when the French king wished to borrow a sum of money from Henry VII., to employ in the war with the King ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... executioner, were not likely to abstain from selling governorships; and, in fact, Seneca intimates that under bad emperors governorships were sold. Of course, the tyranny was felt most at Rome, where it was present; but when Caligula or Caracalla made a tour in the provinces, it was like the march of the pestilence. The absence of a regular bureaucracy, practically controlling, as the Russian bureaucracy does, the personal will of the Emperor, must have ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... place that the elder Pliny sailed from at the time of the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii. And look all around. That little town was once the luxurious Baiae. Over yonder is Lake Lucrine, which Virgil sings about. On that side is Misenum, where the Roman navy lay. There is Caligula's Bridge. What a glorious place! Everything that we have ever read of in classic story gathers about us here. Cicero, Caesar, Horace, Virgil, Tiberius, and Juvenal, seem to live here yet. Nero and Agrippina, Caligula and Claudius,—every old ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... half the trouble, While those who sillily pursue, The simple, downright way, and true, 10 Make as unlucky applications, And steer against the stream their passions. Some forge their mistresses of stars, And when the ladies prove averse, And more untoward to be won 15 Than by CALIGULA the Moon, Cry out upon the stars, for doing Ill offices to cross their wooing; When only by themselves they're hindred, For trusting those they made her kindred; 20 And still, the harsher and hide-bounder The damsels prove, become the fonder. For what mad ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... debaucheries—flagrant treacheries—unheard-of atrocities—gave his trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on their part—no punctilios of conscience on his own—were thenceforward to prove any security against the remorseless fangs of a petty Caligula. On the night of the fourth day, the stables of the castle Berlifitzing were discovered to be on fire; and the unanimous opinion of the neighborhood added the crime of the incendiary to the already hideous list of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and miserable an end, but only cried out, "Alas! what pity it is that so excellent a musician should perish in this manner!" His uncle Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice; that was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit the madnesses of Caligula's delights, and the execrable sordidness of those of Tiberius. Would one think that Augustus himself, the highest and most fortunate of mankind, a person endowed too with many excellent parts of nature, should be so hard put ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... of Death. The whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin. And yet we go spinning through it all, like a party for the Derby. Perhaps the reader remembers one of the humorous devices of the deified Caligula: how he encouraged a vast concourse of holiday-makers on to his bridge over Baiae bay; and when they were in the height of their enjoyment, turned loose the Praetorian guards among the company, and had them tossed into the sea. This is no bad miniature of the dealings of nature with the transitory ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
