"Parthian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of men came to the Assyrians through the ingenuity of Semiramis; for these wanton wretches with high timbered voices could not have produced themselves, those smooth cheeks could not reproduce themselves; she gathered their like about her: or, Parthian luxury forbade with its knife, the shadow of down to appear, and fostered long that boyish bloom, compelling art-retarded youth to sink to Venus' calling," ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... themselves much better. The Scythian or Tartar militia, which Mithridates drew from the countries north of the Euxine and Caspian seas, were the most formidable enemies whom the Romans had to encounter after the second Carthaginian war. The Parthian and German militias, too, were always respectable, and upon several occasions, gained very considerable advantages over the Roman armies. In general, however, and when the Roman armies were well commanded, they appear to have been very much superior; and if ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... time of this feast at Persepolis, Darius, the vanquished king of Persia, was still living, although a fugitive. In the following year Alexander pursued him into the Parthian Desert, where he was murdered by the satrap of Bactria. By order of Alexander, the body of the unfortunate king was sent to Persepolis, to be buried in the ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... with the exception of myself the cabinet was empty, though a murmuring crowd filled the rooms without. It was then, and only then, she realised that the victory was not all hers, and felt the sting of the Parthian arrow shot by the Queen. Her cheeks burned red, and I saw the hand that held her fan tremble like a leaf in the wind. Then with an effort she recovered herself, and with another glance at me, full of superb disdain, swept from the room. As for me, my last hope had ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... every nerve ripped up and twanged, And a love-o'er-wise and invisible hand At every body-entrance to his lust Utters caresses which flit off, yet just Remain enough to bleed his last nerve's strand, O sweet and cruel Parthian fugitives! ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch; but I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the harmless ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Euphrates, crown'd with Reeds; and there Flows the swift Tigris, with his Sea-green hair, Invent new Names of Things unknown before; Call this Armenia, that, the Caspian Shore: Call this a Mede, and that a Parthian Youth; Talk probably; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... just the thing I'd like especially to sing; But at the task my spirits faint, For 'tis not every one can paint Battalions, with their bristling wall Of pikes, and make you see the Gaul, With, shivered spear, in death-throe bleed, Or Parthian stricken from ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... conquest of Persia by Alexander to the fall of the Parthian dynasty (a period of over five hundred years) little is known of the history of Mazdaism beyond the fact that it seems to have been adopted by the Parthians in a debased form; but about the time of the Persian revival under the Sassanians (226 A.D.) it passed the bounds of its ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... simplicity of the thing to be said had departed and an embarrassing complexity had taken its place. Under other conditions Kent would have been quick to see her difficulty, and would have made haste to efface it; but he was fresh from the interview with Mrs. Brentwood, and the Parthian arrow was still rankling. None the less, he was the first to break ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Jerusalem, Satan conveys him in the twinkling of an eye to the summit of a mountain, whence, pointing eastward, he shows him all the great kingdoms of Asia. Thus, he reveals the glories of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia,—of whose histories he gives a brief resume,—before pointing out a large Parthian army setting out to war against the Scythians, for he hopes by this martial display to convince Christ that, in order to obtain a kingdom, he will have to resort to military force. Then he adds he can easily enlist the services of this army, with which ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... this Parthian shot she returned to Mistress Thankful, who, with her face pressed against the window, was looking out on the moonlit ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... becoming the frightful deserts they are to-day. Persia dared not move in the awful presence of a few legions scattered along the Tigris; and, if, later on, the Parthian kings made a successful resistance against Rome, it was only owing to the abominable corruption of Roman society at the time; but, in fact, Iran had fallen to rise no more, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... conquer the kingdom that Antony had bestowed on him. He brought with him the Roman legions, and for two years a fierce struggle was waged between the Idumeans, Romans, and Romanizing Jews on the one hand, and the national Jews and Parthian mercenaries of Antigonus on the other. The struggle culminated in a siege of Jerusalem. As happened in all the contests for the city, the power of trained force in the end prevailed over the enthusiasm of fervent patriots. Herod stormed the walls, put ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... reverses to be sustained, untried routes, 20 enemies obscurely ascertained, and hardships too vaguely prefigured, which mark the Egyptian expedition of Cambyses—the anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent retreat of the ten thousand, the Parthian expeditions of the Romans, especially those of Crassus 25 and Julian—or (as more disastrous than any of them, and, in point of space, as well as in amount of forces, more extensive) the Russian anabasis and ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... fact of the above words being italicised suggests the idea that the poet is here firing a Parthian shot ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... in China is "the Parthian fruit," showing that it was introduced from Parthia, the Chinese equivalent for Parthia being [an][xi] Ansik, which is an easy corruption of the Greek Arsakes, the first king ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... habit of saying all the malicious things he could about his friends. If there was anything in a man's face or shape particularly uncouth, you might trust De Quincey for noticing that. Even Wordsworth he could not let off without a Parthian shot at his awkward legs and round shoulders; Dr. Parr he rated soundly on his mean proportions; and one of the most unfortunate things which ever happened to the Russian Emperor Alexander was to have been seen in London by De Quincey, who, even amid the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... gave tribute to the love of other days. The fire was dead, and ashes alone remained on the deserted hearth-stone. Lower down in the columns of the same paper, however, was something that smote my soul. The Parthian dart was there, and it quivered in its target! I saw that the wedding-party had sailed for Europe on the same day of the nuptials, to be absent a year, and had taken ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Stuart Poole and Mr. Gardiner of the British Museum. The representations of coins in the work have been, with one exception, taken by the Author from the originals in the National Collection. For the illustrations of Parthian architecture and art he is indebted to the published works of Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Ross, the late Mr. Loftus, and MM. Flandin and Coste. He feels also bound to express his obligations to the late Mr. Lindsay, the numismatic portion of whose work on ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... advance five years. Before proceeding thence with our story, however, let us take a Parthian glance at the overstepped interval. Philip Ballister had left New York with the triple vow that he would enslave every faculty of his mind and body to business, that he would not return till he had made a fortune, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... laughter came on the heels of that. There were none present to laugh with Hat, but that laugh of hers rang in Pearl Higgins' ears like the last trump. She got herself over the side of the bed in short order. Too late, alas! Hat Tyler's had been a Parthian shot. The ship was out of the house altogether by then, and the roof had settled back over its joists at a rakish angle. The whole after part of the house was mashed into a neat concavity which would have made a perfect mold ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the barbarous King Vologesus. And twenty years afterwards, when the Pseudo-Nero appeared, he found a strenuous champion and protector in the king of the Parthians. Possibly, had an opportunity offered for searching the Parthian chancery, some treaty would have been found binding the kings of Parthia, from the age of Augustus through some generations downwards, in requital of services there specified, or of treasures lodged, to secure a perpetual asylum to the prosperity of ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Connection of St. Thomas the Apostle with India in the Indian Antiquary, XXXII., 1903, pp. 1-15, 145-160; he has come to the following conclusions: "(1) There is good early evidence that St. Thomas was the apostle of the Parthian empire; and also evidence that he was the apostle of 'India' in some limited sense, —probably of an 'India' which included the Indus Valley, but nothing to the east or south of it. (2) According to the Acts, the scene ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Middle and Modern Persian Khosrau ("with a good name"), a very common Persian name, borne by a famous king of the Iranian legend (Kai Khosrau); by a Parthian king, commonly called by the Greeks Osroes (q.v.); and by the following two ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... armored cruisers served only as good targets and death traps. The British would have been better off if every armored cruiser had been left at home. The dominating feature of the story is the influence of the torpedo on Jellicoe's tactics. It is fair to say that it was the Parthian tactics of the German destroyer, both actual and potential, that saved the High Seas Fleet and robbed the British of a greater Trafalgar. At every crisis in the battle it was either what the German ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... recover the body of a horse which had been drowned in it, and that Darius I. invokes in his inscriptions Ormazd or Ahura Mazda, the deity of the Avesta. [350] On the subversion of the Persian empire by Alexander, and the subsequent conquest of Persia by the Arsacid Parthian dynasty, the religion of the fire-worshippers fell into neglect, but was revived on the establishment of the Sassanian dynasty of Ardeshir Babegan or Artaxerxes in A.D. 226, and became the state religion, warmly supported ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... run the cables of reserve, And floats into a sea of bliss, And laughs to think of her alarm, Avows she was in love before, Though has avowal was the charm Which open'd to her own the door. She loves him for his mastering air, Whence, Parthian-like, she slaying flies; His flattering look, which seems to wear Her loveliness in manly eyes; His smile, which, by reverse, portends An awful wrath, should reason stir; (How fortunate it is they're friends, And he will ne'er ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... o'clock, a fresh band, all armed, with a drum, beating the charge, appeared, and as they neared the chief entrance of the Hotel de Ville, just one shot, and then a number of shots were fired. Everybody who had a gun then shot it off with an eager but general idea of doing something, as he fled, like a Parthian bowman. The stampede soon became general; numbers of persons threw themselves on the ground. I saw the mother of four children sprawling in the mire, and the bilious taxpayer fall over her, and ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... see yer. Your jiffies are consid'able like golden opportunities, there ain't more 'n one of 'em in a lifetime!" and having shot this Parthian arrow Samantha departed, as one having done her duty in that humble sphere of action to which it had pleased Providence to ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... passed up the College-Wynd, where Goldsmith in his medical student days in Edinburgh had lived, Scott, as a child of two years, may have seen the party. On the 18th they set out from the capital, with the Parthian shot from Lord Auchinleck to a friend—'there's nae hope for Jamie, man; Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, man? He's done wi' Paoli. He's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican, and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, man? A dominie, an auld dominie; ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... time to time, produced a dreadful mortality. Even under the Caesars, after all that had been done, there was no essential amendment. The assertion is true that the Old World never recovered from the great plague in the time of M. Antoninus, brought by the army from the Parthian War. In the reign of Titus ten thousand persons died ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... well-disposed avoided her. I have seen the Square-keeper himself look puzzled as she passed; and Lady Kicklebury walking by with Miss K., her daughter, turn away from Mrs. Stafford Molyneux, and fling back at her a ruthless Parthian glance that ought to have killed any ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Heraklea a certain maiden from Colchis, for whom I would have given all the divorced women of this city, not excluding Poppaea. But these are old stories. Tell me now, rather, what is to be heard from the Parthian boundary. It is true that they weary me every Vologeses of them, and Tiridates and Tigranes,—those barbarians who, as young Arulenus insists, walk on all fours at home, and pretend to be human only when in our presence. But now people in Rome speak much of them, if only for the reason ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... threatening outside, but took no notice of them. Later in the evening he took his usual stroll. He found these fellows loafing around the public house. They had been denouncing him vigorously, and occasionally a Parthian shaft came after him:— ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... made after these troubles might have been more satisfactory but for an unexpected rising in the east. Avidius Cassius, an able captain who had won renown in the Parthian wars, was at this time chief governor of the eastern provinces. By whatever means induced, he had conceived the project of proclaiming himself emperor as soon as Marcus, who was then in feeble health, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... road."—The reader must remember that, until the seventh century of our era, when Mahometanism arose, there was no collateral history. Why there was none, why no Gothic, why no Parthian history, it is for Rome to explain. We tax ourselves, and are taxed by others, with many an imaginary neglect as regards India; but assuredly we cannot be taxed with that neglect. No part of our Indian empire, or of its adjacencies, but has occupied the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... down the guerilla warfare of Spain; it had never been intended for the purposes of desert warfare, or to effect the pacification of nomad tribes extending over a vast and desolate territory. Even as the Parthian war of Trajan required the formation of what was practically a new army developed on unfamiliar lines, so the complete reorganisation of the Republican system would have been essential to the effective conquest of Numidia. The slight successes of this war, such as the taking of Thala ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... old Parthian, as he stepped into his traveling-carriage, "my friend Talboys will miss me; pray be kind to him while I am away. He is a particular friend of mine. I may be wrong, but I do like men of known origin—of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... grimly, but exuding a relieved sigh. Then, her indignation giving her courage, she leaned from the window and hurled a Parthian arrow. "I must say," she protested, "I think you might be ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... general into Asia resulted in a most inglorious Parthian campaign. Nero, however, was more interested first in extravagant rejoicings at the birth of a daughter to Poppaea, and then in equally extravagant mourning over the infant's death. It was well that Corbulo, marching from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Crassus invaded Asia, where, in a battle with the Parthians, his whole army was cut to pieces. He himself was in danger of being taken prisoner, but he fell by the sword of the enemy. His head was cut off, and carried to Orodes, the Parthian king, who ordered liquid gold to be infused into his mouth, that he, who thirsted for gold, might be glutted with it after his death. Caput ejus recisum ad regem reportatum, ludibrio fuit, neque indigno. Aurum enim liquidum in rictum oris infusum est, ut cujus animus ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... reply to Ker Karraje's Parthian shot, for I was stricken dumb. I did not, however, collapse, as the alleged Count ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... the Cameron and Seaforth Highlanders and the Lincolnshire and Warwickshire regiments, under General Gatacre. Various considerations led the Sirdar to wait until he could strike a telling blow. What was most to be dreaded was the adoption of Parthian tactics by the enemy. Fortunately they had constructed a zariba (a camp surrounded by thorn-bushes) on the north bank of the Atbara at a point twenty miles above its confluence with the Nile. At last, on April 7, 1898, after ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... is a platform of large bricks stamped with the names of Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin (3800 B.C.); as the debris above them is 34 ft. thick, the topmost stratum being not later than the Parthian era (H. V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition, i. 2, p. 23), it is calculated that the debris underneath the pavement, 30 ft. thick, must represent a period of about 3000 years, more especially as older constructions ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... majesty had been aware that this Parthian arrow would have been shot at him, he would have been well advised ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... ought to be warned in time!" was Struthers' Parthian arrow as she flounced off to turn the omelette which she'd left to ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... flashing-eyed American girls "took him in" with parthian glances, and even a widowed Russian princess, hobbling by, easing her gouty steps with a jeweled cane, gazed back upon the moody Adonis and sighed for the vanished days, when she possessed both the physical and mental capacity to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... grand-nephew, Octavius; who had been in camp at Apollonia in Illyricum since he had coolly proposed to his great-uncle that the latter, being Dictator, and about to start on his Parthian campaign, should make him his Master of the Horse. He had been exempted from military service on account of ill-health; and Julius had a sense of humor; so he packed him off to Apollonia to 'finish' a military ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... ashamed to use it.... But my spirit would not let me lie quiet under injury and insult. I was ever a fighter, born to die with my spurs on. And when I die at last, they will find that I go with a Parthian shot ... and after all have ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel. Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves. The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians. It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what was once called ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... them free; Persepolis, His city, there thou seest, and Bactra there; Ecbatana her structure vast there shews, And Hecatompylos her hunderd gates; There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream, The drink of none but kings; of later fame, Built by Emathian or by Parthian hands, 290 The great Seleucia, Nisibis, and there Artaxata, Teredon, Ctesiphon, Turning with easy eye, thou may'st behold. All these the Parthian (now some ages past By great Arsaces led, who founded first That empire) under his dominion holds, From the luxurious kings ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep together his party at Rome against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in the triumvirate, and though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready to march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artful nets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria; and there the old warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine of pleasure one of the greatest of sacrifices, the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... BROADSWORD COMBAT! between two young and promising amateurs and a celebrated Parthian gladiator who has just arrived a prisoner from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... out, sent back to him the standards and all the captives, save a few who in shame had destroyed themselves or by eluding detection had remained in the country. Augustus received them with the appearance of having conquered the Parthian in some war. He took great pride in the event, saying that what had been lost in former battles he had recovered without a struggle. Indeed, in honor of his success he both commanded sacrifices ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... gained lately were only of a temporary nature, mainly owing to the disorganization of the Roman army. In the plan of the campaign Pompey displayed great military skill. One of his first measures was to secure the alliance of the Parthian king, which not only deprived Mithridates of all hopes of succor from that quarter, but likewise cut him off from all assistance from the Armenian king Tigranes, who was now obliged to look to the safety of his own dominions. Pompey next stationed his fleet in different squadrons ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence |
