"Praetorian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sanction to their laws, and they in turn sustained the authority of the ulemas with their swords. As long as they experienced no change in their discipline and customs they were invincible. But they too had participated in the universal degeneracy. Like the Praetorian bands of Rome, they had become the absolute masters of the empire. They pulled down and set up sultans at their will; their valor had departed, but their unconquerable pride remained as part of their heritage. Their ranks were filled with crowds of Greeks, Jews, and Moslems, without ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the frozen zone, had recourse to the usual policy of a rich and unwarlike people, bought with gold the service of their swords, and thus formed a corps of satellites more distinguished for valour than the famed Praetorian Bands of Rome, and, perhaps because fewer in number, unalterably loyal to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... cheerfully at one time for a complete set of Hearne. At Laxton, also, it was that first I saw the total array of works edited by Dr. Birch. It was a complete armilustrium, a recognitio, or mustering, as it were, not of pompous Praetorian cohorts, or unique guardsmen, but of the yeomanry, the militia, or what, under the old form of expression, you might regard as the trained bands of our literature—the fund from which ultimately, or in the last resort, students look for the materials of our vast and myriad-faced literature. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... thou eternal one! thou who hast bowed thy neck to imperial pride and priestly craft; thou who hast suffered sorely, even to this hour, from Nero down to Pio Nono,—the days of thine oppression are over. Gone from thy enfranchised ways for ever is the clang of the Praetorian cohorts and the more odious drone of meddling monks!" And yet, as Mackinnon observed, there still stood the dirty friars and the small French soldiers; and there still toiled the slow priests, wending their tedious way up ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... Alexander, the young Syrian Emperor, walked outside his Praetorian camp, accompanied by his friend Licinius Probus, the Captain of the Guard. They were talking gravely of the gloomy faces and seditious bearing of the soldiers. A great foreboding of evil weighed heavily upon the ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the distance, fully two miles away, a dozen or more horsemen, manifestly, even at that distance, of military bearing: I caught, against the sunrays, a gleam of crimson and a glint of gold; I conjectured a detail of Praetorian Guards coming to arrest me or to put me out of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolent prodigality of despotism, deal out to his praetorian guards a donation fit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of our Chancellor of the Exchequer on the faithful band of his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Christianity; you surely will not say that we were the inciters of the usurpations of the Caesars? What have we had to do with the army, that engine of violence, which, in ninety-two years gave you thirty-two emperors and twenty-seven pretenders to the throne? We did not suggest to the Praetorian Guards to put ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of Roman grandeur. They have always brought you to my mind, because I know your affection for whatever is Roman and noble. At Vienna I thought of you. But I am glad you were not there; for you would have seen me more angry than, I hope, you will ever see me. The Praetorian Palace, as it is called, comparable, for its fine proportions, to the Maison Quarree, defaced by the barbarians who have converted it to its present purpose, its beautiful fluted Corinthian columns cut out, in part, to make space for Gothic windows, and hewed down, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... commented indifferently on the Priapeia and the Stoic philosophy. He abjured Protestantism, and like Muretus, sold his pen to Rome. The Jesuits, in his pompous panegyric, were first saluted as 'the praetorian cohort of the camp of God.' Afterwards, when he quarreled with their Order, he showered invectives on them in the manner of a Poggio or Filelfo. The literary infamies of the fifteenth century reappeared in his polemical attacks ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... part of them among the people.] the taxes which were levied on the public lands. M. Marcellus, the father of Aeserninus, though not reckoned a professed pleader, was a prompt, and, in some degree, a practised speaker; as was also his son P. Lentulus. L. Cotta likewise, a man of Praetorian rank, was esteemed a tolerable orator; but he never made any great progress; on the contrary, he purposely endeavoured, both in the choice of his words, and the rusticity of his pronunciation, to imitate the manner of the ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... those present at the banquet was Gaudentius, one of the secretaries, a stupid man, and of a hasty disposition. And he looking upon the matter as serious, reported it to Rufinus, who was at that time the chief commander of the guard of the praetorian prefecture, a man always eager for the most cruel measures, and infamous for every kind ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... understood me. Instead of confiding to a general the direction of our Order, the best militia of the Holy See, I should command it myself. Thenceforward this militia would give me no uneasiness. For instance: the Janissaries and the Praetorian Guards were always fatal to authority—why?—because they were able to organize themselves as defenders of the government, independently of the government; ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... continue?' said the praetorian captain. 'Well, let there be one more main between us, and then we will end it all. Listen! I have won this night two hundred sestertia. What is the worth of that quarry of yours to the south of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Asia and Africa but praetors to the rest on their list,—among which he mentions Cyprus; and they jumped at the conclusion—very natural in itself—that the governor of Cyprus would be called a propraetor. Accordingly Baronio [293:1] suggested that Cyprus, though a praetorian province, was often handed over honoris causa to be administered by the proconsul of Cilicia, and he assumed therefore that Sergius Paulus held this latter office; while Grotius found a solution in the hypothesis that proconsul ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the seventh day the funeral crossed the city. First were the flaming torches; the statues of the House of Octavia; senators in blue; knights in scarlet; magistrates; lictors; the pick of the praetorian guard. Then, to the alternating choruses of boys and girls, the rotting body passed down the Sacred Way. Behind it Tiberius in a travelling-cloak, his hands unringed, marched meditating on the curiosities of life, while to the rear there straggled ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... which houses of ill fame and women of the town came into vogue at Rome. That they had long been under police regulation, and compelled to register with the aedile, is evident from a passage in Tacitus: "for Visitilia, born of a family of praetorian rank, had publicly notified before the aediles, a permit for fornication, according to the usage that prevailed among our fathers, who supposed that sufficient punishment for unchaste women resided in the very nature of their calling." No penalty attached to illicit intercourse or ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... had no sense of the great original duty they owe their country, their resentment would operate like patriotism, and leave your cause to be defended by those on whom you have lavished the rewards and honours of their profession. The Praetorian bands, enervated and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman populace, but when the distant legions took the alarm they marched to Rome and gave away ...
— English Satires • Various
... exchanged greetings with the praefect and with Hortensius Martius. They all knew one another, were all members of the same caste, the ruling caste of Rome. Young Escanes was now there, he who wanted a cook, and Caius Nepos—the praetorian praefect who was ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... cause of this difference perhaps became clearer to his mind. He could see more or less plainly that the soul which held all this marvellous body of civilisation together was reverence for Law. He visited perhaps some of the courts of law; he may have seen the Illustrious Praetorian Prefect, clothed in Imperial purple, move majestically to the judgment-seat, amid the obsequious salutations of the dignified officials,[25] who in their various ranks and orders surrounded the hall. The costly golden reed-case, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the colony's social structure, and by contributing greatly to the defensive unity of New France. So long as the land was weak and depended for its very existence upon the solidarity of its people, so long as the intendant was there to guide the system with a praetorian hand and to prevent abuses, so long as strength was more to be desired than opulence, the seigneurial system served New France better than any other scheme of landholding would have done. It was only when ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... from thence upon the Romans when engaged in the fight. Our army marched thus: the auxiliary Gauls and Germans in front, after them the foot archers, next four legions, and then Germanicus with two praetorian cohorts and the choice of the cavalry; then four legions more, and the light foot with the mounted archers, and the other cohorts of the allies; the men were on the alert and in readiness, so that the order of march might form the order of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... of his own reflections. He left his favourite island, and went upon the continent; and at last, fixed at the promontory of Mise'num.[14] There he fell into faintings, which all believed to be fatal. 14. Calig'ula supposing him actually dead, caused himself to be acknowledged by the Praetorian soldiers,[15] and went forth from the emperor's apartment amidst the applauses of the multitude; when, all of a sudden, he was informed that the emperor was likely to recover. 15. This unexpected account filled the whole court with terror ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... minister of Tib[e]rius, and commander of the Praetorian Guards. His affability made him a great favorite. In order that he might be the foremost man of Rome, all the children and grandchildren of the emperor were put to death under sundry pretences. Drusus, the son of Tiberius, then fell a victim. He next persuaded ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... character it was to joke with difficulty) tells with a scandalised gravity even more amusing than the story itself. His successor as head of the school, Salvius Julianus, was of equal juristic distinction; his codification of praetorian law received imperial sanction from Hadrian, and became the authorised civil code. He was one of the instructors of Marcus Aurelius. The wealth he acquired by his profession was destined, in the strange revolutions of human affairs, to be the purchase-money of the Empire for ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... military virtues? I am afraid to reply. Montesquieu observes, that the government of Rome, even under the emperors, became, in the hands of the troops, elective and republican: but the Fabii or the Bruti were heard of no more after the praetorian ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D. |
