Vulgar words in The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire - Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two - Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) (Page 1)

This book at a glance

ass x 29
bastard x 30
buffoon x 22
jackass x 1
make love x 2
            
pimp x 1
whore x 3
            

Page 1

~   ~   ~   Sentence 72   ~   ~   ~

3 ( return ) [ Some supposed him, oddly enough, to be a bastard of the younger Gordian.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 360   ~   ~   ~

p. 112] 41 ( return ) [ Though it is not, most assuredly, the intention of Lucan to exalt the character of Caesar, yet the idea he gives of that hero, in the tenth book of the Pharsalia, where he describes him, at the same time, making love to Cleopatra, sustaining a siege against the power of Egypt, and conversing with the sages of the country, is, in reality, the noblest panegyric.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 363   ~   ~   ~

The first general; the only triumphant politician; inferior to none in point of eloquence; comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, and philosophers, that ever appeared in the world; an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage; at one time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on punuing, and collecting a set of good sayings; fighting and making love at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his mistress for a sight of the fountains of the Nile.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 87   ~   ~   ~

From his ill-worded narration, it should seem that the prince's buffoon having accidentally entered the tent, and awakened the slumbering monarch, the fear of punishment urged him to persuade the disaffected soldiers to commit the murder.]

~   ~   ~   Sentence 12   ~   ~   ~

As long as the fame of Julian was doubtful, the buffoons of the palace, who were skilled in the language of satire, tried the efficacy of those arts which they had so often practised with success.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 244   ~   ~   ~

Very different from the ass in Aesop, who disguised himself with a lion's hide, our lion was obliged to conceal himself under the skin of an ass; and, while he embraced the dictates of reason, to obey the laws of prudence and necessity."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 435   ~   ~   ~

i. p. 51,) confounds the antelope with the roebuck, and the wild ass with the zebra.]

~   ~   ~   Sentence 89   ~   ~   ~

Ptolemy gave him to the old general Arintheus, for whom he very skilfully exercised the profession of a pimp.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 43   ~   ~   ~

His right hand was first cut off; and, after he had been exposed, mounted on an ass, to the public derision, John was beheaded in the circus of Aquileia.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 140   ~   ~   ~

In the room of a prince not conspicuous for any superior powers of the mind or body, they acquired his bastard brother, the terrible Genseric; 13 a name, which, in the destruction of the Roman empire, has deserved an equal rank with the names of Alaric and Attila.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 171   ~   ~   ~

At the supper, a more familiar repast, buffoons and pantomimes are sometimes introduced, to divert, not to offend, the company, by their ridiculous wit: but female singers, and the soft, effeminate modes of music, are severely banished, and such martial tunes as animate the soul to deeds of valor are alone grateful to the ear of Theodoric.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 509   ~   ~   ~

Alaric had left behind him an infant son, a bastard competitor, factious nobles, and a disloyal people; and the remaining forces of the Goths were oppressed by the general consternation, or opposed to each other in civil discord.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 191   ~   ~   ~

Since the orator, in the king's presence, could mention and praise his mother, we may conclude that the magnanimity of Theodoric was not hurt by the vulgar reproaches of concubine and bastard.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 195   ~   ~   ~

18 ( return ) [ Justinian an ass-the perfect likeness of Domitian-Anecdot.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 210   ~   ~   ~

She neither danced, nor sung, nor played on the flute; her skill was confined to the pantomime arts; she excelled in buffoon characters, and as often as the comedian swelled her cheeks, and complained with a ridiculous tone and gesture of the blows that were inflicted, the whole theatre of Constantinople resounded with laughter and applause.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 460   ~   ~   ~

But the repetition of partial and passionate invectives degraded, in their eyes, the majesty of the purple; they renounced allegiance to the prince who refused justice to his people; lamented that the father of Justinian had been born; and branded his son with the opprobrious names of a homicide, an ass, and a perjured tyrant.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 709   ~   ~   ~

The engine was named the wild ass, a calcitrando, (Hen.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 808   ~   ~   ~

Otherwise, the famous Bologna sausages are said to be made of ass flesh, (Voyages de Labat, tom.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 348   ~   ~   ~

That Theodora concealed her bastards, and that her grandson by Justinian would have been heir apparent of the empire.]

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,626   ~   ~   ~

According to the rigor of law, bastards were entitled only to the name and condition of their mother, from whom they might derive the character of a slave, a stranger, or a citizen.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 476   ~   ~   ~

A fanatic monk ran through the streets with a drawn sword, denouncing against him the wrath and the sentence of God; and a vile plebeian, who represented his countenance and apparel, was seated on an ass, and pursued by the imprecations of the multitude.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 741   ~   ~   ~

p. 44,) who affirms that Dioscorus kicked like a wild ass.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 203   ~   ~   ~

The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe him as an itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry merchandise to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on the road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 331   ~   ~   ~

The hands and feet of the rebel were amputated; he was placed on an ass, and, amidst the insults of the people, was led through the streets, which he sprinkled with his blood.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 384   ~   ~   ~

A buffoon of the court was invested in the robes of the patriarch: his twelve metropolitans, among whom the emperor was ranked, assumed their ecclesiastical garments: they used or abused the sacred vessels of the altar; and in their bacchanalian feasts, the holy communion was administered in a nauseous compound of vinegar and mustard.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 386   ~   ~   ~

On the day of a solemn festival, the emperor, with his bishops or buffoons, rode on asses through the streets, encountered the true patriarch at the head of his clergy; and by their licentious shouts and obscene gestures, disordered the gravity of the Christian procession.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 802   ~   ~   ~

The fate of her son was not long deferred: he was strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to pity or remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth, struck it rudely with his foot: "Thy father," he cried, "was a knave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a fool!"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 309   ~   ~   ~

2311 ( return ) [ The patriarch Anastasius, an Iconoclast under Leo, an image worshipper under Artavasdes, was scourged, led through the streets on an ass, with his face to the tail; and, reinvested in his dignity, became again the obsequious minister of Constantine in his Iconoclastic persecutions.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,080   ~   ~   ~

Of his moral virtues, chastity is not the most conspicuous: 96 but the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, 97 whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,401   ~   ~   ~

132 The bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin church.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,494   ~   ~   ~

The pope was degraded in a synod; the praefect was mounted on an ass, whipped through the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe process was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 981   ~   ~   ~

108 ( return ) [ Mokawkas sent the prophet two Coptic damsels, with two maids and one eunuch, an alabaster vase, an ingot of pure gold, oil, honey, and the finest white linen of Egypt, with a horse, a mule, and an ass, distinguished by their respective qualifications.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 291   ~   ~   ~

A public employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family: the elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these feeble regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his bastards.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,012   ~   ~   ~

The same caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had tumbled into a ditch.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,232   ~   ~   ~

Whoever would fairly estimate the merit of the poetic deacon, may read the description of the slinging a jackass into the famishing city.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 792   ~   ~   ~

A general law of Charlemagne exempted the bishops from personal service; but the opposite practice, which prevailed from the ixth to the xvth century, is countenanced by the example or silence of saints and doctors.... You justify your cowardice by the holy canons, says Ratherius of Verona; the canons likewise forbid you to whore, and yet-] The love of freedom and of arms was felt, with conscious pride, by the Franks themselves, and is observed by the Greeks with some degree of amazement and terror.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 277   ~   ~   ~

The bastard Arnulph was provoked to invite the arms of the Turks: they rushed through the real or figurative wall, which his indiscretion had thrown open; and the king of Germany has been justly reproached as a traitor to the civil and ecclesiastical society of the Christians.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 401   ~   ~   ~

the Bastard or Conqueror, whom they hold (communemente si tiene) to be the father of Tancred of Hauteville; a most strange and stupendous blunder!

~   ~   ~   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.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,804   ~   ~   ~

As long as the fame of Julian was doubtful, the buffoons of the palace, who were skilled in the language of satire, tried the efficacy of those arts which they had so often practised with success.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,198   ~   ~   ~

Very different from the ass in Æsop, who disguised himself with a lion's hide, our lion was obliged to conceal himself under the skin of an ass; and, while he embraced the dictates of reason, to obey the laws of prudence and necessity."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,233   ~   ~   ~

His right hand was first cut off; and, after he had been exposed, mounted on an ass, to the public derision, John was beheaded in the circus of Aquileia.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,268   ~   ~   ~

In the room of a prince not conspicuous for any superior powers of the mind or body, they acquired his bastard brother, the terrible Genseric; a name, which, in the destruction of the Roman empire, has deserved an equal rank with the names of Alaric and Attila.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,611   ~   ~   ~

A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators, by their deformed figure, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange, unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,041   ~   ~   ~

At the supper, a more familiar repast, buffoons and pantomimes are sometimes introduced, to divert, not to offend, the company, by their ridiculous wit: but female singers, and the soft, effeminate modes of music, are severely banished, and such martial tunes as animate the soul to deeds of valor are alone grateful to the ear of Theodoric.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,992   ~   ~   ~

Alaric had left behind him an infant son, a bastard competitor, factious nobles, and a disloyal people; and the remaining forces of the Goths were oppressed by the general consternation, or opposed to each other in civil discord.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 389   ~   ~   ~

She neither danced, nor sung, nor played on the flute; her skill was confined to the pantomime arts; she excelled in buffoon characters, and as often as the comedian swelled her cheeks, and complained with a ridiculous tone and gesture of the blows that were inflicted, the whole theatre of Constantinople resounded with laughter and applause.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 483   ~   ~   ~

But the repetition of partial and passionate invectives degraded, in their eyes, the majesty of the purple; they renounced allegiance to the prince who refused justice to his people; lamented that the father of Justinian had been born; and branded his son with the opprobrious names of a homicide, an ass, and a perjured tyrant.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,859   ~   ~   ~

According to the rigor of law, bastards were entitled only to the name and condition of their mother, from whom they might derive the character of a slave, a stranger, or a citizen.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,672   ~   ~   ~

A fanatic monk ran through the streets with a drawn sword, denouncing against him the wrath and the sentence of God; and a vile plebeian, who represented his countenance and apparel, was seated on an ass, and pursued by the imprecations of the multitude.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,756   ~   ~   ~

The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe him as an itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry merchandise to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on the road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,867   ~   ~   ~

The hands and feet of the rebel were amputated; he was placed on an ass, and, amidst the insults of the people, was led through the streets, which he sprinkled with his blood.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,920   ~   ~   ~

A buffoon of the court was invested in the robes of the patriarch: his twelve metropolitans, among whom the emperor was ranked, assumed their ecclesiastical garments: they used or abused the sacred vessels of the altar; and in their bacchanalian feasts, the holy communion was administered in a nauseous compound of vinegar and mustard.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,922   ~   ~   ~

On the day of a solemn festival, the emperor, with his bishops or buffoons, rode on asses through the streets, encountered the true patriarch at the head of his clergy; and by their licentious shouts and obscene gestures, disordered the gravity of the Christian procession.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,326   ~   ~   ~

The fate of her son was not long deferred: he was strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to pity or remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth, struck it rudely with his foot: "Thy father," he cried, "was a knave , thy mother a whore , and thyself a fool !"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 392   ~   ~   ~

Of his moral virtues, chastity is not the most conspicuous: but the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 517   ~   ~   ~

The bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin church.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 549   ~   ~   ~

The pope was degraded in a synod; the præfect was mounted on an ass, whipped through the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe process was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,361   ~   ~   ~

A public employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family: the elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these feeble regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his bastards.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,674   ~   ~   ~

The same caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had tumbled into a ditch.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,464   ~   ~   ~

The bastard Arnulph was provoked to invite the arms of the Turks: they rushed through the real or figurative wall, which his indiscretion had thrown open; and the king of Germany has been justly reproached as a traitor to the civil and ecclesiastical society of the Christians.

~   ~   ~   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.

Page 1