58 quotes found
"Vellem nescire literas."
"Qualis artifex pereo."
"The people love Nero. He inspires in them both affection and respect. There is a reason for this which Tacitus omits. One can discern the reason for this popular feeling: Nero oppressed the great and never burdened the ordinary people. But Tacitus says nothing of this. He speaks of crimes. He speaks of them with passion. We, as a result, feel he is biased; he no longer inspires the same confidence. One is led to believe that he exaggerates; he explains nothing and appears satisfied with vignettes."
"Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: “Beware the age of seventy-three.” Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He’s thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers. … And in Spain Galba secretly musters and drills his army — Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year."
"Nero came to power when his mother poisoned her husband, the Emperor. As Emperor himself, Nero indulged his tendencies to debauchery and cruelty. No one was safe from him, especially those who failed to appreciate his self-proclaimed skill as a musician and actor. His extravagances bankrupted the Empire, provoking the revolts that finally deposed him. An admirer of Greek culture, he effectively rebuilt Rome after a devastating fire."
"The arts of the magician are said to have been called into action by Nero upon occasion of the assassination of his mother, Agrippina. He was visited with occasional fits of the deepest remorse in the recollection of his enormity. Not with-standing all the ostentatious applauses and congratulations which he obtained from the senate, the army and the people, he complained that he was perpetually haunted with the ghost of his mother, and pursued by the Furies with flaming torches and whips. He therefore cased himself to be attended by magicians, who employed their arts to conjure up the shade of Agrippina and to endeavour to obtain her forgiveness for the crime perpetrated by her son. We are not informed of the success of their evocations."
"God, save us from ourselves! We carry within us the elements of hell if we but choose to make them such. Ahaz, Judas, Nero, Borgia, Herod, all were once prattling infants in happy mother's arms."
"Nero saw himself as an artist; his enemies thought of him as a tyrant and a buffoon. The truth is, he was all three. He certainly wasn't very good at running an empire, but then, what did Rome expect? If you put a messed-up sixteen-year-old in charge of half the known world, you're asking for trouble. Rome learned the hard way. From now on, it abandoned the Julio-Claudian line of emperors in favour of skilled administrators. But Nero did leave his mark on history. Whatever else he wasn't, he was a showman. He did everything in a big way, from building his house to killing his mother. He thought of himself as an actor, but no part he ever played on the stage could match the drama, the spectacle and the sheer theatricality of his own life."
"The emperor who ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that took Rome from Republic to one-man rule. Raised amidst violence and tyranny, he ruled with ludicrous vanity, demented whimsy and inept despotism. Few mourned his abdication and death amidst the chaos that he himself had created."
"The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius."
"Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Æropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles."
"Cui dono lepidum novum libellum Arido modo pumice expolitum?"
"Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque, Et quantum est hominum venustiorum. Passer mortuus est meae puellae, Passer, deliciae meae puellae."
"Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum illuc, unde negant redire quemquam."
"Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda."
"Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum."
"Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque?"
"Per caputque pedesque."
"Ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit."
"O quid solutis est beatius curis, cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum, desideratoque acquiescimus lecto? hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis."
"Nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est."
"Ille mi par esse Deo videtur, ille, si fas est, superare Divos, qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit dulce ridentem."
"Otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes."
"Quid datur a divis felici optatius hora?"
"Ut flos in saeptis secretus nascitur hortis, Ignotus pecori, nullo contusus aratro, Quem mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber; Multi illum pueri, multae optavere puellae."
"Nunc iam nulla viro iuranti femina credat, nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles; quis dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci, nil metuunt iurare, nihil promittere parcunt: sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libido est, dicta nihil metuere, nihil periuria curant."
"Omnia fanda nefanda malo permixta furore iustificam nobis mentem avertere deorum."
"Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua."
"Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri, Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium."
"Huc est mens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpa atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo, ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias, nec desistere amare, omnia si facias."
"Siqua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas Est homini."
"Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem."
"Si vitam puriter egi."
"Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior."
"Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus Advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis Et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem. Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum, Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi, Nunc tamen interea haec prisco quae more parentum Tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias, Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale."
"Si quicquam cupido optantique optigit umquam insperanti, hoc est gratum animo proprie."
"An admirable poet. No Latin writer is so Greek. The simplicity, the pathos, the perfect grace, which I find in the great Athenian models, are all in Catullus, and in him alone of the Romans."
"It is just this quality, this clear and almost terrible simplicity, that puts Catullus in a place by himself among the Latin poets. Where others labour in the ore of thought and gradually forge it out into sustained expression, he sees with a single glance, and does not strike a second time."
"Catullus is a completely sophisticated, urbane poet, and his sophistication is sincere because his emotions were sophisticated. He expresses the spirit and essence of what we call "society"."
"Catullus was the leading representative of a revolution in poetry created by the neoteroi or "new men" in Rome. Rather than writing about battles, heroes, and the pagan gods, Catullus draws his subjects from everyday, intensely personal life."
"One often hears: that is good but it belongs to yesterday. But I say: yesterday has not yet been born. It has not yet really existed. I want Ovid, Pushkin, and Catullus to live once more, and I am not satisfied with the historical Ovid, Pushkin, and Catullus."
"It passes my comprehension why Tennyson could have called him 'tender'. He is vindictive, venomous and full of obscene malice. He is only tender about his brother and Lesbia, and in the end she gets it hot as well."
"Catullus was the first Roman who imitated with success the Greek writers, and introduced their numbers among the Latins."
"The most hard-edged and intense of the Latin poets."
"Valerium Catullum, a quo sibi versiculis de Mamurra perpetua stigmata imposita non dissimulaverat, satis facientem eadem die adhibuit cenae hospitioque patris eius, sicut consuerat, uti perseveravit."
"Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago."
"Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora, Et teneam moriens deficiente manu."
"Audendum est: fortes adiuvat ipsa Venus."
"Nec iurare time: veneris periuria venti inrita per terras et freta summa ferunt. gratia magna Iovi: vetuit Pater ipse valere, iurasset cupide quidquid ineptus amor."
"Te propter nullos tellus tua postulat imbres, arida nec pluvio supplicat herba Iovi."
"Quis fuit, horrendos primus qui protulit enses? quam ferus et vere ferreus ille fuit!"
"Atque aliquis senior veteres veneratus amores annua constructo serta dabit tumulo, et "bene" discedens dicet "placideque quiescas, terraque securae sit super ossa levis.""
"Credula vitam spes fovet et fore cras semper ait melius."
"Illam, quidquid agit, quoquo vestigia movit, componit furtim subsequiturque Decor."
"Difficile est tristi fingere mente iocum."
"Periuria ridet amantum Iuppiter."
"Est nobis voluisse satis."
"The elegant, the tender, and the passionate Tibullus."