Vulgar words in History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 6 (Page 1)

This book at a glance

ass x 3
bastard x 6
buffoon x 5
            

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~   ~   ~   Sentence 170   ~   ~   ~

Isaac slept on the throne, and was awakened only by the sound of pleasure: his vacant hours were amused by comedians and buffoons, and even to these buffoons the emperor was an object of contempt: his feasts and buildings exceeded the examples of royal luxury: the number of his eunuchs and domestics amounted to twenty thousand; and a daily sum of four thousand pounds of silver would swell to four millions sterling the annual expense of his household and table.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 774   ~   ~   ~

On the way they overtook the patriarch, without attendance and almost without apparel, riding on an ass, and reduced to a state of apostolical poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 801   ~   ~   ~

An ass and his driver, which were erected by Augustus in his colony of Nicopolis, to commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 129   ~   ~   ~

In the West, a third fragment was saved from the common shipwreck by Michael, a bastard of the house of Angeli, who, before the revolution, had been known as a hostage, a soldier, and a rebel.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 345   ~   ~   ~

Of these, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies was the most formidable neighbor: but as long as they were possessed by Mainfroy, the bastard of Frederic the Second, his monarchy was the bulwark, rather than the annoyance, of the Eastern empire.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 12   ~   ~   ~

By his intemperate discipline, the patriarch Athanasius 2 excited the hatred of the clergy and people: he was heard to declare, that the sinner should swallow the last dregs of the cup of penance; and the foolish tale was propagated of his punishing a sacrilegious ass that had tasted the lettuce of a convent garden.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 78   ~   ~   ~

c. 1) for the knowledge of this tragic adventure; while Cantacuzene more discreetly conceals the vices of Andronicus the Younger, of which he was the witness and perhaps the associate, (l. i. c. 1, &c.)] 8 ( return ) [ His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard of Constantine his second son.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 635   ~   ~   ~

His ministers trembled in silence: but an Æthiopian buffoon presumed to insinuate the true cause of the evil; and future venality was left without excuse, by annexing an adequate salary to the office of cadhi.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 541   ~   ~   ~

Bessarion, in the first debates, had stood forth the most strenuous and eloquent champion of the Greek church; and if the apostate, the bastard, was reprobated by his country, 65 he appears in ecclesiastical story a rare example of a patriot who was recommended to court favor by loud opposition and well-timed compliance.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 152   ~   ~   ~

The supine ignorance of the nobles was incapable of discerning the serious tendency of such representations: they might sometimes chastise with words and blows the plebeian reformer; but he was often suffered in the Colonna palace to amuse the company with his threats and predictions; and the modern Brutus 25 was concealed under the mask of folly and the character of a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 156   ~   ~   ~

201 ( return ) [ But see in Dr. Papencordt's work, and in Rienzi's own words, his claim to be a bastard son of the emperor Henry the Seventh, whose intrigue with his mother Rienzi relates with a sort of proud shamelessness.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 218   ~   ~   ~

Apprehensive for their safety, but still more apprehensive of the danger of a refusal, the princes and barons returned to their houses at Rome in the garb of simple and peaceful citizens: the Colonna and Ursini, the Savelli and Frangipani, were confounded before the tribunal of a plebeian, of the vile buffoon whom they had so often derided, and their disgrace was aggravated by the indignation which they vainly struggled to disguise.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 403   ~   ~   ~

Stephen Colonna the younger, the noble spirit to whom Petrarch ascribed the restoration of Italy, was preceded or accompanied in death by his son John, a gallant youth, by his brother Peter, who might regret the ease and honors of the church, by a nephew of legitimate birth, and by two bastards of the Colonna race; and the number of seven, the seven crowns, as Rienzi styled them, of the Holy Ghost, was completed by the agony of the deplorable parent, and the veteran chief, who had survived the hope and fortune of his house.

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