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More "Spartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeing other nations going over the top—the same nations who had been over so many times; they wanted to see their sons and brothers at once given the opportunity to share the wounds and the danger. Their attitude was Spartan and splendid; they demanded a curtailment of their respite that they might find themselves afloat on the crimson tide. The cry of the civilians in America was identical with that of their men in France. "Let them take off our khaki or else ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... good people,—Zeus confound you, brute of a Spartan, your big sandals crush my toes again! Can I never get near enough to place my two minae on ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... stories of the great West where he had lived as a boy, and of the wilderness through which he had tramped as a mere child when he cared for his father's cattle. Russell was entirely too young to grasp the meaning of the earnest discussions that went on about the fireplace of which this Spartan was then the centre. But in later years their meaning came to him with a peculiar significance. A light seemed to be shed on the horrors of slavery as if the voice of his childhood's friend were calling ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... skins of the victims were given as prizes to competitors in running, wrestling, boxing, and other contests. The superintendence of such festival games, so fully accordant with Grecian usage and highly interesting to the army, was committed to a Spartan named Drakontius; a man whose destiny recalls that of Patroklus and other Homeric heroes—for he had been exiled as a boy, having unintentionally killed another boy with a short sword. Various departures from Grecian ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... has the art, as no man but himself ever had, of sustaining the illusion of an awful or solemn narrative through a long poem, to be closed in a catastrophe that is at once unexpected and ludicrous. The mystification is complete; the secret of the issue is never betrayed; suspense is maintained with Spartan reticence; curiosity is excited progressively to its utmost tension; and the surprise at the end is oftentimes electric. "A Storm at Hastings" and "The Demon Ship" are of this class. But sometimes the terrible so prevails as to overpower the ludicrous, or rather, it becomes more terrible by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his army, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... social amenities on the rangeside or in the bush, where women are scarce. Vane had lived in Spartan simplicity, practising the ascetic virtues, as a matter of course. He had had no time for sentiment, his passions had remained unstirred; and now he was seven and twenty, sound and vigorous of body, and, as a rule, level of head. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... compensation; proprietors of Boarding Schools, or "Academies," as they were generally called, had to modify their terms and to plead for compensation, while the King on his throne found the Civil List insufficient even with that Spartan order adopted by His Majesty, George III., that the bread in his household was to be made of meal and rye mixed, and that the Royal family were to eat the same bread as ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... and her pride sustained her. She was the Spartan wife of the brave soldier. She even took up knitting as an appropriate activity. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... deterioration of the gentleman been confined to England only—polite and ceremonious France has felt her change. The Revolution brought in coarse and uncivilised manners. The awkward and unsuccessful attempt at Spartan and Roman republican manners; the citizen succeeding to Monsieur; the blasphemous, incredulous, atheistical principles instilled into the then growing generation of all classes; the system of equality, subversive of courtliness, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... mountains, and the terror of the plains. He therefore goes forth to distinguish himself in the fight, and bring home trophies of his prowess. If theft is held in esteem by the Circassian, as formerly by the Spartan warrior, it is so mainly for its adroitness, a quality so necessary in circumventing the enemy; and if he exults in stripping the discomfited Muscovite and Cossack of their arms and clothing, these are the tokens of his valor, and chiefly as ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... our duty without gratefully acknowledging the respect we entertain for those who have defended our cause with more than Spartan courage. It is the opinion of your committee, that they are to be respected as our countrymen, our brethren, and our fellow citizens—not to say they are to be applauded as men, whose great acts are based upon the acclamation of their fellow ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... not couched in forms Worn and made smooth by prudent folk long dead. I love Hipparchus for his wave-like brightness; He wastes himself, but till his flash is gone I shall be ever glad to hear him laugh: Nor could one make a Spartan of him even Were one the Spartan with a will to do it. Yet had there been no more than what is told, Thou wouldst not now be lending ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... cold, and a tremor ran through him; but he did not speak a word; and, with Spartan fortitude, suppressed all outward sign of emotion. He laid the paper down patiently, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... rights are abused, our women are robbed of their womanhood and their chastity is insulted, our aspirations are banded and proscription is held up to our eyes wherever we go, and enforced against us with Egyptian exactness and Spartan severity, and the most vexatious and grievous fact of all is, that the strong arm of the law of the land loses its power when it comes our turn to receive justice. The law either plays truant, or openly acknowledges that it has no power to defend us. But the ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... a Spartan youth, son of Clio, one of the Muses, and of the mortal with whom she had mated, and from mother, or father, or from the gods themselves, he had received the gift of beauty. It chanced one day that as Apollo drove his chariot on its all-conquering round, he saw the boy. Hyacinthus was ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... LE ON' I DAS, the celebrated Spartan leader who, with three hundred men, perished in the effort to resist the Persian hosts, at the mountain pass ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the children of that sex, hardly yielded to that of the male in laboriousness and fatigue. Be this confessed to be an extreme: but then it was in some measure compensated by its being universally allowed, that the Spartan women owed to it that beauty in which they excelled the rest of the Grecian women, who were themselves held, in that point, preferable to the rest of the world. Hellen was a Spartan. Yet the legislator of that people, did not so much ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... should flap its black pinions, Then gladly "to arms," while we hurl, in our pride, Defiance to tyrants and death to their minions! With our front in the field, swearing never to yield, Or return, like the Spartan, in death on our shield! And the Cross of the South shall triumphantly wave, As the flag of the free or ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... styled the "account-dinner," is partaken of by any of the shareholders who may wish to be present, on which occasion the manager and agents lay before the company the condition and prospects of the mine, and a quarterly dividend (if any) is paid. There is a matter-of-fact and Spartan-like air about this feast which commands respect. The room in which it is held is uncarpeted, and its walls are graced by no higher works of art than the plans and sections of the mine. The food is excellent and substantial, but simple. There is abundance of it, but there are no courses—either preliminary ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... classical education, while Gabrielle could supply the feminine influence which was so essential to real refinement. She was not only tired of tutors—their equivocal social status was so tiresome!—but sufficiently Spartan to feel that her sons would be better away from home for a little while. Away, but not too far away. Gabrielle had thought it would be rather fun to have a couple of boys, even dull boys like the Traceys, in the house. She had told Considine that she would like the arrangement if only the Rectory ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... regular Spartan, as a rule, but they've just finished dividing up my father's estate, so I'm in funds for the moment, and why shouldn't we have a little dinner to celebrate? If you want to change, I can wait outside—but come just as you are, ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Reflect that you, so lately unrivalled, can now see a EUGENE SUE whose brow is umbraged by laurels of a more luxuriant and lovely green. Cease your expectorations of bile upon a great people; admit that mastication of the 'odorous vegeble' is a Spartan virtue; and we will again vote you an Anak in the kingdom of pen and paper. Then again shall we be led to believe that your praises and your vituperations are equally unpurchasable. Then once more shall we think you would swallow no golden pill, nor ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... thy art, that while we viewed, Of Sparta's sons the lot severe, We caught the Spartan fortitude, And saw their ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... which was carried on between Carrigaholt and the Greek woman to whom the rooms belonged. Carrigaholt objected that the windows commanded no view of the street. Immediately the brow of the majestic matron was clouded, and with all the scorn of a Spartan mother she coolly asked Carrigaholt, and said, “Art thou a tender damsel that thou wouldst sit and gaze from windows?” The man whom she addressed, however, had not gone to Greece with any intention of placing ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... his short Account of the Spartan Commonwealth, [1] speaking of the Behavior of their young Men in the Streets, says, There was so much Modesty in their Looks, that you might as soon have turned the eyes of a Marble Statue upon you as theirs; and that in all their Behaviour they were more modest than a ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VII.) roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon; it is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that we cannot know, is ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... That night, however, an extraordinary event took place, and showed how far from terror-palsy were the motley troops in Plattsburg. A sturdy Vermonter, named Captain McGlassin, got permission of Malcomb to attempt a very Spartan sortie. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... disguised in war-paint and armed with the weapons of warriors and the courage of despair—fought side by side with the Indian braves in the effort to arrest Rutherford's progress and compass his defeat. More than forty frontiersmen fell beneath the deadly shots of this truly Spartan band before the final repulse ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... would permit any one to talk with him about himself, and enthusiastic admirers of his genius commonly met with a rather cold reception. He repelled everything in the shape of a compliment. Dr. Edward Emerson says somewhere that his father was used to eat whatever was set before him with Spartan-like indifference. This mistake may have arisen from the good quality of Mrs. Emerson's housekeeping, and the excellent fare which she provided for her husband and his friends. Emerson wished to bear the hardships of life without ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... out in a widely different manner—my own tastes are of a Spartan turn, and the outer chamber was so planned as to accord with them. An oil-stove by Rippingille of Birmingham furnished me with the means of cooking; while two great bags, the one of flour, and the other of potatoes, made me independent of ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coolness and subordination was manifested, both by the 21st and 23d regiments. To Major Wood I feel particularly indebted. This officer's merits are so well known, that approbation can scarcely add to his reputation. He has the merit, with the Spartan band, in connection with Captain Towson's artillery, of defeating a vaunting foe of six times his force. Major Brooke did every thing in his power: and it affords me pleasure at all times to call the attention ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... often called for a moment upon his way to market, and Chris, who now greeted her lover, felt puzzled at the unusual gravity of his face. She turned pale when she heard his tremendous news; but the mother was of more Spartan temperament and received intelligence of Will's achievement without changing colour or ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... before she finished; and then she calmly slipped on to the nest, wriggling and twisting about as if she were pawing them over with her feet. There she sat for five or six minutes before darting away for fresh supplies, while I wondered if the two victims of this Spartan method were lying dead, stabbed to death, or smothered, by their own mother. But I did her tenderness and her motherhood injustice. Regularly every half hour she came and repeated this murderous-looking process, unless, as often happened, she was frightened ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... he had continued to live well. Now, with almost nothing left to live upon, he must go shabby, and cease to tickle his too fastidious palate. He must buy nothing new to wear, and must live at the cheapest of the restaurants. He felt a sort of Spartan satisfaction when this resolve had been fairly reached, but no enthusiasm. It required great resolution on his part when, for the first time, he entered a restaurant the sign in front of which bore the more or less alluring ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... inglorious in thy fate; For so Apollo, with unweeting hand Whilome did slay his dearly-loved mate Young Hyacinth born on Eurotas' strand, Young Hyacinth the pride of Spartan land; But then transform'd him to a purple flower Alack that so to change ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... dozen spearmen appeared, all obviously very frightened and only moved by an apparently Spartan discipline. Promptly they saluted, whereupon the Hero—as his title appeared to be—uttered a number of brief commands in some guttural language entirely unintelligible to ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... York magazines, going rather hungrily through their advertisements where such lovely layettes are described. My poor little Dinky-Dink's things are so plain and rough and meager. I envy those city mothers with all those beautiful linens and laces. But my little Spartan man-child has never known a single day's sickness. And ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... are quiet without, unless they should have been already disturbed by conspiracy; and even should affairs outside be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and has lived as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist every attack, as I said Nabis the Spartan did. ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... stripped the Athenians of all the advantages which they had acquired on the mainland of Greece. In every city of Greece there were always two parties, the wealthy and noble, called oligarchs, and the demos, or commons; and according as Spartan or Athenian influence was in the ascendant the balance of power in each city wavered between the nobles and the people, the Athenians favouring the Many, the Spartans the Few. Accordingly there was always ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... but it was noticed by others, and especially by Howard. Often he watched Stafford moving moodily about his father's crowded rooms, with the impassive face which men wear when they have some secret trouble or anxiety which they conceal as the Spartan boy concealed the fox which was gnawing at his vitals; or Howard came upon him in the corner of a half-darkened smoking-room, with an expired cigar in his lips, and his eyes fixed on a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... within the experience of everyone. There ale many people who pride themselves on not requiring any extra clothing during the colder months, and evidently look upon this fact as a proof that they possess Spartan powers of endurance, and that cold is a matter of perfect indifference to them. Now, it may be that a few individuals differ essentially from the rest of humanity, and do not require any change of clothing all the year round. But the majority of people who profess this disregard ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... dearer than the mere victory of party, as truth is more precious than the interest of any sect. You will hear this patriotism scorned as an impracticable theory, as the dream of a cloister, as the whim of a fool. But such was the folly of the Spartan Leonidas, staying with his three hundred the Persian horde, and teaching Greece the self-reliance that saved her. Such was the folly of the Swiss Arnold von Winkelried, gathering into his own breast the points of Austrian spears, making his dead body ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night it retired unobserved. The following day the Persian ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... garcon[53]) the little boy of the family is despatched by his mother to the landlord's neighbouring bog or turf rick, to bring home, in their phraseology, in ours to steal, a few turf; if, upon this expedition, the little Spartan be detected, he is tolerably certain of being whipped by his mother, or some of his friends, upon his return home. "Ah, ye little brat! and what made ye tell the gentleman when he met ye, ye rogue, that ye were going to the rick? ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... constancy of the witnesses. The headmen manage their rogueries with so much ingenuity that charges can very seldom be proved against them. They send out their apprentices, under particular instructions, to commit robberies, and, like the Spartan youths, they consider the most expert thief to be the cleverest fellow: should any of these young men be caught, they are left to get out of the scrape in the best manner they are able, for unless it be to swear falsely to an alibi, or some other evasion of ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... an armed police, headed by Wellington himself, which held her chief fortresses for three years, and saw that her chains were kept bright and strong. Never, since Lysander demolished the Long Walls of Athens to the music of the Spartan flute, had the world seen so bitter a spectacle of national humiliation, so absolute a reversal of fortune,—the long-conquering legions perishing by the sword, and him who had headed so many triumphal processions perishing as it were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... detecting it. Not a lump of sugar, not a slice of bread, went to waste in that house; yet even I had to think twice to realize that we were poor, desperately poor. She did not hide our poverty; she beautified it, she dignified it into Spartan simplicity. I know it is not the glamour over the past that makes me believe there are no women now like those of the race to which she belonged. The world, to-day, yields comfort too easily to the capable; ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... first instalment of wealth and fame. It was, indeed, from the editor of the periodical, and, remembering the avalanche of poetry and prose from beneath which this unfortunate class must daily struggle into life and being, it was unusually kind and full; but to Haldane it was cruel as death—a Spartan short-sword, only long enough to pierce his heart. It was to ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... shelves of precipitous rock, she holds it in place with her foot until the warmth of her leg and overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would seem, and the education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties, exposures, and dangers, it is not strange that the guillemots ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... horribly afraid, but she had learned in the Spartan household of her ancestors, to be more afraid of fear than of anything else, so she pulled a blanket over her head and shouldered a musket, and, after the elder Letitia had unbarred and unbolted the door, they all stepped out into the night, armed and ready to guard ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fame, Fair Virtue's silent train: supreme of these 170 Here ever shines the godlike Socrates: He whom ungrateful Athens[66] could expel, At all times just, but when he sign'd the shell: Here his abode the martyr'd Phocion claims, With Agis, not the last of Spartan names: Unconquer'd Cato shows the wound he tore, And Brutus his ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... capable of being corrected; but any advance gained by the democratic party, has never been retraced, and that it has been by the preponderance of power being thrown into its hands that nations have fallen. Of all the attempts at republics, that of the Spartan, perhaps, is the most worthy of examination, as Lycurgus went to work radically, and his laws were such as to obtain that equality so much extolled. How far the term republic was applicable to the Spartan form of government I will not pretend to say, but when Lycurgus was called upon ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... custom rends the bond of love. Nations we know have nature's law transgress'd, And snatch'd the infant from the parent's breast; But still for public good the boy was train'd, The mother suffer'd, but the matron gain'd: Here nature's outrage serves no cause to aid; The ill is felt, but not the Spartan made. Then too I own, it grieves me to behold Those ever virtuous, helpless now and old, By all for care and industry approved, For truth respected, and for temper loved; And who, by sickness and misfortune tried, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Spartan mothers with one voice, while the other sisters danced round them, and Kate patted the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Beyond a doubt her French maid was becoming careless, very careless. Sometimes Miss Arthur was inclined to think that her scant locks of well-dyed hair were pulled quite unnecessarily, while her head was under Celine's hands. But this she endured like a Spartan, only exclaiming when the torture became unbearable. And when she finally ventured a protest, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... about 1820 near the forks of the Platte River. He was one of a family of nine children whose father, an able and respected warrior, reared his son under the old Spartan regime. The young Red Cloud is said to have been a fine horseman, able to swim across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, of high bearing and unquestionable courage, yet invariably gentle and courteous in everyday life. This last trait, together with ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... to be a Christian, but as a gentleman one accepts a bit of bad luck without gnashing one's teeth. What? That Spartan boy with the fox was a well bred 'un, you can take my word for ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... them to the Colonel's tent, which had a raised floor and the good cheer of cigar-boxes, and of something under his cot that looked like a champagne-basket; and he smiled to think of Chaffee's Spartan-like outfit at Chickamauga. Every now and then a soldier would come up with a complaint, and the Colonel would attend to ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... A young Spartan, braving the risk of a hundred lashes, stole into a kitchen, and carried off a live fox-cub, which concealed under his coat, scratched and bit him till the blood came. To avoid the disgrace of detection, the child allowed the creature to gnaw ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... same boat, or in the same tent, and I never found a fault in him.... Each day's life with him added to my admiration for him. His gentleness never forsakes him: his hopefulness never deserts him. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon. The ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. I may add that in the Hippolytus, beside the passage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished him with suggestions. Cf. for instance Hipp., 30 ff., with the lines about the Spartan hounds in Mids. Night's Dream, IV. i. 117 ff., and Hippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech in As You Like It, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Wing). This plain and unpretentious building, which was largely due to the munificence of Archbishop Laud, was begun in 1635 and finished two years later. It cost, with the buildings above, about L4,200. Its dreary late-Gothic windows and heavy tracery, and the Spartan severity of its unbacked benches, are characteristic of the time of transition, alike architectural and religious, to which it belongs. It has been from that time to this the Parliament House of the University, where all matters are first discussed by the ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... sufferings, Germany has reason enough to cherish with a passionate devotion her late achieved unity. And German brutality, which is not the less brutality because Germans regard it as quite natural and right, has its origin in German history. The Prussian is a Spartan, a natural brute, but brutal to himself as well as to others, capable of extremes of self-denial and self-discipline. From the Prussians the softer and more emotional German peoples of the South received ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... remember that Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the townsman of Alexander the Great, made an expedition to Italy. This was the way it came about. The city of Tarentum was a Spartan colony at the head of the gulf that bears its name. It was as proud as its parent, but had lost all the grave sternness of manners, and was as idle and fickle as the other places in that languid climate. ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... woman about Winkelberg. I became poignant and moving on the subject of Winkelberg's misfortunes, his trials, sufferings and, above all, his Spartan stoicism. It pleased me to do this. I felt that I was making some amends and that the thing ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... quite tired and sleepy before the doctor returned for him, and his bruises ached badly. Once he would have cried and worried every one about him, if in such an uncomfortable state; but now he bore the pain like a Spartan. ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... the men they caught—won't they help?' and I says, 'They paid their tine and skipped.' 'Fine?' asks Mart, 'fine? I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I, 'it amounts to the same thing; she can't pay her fine, and that damn reform judge, wanting to make a record as a Spartan, has committed her to jail till it is paid!' 'So they go free, and she goes to jail, because she is poor,' says Mart.' That's what your reform means,' says I, 'or I let her and the boy loose and lose my job. And oh, Mart,' ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... conceited in the matter,—but not proud of having excited the admiration of her Irish lover. She was proud of her own subsequent conduct, and gave herself credit for coming out strongly as a noble-minded matron. "I believe she thinks," said Mrs. Mackinnon, "that her virtue is quite Spartan and unique; and if she remains in Rome she'll boast of it through ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... harmony with the rooms and furniture, consisting only of the strict necessities, cooked with a Spartan disregard for such sybarite foibles as seasoning or dressing. I believe there was a substantial meal somewhere in the early morning hours, but I never succeeded in getting down in time to inspect it. By successful bribery, I induced one of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... day of the most Spartan simplicity, all our needs cut down to the lowest and plainest of possessions, and yet a spirit of hospitality, of contentment, of gaiety, of self-reliance and mutual helpfulness. ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... on my mind by Greece, as well as Rome, was its diminutive size. I almost resented the fact that a place civilized thousands of years ago, and which had loomed up on my imagination as the land of Socrates, of Plato, of Homer, of Achilles, of Spartan warriors, and immortal poets, all seemed so small. The sense of imposition on my youth ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... beholding her eagerness, at length the nurse showed the child, and the woman caressed its face and said, "she shall be the fairest woman in Sparta." And from that day the fashion of its countenance was changed, "and the child became the fairest of all the Spartan women." ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... her. I have talked over these things with her many a time; and where I would fain be, she would fain be also. She sent me out with my virgin honor, as the Spartan mother did her boy with the shield, saying, 'Come back either with this, or upon this;' and one or the other I must do, if I would meet her either in this life or in the next. But in the meanwhile do not mistake me; my life ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... vain to get an offer from him. Said I, 'Carroll, is this another Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said I was a Spartan widow." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... breakfast, of a mug of tea and bread. Edgar found, however, that the Spartan breakfasts and teas could be supplemented by additions purchased at the canteen. Here pennyworths of butter, cheese, bacon, an egg, a herring, and many similar luxuries were obtainable, and two pence of his pay was invariably spent on ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... no foreign education and speaks no English. He is distinctively Chinese in his training and outlook. He is a man of force, capable of drastic methods, straightforward intellectually and physically, of unquestioned integrity and of almost Spartan life in a country where official position is largely prized for the luxuries it makes possible. For example, practically alone among Chinese provincial officials of the first rank he has no concubines. Not only this, but he proposed ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... the manlier of the two, for Drury was a delicate boy, too sensitive for the approval of his Spartan fellows. They made fun of his gentleness. He hated to wreathe a fishing-worm on a hook! He loathed to wrench a hook from a fish's gullet! The nearest he had ever come to fighting was in defense of a thousand-legged worm that one of the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... The female Spartan said nothing however, hoarding her indignation in silence, complaining only to don Andres of the recrudescence of a madness that was upsetting all her plans. Through his numerous henchmen the counselor kept watch upon the young man. His spies followed ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... write something about the rosy but dim and distant date when Dolores would be "through school?" Well, it's come. She's through school. And school, I might mention in passing, is through with her,—five of them, from Miss Trenchard's Spartan smartness to the gentle Spanish convent. She's a demon-baby. She's a cross between Carmen ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... always," Mat replied, and then because she had a Spartan spirit, she added: "But let's don't say any more that way. Let's think of what you are going to see—the plains, the Santa Fe Trail, the mountains, and maybe bad Indians. And even old Santa Fe town itself. You are in for 'the big shift,' as Aunty Boone says, and you've got ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... of female courage of ancient and modern times, and set before the wives, sisters, and daughters of the country, in the hope that it may make them even more renowned for resolution, fortitude, and self-sacrifice than the Spartan females of old. By HENRY C. WATSON. With Illustrations. Cloth. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... perspicacity; and he used to lecture comparative strangers about their duties with incredible insolence. The clergyman's life was made a burden to him, and the doctor's as well. Though he was the most luxurious and comfort-loving old wretch, his great text was the value of Spartan discipline for everyone else. If any dish was not exactly to his mind, he would allow no one to taste it, send it away, and complain bitterly that even his simple wants could not be supplied. Even when he got more infirm and took most of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... spare me a repetition of your father's platitudes—I've heard them often enough. I don't know much about the war, but all I've heard has set me against it. But never mind! And now, good-bye, my Spartan sweetheart." ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... to check expenditure. Athalie had dismissed their servant as soon as she had lost her position at Wahlbaum and Grossman's. Table expenses were reduced to Spartan limits, much to the disgust of them all. No clothes were bought, no luxuries, no trifles. They did their own marketing, their own cooking, their own housework and laundry. And had it not been that the apartment entailed no outlay for light, heat, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... Esq., near the grave of his beloved wife, who, a short time before, preceded him to the tomb. Upon this lot was located the Queen's Museum College, receiving, in 1777, the more patriotic name of "Liberty Hall Academy." Within its walls were educated a Spartan band of young men, who afterward performed a noble part in achieving ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... indolent and mean-spirited. He had begun to question the utility of religion, of patriotism, and of justice. Having allowed the organ for the ideal to atrophy in his soul, he could dream of finding some sullen sort of happiness in unreason. He felt that the austere glories of his country, as a Spartan regimen might have preserved them, would not benefit that baser part of him which alone remained. Political virtue seemed a useless tax on his material profit and freedom. The tedium and distrust ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... English bishop recently alleged in an after-dinner speech, "there is embodied so much wholesome discipline that a careful attendance to the practice of them gives the young man or woman an advantage not offered by any other method of training." Spartan, but indigestible! A keener observer than the bishop—the heresiarch Thackeray—wrote in his Philip: "I never saw people on better terms with each other, more frank, affectionate and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up young folks in the United States;" and certain it is that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... popped frequently and furious; or a request for another snipe, or another spoonful of the sauce; while all devoted themselves to the work in hand with a sincere and business-like earnestness of demeanor, that proved either the excellence of Tom Draw's cookery, or the efficacy of the Spartan sauce which the sportsmen had brought to assist them at their meal. The last rich drops of the fourth flask were trickling into Tom's ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... The Spartan simplicity of the proceedings impressed the Master far more than any Oriental ceremony could have done. Here was the Olema, or high priest and chief, of a huge city carved of virgin gold, coming to meet him on horseback and speaking to him face to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... imagined that Mr. Chamberlain and his noble colleagues had anything but beds of roses whilst pursuing the diplomacy adopted to checkmate the Bond. They had to gain national support without divulging their own proceeding, and were at the same time reduced to a situation which imposed a spartan fortitude in concealing and repressing involuntary perturbation in the presence of an impending national crisis, and also the stoical endurance of bitter recriminations on the part of an opposition comprising a large ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... and one more classic than any black broth ever supped by Spartan; more pregnant of Fate than the hell-broth compounded by Macbeth's witches; broth in which was brewed the destiny of a great nation, broth but for whose brewing I certainly, and you, if you be of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... one: he gives proofs no less convincing that the many are nought. To deceive the world by saying the same thing in entirely different forms, is a strain of art beyond most of us.' 'Yes, Socrates,' said Zeno; 'but though you are as keen as a Spartan hound, you do not quite catch the motive of the piece, which was only intended to protect Parmenides against ridicule by showing that the hypothesis of the existence of the many involved greater absurdities than the hypothesis of the one. The book was a youthful composition of mine, ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... more!" she immediately justified his emotion, by undergoing the same alarm, and, without further hesitation, engaged herself in the search, beginning with a song, which might be compared to the hymn of battle among the Greeks, or rather more aptly to that which the Spartan females sung round the altar of Diana, surnamed Orthian; for it was attended with strange gesticulations, and, in the course of utterance, became so loud and shrill, that the guests, who were by this time partly ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... other metopes testify. The figure of Athena should be compared with that of Sterope in the eastern pediment. There is a substantial resemblance in the drapery, even to the arbitrary little fold in the neck; but the garment here is entirely open on the right side, after the fashion followed by Spartan maidens, whereas there it is sewed together from the waist down; there is here no girdle; and the broad, flat expanse of cloth in front observable there is here narrowed by two folds falling ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... ff.) Philocomasium needs only to change clothing to appear in the role of her own hypothetical twin sister, and in 874 ff. and 1216 ff. the meretrix plays matrona. Sagaristio and the daughter of the leno impersonate Persians (Per. 549 ff.), Collabiscus becomes a Spartan (Poen. 578 ff.), Simia as Harpax gets Ballio's money (Ps. 905 ff.), the sycophant is garbed as messenger (Trin. 843 ff.), Phronesium elaborately pretends to be a mother (Truc. 499 ff.). A swindle is almost ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... Stonewall Jackson would have felt at home, saying his prayers at the double-quick, in such company. As mementos from home, the soldiers wore in their caps and buttonholes withered flowers and sprigs of green which their womenfolk had given in farewell. The women were just as Spartan as the Spartans; perhaps more so. If any soldier lacked innate courage, the spur of public opinion drove him forward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Philoctetes, which are also emblems of the all-conquering rays of the sun. The recovery of the stolen treasure is like Menelaus's recovery of Helen, and it apparently brings as little happiness to Sigurd as his recreant wife did to the Spartan king. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... it physically in the prize fighter who "doesn't know when he is beaten," in the race horse that throws an unexpected dash into the last stretch even after his last ounce of force is gone, in the Spartan soldier who exclaimed "If I fall I fight on ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... admiration, and the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency, which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is this the man who delights to paint the useful struggles of passion, the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic flights which carry the glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty sentiments lowered when he describes the prettyfoot and enticing airs of his ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... living-quarters of the crew, kept spotlessly clean and tidy, yet Spartan-like in their simplicity. Two of the men were sound asleep in their bunks. Three more, who were playing cards at a plain deal table, glanced up from their game as the British lads passed by; but their interest was of brief duration, and stolidly they ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... The case of Sparta is especially interesting because the Spartan mores were generally admired and envied in the fourth century B.C. They were very artificial and arbitrary. They developed into a catastrophe. The population declined to such a point that it was like group suicide. The nation incased itself in fossilized mores and extremest ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... but weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... were overthrown. National danger and the necessity for national effort being removed, self-devotion failed, egotism broke loose, and began to revel in the pillage and oppression of a conquered world. The Roman character was corrupted, as the Spartan character was corrupted when Sparta, from being a camp in the midst of hostile Helots, became a dominant power and sent out governors to subject states; though the corruption in the case of Sparta was far more rapid, because Spartan excellence ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... therefore took his dinner to him and they ate it together. A blackbird once assailing Benedict's face was repelled by the sign of the cross. Being tempted by a woman, Benedict crawled about among briars and nettles to maintain his Spartan spirit. He now became the abbot of a monastery, but the monks were so worldly that he had to correct them. In retaliation they poisoned his wine, but the saint making the sign of the cross over it, the glass broke in pieces and the wine was innocuously ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Evelyn found the new owner of Vandon, when they rode over together to call, a day or two after the school-feast. Poor Dare was sitting on the low ivy-covered wall of the topmost terrace, a prey to the deepest dejection. If he had lived in Spartan days, when it was possible to conceal gnawing foxes under wearing apparel, he would have made no use of the advantages of Grecian dress for such a purpose. Captivated by Evelyn's gentleness and sympathetic manner (strangers always thought Evelyn sympathetic), and impressed by ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... acceptance to the Home Secretary, who had asked him to luncheon. Doris was not included in the invitation. "But anybody may ask a husband—or a wife—to lunch, separately. That's understood. I shan't do it often, however—that I can tell them!" And justified by this Spartan temper as to the future, he wrote a charming note, accepting the delights of the present, so full of epigram that the Cabinet Minister to whom it was addressed had no sooner read it than he consigned it instanter to his ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... terrible fall was this! that famous one of Icarus himself, tumbling down headlong from the near neighbourhood of the sun, was not a greater. Battered, bruised, sore and aching all over, poor Leander, crestfallen and forlorn, limping painfully, and suppressing his groans with Spartan resolution, crept slowly back to his own room; but so overweening as his self-conceit that he never even suspected that a trick had been played upon him. He said to himself that without doubt Mme. la Marquise had been watched and followed by her jealous husband, who ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... man of the tale who saves himself from cobra or rattler by letting the serpent crawl its slow way over his perfectly controlled body might have withheld even a quiver of the flesh, but I am no Spartan. At my convulsive shudder each horrid claw gripped a death-hold. In one swift motion I seized a corkscrew that lay nearby, pried loose with a quick jerk every single pede and threw the odious thing a dozen yards. A trail of red, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... puppetry of thrones, to muse On that blest triumph, when the Patriot Sage[118:1] Called the red lightnings from the o'er-rushing cloud 235 And dashed the beauteous terrors on the earth Smiling majestic. Such a phalanx ne'er Measured firm paces to the calming sound Of Spartan flute! These on the fated day, When, stung to rage by Pity, eloquent men 240 Have roused with pealing voice the unnumbered tribes That toil and groan and bleed, hungry and blind— These, hush'd awhile with patient eye serene, Shall watch the mad careering of the storm; Then ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had never met; the poor man didn't care to have his quiet invaded by strange women, and to do the honours of London is no small task: yet this heroic gentleman obeyed orders without a murmur; and, leaving his artistic seclusion, shouldered his burden with the silent courage of a Spartan. ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... there before them, were also freemen, all but those of one city, called Helos, which revolted, and was therefore broken up, and the people were called Helots, and became slaves to the Spartans. One of the Spartan kings, sons of Hercules, had twin sons, and these two reigned together with equal rights, and so did their sons after them, so that there were always two kings at Sparta. One line was called the Agids, from Agis, its second king; the other Eurypontids, from Eurypon, its third king, instead ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 1846, Jackson received the brevet rank of second lieutenant of artillery. He was fortunate from the very outset of his military career. The officers of the United States army, thanks to the thorough education and Spartan discipline of West Point, were fine soldiers; but their scope was limited. On the western frontier, far beyond the confines of civilisation, stood a long line of forts, often hundreds of miles apart, garrisoned by a few troops of cavalry or companies ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... memorial days and ceremonies "that all the students should observe": the ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, thrift and morality, and the ceremonies at the end of rice planting, at harvest and at the maturity of the silk-worm. The fitting-up of the school is Spartan but the rooms are high and well lighted and ventilated. The students' hot bath accommodates a dozen lads at a time. The studies are also the dormitories, and in the corner of each there is stored a big mosquito netting. Except for a few square yards near the doors, these rooms consist ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... perish!' Think of the fair, soft lips set to utter that grand surrender, and of all the flowery and silken cords which bound the young heart to life, so bright and desirable as was assured to her. Note the resolute calmness, the Spartan brevity, the clear sight of the possible fatal issue, the absolute submission. No higher strain has ever come from human lips. This womanly soul was of the same stock as a Miriam, a Deborah, Jephthah's daughter; and the same fire burned in her,—utter devotion to Israel because entire consecration ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not already as much disgusted with Spartan Black Broth as Dionysius was {243} with the first mouthful, I beg leave to submit a few supplementary words to the copious indications of your correspondents "R.O." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... oath is taken is always originally divine. In the Hebrew ordeal of jealousy the sacred water decides whether the accused woman is guilty or not.[573] The sea is treated as a living thing, whose anger may be appeased by gifts; it is a monster, a dragon.[574] The Spartan Cleomenes, about to start on a voyage, sacrifices a bull to the sea.[575] Offerings to the sea are made in ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... condition of a slaughtered beast as the natives, whose practice in that respect we had formerly ridiculed." When they caught an emu, their first and eager care was to pluck the feathers and cut into the flesh, "to see how thick the fat was, and whether it was a rich yellow." The Spartan Doctor himself was not proof against the greasy fascination. Hear his confession of a frailty, and record of its quick-succeeding punishment. 'Tis a propos of kites, which filthy feeders, unaccustomed in the lonely bush to the sight of man, become exceedingly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... spring, and the seedlings bear the following year. The plants should be set eighteen inches apart each way in the fruiting- bed. When they blossom, note and mark all the pistillates as such. Those that grow feebly, and whose foliage scalds or burns in the sun, root out at once. The Spartan law of death to the feeble and deformed should be rigorously enforced in the fruit garden. The first year of fruiting will satisfy you that the majority of seedlings are to be thrown away. Those that give special promise ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... of one of the three more fashionable corps spends far more than these sums, and his habits may be less Spartan. The ridiculous expenditure of some of our mamma-bred undergraduates, who go to college primarily to cultivate social relations, are unknown anywhere in Germany, for a student would make himself unpopularly conspicuous by extravagance. Two to three thousand dollars a year, even ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... changed the paths of earth and sea, who sailed upon the mainland, and walked upon the deep—him did Spartan valour hold back, with just three hundred spears. Shame on ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... resistance. The barbarians advanced from conquering to conquer. Alaric, leader of the Goths, invaded Greece at the head of a numerous army. Degenerate soldiers guarded the pass where three hundred Spartan heroes had once arrested the Persian hosts, and fled as Alaric approached. Even at Thermopylae no resistance was made. The country was laid waste with fire and sword. Athens purchased her preservation at an enormous ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the governor to call up Heliogabalus's cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get down ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... then this best and meekest woman bore With such serenity her husband's woes, Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore, Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose Never to say a word about them more— Calmly she heard each calumny that rose, And saw his agonies with such sublimity, That all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... far shrewder than his brother gave him credit for. He was already richer than any two of the other children put together, but he chose to keep his counsel and to pretend modesty of fortune. He realized the danger of envy, and preferred a Spartan form of existence, putting all the emphasis on inconspicuous but very ready and very hard cash. While Lester was drifting Robert was working—working ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... forbidding her to mention it to any one, and dashed into the games with a Spartan disregard of her pain. It was the only way to keep from crying, and she played recklessly on at "prisoner's base," not stopping even when a pointed stick snagged one shoe and a ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... not learning enough to copy a Spartan mother, has lost her youngest son.(1067) I saw her this morning —her affectation is on t'other side she affects grief—but not so much for the son she has lost, as for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 1815,) and France is only now beginning to understand that the defeat of Waterloo was necessary for the liberty of Europe; but she not the less cherishes at the bottom of her heart a poignant grief and rage at having been marked out for a victim. On that plain where so many Spartan-like warriors fell for her sake—where the pyramid of the Prince of Orange, the tomb of Colonel Gordon, and the monument of the Hanoverians, serve as mementoes of the fight—no stone, or cross, or inscription recalls the name of France. But the day shall come when God will bid her (France) recommence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... preparations did not daunt the spirits of Leonidas and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come home from battle "with the shield or on it"—either carrying it victoriously or borne upon it as ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... modern Constantinople stands. It was said to have been founded by Megarians and Argives under Byzas about 657 B.C., but the original settlement having been destroyed in the reign of Darius Hystaspes by the satrap Otanes, it was recolonized by the Spartan Pausanias, who wrested it from the Medes after the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.)—a circumstance which led several ancient chroniclers to ascribe its foundation to him. Its situation, said to have been fixed by the Delphic oracle, was remarkable for beauty and security. It had complete ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the Athenians above, esteemed themselves of the serpent race. The Lacedaemonians likewise referred themselves to the same original. Their city is said of old to have swarmed with [509]serpents. The same is said of the city Amyclae in Italy, which was of Spartan original. They came hither in such abundance, that it was abandoned by the [510]inhabitants. Argos was infested in the same manner, till Apis came from Egypt, and settled in that city. He was a prophet, the reputed son of Apollo, and a person of great skill and sagacity. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... indignant; the king groaned over it; Dumouriez laughed at it. "Ah, well then, really, gentlemen," he said to the courtiers, "since there is no more etiquette there is no more monarchy." This jocose mode of treating the thing had at once removed all the anger of the court, and all the effect of the Spartan ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... inkstand, pen, and small handwriting amuse them very much. Miss K., the typical American travelling lady, who is encountered everywhere from the Andes to the Pyramids, tireless, with an indomitable energy, Spartan endurance, and a genius for attaining everything, and myself, a limp, ragged, shoeless wretch, complete the group, and our heaps of saddles, blankets, spurs, and gear tell of real travelling, past and future. It is a most picturesque sight by the light of the flickering ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Belle Poule, as I do Raphael's "Disputa," and even rather more; for when abundant, beautiful possessions of this kind are almost always associated with vulgar luxury, and become then anything but indicative of noble character in their possessors. The ideal of human life is a union of Spartan simplicity of manners with Athenian sensibility and imagination; but in actual results, we are continually mistaking ignorance for ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... French are in my Head; Latin I write, and Greek I— read."] We have also his own authority (in Tom Jones) for supposing that he occasionally, if not frequently, sacrificed "with true Spartan devotion" at the "birchen Altar," of which a representation is to be found in Mr. Maxwell Lyte's history of the College. And it may fairly be inferred that he took part in the different sports and pastimes of the day, such ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... eat from anything better than pewter. It was a high crime even in a count and field-marshal to have a single silver spoon among his baggage. Gay young Englishmen of twenty thousand a year, accustomed to liberty and to luxury, would not easily submit to these Spartan restraints. The King could not venture to keep them in order as he kept his own subjects in order. Situated as he was with respect to England, he could not well imprison or shoot refractory Howards and Cavendishes. On the other hand, the example of a few ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... slightly vexed with me. As kind a master as any dog could wish to have, he yet did not approve of cake being given to dogs. The Fyne dog was supposed to lead a Spartan existence on a diet of repulsive biscuits with an occasional dry, hygienic, bone thrown in. Fyne looked down gloomily at the appeased animal, I too looked at that fool-dog; and (you know how one's memory gets suddenly stimulated) I was reminded visually, with an ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... l. 303. Ne'er may I see thee. The Spartan captives from Pylos had lately been at Athens, and some of them were reputed descendants of Hyllus, the ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... give no quarter &c (pitiless) 914.1. Adj. severe; strict, hard, harsh, dour, rigid, stiff, stern, rigorous, uncompromising, exacting, exigent, exigeant^, inexorable, inflexible, obdurate, austere, hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron-handed, peremptory, absolute, positive, arbitrary, imperative; coercive &c 744; tyrannical, extortionate, grinding, withering, oppressive, inquisitorial; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... right way as morning and night to confine himself to these; but he who does so shall have his reward in a rare sanity of judgment and lightness of spirit, and a capacity for work unknown to countrymen of less Spartan habit. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... it appeared to me, the only thing to be done. But I had the courage to hold my tongue, to gnaw at my entrails like the Spartan boy. I wished to leave him ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... in the 'Edinburgh Review' (July, 1859) observes that "the Duke's talents seem never to have developed themselves until some active and practical field for their display was placed immediately before him. He was long described by his Spartan mother, who thought him a dunce, as only 'food for powder.' He gained no sort of distinction, either at Eton or at the French Military College of Angers." It is not improbable that a competitive examination, at this day, might have excluded ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... consolation elsewhere; he sat like a Spartan hero, and calmly watched his heart being consumed ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... which accords with the real interest and policy of men struggling under every difficulty for the attainment of the most inestimable blessing of life, liberty. The chevalier was polite enough to approve my principle, and condescended to appear pleased with our Spartan living. In a word, he made us all exceedingly happy by his affability and good humour, while ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, 5 Applauding Freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcaeus,[21] fancy-blest, Shall sing the sword, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... in matters of opinion is not to be obtained in the most select company; and if it were, what would become of society? "The Spartan legislator," says Plutarch, "appears to have sown the seeds of variance and dissention among his countrymen: he meant that good citizens should be led to dispute; he considered emulation as the brand by which their virtues were kindled; and seemed to apprehend, that ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... maturest thoughts on education, on government, on the type of man,—a rare type, alone fitted for leadership. The figure of his hero, Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, known to him by story and legend, is modelled on the Spartan king Agesilaus, whom he loved and admired, and under whom he served in Persia and in Greece (op. cit. Vol. II., see under Agesilaus, Index, and Hellenica, Bks. III.-V. Agesilaus, an Encomium, passim). Certain traits are also taken from the younger Cyrus, whom Xenophon ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... commonly met with a rather cold reception. He repelled everything in the shape of a compliment. Dr. Edward Emerson says somewhere that his father was used to eat whatever was set before him with Spartan-like indifference. This mistake may have arisen from the good quality of Mrs. Emerson's housekeeping, and the excellent fare which she provided for her husband and his friends. Emerson wished to bear the ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... fair, as the saying is, she is commonly a fool: if proud, scornful, sequiturque superbia formam, or dishonest, rara est concordia formae, atque pudicitiae, "can she be fair and honest too?" [5732] Aristo, the son of Agasicles, married a Spartan lass, the fairest lady in all Greece next to Helen, but for her conditions the most abominable and beastly creature of the world. So that I would wish thee to respect, with [5733]Seneca, not her person but qualities. "Will you say that's ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, who was not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come home from battle 'with the shield or on it'—either carrying it victoriously or borne ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him, and Egypt became plunged in a civil war. But for the courage and conduct of Agesilaues, which were conspicuously displayed, Tacho would have yielded to despair and have given up the contest. In two decisive battles the Spartan general completely defeated the army of the rebels, which far outnumbered that of Tacho, and replaced the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... greatly, and their house in Buccleuch Place (not the least famous locality in literature) was furnished on a scale which some modern colleges, conducted on the principles of enforced economy, would think Spartan for an undergraduate. Shortly afterwards, and very little before the appearance of the Blue and Yellow, Jeffrey made another innovation, which was perhaps not less profitable to him, by establishing ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... there partook of the gravity, almost the austerity, of convent life, tempered by youth and gaiety. The vast room was redolent of industry and quietude, warm with bright sunshine. However, what most particularly struck him was the Spartan training, the bravery of mind and heart among those sons who allowed nothing to be seen of their personal feelings, and did not presume to judge their father, but remained content with his message, ready to await events, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the right of succession (as every one thought) rested in Lycurgus; and reign he did for a time, but declared that the kingdom belonged to the child of his sister-in-law the queen, and that he himself should exercise the regal jurisdiction only as his guardian; the Spartan name for which office is prodicus. Soon after, an overture was made to him by the queen, that she would herself in some way destroy the infant, upon condition that he would marry her when he came to the crown. Abhorring the woman's wickedness, he nevertheless ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and noble service: "Mrs. Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital. Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one's country. She read and talked to them of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... wearied brother; see thy fellow workmen there in God's eternity surviving those, they alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time. To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind. Heaven is kind, as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying, while she gave her son his shield, 'With it, my son, or upon it, thou, too, shalt return home in honour—to thy far distant home in honour—doubt it not—if in the battle thou keep thy shield!' Thou in the eternities ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... impossible to believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known, should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... short of it, at any rate. You speak like a Spartan. You come to the point at once. But why do you come to me? I have no ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... What slave is here, instantly to cool some cups of ardent Falernian in the passing stream? Who will tempt the vagrant wanton Lyde from her house? See that you bid her hasten with her ivory lyre, collecting her hair into a graceful knot, after the fashion of a Spartan maid. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... big bare barn of a place with its cold north light, for Rooke, sybarite as he was in other respects, treated his work from a Spartan standpoint which permitted necessities only in ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... oppressive, was capable of being corrected; but any advance gained by the democratic party, has never been retraced, and that it has been by the preponderance of power being thrown into its hands that nations have fallen. Of all the attempts at republics, that of the Spartan, perhaps, is the most worthy of examination, as Lycurgus went to work radically, and his laws were such as to obtain that equality so much extolled. How far the term republic was applicable to the Spartan form of government I will not pretend to say, but when Lycurgus was ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... her age; comely to look upon, wise to listen to: "Is not she the suitable one?" thinks Friedrich, in regard to this matter. "Her kindred is of the oldest, old as Albert the Bear; she has been frugally brought up, Spartan-like, though as a Princess by birth: let her cease skipping ropes on the ramparts yonder, with her young Stettin playmates; and prepare for being a Czarina of the Russias," thinks he. And communicates his mind to the Czarina; who answers, "Excellent! How ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... for you, but we scarce thought you'd go to sleep squarely in the trail, just where we'd be sure to see you. Stand up now and march like a man, ready to meet any fate. Fortune has turned against you, but you still have the chance to show your Spartan ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... motives, as the native-born. Taken as a whole, it was, even more than the Revolutionary War, a true citizens' fight, and the armies of Grant and Lee were as emphatically citizen armies as Athenian, Theban, or Spartan armies in the great age of Greece, or as a Roman army in ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... was unfaithfulness, of however long duration, conclusively fatal against a wife; for we meet Helen, after a twenty years' elopement, again the quiet, hospitable mistress in the Spartan palace, entertaining her husband's guests with an easy matronly dignity, and not afraid even in Menelaus's presence to allude to the past—in strong terms of self-reproach, indeed, but with nothing like despairing prostration. Making the worst of this, however, yet even in this respect the Homeric ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... bred out of the Spartan kinde, So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung With eares that sweepe away the morning dew, Crooke kneed, and dew-lapt, like Thessalian Buls, Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bels, Each vnder each. A cry more tuneable Was neuer hallowed to, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... life brought with it any pleasure, or any business, or any holiness of duty, other or loftier than that of war. If it were possible that, under the amenities of a Grecian sky, too fierce a memento could whisper itself of torrid zones, under the stern discipline of the Doric Spartan it was that you looked for it; or, on the other hand, if the lute might, at intervals, be heard or fancied warbling too effeminately for the martial European key of the Grecian muses, amidst the sweet blandishments it was of Ionian ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of the Lacedaemonians talks about the laws and institutions created by Lycurgus, which train and develop Spartan citizens from ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... my dear, it's always one thing after another; and in another ten or fifteen years I suppose I shall have the pleasing duty of looking about for a new doctor. It's always better to make such a change before it's absolutely necessary." And having arrived at this Spartan decision Mr. Welland firmly took ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... the third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night it retired ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea! Look on the tragic loading of this bed; This ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... took a position in the deepest shadow and waited. Spartan little soldier that she was, she now sent a wail into the night that would have brought a dozen sentries; then, as before, everything was silent. Also, as before, hurried, angry steps soon were heard; yet this time, as the sentry passed ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... Ferry, so often pictured, or attempted to be, by pen and pencil. Either art has failed, and will fail, to do justice to that sublimely grand mountain scenery. Not quite three years ago, an iron old man, who perished with the heroism of a Spartan, or rather, to be just, the faith of a Christian; but little more than a year in advance of the dawn of the day of his hope, centred upon this spot the eyes of a continent. A crazy ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... any more pleasant or any shorter to me? The utmost difference would be the difference between a dull pain and a sharp pain; and I think the sharper agony is easier to bear." Having argued with herself thus, Miss Paget endured her weekly martyrdom with Spartan fortitude. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... were the ancients in artificial light! They had few wines; they knew neither tea nor coffee nor cocoa; neither tobacco, nor the innumerable liqueurs of which we make use; in face of our habits, they were always Spartan, even when they wasted, because they lacked the ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... liable to be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is felt, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of war, and can no' change our sentiments of the enemy, for they are far from indicating that any injustice will be done the prisoners. I'm sure that neither Master Cap nor myself has any cause of complaint since we have given ourselves up to Master Arrowhead, who reminds me of a Roman or a Spartan by his virtues and moderation; but ye'll be remembering that usages differ, and that our scalps may be lawful sacrifices to appease the manes of fallen foes, unless you save ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Bravo, Spartan!" cried Uncle Bob, as he stood looking on, when, after walking some distance, Uncle Dick insisted upon my taking off my jacket in a lane and having the ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... it would have been destroyed. Undoubtedly, however, he would have sympathized with the unknown critic in his complaint of the unsuitableness of sumptuous meals to youths who were destined for the hardships of the camp. At Brienne he had been dubbed "the Spartan," an instance of that almost uncanny faculty of schoolboys to dash off in a nickname the salient features of character. The phrase was correct, almost for Napoleon's whole life. At any rate, the pomp of Paris served but to root his youthful affections more ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... coat of mail of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian cavalry; but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand; nor is it likely that the Lacedaemonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... narrow room and sat down to the banquet. Heavens! what a feast! There were omelettes and geese and eels and duck and tripe and onion soup and sausages and succulences inconceivable. Accustomed to the Spartan fare of vagabondage I plunged into the dishes head foremost like a hungry puppy. Should I eat such a meal as that to-day it would be my death. Hey for the light heart and elastic stomach of youth! Some fifty persons, the ban and arriere ban of the relations of the young couple, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... hard on men to be sent straight from the comfort and warmth of a hospital or convalescent camp to a place as Spartan as this. Instead of having a bed to sleep on, the unfortunate "detail" found himself condemned to the floor boards of a bell tent, with a very meagre allowance of well-worn blankets. In cold weather the change was abrupt and trying, but of course it had to be made ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... women have so often fooled his soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be her reward. Had Othello any knowledge or experience in such matters to fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized doubt, until compass, bearings, and wisdom lost, he ends ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... guilty wretch—to love where he should not, to hazard the world's esteem, to grieve his wife, and to dishonour his name! And yet, I wonder, is he happier in his sinful indulgence than if he had played a Roman part, or, like the Spartan lad we read of, had let the wild-beast passion gnaw his heart out, and yet made no sign? To suffer and die, that is virtue, I take it, Mr. Evelyn; and you Christian sages assure us that virtue is happiness. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... thunder, by heaven, you can hear the roll of hexameters, and an old blind sorrow-stricken bard chanting. The soul of a nation is rising, the beat of her wings keeping time to the music of olden proud resounding lines. Who led the Grecian fleet at Salamis?—Not Spartan Eurygiades, but an old blind man dead these centuries. Who led the victors at Marathon? Not sly Athenian Miltiades, but an old dead man who had only words for his wealth: blind Maeonides chanting; and with his chanting marshaling on the roll of his hexameters mightier heroes ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... matter,—but not proud of having excited the admiration of her Irish lover. She was proud of her own subsequent conduct, and gave herself credit for coming out strongly as a noble-minded matron. "I believe she thinks," said Mrs. Mackinnon, "that her virtue is quite Spartan and unique; and if she remains in Rome she'll boast of it through the ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... one way by which the Per-sian army could go into Greece on that side, and that was by a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea. This pass was guarded by Le-on'i-das, the King of the Spartans, with three hundred Spartan soldiers. ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... ice-cold water which bubbled up from a boss of cresses by the roadside completed his Spartan breakfast. His next step was to examine his surroundings. "From the top of this hill," said Lynde, "I shall probably be able to see where I am, if that will be ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... food. From my earliest childhood I have always had a physical antipathy to pea-soup. The very sight of it raises my gorge. Nor have I any special relish for potatoes, unless they are of good quality and well cooked. I therefore munched the brown bread, and washed it down with cold water. It was a Spartan meal, but a very indigestible one, as I can certify from painful experience. Why a prisoner's stomach should be so grossly abused by a sudden change of diet passes my comprehension. Surely it would not be difficult to introduce the prison fare gradually. There is real danger ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... about he taught sweete flowres to growe; 665 The Rose, engrained in pure scarlet die; The Lilly fresh, and Violet belowe; The Marigolde, and cherefull Rosemarie; The Spartan Mirtle, whence sweet gumb does flowe; The purple Hyacinths, and fresh Costmarie, 670 And Saffron, sought for in Cilician soyle, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... i.e. secretary or despatch writer, is the Spartan title of the officer second in ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... shoulders and kissed him on the forehead. She was fair like her son, and much less than fifty years of age. There was no stoop in her shoulders and but little gray in her hair. Her eyes were anxious, but John saw in them the Spartan determination that marked ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... together. Mrs. Fortescue wore around her white throat a locket with a miniature in it of her boy soldier. He was to her what Anita was to the Colonel, but being a stout-hearted woman she had sent her son away to be a soldier and had worn a smile at parting. There was a strain of the Spartan mother in this smiling daughter, ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... exploring In the gold and gem-enfolding Waters of the ancient lore— Seeking in its buried treasures, Means for life's most common pleasures; Neither vicious nor ambitious— Simple wants and simple wishes. Ah! he finds the ancient learning But the Spartan's iron ore; Without value in an era Far more golden Than the olden— When the beautiful chimera, Love, hath almost wholly faded Even from the dreams of men. From his prison Newly risen— From his book-enchanted den— The stronger magic of the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... and he himself afoot went with Achates lone, Shaking in hand two slender spears with broad-beat iron done. But as he reached the thicket's midst his mother stood before, Who virgin face, and virgin arms, and virgin habit bore, A Spartan maid; or like to her who tames the Thracian horse, Harpalyce, and flies before the hurrying Hebrus' course. For huntress-wise on shoulder she had hung the handy bow, And given all her hair abroad for any wind to blow, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... with little knowledge, possessed of an educated sense of beauty, and an ingrained love of what is noble and hatred of all that is the reverse. He would be more cultivated and human than the best type of young Spartan, more physically vigorous and reverential, though less intellectually developed, than the best type of young Athenian—a nascent soldier and servant of the state, not, like most young Athenians of ability, a nascent orator. ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... preserved the same Spartan simplicity. Eunice, however, carried her point in regard to the salad; for Abel, after tasting and finding it very palatable, decided that oil and vinegar might be classed in the catalogue of True Food. Indeed, his long abstinence from piquant flavors gave him such an appetite ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the torturing contemplation of his own moral impotence. He turned to philosophy to see if he could find some clue to the bewildering riddle of life, and he lost his way among philosophical speculations. Southey, on the other hand, a man of Spartan virtue, became a highly-cultivated writer; he sate in his spacious library of well-selected books, arranged with a finical preciseness, apportioning his day between various literary pursuits. He ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the salvation of a community must lie in preserving intact, so far as possible, the institutions imposed by the enlightened lawgiver, since change meant corruption and disaster. These a priori principles account for the admiration of the Spartan state entertained by many Greek philosophers, because it was supposed to have preserved unchanged for an unusually long period a system established by an ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... UT SUNT ... SENES: the Spartan [Greek: gerousia], as it is commonly called, consisted of 28 members, all over 60 years of age. Herodotus uses the term [Greek: gerontes] (senes) for this assembly; Xenophon [Greek: gerontia]. In the Laconian dialect [Greek: geroia] was its name; we also ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... one resource Still in my science—I can call the dead, And ask them what it is we dread to be: The sternest answer can but be the Grave, And that is nothing: if they answer not— 180 The buried Prophet answered to the Hag Of Endor; and the Spartan Monarch drew From the Byzantine maid's unsleeping spirit An answer and his destiny—he slew That which he loved, unknowing what he slew, And died unpardoned—though he called in aid The Phyxian Jove, and in Phigalia roused The Arcadian Evocators to compel ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... in Nineteen Hundred Two, he bore the blow like a Spartan. Fifty-eight years had they journeyed together. She was a woman of great good sense, and a very handsome woman, even in her old age. Her husband had always depended on her, telling her his plans and thus clarifying them in his own mind. They were companions, friends, chums, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... with the rooms and furniture, consisting only of the strict necessities, cooked with a Spartan disregard for such sybarite foibles as seasoning or dressing. I believe there was a substantial meal somewhere in the early morning hours, but I never succeeded in getting down in time to inspect it. By successful bribery, I induced one of the village belles, who served ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... legs, and pushed him with such violence into the hole that the point of the spike, which he had placed in his pocket, found its way through his clothes to the flesh, inflicting a slight, but painful wound. Jack, who had something of the Spartan in his composition, endured his martyrdom without flinching; and carried his stoical indifference so far, as even to make a mocking grimace in Sharples's face, while that amiable functionary thrust Thames into the recess ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... purpose of trying the proportions of martial merit, but (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing to Europe the proclamation of French superiority—that is the object of French wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold that a state of peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls for apology; and that already from the first such an apology must wear a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Egad! I'd burn the last ham in the locker to overtake her!"—and he hurls the glowing stump after the "Senator," as the Spartan youth hurled their shields into the thick of the battle ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... it,—leaving probably the Prime Minister to judge what narrow majority would constitute nearness. On this occasion all the gentlemen assembled were jocund in their manner, and apparently well satisfied,—as though they saw before them an end to all their troubles. The Spartan boy did not even make a grimace when the wolf bit him beneath his frock, and these were all Spartan boys. Even the Prime Minister, who had fortified himself for the occasion, and who never wept in any company but that of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... comfort at least to remember that it had not been the fabrication of her own brain, she had respectable authority for the idea, and she trusted to its prompter to participate in her indignation, argue Ulick out of so poor a match, and at least put a decided veto upon Sophy's Spartan magnanimity— Sophy's health and feelings being the subject, she sometimes thought, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a rapidly developing lump over one eye, but his expression remained unchanged. Josephine approached him with happy gurgles. Her heart was filled with womanly sympathy, but her soul remained undaunted. She was of the Spartan stuff that sends sons to the war, and holds a reception for them if they return—from victory—on their shields. She cooed in conscious imitation of Fraulein's best manner. "Now, you can fall ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... barley, with wine proportionable, supplied him out of his own lot by his laborer or helot; and being confined in that to the scantling above which he might not live, there was not any such thing as a trade, or other art, except that of war, in exercise. Wherefore a Spartan, if he were not in arms, must sit and play with his Angers, whence ensued perpetual war, and, the estate of the city being as little capable of increase as that of the citizens, her inevitable ruin. Now what better ends you can propose to yourselves in ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... be a blank; but it is your duty not to let any one perceive it. Imitate the young Spartan, who smiled although the fox, hidden under his cloak, was gnawing his vitals. Let us avoid ridicule, my friend. In society there is nothing that provokes laughter more than a disappointed lover, who rolls his eyes about and looks woe-begone. And, then, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... remembered that a modern Utopia must differ from the Utopias of any preceding age in being world-wide; it is not, therefore, to be the development of any special race or type of culture, as Plato's developed an Athenian-Spartan blend, or More, Tudor England. The modern Utopia is to be, before all things, synthetic. Politically and socially, as linguistically, we must suppose it a synthesis; politically it will be a synthesis of once widely different ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... country again and again, and so knew it well. They were all eager to go in the hope of reaching their missing comrades. The broad outline of their duty was given them by Superintendent Snyder, with the Spartan simplicity and directness characteristic of the Mounted Police. It ran thus: "Corporal Dempster. You will leave to-morrow for a patrol over the Fort Macpherson trail to locate the whereabouts of Inspector Fitzgerald's ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... struggle with coiling serpents; then the loud, clear, triumphant notes, 'Give me liberty,' electrified the assembly. It was not a prayer, but a stern demand, which would submit to no refusal or delay. The sound of his voice, as he spoke these memorable words, was like that of a Spartan paean on the field of Plataea; and, as each syllable of the word 'liberty' echoed through the building, his fetters were shivered; his arms were hurled apart; and the links of his chains were scattered to the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... excellencies of animated grace and active manliness: his head raised, the body's attitude, not studied surely, but the apparent and seemingly sudden effect of patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who, hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of his own defenceless state, snatches a spear and shield from one he meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by both armies as a descended God, and ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... party but to have their exhausted comrade carried, in some way, to Leyden. As for expecting him to skate anymore that day, the thing was impossible. In truth, by this time each boy began to entertain secret yearnings toward iceboats, and to avow a Spartan resolve not to desert Jacob. Fortunately a gentle, steady breeze was setting southward. If some accommodating schipper would but come along, matters would not be ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... distinction as to fitness to survive. The Spartans in ancient times, and many social reformers of to-day have discussed and advocated the artificial limitation of the unfit. The exposure of defective infants was the Spartan method of preserving the physical and mental stature ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... of cattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts as hardy and stalwart of mind and body. Long calls them haughty, ferocious and stubborn; Edwards relates examples of their Spartan fortitude; and it was generally agreed that they were frequently instigators of slave conspiracies and insurrections. Yet their spirit of loyalty made them the most highly prized of servants by those who could call it forth. Of them Christopher Codrington, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Jane wishes that her father kept a carriage, and liveried servants and out-riders. She thinks of politics, and of the tyranny of kings and nobles, and of the unjust inequalities of man. She retires to the solitude of her loved chamber window, and reads of Aristides the Just, of Themistocles with his Spartan virtues, of Brutus, and of the mother of the Gracchi. Greece and Rome rise before her in all their ancient renown. She despises the frivolity of Paris, the effeminacy of the moderns, and her youthful bosom throbs ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... it became a young woman to be unhappy in secret;—that it became a young woman, I might rather say, to have a source of unhappiness hidden from the world in general, and endured without any detriment to her outward cheerfulness. We know the story of the Spartan boy who held the fox under his tunic. The fox was biting into him,—into the very entrails; but the young hero spake never a word. Now Bessy Garrow was inclined to think that it was a good thing to have a fox always biting, so that the torment caused no ruffling to her outward smiles. ...
— The Mistletoe Bough • Anthony Trollope
... in immense sums of money; and finally forced to pay the cost of an armed police, headed by Wellington himself, which held her chief fortresses for three years, and saw that her chains were kept bright and strong. Never, since Lysander demolished the Long Walls of Athens to the music of the Spartan flute, had the world seen so bitter a spectacle of national humiliation, so absolute a reversal of fortune,—the long-conquering legions perishing by the sword, and him who had headed so many triumphal processions perishing as it were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... sensuous, and delay the psychic restraint which should early preponderate over the physical. But will-culture for boys is rarely as thorough as it should be without more or less flogging. I would not, of course, urge the extremes of the past. The Spartan beating as a gymnastic drill to toughen, the severity which prevailed in Germany for a long time after its Thirty Years' Wars,[2] the former fashion in many English schools of walking up not infrequently to take a ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... fault." Again it would be, "You are very babyish, and lack self-control; there is no need of crying over such a small matter as a little blister on your finger." And Edna wondered if she were expected to be like the Spartan boy who held the fox under his coat while it gnawed at his heart. Aunt Elizabeth never pitied her, and even the little caresses from Uncle Justus ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... long as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving—peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of time! To thee, Heaven, though severe, is not unkind. Heaven is kind, as a noble mother—as that Spartan mother, saying, as she gave her son his shield, 'with it, my son, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... amateur surgeon approved, when he finished. "You're a Spartan—if you happen to remember what that is. Now we'll move on. But before we go, wash your face good and hard. Get that tribe paint off. These Indians with us don't like it. You're no Indian, anyhow; you're white, like us. Savvy? White man. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... feel quite tired and sleepy before the doctor returned for him, and his bruises ached badly. Once he would have cried and worried every one about him, if in such an uncomfortable state; but now he bore the pain like a Spartan. ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... can bear the agony without betraying any sign of emotion. Then he is a man and can marry. A lad's age is reckoned by the number of times he has passed through the ordeal.[147] An eye-witness has described how a young Mauhe hero bore the torture with an endurance more than Spartan, dancing and singing, with his arms cased in the terrible mittens, before every cabin of the great common house, till pallid, staggering, and with chattering teeth he triumphantly laid the gloves before the old chief and received the congratulations of the men ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Living was Spartan in the station. It rotated fast enough to give weight, but even on the outer skin that was only one-half Earth gravity. A couple of silent Martians prepared undistinguished meals and did housework in the quarters. There were no films or other organized recreation, though ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... this woman about Winkelberg. I became poignant and moving on the subject of Winkelberg's misfortunes, his trials, sufferings and, above all, his Spartan stoicism. It pleased me to do this. I felt that I was making some amends and that the thing reflected credit upon ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... is too short," said a Spartan youth to his father. "Add a step to it, then," was the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... was the familiar instance of the Spartan youth who having stolen a fox and hidden it inside his robe calmly stood up and let the animal gnaw his vitals rather than be caught with it in his possession. But, why? I ask you, why? What was the good ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... from the top of the deck plumb down to the hock kyard, he's nothin' but Jackson. This yere attitood of my grandsire, an' him camped in the swarmin' midst of a Henry Clay country, is frootful of adventures an' calls for plenty nerve. But the old Spartan goes through. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and meekest woman bore With such serenity her husband's woes, Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore, Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose Never to say a word about them more— Calmly she heard each calumny that rose, And saw his agonies with such sublimity, That all the world ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... thousand francs with the lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic. Then the fortune ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Oenone, Weeping ever, weeping low, On the holy mount of Ida, Where the pine and cypress grow. In the self-same hour Cassandra Shrieked her prophecy of woe, And into the Spartan dwelling Did ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... coast, exchanging their burthens for salt, at a favorable market, but sedulously avoiding all intercourse with strangers and their cities. The Bunjaras are a stout, sturdy race; sturdy and stout in action and resolve as they are in body and form, Spartan-like in their sense of honor, free in their opinion as the mountain breeze, keeping apart from men and their cabals, and existing by their own energies. A short time since, I journeyed on horseback over the very line of this proposed railway, from ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... way were the worst Spartan natures displayed in a heroic sense, after they had commenced life by a persistence ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... out the temple where the dead Are honour'd by the nations—let it be, And light the laurels on a loftier head, And be the Spartan's epitaph on me: "Sparta had many a worthier son than he"; Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted—they have torn me—and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... and martyr. It is certainly no light heritage, the knowledge, that his brave blood flows in their veins. For history does not record, that any other of its long and shining line of heroes and martyrs, ever met death, anywhere on this globe, in a holier cause or a sublimer mood, than died this Spartan-like slave, more than three quarters ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... guess. The Spartan's sure to say, 'a little too free, but correct on the whole,' anyway," she thought, ruefully, as she folded up her paper and put her pen and ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... Lycurgus set up the god of laughter in the Spartan eating-halls? There is no table sauce like laughter at meals. It is the ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of Broth, and one more classic than any black broth ever supped by Spartan; more pregnant of Fate than the hell-broth compounded by Macbeth's witches; broth in which was brewed the destiny of a great nation, broth but for whose brewing I certainly, and you, if you be of Pilgrim strain, had never been, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Hagen, the real hero of the second half of the poem. Fully aware that he is going to his death, he nevertheless scorns to desert his companions-in-arms, and awaits the fate in store for him with a stoicism that would do honor to a Spartan. He calmly accepts the consequences of his crime, and to the last mocks and scoffs at Kriemhild, until her fury knows no bounds. No character shows so little the refining influences of Christianity as does ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... continued in semi-barbarism, having little intercourse with the rest of Greece. In the 5th century B.C. with the aid of Athens they subdued the Corinthian factories on their coast. In 391 they submitted to the Spartan king Agesilaus; in 371 they passed under Theban control. In the Hellenistic age the Acarnanians were constantly assailed by their Aetolian neighbours. On the advice of Cassander they made effective their ancient cantonal league, apparently after the pattern of Aetolla. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... am told, wishes you to be educated for a teacher, a profession which requires as much training as the Spartan youth endured, when fitted to be the warriors of the land. Why, you should be preparing yourself a coat of mail, instead of embroidering a silken suit. How do you expect to get through the world, child,—and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of it; glad she was going to be hurt. She could get back some of her self-respect, she thought, by enduring it all, first the wretchedness, then the pain, with a Spartan fortitude. There would he a sort of savage satisfaction in marching through all her miseries with ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... turf they rest, Far from the gory field, Borne to a Spartan mother's breast On many a bloody shield. The sunshine of their native sky Smiles sadly on them here, And kindred eyes and hearts ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... was born about 1820 near the forks of the Platte River. He was one of a family of nine children whose father, an able and respected warrior, reared his son under the old Spartan regime. The young Red Cloud is said to have been a fine horseman, able to swim across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, of high bearing and unquestionable courage, yet invariably gentle and courteous ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... himself greatly shaken in his allegiance to the chief, by recollecting the effect produced on his valour by a single glance from the instrument of law. He had not yet lived long enough to be aware that men are sometimes the Representatives of Things; that what the scytale was to the Spartan hero, a sheriff's writ often is to a Waterloo medallist: that a Bow Street runner will enter the foulest den where Murder sits with his fellows, and pick out his prey with the beck of his forefinger. That, in short, the thing called LAW, once made tangible and present, rarely ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... know if it is true that he is engaged to Miss Stuart," replied Anne, with Spartan composure, "but it is certainly true that ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that butt of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... large difference. In the past, copy, layouts, and other campaign ingredients were threshed out in endless conferences, and decisions were made on the basis of an informed group guess. Now, each new idea was exposed at infancy like a Spartan baby to the elemental reaction of Ev & Co., and instantly ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... claims are justly great: Thy milder virtues could my muse relate, To thee alone, unrivall'd, would belong The feeble efforts of my lengthen'd song. Well canst thou boast, to lead in senates fit, A Spartan firmness with Athenian wit: Though yet in embryo these perfections shine, Lycus! thy father's fame will soon be thine. Where learning nurtures the superior mind, What may we hope from genius thus refin'd! ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... More than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... had already reasoned out, and some of it he reasoned out later. In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation except when he went to see Ruth, and living like a Spartan. He paid two dollars and a half a month rent for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and drowning her ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... directions. From our laboratories, libraries, observatories, schools of medicine and law, universities of science, art and literature, she is advancing to the examination of the problems of life, with an eye single only to the glory of truth. Like the Spartan of old she has thrown her spear into the thickest of the fray, and will fight gloriously in the midst thereof till she regains her own. No specious sophistry or vain delusion—no time-honored tradition or untenable doctrine can evade ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... held the bridge; he just let the blamed thing go. The boy did not stand on the burning deck, whence all but him had fled; he was among the first in the lifeboats. That other boy —the Spartan youth—did not have his vitals gnawed by a fox; the Spartan youth had been eating wild grapes and washing them down with spring water. Hence that gnawing sensation of which so much mention has been made. Nobody hit Billy Patterson. He acquired his black eye in the same way ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... hopping about them like hailstones, the boys below commonly succeeded in securing, under cover of the fire, the desired boathook or oar. And such were the ordinary circumstances and details of this piece of Spartan education; of which a townsman has told me he was strongly reminded when boarding, on one occasion, under cover of a well-sustained discharge of musketry, the vessel of an enemy that had been stranded on the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the officers, British as well as American, to dine with her. Having now no better place of accommodation, she entertained us under a large arbor built in front of her log cabin, where, with great pleasure, I observed that the same lady could one day act the Spartan, and the next the Parisian: thus uniting in herself, the rare qualities of the heroine and the christian. For my life I could not keep my eyes from her. To think what an irreparable injury these officers had done her! and yet ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... "bagging a thing," or, at the worst, "cribbing it"—concealing the villainy under a new name, a name with no very odious associations attached to it; just as they called lying "cramming," under which title it sounded much less repulsive. In fact, these young Noelites took a most Spartan view of these petty larcenies, confining the criminality to the incurring of detection. But they had never succeeded in making Charlie take this view; he never would adopt the change of language by which they altered the accepted meaning of words in accordance with their own propensities ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... mouldering garrets of Clare, looking over waste land to the oozy Cam, no doubt wished that their foundress had been less Spartan. Very little of the domestic architecture that Camden admired in Cambridge is now left; and yet probably it and Oxford are the two places of all which he describes that it would give him least trouble to identify if he came to life again three hundred years after the first appearance ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... ON' I DAS, the celebrated Spartan leader who, with three hundred men, perished in the effort to resist the Persian hosts, at the mountain ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... desperately[3] hurt, ran forward and stood in defence of his body and arms, risking his life alone against a multitude, determined to die rather than leave Pelopidas lying there. He too was in evil plight, with a spear wound in the breast, and a sword-cut on the arm, when Agesipolis, the Spartan king, came to the rescue from the other wing, and most unexpectedly ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... curtain over the scene of the Spartan mother—we hope you belong to that nearly extinct class—which is to follow. Let us suppose all differences settled, the habit ostensibly given up, and your darling, grown more honest or more artful,—the result is the same to your blissful ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... history of womankind is a story of abuse. For ages men beat, sold, and abused their wives and daughters like cattle. The Spartan mother that gave birth to one of her own sex disgraced herself; the girl babies were often deserted in the mountains to starve; China bound and deformed their feet; Turkey veiled their faces; America denied them equal ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... wore through the remaining hours of darkness upon the sodden hillside. Superlative Miss Gilchrist! Folded in the mantle of that Spartan dame; huddled upon a boulder, while the rain descended upon my bare head, and coursed down my nose, and filled my shoes, and insinuated a playful trickle down the ridge of my spine; I hugged the lacerating fox of self-reproach, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right, please come to the piano." The girl indicated, a dignified senior, obeyed the summons, coolly handed the professor her music, stationed herself at his side and awaited trial with the air of a Spartan. After a short prelude she began to sing a popular air that was at that time going the round of Sanford. She sang one verse, then the professor dropped his hands from the keys, inquired her name, made a memorandum on a pad, and, dismissing her, signaled another girl ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the child should be shown, and the other beholding her eagerness, at length the nurse showed the child, and the woman caressed its face and said, "she shall be the fairest woman in Sparta." And from that day the fashion of its countenance was changed, "and the child became the fairest of all the Spartan women." ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... took his dinner to him and they ate it together. A blackbird once assailing Benedict's face was repelled by the sign of the cross. Being tempted by a woman, Benedict crawled about among briars and nettles to maintain his Spartan spirit. He now became the abbot of a monastery, but the monks were so worldly that he had to correct them. In retaliation they poisoned his wine, but the saint making the sign of the cross over it, the glass broke in pieces and the wine was ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... has Spartan courage fled? And why, proud Athens! above thine head Is the Mussulman crescent gleaming? Have thine ancient memories no avail? And art thou not fired at the legend tale Which reminds thee how the whole world grew pale, And recoiled ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the roaring wood fire, he ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Biblical pedant seeking to reconcile passing events with ancient Jewish prophecies, and to see in the most ordinary occurrences the workings of a resistless and unalterable fate. That was not the true Gordon, but rather the grafting of a new character on the original stem of Spartan simplicity and heroism. But to the very end of his career, to the last message from Khartoum, the old Gordon—the real Gordon, the one who will never be forgotten—revealed himself just as he was in ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... soup, rich in dark-hued garden produce, and a large hunk of bread—except on Thursdays, when a pat of butter was served out to each boy instead of that Spartan broth—that "brouet noir des ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... but two or three words can dishearten it. There is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress. Isocrates described his art, as "the power of magnifying what was small and diminishing what was great";—an acute, but partial definition. Among the Spartans, the art assumed a Spartan shape, namely, of the sharpest weapon. Socrates says, "If any one wishes to converse with the meanest of the Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him despicable in conversation; but, when a proper opportunity offers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... common with the family, trouble her enormously. Nevertheless, I hope to return toward the end of August; but in no circumstance will I ever again separate myself from the person I love. Like the Spartan, I intend to return with my shield ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... Oh, that first evening! In our happy days of childhood our teachers used to describe and set up before us as an example the manly fortitude of the young Spartan, who, having stolen a fox and hidden it under his tunic, without uttering one shriek let it devour all his entrails, and so preferred death itself to disgrace.... I can find no better comparison for my indescribable sufferings ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the merciful haste of it that she could not, until long after, recall herself to mourn. And she did honestly mourn. The little John was glad of that. So ill and tired had she been for years and yet so bound upon the rack of her husband's Spartan theories for her, that John thought he could not have borne it if she had not adored her righteous tormentor, if she had had to look on him as her master, not her lord by love. It seemed to him he was always mourning over his mother, in those ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... difficult to date even that of the central three hundred years. I will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VII.) roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon; it is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that we cannot know, is itself of the greatest import. We cannot say, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... most of all because it was the 'thing to do,' the then accepted form of human action. When once the predominant type was determined, the copying propensity of man did the rest. The tradition ascribing Spartan legislation to Lycurgus was literally untrue, but its spirit was quite true. In the origin of states strong and eager individuals got hold of small knots of men, and made for them a fashion which they were attached to ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... in the Roman camp, and others, the noblest of the citizens, must live in exile: so that the Roman nation was become a partisan of Nabis in his tyranny." Quinctius led back his army to Elatia, whence he had set out to the Spartan war. Some writers say, that the tyrant's method of carrying on hostilities was not by sallies from the city, but that he encamped in the face of the Romans; and that, after he had declined fighting a long time, waiting for succours from the Aetolians, he was forced to come to an engagement, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... building, which was largely due to the munificence of Archbishop Laud, was begun in 1635 and finished two years later. It cost, with the buildings above, about L4,200. Its dreary late-Gothic windows and heavy tracery, and the Spartan severity of its unbacked benches, are characteristic of the time of transition, alike architectural and religious, to which it belongs. It has been from that time to this the Parliament House of the University, where all ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I believe ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... down-trodden children accepted punishment without question. Salter's grandmother had dismissed grown-up sons from table and kept a rebellious daughter for weeks incarcerated in her room. Salter's father had inherited her stern, Spartan spirit; he gave his heir a first-class education in the neighbourhood of London and, when he was twenty, recalled him to Bradford, there to take his place in the works and live at home. But Salter, junior, having tasted the delights of liberty, found home ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... leg sufficiently workable in the matter of climbing stairs, Dr. Farr's boarder had resigned the family couch in the sitting-room and had retired to his spartan chamber under the eaves. From its open window that night he watched the moon. Let nothing happen to the universe in the meantime, and there would be a full moon on Friday night. The professor hoped that nothing ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... to me, the only thing to be done. But I had the courage to hold my tongue, to gnaw at my entrails like the Spartan boy. I wished to leave him ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... just whispered something about the Macaulay-flowers of literature?—There was a dead silence.—I said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If I have used any such, it has been only as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. We ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... they could stand on one aching foot with heads comfortably sunken inside the excruciating collars, which rasped their ears and made the lobes thereof a pleasing scarlet. Brief were these moments, however, and the Spartan boys danced on with smiling faces, undaunted by the hidden anguish which preyed upon them "fore and aft," ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... to the means of raising revenue, Paine sketched a plan of progressive taxation on incomes, ranging from 3d. in the pound on incomes less than L500 to punitive proportions after L10,000 was reached; while in his Spartan arithmetic great wealth appeared so dire a misfortune that he rid the possessors of the whole of incomes of L23,000 and upwards. As for Pitt's financial reforms, he laughed them to scorn. He also accused him of throwing over the fair promises that marked his early ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... tempt them, and their goal in safety reached, To dare a second voyage. Round the stag Thus will the cunning hunter draw a line Of tainted feathers poisoning the air; Or spread the mesh, and muzzle in his grasp The straining jaws of the Molossian hound, And leash the Spartan pack; nor is the brake Trusted to any dog but such as tracks The scent with lowered nostrils, and refrains From giving tongue the while; content to mark By shaking leash the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Banneker had heard of as being a bachelor country club whose distinguishing marks were a rather Spartan athleticism, and a more stiffly hedged exclusiveness than any other social institution known to the elite of New York and Philadelphia, between ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... incident related in the Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was accosted thus by some airy stripling: "Had I been left alone with a young beauty, I would not have spent my time like your Spartan." "That sir," said Dryden, "perhaps, is true; but give me leave to tell you, that you are ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... an humble complaint against the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole, with a Post-script. This ran to a ninth edition. Near the same time too he wrote a Letter to Cleomenes King of Sparta, from E. Budgell, Esq; being an Answer Paragraph by Paragraph to his Spartan Majesty's Royal Epistle, published some time since in the Daily Courant, with some Account of the Manners and Government of the Antient Greeks and Romans, and Political Reflections thereon. And not long after there ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... des Sauvages Ameriquains compares aux moeurs des premiers temps, tom. i., p. 526. He refers to Plutarch, in Lycurgo, for an account of similar Spartan dances.] ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... arrival searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit and independence in all lands where the British flag ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... husbands and fathers. The independence of women seemed rather less unnatural to the Greeks than to other ancients, on account of the fabulous Amazons (whom they believed to be historical), and the partial example afforded by the Spartan women; who, though no less subordinate by law than in other Greek states, were more free in fact, and being trained to bodily exercises in the same manner with men, gave ample proof that they were not naturally disqualified for them. There can be little doubt that Spartan experience suggested ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... have talked over these things with her many a time; and where I would fain be, she would fain be also. She sent me out with my virgin honor, as the Spartan mother did her boy with the shield, saying, 'Come back either with this, or upon this;' and one or the other I must do, if I would meet her either in this life or in the next. But in the meanwhile do not mistake me; my life is God's, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... "She was a Spartan lady. She cured me of it by rapping my knuckles with the handle of a silver-plated knife. My, how it hurt! I feel it yet! I wonder that they were not ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... accentuate. A perilous intoxication, not to be too freely indulged in by a serious professional man at any time—in business hours certainly not. But if the doctor were quite in earnest over a sort of Spartan declaration of policy his heart feels the prudence of, would that responsive twinkle flutter in his face behind its mock gravity? He is all but head over ears in love with Sally—so why pretend? Really, we don't ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... two gilt "Directions to Travelers" which clung like mustard plasters to his back, while a jagged tin sign, wrenched from the home terminal, embraced his stomach with the painful tenacity of the historic Spartan fox. In his pockets were objects—small objects but precious and dangerous to ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... however, in which the women of ancient and modern times manifested their love of their country. The Spartan mother, who, without a tear, presented her sons with their shields, with the stern injunction to return with them, or upon them, that is, with honor untarnished, or dead,—the fair dames and maidens of Carthage, who divested themselves of their beautiful tresses, to furnish bowstrings ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... she had learned in the Spartan household of her ancestors, to be more afraid of fear than of anything else, so she pulled a blanket over her head and shouldered a musket, and, after the elder Letitia had unbarred and unbolted the door, they all stepped out into the night, ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of loss and of close-impending disgrace was the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool work than ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... time that Rebecca, who had been reading about the Spartan boy, conceived the idea of some mild form of self-punishment to be applied on occasions when she was fully convinced in her own mind that it would be salutary. The immediate cause of the decision was a somewhat sadder accident than ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dreariness of our sad situation; not a complaint, not a murmur, not a reproach. To see her so quietly resigned, you would have supposed that she had been both chamber-maid and cook all her life, that is if you never tasted her dishes! I shall always remember her first dinner. O, the Spartan broth of that day! She must have gotten the receipt from ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Hospital in Lamb and Coleridge's day, died in 1814. His living, the richest in the Hospital's gift, was that of Colne Engaine, which passed to the Rev. Arthur William Trollope, Headmaster of Christ's Hospital until 1826. Boyer had been a Spartan, and Coleridge and he had had passages, but in the main Coleridge's testimony to him is favourable and kindly (see Lamb's Christ's Hospital essay, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... justice of their punishment. The usual respect of the young to the old was not paid to bachelors (Plut. Lyc. 15). At Athens there was no definite legislation on this matter; but certain minor laws are evidently dictated by a spirit akin to the Spartan doctrine (see Schoemann, Gr. Alterth. i. 548). At Rome, though there appear traces of some earlier legislation in the matter, the first clearly known law is that called the Lex Julia, passed about 18 B.C. It does not appear to have ever come into full operation; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... comprehension for, and a passionate devotion to, the State. The moderns have ceased to live and move in the State. They are divided and distracted by their social and economic interests. Only the modern Prussian feels for Prussia as the Roman and the Spartan felt for their native countries. To the Prussian alone, as to the Roman and the Spartan, the devotion to the State is glorified into a ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... observatories, schools of medicine and law, universities of science, art and literature, she is advancing to the examination of the problems of life, with an eye single only to the glory of truth. Like the Spartan of old she has thrown her spear into the thickest of the fray, and will fight gloriously in the midst thereof till she regains her own. No specious sophistry or vain delusion—no time-honored tradition or untenable doctrine can evade ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... boys as a developer of their wits. The Spartan boy and the fox is a classical example; and Diodorus relates that in Egypt the boy who wished to become a thief was required to enrol his name with the captain of the thieves, and to turn over to him all stolen articles. The citizens who were robbed went to the captain ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... quaked internally: but he hid it grandly, and once more was a Spartan gnawed beneath his robe by this little fox. "What," said he sternly, "after all I and mine have done for you and yours, would you be so base as to go and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Caesar in AEgypt Spartan Dame Two Harlequins Thomson's Sophonisba Roman Actor Three Hours after Marriage Alexis's Paradise Usurper Love in a Forest Lottery Sultaness Edwin Mad Lovers Wedding Bays's Opera Female Fop Female Parson Fall of Saguntum Henry V. Penelope Non-Juror Rival Modes Philotas Footman Lady's Philosophy ...
— The Annual Catalogue (1737) - Or, A New and Compleat List of All The New Books, New - Editions of Books, Pamphlets, &c. • J. Worrall
... Leonidas pour'd out the wine, And shouted ere he drain'd the cup, "Ho! comrades, let us gaily dine— This night with Pluto we shall sup"; And if they leant upon a reed, And if their reed was slight and slim, There's something good in Spartan creed— The lights are ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... strict disciplinarian to his children in their early years, but his attitude toward himself was truly Spartan. He never visited the theater, for instance, but sought his recreation in various spiritual practices and in reading the BHAGAVAD GITA. {FN1-7} Shunning all luxuries, he would cling to one old pair of shoes until they were useless. His sons bought automobiles ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... years of wantonness and riot preceding fourteen hungry famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war. The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in vice, if not in splendour, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry's Spartan grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth, whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother's lessons. A seraglio of maids of honour ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... herself with grim jocoseness the "alma mater" of her students, but if she be a mother at all she is one of a very heroic and Spartan cast, who conceals her maternal affection with remarkable success. The only signs of interest which she ever designs to evince towards her alumni are upon those not infrequent occasions when guineas are to be demanded from them. Then one is surprised to find how carefully the old hen has ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "You're a Spartan," said her brother in awe, as he looked on that thin, stern face. "Terry is your theory. If he disappoints you, he'll be simply a theory gone wrong. You'll cut him out of your life as if he were an algebraic equation and ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... with incredible insolence. The clergyman's life was made a burden to him, and the doctor's as well. Though he was the most luxurious and comfort-loving old wretch, his great text was the value of Spartan discipline for everyone else. If any dish was not exactly to his mind, he would allow no one to taste it, send it away, and complain bitterly that even his simple wants could not be supplied. Even when he got more infirm and took most of his food in ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... would willingly have endured the pain to be made of so much importance, and said to be better than a Spartan, which must doubtless be ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feather,—emblem of truth,—and the moment his javelin has drawn blood, he sticks it into his tufty pole with as much satisfaction as we feel when attaching a medal to our shell-jackets. It is by no means necessary to slay the foe in fair combat: Spartan-like, treachery is preferred to stand-up fighting; and you may measure their ideas of honor, by the fact that women are murdered in cold blood, as by the Amazulus, with the hope that the unborn child may prove a male. The hero carries home ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flu'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew. Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls, Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouths like bells, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... seemed to be. Certainly it was not so disinterested as European ignorance might fancy it: but it was quite as much so as it ought to have been, in balancing the interests of a child. Very true it is—that, being a genuine Spaniard, who was still a rare creature in so vast a world as Peru, being a Spartan amongst Helots, an Englishman amongst Savages, an Alferez would in those days have been a natural noble. His alliance created honor for his wife and for his descendants. Something, therefore, the cornet would add to the family consideration. But, instead of selfishness, it argued ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... damned nonsense, from all which considerations I will deliver it in person. It is entitled the "Fair Shepherdess," or rather "Herdswoman;" if you don't like the translation take the original title "[Greek (transliterated): hae boskopoula]." Galt also writes something not very intelligible about a "Spartan State paper" which by his account is everything but Laconic. Now the said Sparta having some years ceased to be a state, what the devil does he mean by a paper? he also adds mysteriously that the affair not being concluded, he cannot at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... body, Spartan-like, to all the fatigues and exposures of war. He indulged in no luxury of tents or carriages, and ate the flesh of horses and wild beasts, which he roasted himself, over the coals. In his campaigns the ground was his bed, the sky his curtain, his horse blanket his covering, and the saddle ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... ascended in the first instance, and that afterwards he permitted Gylippus to enter and raise the siege, and lastly that Demosthenes, by overpowering the insufficient Syracusan guard, got at night within the lines of the Spartan general. Thus the three most important movements of the siege were made upon Euryalus. Dionysius, when he enclosed Epipolae with walls, recognised the value of the point, and fortified it with the castle which remains, and to which, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... opinion has always been ready to serve the demands of the base nature below. It was the great lawgiver, Lycurgus, who taught Spartan youths the commercial economy of theft and the virtue and advantage of lying. It was not only when Rome was in decay, but when she was at the zenith of glory from the first Brutus to Octavius, when Caesar, Cicero, Seneca, Horace, and the Plinys lived at ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... physiognomist who had been familiar with Javert, and who had made a lengthy study of this savage in the service of civilization, this singular composite of the Roman, the Spartan, the monk, and the corporal, this spy who was incapable of a lie, this unspotted police agent—if any physiognomist had known his secret and long-cherished aversion for M. Madeleine, his conflict with the mayor on the subject of Fantine, and had examined Javert at that moment, he would have said ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... francs with the lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... evening.... Oh, that first evening! In our happy days of childhood our teachers used to describe and set up before us as an example the manly fortitude of the young Spartan, who, having stolen a fox and hidden it under his tunic, without uttering one shriek let it devour all his entrails, and so preferred death itself to disgrace.... I can find no better comparison for my indescribable sufferings during the evening on which I first saw the prince by Liza's ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... is true that he is engaged to Miss Stuart," replied Anne, with Spartan composure, "but it is certainly true that ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the soldier's uniform and the barrack mess table are civilization's last word—would like no doubt to start a regime of National Kitchens and "Spartan Broth." They would point out the advantages thereby gained, the economy in fuel and food, if such huge kitchens were established, where every one could come for their rations of soup and ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... distress visible long before she dropped anchor and came along-side. The devoted woman had been strolling slowly for the girl's sake, though oppressed with a mournful certainty that her most prominent feature was fast becoming a fine copper-color; yet she had sustained herself like a Spartan matron, till it suddenly occurred to her that her charge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But he's a very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination. It has simply never entered his head that I could need an allowance. And, if you come to that, I can't say that I positively do. I have a tiny patrimony—threepence a week, or so—enough for my humble ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... physical inconvenience, the idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; and when the women are concerned in a public protest the men are—oh, so mere! And the men in khaki ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... develop the faculty of lying to a high point of efficiency, and no one who knows him will contend that he is inferior to the European in this respect. The natural education of the Natives include the art of lying as the education of Spartan boys included the practice of larceny. Lying, we know, develops the memory, for a good memory is essential to successful lying. Some of the ruses and stratagems thought out by Natives fleeing from the king's wrath or the witch doctor's doom, of which I have heard from the Natives themselves, ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... battle? How could such a constitution flourish in the very foyer of gourmands, in the fatherland of Very, of Vefour, and of Careme? This latter would certainly have thrown himself, like Vatel, on his sword, as a Brutus of cookery and as the last gastronome. Indeed, had Robespierre only introduced Spartan cookery, the guillotine would have been quite superfluous, for then the last aristocrats would have died of terror, or emigrated as soon as possible. Poor Robespierre! you would introduce stern republicanism to Paris—to a city in which one hundred and fifty thousand ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... impatient with the long delay. They weren't interested in seeing other nations going over the top—the same nations who had been over so many times; they wanted to see their sons and brothers at once given the opportunity to share the wounds and the danger. Their attitude was Spartan and splendid; they demanded a curtailment of their respite that they might find themselves afloat on the crimson tide. The cry of the civilians in America was identical with that of their men in France. "Let them take off our khaki or else hurry us into the ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... her foot until the warmth of her leg and overhanging body hatches it into life, when she takes it on her back and flies down to the sea. Motherhood under difficulties, it would seem, and the education of the baby guillemot is carried forward on Spartan principles; for the moment he is out of the shell he is swept downward hundreds of feet and plunged into a cold ocean, where he can sink or swim as instinct serves him. In a life so fraught with anxieties, exposures, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... directed. "I fancy that the pocket-book you are carrying will prove more interesting. We will just glance through the dressing-case first. Thank you. Yes, you can lay the things upon the floor. A man of Spartan-like life, I should imagine Mr. Dunster. A spare toothbrush, though, I am glad to see. Pyjamas of most unattractive pattern. And what a taste in shirts! Nothing but wearing apparel and singularly little of that, ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... But in order to bring this about, the early years of the child must be carefully supervised, and his training calculated to fit him for the tremendous task awaiting him, a task requiring the courage of a Spartan, the wisdom of Solomon, and the patience of Job. Unfortunately, the parents of blind children rarely understand the importance of this early training. They are too often too absorbed in their own sorrow at having a child so afflicted, too sure that loss ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... We were not free, our tawny hands were tied; But Belgium's plight and Serbia's woes we shared Each rise of sun or setting of the moon. So when the bugle blast had called us forth We went not like the surly brute of yore But, as the Spartan, proud to give the world The freedom that we never knew nor shared. These chains, O brothers mine, have weighed us down As Samson in the temple of the gods; Unloosen them and let us breathe the ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... change our sentiments of the enemy, for they are far from indicating that any injustice will be done the prisoners. I'm sure that neither Master Cap nor myself has any cause of complaint since we have given ourselves up to Master Arrowhead, who reminds me of a Roman or a Spartan by his virtues and moderation; but ye'll be remembering that usages differ, and that our scalps may be lawful sacrifices to appease the manes of fallen foes, unless ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... with an eye to the sexual parts? Why, the lover of horses will take just as much pleasure in the good points of Podargus, as in those of AEthe, Agamemnon's mare,[134] and the sportsman rejoices not only in dogs, but also rears Cretan and Spartan bitches,[135] and shall the lover of the beautiful and of humanity be unfair and deal unequally with either sex, and think that the difference between the loves of boys and women is only their different ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... sallied forth from the camp at dawn, to learn, if possible, something of the land on which they had been thrown. They had gone but a little way in the depths of the forest when they met Aeneas's mother, Venus, in the guise of a Spartan maid, her bow hung from her shoulders, her hair flowing ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... not reply, and his silence wounded Lady Lucy to the quick. Was it her fault if her husband, out of an eccentric distrust of the character of his son, and moved by a kind of old-fashioned and Spartan belief that a man must endure hardness before he is fit for luxury, had made her and not Oliver the arbiter and legatee of his wealth? But Oliver had never wanted for anything. He had only to ask. What right had she to ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Yes!" answered the Spartan mothers with one voice, while the other sisters danced round them, and Kate patted the curly ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... in France, indeed, in much resembled that of the Spartan in Greece. He had forced a settlement with scanty numbers in the midst of a subjugated and sullen population, surrounded by jealous and formidable foes. Hence sobriety was a condition of his being, and the policy of the chief ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Smith's statement that such a rite was worked at Quiyough-cohanock, Strachey adds that Sir George Percy (who was with Smith) "was at, and observed" a similar mystery at Kecoughtan. It is plain that the rite was not a sacrifice, but a Bora, or initiation, and the parallel of the Spartan flogging of boys, with the retreat of the boys and their instructors, is very close, and, of course, unnoted by classical scholars except Mr. Frazer. Strachey ends with the critical remark that we shall not know all the certainty ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... close-curling hair, oval face, and skin of deep olive tint indicated a Latin origin. His clerical garb proclaimed him a son of the Church. The room was a small, whitewashed cell of stone, musty with the dampness which had swept in from the sea during the night. It was furnished with Spartan simplicity. Neither image, crucifix, nor painting adorned its walls—the occupant's dress alone suggested his calling. A hanging shelf held a few books, all evidently used as texts in the adjoining college. A table, much littered; ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... up, fiercely forbidding her to mention it to any one, and dashed into the games with a Spartan disregard of her pain. It was the only way to keep from crying, and she played recklessly on at "prisoner's base," not stopping even when a pointed stick snagged one shoe and a sharp ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... examples of female courage of ancient and modern times, and set before the wives, sisters, and daughters of the country, in the hope that it may make them even more renowned for resolution, fortitude, and self-sacrifice than the Spartan females of old. By HENRY C. WATSON. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... undertaking, even supposing it to be possible, to bring together the pieces again. And a vaguer but even more insistent voice, prompted, "Then suppose he does believe me? What will it mean to Johnny Montgomery?" It seemed to me that I had been enough of a Spartan as far ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... a leg sufficiently workable in the matter of climbing stairs, Dr. Farr's boarder had resigned the family couch in the sitting-room and had retired to his spartan chamber under the eaves. From its open window that night he watched the moon. Let nothing happen to the universe in the meantime, and there would be a full moon on Friday night. The professor hoped that ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the wall, shut his eyes, and closed his mind with a Spartan effort. His breathing came heavily, regularly, like one who slept or one who is running. Over that sound he caught at length another light rustling, and then the faint creak as she crossed the crazy floor. He made his face calm—forced his ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... above all to make a man, un homme, of him," he said to Glafira Petrovna, "and not only a man, but a Spartan." Ivan Petrovitch began carrying out his intentions by putting his son in a Scotch kilt; the twelve-year-old boy had to go about with bare knees and a plume stuck in his Scotch cap. The Swedish lady was replaced ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... case of Sparta is especially interesting because the Spartan mores were generally admired and envied in the fourth century B.C. They were very artificial and arbitrary. They developed into a catastrophe. The population declined to such a point that it was like group suicide. The nation incased itself in fossilized mores and extremest ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... weep o'er days more blest? Must we but blush?—Our fathers bled. Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... minute in my description, let those who read my story remember that such courteous dignity, however natural, I am bound to believe, it is to them, was to me an utterly new excellence in human nature. All my mother's Spartan nobleness of manner seemed unexpectedly combined with all my ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said I was a Spartan widow." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sympathy toward one when he is sick, the native dentist cutting out the tooth with a dull knife, we would consider almost too barbarous to practice in America. The Igorrotes have a way of driving out the fever with a slow fire; but between this Spartan method and Visayan ignorance the choice is difficult. No wonder that the people drop off with surprising suddenness. Your laundryman or baker fails to come around some morning, and you ask one of your neighbors where he is. The ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... I noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... which modern Constantinople stands. It was said to have been founded by Megarians and Argives under Byzas about 657 B.C., but the original settlement having been destroyed in the reign of Darius Hystaspes by the satrap Otanes, it was recolonized by the Spartan Pausanias, who wrested it from the Medes after the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.)—a circumstance which led several ancient chroniclers to ascribe its foundation to him. Its situation, said to have been fixed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in store for her. Much to her surprise, everybody had been particularly nice to her that morning. Several girls had given her their addresses and asked her to write to them, Miss Bowes had been kindness itself, and even Miss Teddington, whose conduct was generally of a Spartan order, when bidding her good-bye in the study, had actually bestowed an abrupt peck of a kiss, a mark of favour never before known in the annals of the school. To be sure, she had followed it with a warning against relapsing into loud laughter ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... for the court of Menelaus, king of Sparta, with a view to carry off his wife Helena, the most beautiful woman in the world, as the reward of the judgment which he had pronounced in favour of Venus. The young Trojan met with a most welcome reception at the Spartan court; but he abused the laws of hospitality by prevailing on the queen to elope with him. Though demanded back by all the princes who had sworn to protect her, and threatened with the vengeance of the combined ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... I'd burn the last ham in the locker to overtake her!"—and he hurls the glowing stump after the "Senator," as the Spartan youth hurled their shields into the thick of the battle ere rushing to ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... very high, normally so bare and austere, was hung now with tapestries, and the floor strewn with rushes that were mingled with lemon verbena and other aromatic herbs. Along the lateral walls and across the end of the room that faced the double doors were set the stone tables of the Spartan monks, on a shallow dais that raised them above the level of the floor. These tables were gay now with the gleam of crystal and the glitter of gold and silver plate. Along one side of them, their backs to the walls, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... with flattery, duke," said he, "well knowing that it is a sweet opiate, acceptable to princes, generally causing their ruin. But in this chamber, duke, I am safe from this danger, and here in my republic we will both enjoy the Spartan soup of truth. Believe me, sir, it is at times a wholesome dish, though to the pampered stomach it is bitter and distasteful. I can digest it, and as you have come to visit me, you will have to partake ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... himself or me how entire the sacrifice must be of private happiness to public duty, of which this parting was the first sample; and he writes of the desolation of domestic prospects in so sad a way that I am obliged to write like a Spartan to him. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... the Pariars, or Suders, from whom it is believed these swarthy itinerants of our age are descended, were farther advanced in the knowledge of moral obligations, than were the Spartan people; who, however celebrated for some of their Institutions, accounted the successful perpetration of thefts to ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... matter, Sarah Gurridge had proved herself a loyal friend. Dr. Parash, with conscientious soundness of judgment, had ordered her removal for a prolonged sojourn to city life in Toronto; a course which, in spite of heartbroken appeal on the girl's part, her mother insisted upon carrying out with Spartan-like resolution. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... however, have dreaded the news for after careful examination the eminent specialist had decided to take a single desperate chance and operate with the hope of success. Laurie, they were told, was a monument of courage and had the spirit of a Spartan. Unquestionably he merited the good luck that followed for fortune did reward his heroism,—smiling fortune. Of course, the miracle of health could not come all in a moment; months of convalescence must follow which would be unavoidably tedious ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... to the cotton-spinners is interesting as showing how fresh his sympathy still was with the sons of toil, and what respect he had for their position. He congratulated himself on the Spartan training he had got at the Blantyre mill, which had really been the foundation of all the work he had done. Poverty and hard work were often looked down on,—he did not know why,—for wickedness was the only thing that ought ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... and terror," discerns the deeper truth, the serener ideal which henceforth it pursues as if impelled by the fixed law of its being. There is a word coined by Aristotle which comes down the ages to us, bringing with it as it were the sound of the griding of the Spartan swords as they leapt from their scabbards on the morning of Thermopylae, the energeia tes psyches—the energy of the soul. This energy of the soul in Aristotle is the vertu of Machiavelli, the spring of political wisdom, the ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... the temple where the dead Are honoured by the nations—let it be - And light the laurels on a loftier head! And be the Spartan's epitaph on me - 'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.' Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted,—they have torn me, and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Mercury.—No; one was a Spartan soldier, and the other an English farmer. I see you both look astonished. But what I tell you is truth. Labour and hunger gave a relish to the black broth of the former, and the salt beef of the latter, beyond what you ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Persians—as a coat of mail of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian cavalry; but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand; nor is it likely that the Lacedaemonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... occurred: The Editor "has polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who, it seems, once published some detached scenes of the 'Broken Heart.'" This referred to Charles Lamb, who likened the "transcendent scene [of the Spartan boy and Calantha] in imagination to Calvary and the Cross." Now Gifford had never heard of the personal history of Lamb, nor of the occasional fits of lunacy to which his sister Mary was subject; and when the paragraph was brought to his notice by Southey, through Murray, it caused him unspeakable ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... idea that beef is necessary for strength is not a correct one, is well illustrated by Xenophon's description of the outfit of a Spartan soldier, whose dietary consisted of the very plainest and simplest vegetable fare. The complete accoutrements of the Spartan soldier, in what we would call heavy marching order, weighed seventy-five pounds, exclusive of the camp, mining, and bridge-building tools and the rations ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet. As for "Auntie" June, his half-sister (but so old that she had grown out of the relationship) she loved him, of course, but was too sudden. His devoted "Da," too, had a Spartan touch. His bath was cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged to be sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education, little Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children should not be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... art with subsequent national degradation. You find, in the first place, that the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by those who possessed none: you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede; the Athenian by the Spartan; the Greek by the Roman; the Roman by the Goth; the Burgundian by the Switzer: but you find, beyond this—that even where no attack by any external power has accelerated the catastrophe of the state, the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... received the brevet rank of second lieutenant of artillery. He was fortunate from the very outset of his military career. The officers of the United States army, thanks to the thorough education and Spartan discipline of West Point, were fine soldiers; but their scope was limited. On the western frontier, far beyond the confines of civilisation, stood a long line of forts, often hundreds of miles apart, garrisoned by a few troops of cavalry or companies ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... was persuaded to cross the seas from her Spartan home to set Troy ablaze, and tarnish her fair fame, but it would take twenty sons of Priam to induce a damsel to come over dry land to Craddock Dene, to cook our dinners ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the Baronet that night, in his sarcastic and withering speech on the Drainage and Sewerage Bill, would have recognized the Lover of the Ideal and the Philosopher of the Beautiful. No one who listened to his eloquence would have dreamed of the Spartan resolution this iron man had taken in regard to the Lost Boy—his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... loveliest tarsia work (this too from Vannucci's design), and above these panels the master's frescoes. The 'Nativity' and 'Transfiguration' at the end of the room are among his finest, ripest works, and on each side are the Prophets and Sibyls, or heroes, kings, and sages of antiquity—Leonidas the Spartan, Trajan the wise Roman emperor, Fabius 'Cunctator,' Socrates, Horatius, who kept the ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... art shall here her triumphs bring, And laurel'd bards their choicest anthems sing. Here, honor'd age shall bare its wintery brow, And youth to freedom make a Spartan vow. Here, ripened manhood from its walks profound, Shall come and halt, as if ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... long narrow room and sat down to the banquet. Heavens! what a feast! There were omelettes and geese and eels and duck and tripe and onion soup and sausages and succulences inconceivable. Accustomed to the Spartan fare of vagabondage I plunged into the dishes head foremost like a hungry puppy. Should I eat such a meal as that to-day it would be my death. Hey for the light heart and elastic stomach of youth! Some fifty persons, the ban and arriere ban of the relations of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... education, on government, on the type of man,—a rare type, alone fitted for leadership. The figure of his hero, Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, known to him by story and legend, is modelled on the Spartan king Agesilaus, whom he loved and admired, and under whom he served in Persia and in Greece (op. cit. Vol. II., see under Agesilaus, Index, and Hellenica, Bks. III.-V. Agesilaus, an Encomium, passim). ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... strain like a Spartan to the bitter end, and when the trip was over he, like Lord Ullen, was left lamenting in the shuffle of the forgotten, and didn't even get a kiss in the final good-byes, when they fell as thick ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... brightened the whole circle, unobserved till it was gone. As for the old hosier his pride had been wounded by his son's disobedience, and so he bore stiffly up, and did his best never to mention Gerard's name; but underneath his Spartan cloak, Nature might be seen tugging at his heart-strings. One anxiety he never affected to conceal. "If I but knew where the boy is, and that his life and health are in no danger, small would be my care," would he say; and then a deep sigh would follow. I cannot help thinking ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... cross. The soldiers halted at the gate in the wall, resigned their charge, with a whispered watchword, to two gaunt sentries; and then (relieving the sentries who proceeded on with the prisoner) remained, mute and motionless, at the post: for stern silence and Spartan discipline were the attributes of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should take a wife till he had stood, His left heel on the dizziest point of crag, His right leg and both arms stretched in mid air, Above the sea: three hundred feet to drop To death, if he should fail—a Spartan test. But any man who could have failed, would scarce Have earned his livelihood or his children's bread On that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... mother, kept her own counsel so bravely that no one could have told how hard she had been hit. If she betrayed herself in any way, it was in being rather more attentive and demonstrative to her guests than was usual with her; but she behaved with the Spartan pride of the English gentlewoman, and deceived all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... begin there. A like adventure chanced often at the parsonage, and, at nine years of age, I reigned king absolute over a nursery full of her Majesty's subjects who called me brother, and quailed before my nod like Helots before the crest of a Spartan. But, as I say, all that is neither here ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... think, rather hard on men to be sent straight from the comfort and warmth of a hospital or convalescent camp to a place as Spartan as this. Instead of having a bed to sleep on, the unfortunate "detail" found himself condemned to the floor boards of a bell tent, with a very meagre allowance of well-worn blankets. In cold weather ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... alternative, now, for our party but to have their exhausted comrade carried, in some way, to Leyden. As for expecting him to skate anymore that day, the thing was impossible. In truth, by this time each boy began to entertain secret yearnings toward iceboats, and to avow a Spartan resolve not to desert Jacob. Fortunately a gentle, steady breeze was setting southward. If some accommodating schipper would but come along, matters would not be quite so ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... repetition of your father's platitudes—I've heard them often enough. I don't know much about the war, but all I've heard has set me against it. But never mind! And now, good-bye, my Spartan sweetheart." ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... that something was gravely wrong, and she grasped the line of connection if she did not understand the issue; but, mindful of the doctrine of letting well alone—also of that of catching a heart at the rebound—she made no allusion in the beginning, but let her curiosity gnaw her like the Spartan boy's fox without making a sign. At last, however, her curiosity became impatience, and her impatience conquered her reserve. She was clever in her generation and fairly self-controlled, but she was only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... mere dumb piece of boyish romance, that I had lacked penetration to divine. But the error serves the purpose of my argument; for I am sure, at least, that the heart of young Scotland will be always touched more nearly by paucity of number and Spartan poverty of life. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and in their opinion devotion to the common cause is the most sacred of duties. The character, thus formed, has two aspects. Seen on one side, it must be regarded by every well constituted mind with disapprobation. Seen on the other, it irresistibly extorts applause. The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what he well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration. To a superficial observer ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... head against the ground in rage and despair. Then, his legs being also tied, the man with the hissing red-hot iron in the form of a letter, brands him on the side with the token of his dependence on the lord of the soil. Some of the bulls stand this martyrdom with Spartan heroism and do not utter a cry; but others, when the iron enters their flesh, burst out into long bellowing roars, that seem to echo through the whole country. They are then loosened, get upon their legs again, and like so many branded Cains, are driven out into the country, to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Nativity and Resurrection of Christ, with a panel containing S. John the Baptist in the midst of certain other saints. The side-walls he painted in his own manner; one with figures of Fabius Maximus, Socrates, Numa Pompilius, F. Camillus, Pythagoras, Trajan, L. Sicinius, the Spartan Leonidas, Horatius Cocles, Fabius, Sempronius, the Athenian Pericles, and Cincinnatus. On the other wall he made the Prophets, Isaiah, Moses, Daniel, David, Jeremiah, and Solomon; and the Sibyls, the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... of Barker consisted of Stacy's lifting that young gentleman bodily from his bunk and standing him upright in the open doorway. But Barker was accustomed to this Spartan process, and after a moment's balancing with closed lids like an unwrapped mummy, he sat down in the doorway and began to dress. He at first demurred to their departure except all together—it was so unfraternal; but eventually he allowed himself to be persuaded out of it and into his clothes. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... more responsive to such cries since the war. That might have been foreseen by any one at all familiar with the psychopathology of reform. A cigarette addict who, in a spartan moment, swears off smoking, is familiar enough with the inner gnaw that robs him of his sleep and roils his dinner for days and days. His body, long habituated to the tobacco, had dutifully taken on the business of manufacturing its antidote. ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... philosopher, who alleges for proof an Olympic quoit, on which was preserved the inscription of Lycurgus's name. But others who, with Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, compute the time by the succession of the Spartan kings, place him much earlier than the first Olympiad. Timaeus, however, supposes that, as there were two Lycurguses in Sparta at different times, the actions of both are ascribed to one, on account of his particular renown; and that the more ancient of them lived ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Billy asked herself what now was to be done. For herself, turn whichever way she could, she could see nothing but unhappiness. She determined, therefore, with Spartan fortitude, that to no one else would she bring equal unhappiness. She would be silent. Bertram and Marie loved each other. That matter was settled. As to William—Billy thought of the story William had told her of his lonely life,—of the plea he ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Stephanopouli were of blood the emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina, and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was a man, Constantine Stephanopoulos, the grandfather of this Philopater, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... with a passionate devotion her late achieved unity. And German brutality, which is not the less brutality because Germans regard it as quite natural and right, has its origin in German history. The Prussian is a Spartan, a natural brute, but brutal to himself as well as to others, capable of extremes of self-denial and self-discipline. From the Prussians the softer and more emotional German peoples of the South received the gift of national unity, and they repaid the debt by extravagant ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... Dean Pellew tells us that numerous letters of this kind were written by this tutor to his pupil in after life, and adds with a ludicrous solemnity, "It will readily be imagined how efficacious they must have proved, in forming the character of the future statesman, and erecting Spartan and Roman virtues on the noble ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... seeking that same refuge they may destroy their own political freedom.(481) The Achean league, which under the leadership of Aratos, the "enemy of tyrants," had come into existence, promising so much hope, beheld itself later, and mainly through fear of the contagious effects of Spartan socialism under Cleomenes, compelled to unite with the Macedonians, that is, to give ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... and always," Mat replied, and then because she had a Spartan spirit, she added: "But let's don't say any more that way. Let's think of what you are going to see—the plains, the Santa Fe Trail, the mountains, and maybe bad Indians. And even old Santa Fe town itself. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... as no man but himself ever had, of sustaining the illusion of an awful or solemn narrative through a long poem, to be closed in a catastrophe that is at once unexpected and ludicrous. The mystification is complete; the secret of the issue is never betrayed; suspense is maintained with Spartan reticence; curiosity is excited progressively to its utmost tension; and the surprise at the end is oftentimes electric. "A Storm at Hastings" and "The Demon Ship" are of this class. But sometimes the terrible so prevails as to overpower the ludicrous, or rather, it becomes more terrible ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... already reasoned out, and some of it he reasoned out later. In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation except when he went to see Ruth, and living like a Spartan. He paid two dollars and a half a month rent for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... obliged to yield, and Louis XVI. exclaimed, 'There are then no fathers in that chamber of the Third Estate.' The chamber very much applauded this trait of brutal insensibility in Bailly, which they termed a trait of Spartan stoicism." ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... only one way by which the Per-sian army could go into Greece on that side, and that was by a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea. This pass was guarded by Le-on'i-das, the King of the Spartans, with three hundred Spartan soldiers. ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... digression we were on the point of discussing the four vitiated forms of the state, and the corresponding individual types. The four types of state as we know them in Hellas, are: the Spartan, where personal ambition and honour rule, which we call timocracy; the oligarchical, where wealth rules; the democratic; and the arbitrary rule of the individual, which we call tyranny. The comparison of this last—the supremely unjust—with our own—the supremely just—will show whether justice ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... should know? It was easy to imagine their attitude of shocked disapproval, and her brother's disgusted repudiation of the whole business as a thing, most emphatically, which one did not do. Ah, no! it was not a departure such as this that a well-bred society Spartan could even decently contemplate! And it was almost with a laugh, devoid, indeed, of merriment, that Eve tossed consideration of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... a live coal upon the wrist of his young guest and quietly watched. There was no flinching. The coal burned itself out upon the motionless wrist of a Spartan. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the mansion, and passing through several splendid apartments, at length reached a large and magnificent saloon. It was hung with tapestry, upon which were represented the figures of Sappho sweeping the lyre; of the Spartan mother bending over the body, and counting the wounds of her son; of Penelope in the midst of her maidens, carefully unravelling the funeral web of her husband; of Lucretia inflicting upon herself a glorious and voluntary death; ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... readers are not already as much disgusted with Spartan Black Broth as Dionysius was {243} with the first mouthful, I beg leave to submit a few supplementary words to the copious indications of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... that the defeat of Waterloo was necessary for the liberty of Europe; but she not the less cherishes at the bottom of her heart a poignant grief and rage at having been marked out for a victim. On that plain where so many Spartan-like warriors fell for her sake—where the pyramid of the Prince of Orange, the tomb of Colonel Gordon, and the monument of the Hanoverians, serve as mementoes of the fight—no stone, or cross, or inscription recalls the name of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... drawing-rooms, or divans, he takes us through bedrooms and dressing-rooms furnished in Spartan simplicity, with the little iron bedsteads covered with bear-skins, and supplied with writing- tables and lamps, beside which repose the Bible, the Shakspeare, the Euclid, and the Breviary, which go with Captain and Mrs. Burton on all their wanderings. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... Your uncle would never have consented. But oh, Jock! I'm not a Spartan mother. My heart ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Thermopylae, and Xerxes sent scouts to ascertain what the Greeks were doing in their camp, the report was that some of them were engaged in gymnastics and warlike exercises, while others were merely sitting and combing their long hair. If the hypothesis already suggested is correct, the Spartan youths so engaged were perhaps not merely adorning themselves for death, but, as they thought, obtaining their full strength for battle. "The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... in fact, was a profound admirer and faint umbra of the Attorney-General, in whose professional sunshine he basked, and at whose feet he may in an intellectual sense be said to have grovelled. Even the most Spartan of Crown prosecutors could hardly be expected to do his utmost to secure a conviction under such circumstances; and Attorney-General Robinson had nothing of the Spartan in his composition where the interests of his friends ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... I DAS, the celebrated Spartan leader who, with three hundred men, perished in the effort to resist the Persian hosts, at the mountain ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... And in effect, the Spartan boy with the fox gnawing into his side, did not acquit himself more heroically than my friend. The case was a clear one, no doubt, but Tom made a noble speech, and was highly complimented by the Judge upon his ability. No sooner, however, had he finished it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Greece, Lacedaemon, considering that Lycurgus their lawgiver was so addicted to elegant learning, as to have been the first that brought out of Ionia the scattered works of Homer, and sent the poet Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law and civility, it is to be wondered how museless and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... has written about Mrs. Adams might possibly be applicable to many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and noble service: "Mrs. Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital. Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one's country. She read and talked to them of the world's history.... Every night, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... shaken in his allegiance to the chief, by recollecting the effect produced on his valour by a single glance from the instrument of law. He had not yet lived long enough to be aware that men are sometimes the Representatives of Things; that what the scytale was to the Spartan hero, a sheriff's writ often is to a Waterloo medallist: that a Bow Street runner will enter the foulest den where Murder sits with his fellows, and pick out his prey with the beck of his forefinger. That, in short, the thing called ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... indeed, how many of them ever got back to their Spartan or Athenian homes, for we know that most of them could not make up their minds to live quiet lives of peace again; but preferred fighting in behalf of the independence of the Ionian cities which Greece had planted on the coast of ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... quickly away by one independent impulse, and set a bad example. Apparently neither of them had calculated on this paltry little detail; they were game for theoretical departures; to impalpable universities: and "an air-drawn Bus, a Bus of the mind," would not have dejected for a moment their lofty Spartan souls on glory bent; safe glory. But here was a Bus of wood, and Edward going bodily away inside it. The victim kissed them, threw up his portmanteau and bag, and departed serene as Italian skies; the victors watched the pitiless Bus quite out of sight; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... use of leisure in future years, and though burdened with little knowledge, possessed of an educated sense of beauty, and an ingrained love of what is noble and hatred of all that is the reverse. He would be more cultivated and human than the best type of young Spartan, more physically vigorous and reverential, though less intellectually developed, than the best type of young Athenian—a nascent soldier and servant of the state, not, like most young Athenians of ability, a nascent orator. And as he would be only half way through ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... born about 1820 near the forks of the Platte River. He was one of a family of nine children whose father, an able and respected warrior, reared his son under the old Spartan regime. The young Red Cloud is said to have been a fine horseman, able to swim across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, of high bearing and unquestionable courage, yet invariably gentle and ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... futilities," Morrison's cameo of small-talk carried to the upper hall. "What could they add to such a Spartan lustration?" ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... her own brain, she had respectable authority for the idea, and she trusted to its prompter to participate in her indignation, argue Ulick out of so poor a match, and at least put a decided veto upon Sophy's Spartan magnanimity— Sophy's health and feelings being the subject, she sometimes thought, which concerned him ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from out thy heart A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three To ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... rapidity, too; for when soldiers are being mowed down like oats, it is a glorious time for such of them as keep their feet. Raynal mounted fast, and used to write to his mother, and joke her about the army being such a bad profession; and, as he was all for glory, not money, he lived with Spartan frugality, and saved half his pay and all his prize money for the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... selling them again, increasing it sometimes, sometimes diminishing it, and always running the risk of losing every penny of it in a day's disaster. But although she wondered, she could not help loving him the better for his odd combination of Spartan self-control and what appeared to her romantic and childish folly. Ralph interested her more than any one else in the world, and she often broke off in the middle of one of these economic discussions, in spite of their gravity, to ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... and concealed. Inserted between his nether and outer shirts were two gilt "Directions to Travelers" which clung like mustard plasters to his back, while a jagged tin sign, wrenched from the home terminal, embraced his stomach with the painful tenacity of the historic Spartan fox. In his pockets were objects—small objects but precious and ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... bad, after all," said he, drenching his tasteless mouthful of half-cold meat with champagne. "The truth is, that Clubs spoil us. This is Spartan fare. Come, drink with me, my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of earth and sea, who sailed upon the mainland, and walked upon the deep—him did Spartan valour hold back, with just three hundred spears. Shame on you, ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that the Japanese women, who were only yesterday altogether Oriental in habits and ideals, have produced a race of strong men, so far as physical daring and hardihood is concerned. The influence of women on these men ceased with childhood—even then it was a Spartan influence. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... standing on the summit his jaded heart revived, and "obtained a wider horizon of feeling." Thoreau, too, went to the woods because he wanted to live deliberately, and front only the essential facts of life. "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... "is the house of the Akitcita, our soldiers and policemen, the men between twenty and forty, the warriors of the first rank, who live here in common, and into whose house women and children may not enter. I have read in the books at your schools how the Spartan young men lived together as soldiers in a common house, eating rough food and doing the severest duty, and the whole world has long applauded. The Sioux, who never heard of the Spartans, have been doing the same far back ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... a glance of admiring solicitude, such as a Spartan mother might have bestowed upon her fighting offspring, and kicked open the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... might have learnt even to taste some humour in his situation. Thanks to Mr. Jope and Mr. Adams, who had taken a genuine fancy to him, he found life on board the Vesuvius cheerful if not comfortable. The fare was Spartan, indeed, but, for a short holiday, tolerable. The prospect of seeing some real fighting excited him pleasurably, for he was no coward. Here, before his eyes, lay the coast of France; the actual forts and guns with which his imagination had so often played. What a tale he would ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... holy persons found great favour in Umbrian palaces and convents. Thenceforward he painted but little else; and when, in the Sala del Cambio, he was obliged to treat the representative heroes of Greek and Roman story, he adopted the same manner[220]. Leonidas, the lionhearted Spartan, and Cato, the austere Roman, who preferred liberty to life, bend their mild heads like flowers in Perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy. Jove is a reproduction ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... you I will be as Spartan as I can," agreed Tricotrin. "Now I have lost my place in the masterpiece. Ah, here we are! 'I feel she brings bad tidings—she wears a disastrous mien.' It is sprightly dialogue! If the hundred and fifty francs were not essential ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... man just at this time in Greece was Agesilaus, one of the kings of Sparta. He was small, weakly, and lame, but full of courage, and an excellent general; and though he was as plain and hardy as suited with Spartan discipline, he had a warm, kind, tender heart, and was not ashamed to show it, as some of the Spartans were. So that, when some ambassadors came to see him, they found him riding on a stick to please his children; and again, when a trial of a distinguished man was going on ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for war, and at length was able to intimate to the Spartans that there were good hopes of coming to terms. They willingly believed him because of his high character for probity, and more especially because he had shown great kindness to the Spartan prisoners taken at Pylos. A truce for one year had already been arranged between them, and during this they conversed freely with one another, and, enjoying a life of leisure and freedom from the restraints and alarms of war, began to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... English, and the others laugh and talk incessantly. My inkstand, pen, and small handwriting amuse them very much. Miss K., the typical American travelling lady, who is encountered everywhere from the Andes to the Pyramids, tireless, with an indomitable energy, Spartan endurance, and a genius for attaining everything, and myself, a limp, ragged, shoeless wretch, complete the group, and our heaps of saddles, blankets, spurs, and gear tell of real travelling, past and future. It is a most picturesque ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... duty without gratefully acknowledging the respect we entertain for those who have defended our cause with more than Spartan courage. It is the opinion of your committee, that they are to be respected as our countrymen, our brethren, and our fellow citizens—not to say they are to be applauded as men, whose great acts are based upon the acclamation ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... his sov'reign's toil the vet'ren shar'd, His lovely child the fost'ring graces rear'd. D'Etree (that name the favour'd mortal bore), 165 Of ev'ry, charm exhausted Nature's store. Not on Eurota's bank, so beauteous shone The faithless partner of the Spartan throne; Not she who conquer'd, whom the world obey'd, On Cydnus when in pomp of charms array'd, 170 Mortals deceiv'd, in awful rapture gaz'd, And incense to the present goddess blaz'd. Scarce had she gain'd ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... To be Tyrio conspectus in ostro, seemed, in the estimation of the Mantuan poet, essential to his due appearance in honour of Augustus, Geor. 3—17. But several other places in the Mediterranean afforded this precious article. Thus Horace speaks of Spartan purple, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... their tine and skipped.' 'Fine?' asks Mart, 'fine? I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I, 'it amounts to the same thing; she can't pay her fine, and that damn reform judge, wanting to make a record as a Spartan, has committed her to jail till it is paid!' 'So they go free, and she goes to jail, because she is poor,' says Mart.' That's what your reform means,' says I, 'or I let her and the boy loose and lose ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... gather, to see them off. Two-and-Two's folks, a solid, chunky couple, looking grave. David Lester's mother, of course, seeming younger than the Bunch remembered her. Make-up brought back some of her good-looks. She was more Spartan than ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... not wait for the order to be repeated; she returned to her room, wrote an answer to Malicorne, and slipped it under the carpet. The answer simply said: "She is going." A Spartan could not have ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... intention with which our American Manhood took up its burden, led us nationally unto those heights of moral perspective and spiritual vision known only to him who toils upon the hill of Sacrifice. No Spartan of Athenian fields, no Regulus of Rome or Nathan Hale, was nobler, higher motived or less afraid than our ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... The public eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks, to find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in store for them. If they have deliberately sought martyrdom, as some critics have been unkind enough to suggest, they have it now. And if their campaign, in the opinion of perhaps the great majority of the public, has been ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population, living in the most Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such being my conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may very readily infer how palpably I must have ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... them, and their goal in safety reached, To dare a second voyage. Round the stag Thus will the cunning hunter draw a line Of tainted feathers poisoning the air; Or spread the mesh, and muzzle in his grasp The straining jaws of the Molossian hound, And leash the Spartan pack; nor is the brake Trusted to any dog but such as tracks The scent with lowered nostrils, and refrains From giving tongue the while; content to mark By shaking leash the covert ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... I replied, with Spartan firmness. And then, on a sudden impulse: 'Don't you think we've both been rather mistaken, Mabel? I've been silly and presumptuous, because, of course, I'm nobody—just a penniless newspaper reporter. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... a nearby city where they are not known and giving themselves over to the dubious delights of a spree. Publication of this fact alone would prove sufficient to injure Lawrence socially and in the commercial world. The old case of the Spartan lad—Carroll reflected. The disgrace lay in ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... have lost a great man, whose foot was rarely out of his stirrup, and whose clear head guided a bold hand. He carried common-sense to its perfection, and he made the straight path the sublimest. His words were few, his actions were many. He was the Spartan of Tobymen, and laconism was the short soul of his ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the night arrived from which my future life was to be reckoned. I was dressed and sent out to conquer, with a heart beating like that of an old knight-errant at his first sally. Scholars have told me of a Spartan matron, who, when she armed her son for battle, bade him bring back his shield, or be brought upon it. My venerable parent dismissed me to a field, in her opinion of equal glory, with a command to shew that I was her daughter, and not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... workers in iron, which is their wealth. Their money is composed of Ikia, dwarf bars shaped like horse-fleams, a coinage familiar to old travellers in West Africa, and of this Spartan currency a bundle of ten represents sixpence. "White man's Ikia" would be silver, for which the more advanced Mpongwe have corrupted the English to "solove." An idea exists on the Lower River that our hardware is broken up for the purpose of being made into spear-heads and other weapons. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... morning session he had raised his hand to announce stolidly to his long-suffering teacher, "I can't think of no subjeck"; and at last Miss Margaret had relaxed her Spartan resolution to make him do his own thinking and had helped ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... even that of the central three hundred years. I will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VII.) roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon; it is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that we cannot know, is itself of the greatest ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... scented toilet futilities," Morrison's cameo of small-talk carried to the upper hall. "What could they add to such a Spartan lustration?" ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... bath into which he had been thrown like a Spartan babe by his first contact with church sociability. His, as a new creature, was a vigorous constitution, and was destined to out-live many a shock incident to the earthly career of a heaven-born man. Both he and Winifred returned ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... headmen manage their rogueries with so much ingenuity that charges can very seldom be proved against them. They send out their apprentices, under particular instructions, to commit robberies, and, like the Spartan youths, they consider the most expert thief to be the cleverest fellow: should any of these young men be caught, they are left to get out of the scrape in the best manner they are able, for unless it be to swear falsely to an alibi, or some other evasion of truth, their ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... declamation about the Lacedaemonians by saying, most concisely, correctly and happily, that the Lacedaemonian commonwealth really was a standing army which threatened all the rest of Greece. In fact, the Spartan had no calling except war. Of arts, sciences and letters he was ignorant. The labour of the spade and of the loom, and the petty gains of trade, he contemptuously abandoned to men of a lower caste. His whole existence from childhood to old age was one long ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a harem. Retaining to the last their disdain of all without the Persian pale; deeming themselves still "the most excellent of mankind;" [49] this people, the nobility of the East, with the arrogance of the Spartan, contracting the vices of the Helot, rapidly decayed from all their national and ancient virtues beneath that seraglio-rule of janizaries and harlots, in which, from first to last, have merged the melancholy destinies of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I glanced upward from my manuscript, and mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I believe ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... by seeking that same refuge they may destroy their own political freedom.(481) The Achean league, which under the leadership of Aratos, the "enemy of tyrants," had come into existence, promising so much hope, beheld itself later, and mainly through fear of the contagious effects of Spartan socialism under Cleomenes, compelled to unite with the Macedonians, that is, to give themselves up ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... performs purificatory ceremonies every morning? And does he not bathe after leaving your presence before he eats? If you pass by the clean place where he is about to cook his food in the morning, you will see a large pot of water on the fire. When this gets warm—for Rama is not a Spartan—he will stand on a smooth stone, as sparingly clad as it is possible to be, and pour the water on his head, polishing himself vigorously as it runs down his limbs; then, after dressing his long hair and tying it in a knot on the top of his head, he will sit down to eat, in a place by himself, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... against the luxury of the young men of the military school. After a little he turned the conversation on Mania, and the present education of the young Maniotes, drawing a comparison between it and the ancient Spartan system of education. His observations on this head be told me he intended to embody in a memorial to be presented to the Minister of War. All this, depend upon it, will bring him under the displeasure of his comrades; and it will be lucky if he escape being run through.' ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to make them feel that we will not patronize them in business relations; in short, that we will hold no communion with them whatever, except it may be to reform them as fallen brethren. As the Spartan mothers of old, as the mothers of the Revolution, did not shrink from whatever of trial, of sacrifice, and of toil was theirs to endure, so may we of the XIXth century, the mothers of the soldiers of freedom, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... haven't come to-day to show how England feels; The hours go lame and languidly between our Spartan meals; We've written letters till we're tired, with not a thing to tell Except that nothing's doing, weather beastly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... found, when the battle of Lexington summoned them to common counsels, by the side of WARREN; a man who lived to serve his country at home and abroad, and to die in the second place in the government. There, too, is the inflexible, the upright, the Spartan character, ROBERT TREAT PAINE. He also lived to serve his country through the struggle, and then withdrew from her councils, only that he might give his labors and his life to his native State, in another relation. These names, fellow-citizens, are the treasures of the Commonwealth; and they ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... fiercely forbidding her to mention it to any one, and dashed into the games with a Spartan disregard of her pain. It was the only way to keep from crying, and she played recklessly on at "prisoner's base," not stopping even when a pointed stick snagged one shoe and a ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... why speak of Timaeus, when even men like Xenophon and Plato—the very demi-gods of literature—though they had sat at the feet of Socrates, sometimes forgot themselves in the pursuit of such paltry conceits. The former, in his account of the Spartan Polity, has these words: "Their voice you would no more hear than if they were of marble, their gaze is as immovable as if they were cast in bronze; you would deem them more modest than the very maidens ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... Parash, with conscientious soundness of judgment, had ordered her removal for a prolonged sojourn to city life in Toronto; a course which, in spite of heartbroken appeal on the girl's part, her mother insisted upon carrying out with Spartan-like resolution. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... in harmony with the rooms and furniture, consisting only of the strict necessities, cooked with a Spartan disregard for such sybarite foibles as seasoning or dressing. I believe there was a substantial meal somewhere in the early morning hours, but I never succeeded in getting down in time to inspect it. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... descriptions, but which she had never seen. Then her eyes flooded and, with a sense of revelation, she forgave him every frailty and fault—even the isolated horror of longing she had been carrying in her heart. So sensitive a soul as his could not have been expected to stand out Spartan-bold against the voluptuary blandishments of such surroundings—and such a life. He looked at her for a long while and once, unseen by her, he put out his arms, but caught them back again with a swift gesture and shook his head. Now he knew in all bitterness what Loraine Haswell and his own cowardice ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Sweden burst in upon the scene, like a meteor amidst the stars of midnight. A more bloody apparition never emerged from the sulphureous canopy of war. Having perfect contempt for all enervating pleasures, with an iron frame and the abstemious habits of a Spartan, he rushed through a career which has excited the wonder of the world. He joined the Austrian party; struck down Denmark at a blow; penetrated Russia in mid-winter, driving the Russian troops before him as dogs scatter wolves; ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Lacedemonians.—In the 12th chapter of the 1st Book of Maccabees the letter of Jonathan, the High Priest, to the Lacedemonians is given, in which he claims their amity. This is followed by a letter of Arcus, the Spartan king, in answer, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... and a tremor ran through him; but he did not speak a word; and, with Spartan fortitude, suppressed all outward sign of emotion. He laid the paper down patiently, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... not, however, have dreaded the news for after careful examination the eminent specialist had decided to take a single desperate chance and operate with the hope of success. Laurie, they were told, was a monument of courage and had the spirit of a Spartan. Unquestionably he merited the good luck that followed for fortune did reward his heroism,—smiling fortune. Of course, the miracle of health could not come all in a moment; months of convalescence must follow which would be unavoidably tedious with suffering. But beyond this ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... good classical education, while Gabrielle could supply the feminine influence which was so essential to real refinement. She was not only tired of tutors—their equivocal social status was so tiresome!—but sufficiently Spartan to feel that her sons would be better away from home for a little while. Away, but not too far away. Gabrielle had thought it would be rather fun to have a couple of boys, even dull boys like the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... rest of that week, and through New Year's Day, Lloyd managed to keep her resolution bravely. Even when the time came for the girls to go back to school without her, she went through the farewells like a little Spartan, driving down to the station with tearful Betty, who grieved over Lloyd's disappointment as if it ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... if she did not understand the issue; but, mindful of the doctrine of letting well alone—also of that of catching a heart at the rebound—she made no allusion in the beginning, but let her curiosity gnaw her like the Spartan boy's fox without making a sign. At last, however, her curiosity became impatience, and her impatience conquered her reserve. She was clever in her generation and fairly self-controlled, but she was only a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... dear Cairn? Every man has within him something of the Sybarite. Why crush a propensity so delightful? The Spartan philosophy is palpably absurd; it is that of one who finds himself in a garden filled with roses and who holds his nostrils; who perceives there shady bowers, but chooses to burn in the sun; who, ignoring the choice fruits which tempt his hand and court his palate, stoops to pluck bitter herbs ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... not a reproach. To see her so quietly resigned, you would have supposed that she had been both chamber-maid and cook all her life, that is if you never tasted her dishes! I shall always remember her first dinner. O, the Spartan broth of that day! She must have gotten the receipt from "The Good ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... after the Spartan model, at a great public table. There is no union of the sexes, and every Shaker, male and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. Rumour has been busy upon this theme, but here again I must refer to the lady ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... ate the latter as if it were a peculiarly distasteful medicine in the solid—the girl tidied the room. It was the only really well-furnished room in the cottage; Nell's little chamber in the roof was as plain as Marguerite's in "Faust," and Dick's was Spartan in its Character; but a Wolfer—Mrs. Lorton was a distant, a very distant connection by a remote marriage of the noble family of that name—cannot live without a certain amount of luxury, and, as there ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the value of this Spartan discipline,—the inestimable value of being for once in his life brought down to hard- pan and the plain necessities of life. The juice of wormwood is bitter, but it is also strengthening. On July 3, 1839, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... they should have been already disturbed by conspiracy; and even should affairs outside be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and has lived as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist every attack, as I said Nabis the Spartan did. ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... my uncle when I was home last, but he wrote to me twice—stern, military-toned letters, each of which was quite a despatch in itself. In these he laid down the law to me, giving me the best of advice, but it was all very Spartan-like. He insisted above all things upon my recollecting that I was to be a soldier, and that a soldier was always a gentleman and a man of honour, and each time he finished ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... that famous one of Icarus himself, tumbling down headlong from the near neighbourhood of the sun, was not a greater. Battered, bruised, sore and aching all over, poor Leander, crestfallen and forlorn, limping painfully, and suppressing his groans with Spartan resolution, crept slowly back to his own room; but so overweening as his self-conceit that he never even suspected that a trick had been played upon him. He said to himself that without doubt Mme. la Marquise had ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... ever thought your due; And your opponent often will revoke, That you for better luck may have a cloak: If you've a friend o'er head and ears in debt: At once, to help him numbers you can get. You fancy these your rind regales and cheers She's better for it; more beautiful appears; The Spartan king, in Helen found new charms, When he'd ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... thinking, that the story which attributes the preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a version of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its historical probability must be measured by that of many others relating to the Spartan Confucius. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... The short of it, at any rate. You speak like a Spartan. You come to the point at once. But why do you come to me? I have no control over the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the housekeeper of Sigmundskron, was busy with the preparations for the christening. A year of uninterrupted prosperity had made her a trifle more sleek than before, and though she still affected a Spartan simplicity of dress, her frock was made of better materials than formerly, and her cap was adorned with ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... vigorously, and no longer vexed her mother's soul by her drooping looks of uncomplaining discontent,—that silent protest of many, that is so irritating to the home-rule. True, it might be only the quiescence of despair, but at least she veiled it decently under a show of Spartan cheerfulness. The fox of bitterness might gnaw, but she drew the mantle of her pride closer round her. She might suffer and pine, like a caged lark in her narrow cage, but at least no one, not even Archie, and least of all her ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... mother and sisters, she could not afford to live as the other lady agents did. She had to economise in every direction, and took to subsisting wholly on native food. It was in this way she acquired those simple, Spartan-like habits which accompanied her through life. Her colleagues attributed her desire for isolation and native ways to natural inclination, not dreaming that they were a matter of compulsion, for she was too loyal to her home and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... room and sat down to the banquet. Heavens! what a feast! There were omelettes and geese and eels and duck and tripe and onion soup and sausages and succulences inconceivable. Accustomed to the Spartan fare of vagabondage I plunged into the dishes head foremost like a hungry puppy. Should I eat such a meal as that to-day it would be my death. Hey for the light heart and elastic stomach of youth! Some fifty persons, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... glanced at the boy, and then looked quickly away. "You are a strange lad, my little Spartan," said he. "I don't think I ever knew a boy quite ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... you will have an opportunity to become more intimately acquainted with the mysteries of the culinary art," observed Mr. Everidge cheerfully. "It will be a splendid chance to evolve that finest of character combinations, Spartan endurance ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... of the Spartans on the island of Sphacteria was a surprise to friend and foe alike; and the severe historian of the Peloponnesian war pauses to record the answer of a Spartan to the jeering question of one of the allies of the Athenians,—a question which implied that the only brave Spartans were those who had been slain. The answer was tipped with Spartan wit; the only thing Spartan, as some ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Weeping ever, weeping low, On the holy mount of Ida, Where the pine and cypress grow. In the self-same hour Cassandra Shrieked her prophecy of woe, And into the Spartan dwelling Did ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Broth, and one more classic than any black broth ever supped by Spartan; more pregnant of Fate than the hell-broth compounded by Macbeth's witches; broth in which was brewed the destiny of a great nation, broth but for whose brewing I certainly, and you, if you be of Pilgrim strain, had never been, for in its seething ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... I faint; and my limbs fail me.—O daughter, touch thy mother, stretch forth thy hand—give it me—leave me not childless—I am lost, my friends. Would that I might see the Spartan Helen, the sister of the twin sons of Jove, thus, for through her bright eyes that most vile woman ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... time Zola's life had been a steady struggle against poverty. He was terribly in earnest, and was determined to create for himself a place in literature; to accomplish this end he counted no labour too arduous, no sacrifice too great. His habits were Spartan in their simplicity; he was a slave to work and method, good equipment for the vast task he was next to undertake. He had long been an earnest student of Balzac, and there is no doubt that it was the example of the great ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... As to the Spartan women, Aristotle says that they ruled their husbands and owned two-fifths of the land. Surely, had they not approved of infanticide for some very strong reasons of their own, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... at expression. Chilling at times. Good in a lawyer, no doubt. You get the idea of large reserves. But perhaps as a—well, as a father, for instance— That bright boy of theirs now. You may have noticed how little there is between them. What do you think of the Spartan parent—in these days?" ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... heart Billy asked herself what now was to be done. For herself, turn whichever way she could, she could see nothing but unhappiness. She determined, therefore, with Spartan fortitude, that to no one else would she bring equal unhappiness. She would be silent. Bertram and Marie loved each other. That matter was settled. As to William—Billy thought of the story William had told her of his lonely life,—of ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... the living-quarters of the crew, kept spotlessly clean and tidy, yet Spartan-like in their simplicity. Two of the men were sound asleep in their bunks. Three more, who were playing cards at a plain deal table, glanced up from their game as the British lads passed by; but their interest was of brief duration, and stolidly ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... Sparta was that shortsighted policy which prevented the nobles from recruiting their ranks by the admission of new families. The system again of secret justice, the espionage, and the calculated terrorism, by means of which both the Spartan Ephoralty and the Venetian Council imposed their will upon the citizens, were stifling to the free life of a republic.[3] Venice in the end became demoralized in politics and profligate in private ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... from the capital, cultivating land which but for their efforts would have been abandoned as worthless, every man was a land-owner in a small degree, and the patrimony of Millet sufficed for a numerous family of which he was the eldest son. Sufficed, that is, for a Spartan subsistence, made up of unrelaxing toil, with few or no comforts, save those of a spiritual nature which came in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... Spanish-American War Sebastopol, siege of Seeley, Sir J. R. Seymour, Lord Henry Ships for the navy, question of size of; for supply Sismondi, quoted Sluys, battle of Smith, Sir Sydney Spanish Armada, defeat of the; Records of; Queen Elizabeth and the —— American War Spanish Indies —— Navy Spartan Army Stirling, Sir James Stores, reserve of ship's Strategy (seeunder Naval Strategy) Stuart, General J. E. B. Suffren, Admiral Supply and communications of a fleet Supply ships, ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; and when the women are concerned in a public protest the men are—oh, so mere! And the men in khaki were no exception to the rule; they ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... I look upon this as the first glorious achievement of the Spartan. By displaying the perjury of Tissaphernes he robbed him of his credit with all the world; by the exhibition of himself in contrast as a man who ratified his oath and would not gainsay an article of his agreement, he gave all men, Hellenes ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Athenians above, esteemed themselves of the serpent race. The Lacedaemonians likewise referred themselves to the same original. Their city is said of old to have swarmed with [509]serpents. The same is said of the city Amyclae in Italy, which was of Spartan original. They came hither in such abundance, that it was abandoned by the [510]inhabitants. Argos was infested in the same manner, till Apis came from Egypt, and settled in that city. He was a prophet, the reputed son of Apollo, and a person of great skill and sagacity. To him they attributed ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... Attica, but to fortify their isthmus, so that the Athenians had no choice but either to submit or to evacuate Athens, removing their families and their goods to Troezen or Aegina or Salamis. In the fleet, their contingent was by far the largest and best, but the commanding admiral was the Spartan Eurybiades. Then the Persians, passing through Boeotia, but, being dispersed before Delphi by thunderbolts and other portents, took possession of Athens, after a fierce fight with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... fashionable dress of a Parisian elegante, see Seneca on the transparent vestments of the Roman ladies, who, like these modern belles, were generous in the display of their charms to the public. No doubt these French republicanists act upon the true Spartan principle of modesty: they take the most efficacious method to prevent their influence from being too great over the imaginations of men, by renouncing all that insidious reserve which alone can render even ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... architecture, look at Carlyle's account of Henry the Fowler, [1] and of his building military towns, or burgs, to protect his peasantry. In such function you have the first and proper idea of a walled town,—a place into which the pacific country people can retire for safety, as the Athenians in the Spartan war. Your fortress of this kind is a religious and civil fortress, or burg, defended by burgers, trained to defensive war. Keep always this idea of the proper nature of a fortified city:—Its walls mean protection,—its gates hospitality and ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... the false swain was hurrying o'er the deep His Spartan hostess in the Idaean bark, Old Nereus laid the unwilling winds asleep, That all to Fate might hark, Speaking through him:—"Home in ill hour you take A prize whom Greece shall claim with troops untold, Leagued by an oath your marriage ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... punch, when the Doctor is the god from the machine. There is no doctor on the stage in the original Ghosts. But there is a physician in the Doll's House, a scientific, quietly moving oracle, crisp, Spartan, sophisticated. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... should imagine himself another Leonidas, and us his Spartan band, and want us to die around him, and start another Thermopylae down her in the mountains, some place," suggested Kent Edwards, "you would cheerfully pass in your checks along with the rest, so as to make the thing ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... handsomer day by day. She was shedding awkwardness without any loss of that subacid sincerity that was her charm. Connie, as much as she dared, took her dressing in hand. She was never allowed to give a thing; but Annette's fingers were quick and clever, and Nora's Spartan garb was sometimes transformed by them under the orders of a coaxing or audacious Constance. The mere lifting of the load of care had let the young plant shoot. So that many persons passing Ewen Hooper's second daughter in the street would turn round now to look at her in surprise. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... women of a nation are badly educated, it must have a great effect on the education of their sons, and the conduct of their husbands. The Spartan and Roman mothers had the glory of making [end of page 100] their sons esteem bravery, and those qualities in a man that were most wanted in their state of society. It should be one part of female education to know and admire the qualities that are ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... Akitcita, our soldiers and policemen, the men between twenty and forty, the warriors of the first rank, who live here in common, and into whose house women and children may not enter. I have read in the books at your schools how the Spartan young men lived together as soldiers in a common house, eating rough food and doing the severest duty, and the whole world has long applauded. The Sioux, who never heard of the Spartans, have been doing the same far back into ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... possibility of material gain accruing; but for all that, deeds which for their sheer daring will ring for ever in the ears of men; of which the bare memory is an inspiration; whereof the fame in their own day roused the emulous courage of every Spartan and of every Englishman, making them ready to face any odds, and chilling the blood of their foes. Vain deeds, when we count the cost and the tangible gain—but very far from vain when we take into account ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... minds will have an answer to this. They will argue it is well that life should be Spartan and hard, because of the discipline and its strengthening effects on the character. But the good effects of this sort of discipline will be mixed with sad wreckage. And only creatures incapable of disciplining themselves could thus argue. It is an odd expedient to get yourself ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... leading question of Federal politics. Though Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, had recommended a recharter, the predominant sentiment of the Republican party was adverse to the measure. Van Buren shared in this hostility, and publicly lauded the "Spartan firmness" of George Clinton when as Vice-President he gave his casting vote in the United States Senate against the bank bill, February 20, 1811. In 1812 was elected to the senate of New York from the middle district ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... moved. With one cry of "Close the gates!" they declared for death, if so be that the gods were against them. The chief smiled and prepared for the defence. Some cried that the shore was crowded with enemies. Kaupepee replied, in Spartan phrase, "Our spears will be the less likely to miss." A messenger arrived offering terms if Hina were given up. The answer was, "She is here. Come and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known, should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality is so easily made and so difficult ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... creed of our fathers; old creed, did I say? Ever new creed; for what Time passes by, never grows old. This we would change to suit ourselves, fancying we have outgrown it; or thinking it, like the Spartan iron coin, too cumbersome for general circulation, we would change it for lighter, and as we think, more precious metal. We deem this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and noble service: "Mrs. Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital. Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one's ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... general Iphicrates was able to cut to pieces a "mora" (brigade) of Spartan hoplites, in 392 B.C., by skillful use of a force ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... by his late presenting an humble complaint against the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole, with a Post-script. This ran to a ninth edition. Near the same time too he wrote a Letter to Cleomenes King of Sparta, from E. Budgell, Esq; being an Answer Paragraph by Paragraph to his Spartan Majesty's Royal Epistle, published some time since in the Daily Courant, with some Account of the Manners and Government of the Antient Greeks and Romans, and Political Reflections thereon. And not long after there came out A State of one of the Author's Cases before the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... instantly to cool some cups of ardent Falernian in the passing stream? Who will tempt the vagrant wanton Lyde from her house? See that you bid her hasten with her ivory lyre, collecting her hair into a graceful knot, after the fashion of a Spartan maid. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... sight of his torture any longer, run to the officer and told him that he was in the service of Mr. —— a suspected man. The brave boy damned his sister for a blabbing b— for now said he the cause of Ireland is betrayed and ruined. Here are traits of Spartan virtues, that a modern British house of commons are past comprehending. A stronger proof of debasement cannot well be imagined in ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... fall as an artist came his simultaneous transformation from invited guest to parasite and hanger-on; he could not bring himself to quit dinners so excellently served for the Spartan broth of a two-franc ordinary. Alas! alas! a shudder ran through him at the mere thought of the great sacrifices which independence required him to make. He felt that he was capable of sinking to even lower depths for the sake of good living, if there were no other way of enjoying ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... my father, Mr. Genuine Bacon-Fat, appointed by me in my last will I give and bequeath: thirty measures of acorns; and to my mother, Mrs. Old-Timer Sow, appointed by me in my last will, I give and bequeath: forty measures of Spartan wheat; and to my sister, Cry-Baby, appointed by me in my last will, whose wedding, alas! I cannot attend, I give and bequeath: thirty measures of barley; and of my nobler parts and property I give and bequeath, to the cobbler: ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... confirmation of it, he alleges an inscription upon one of the copper quoits used in those sports, upon which the name of Lycurgus continued uneffaced to his time. But Eratosthenes and Apollodorus and other chronologers, computing the time by the successions of the Spartan kings, pretend to demonstrate that he was much more ancient than the institution of the Olympic games. Timaeus conjectures that there were two of this name, and in diverse times, but that the one ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... such Spartan discipline Would make an angel fret; They drew a lot, and WILLIAM shot ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... their unparalleled volubility, and their intolerable inquisitiveness—two evil habits hitherto unknown in those parts, or only known to be abhorred; for our ancestors were noted as being men of truly Spartan taciturnity, and who neither knew nor cared aught about anybody's concerns but their own. Many enormities were committed on the highways, where several unoffending burghers were brought to a stand, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... but going strong, and almost losing the Spartan habits engendered by my recent life ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... fortress, the stronghold of belligerent reformers, whence heresy sent forth its missionaries and promulgated subversive doctrines through the medium of an ever-active press. Transformed by Calvin from its earlier condition of a pleasure-loving and commercial city, it was now what Deceleia under Spartan discipline had been to Athens in the Peloponnesian war—a permanent epiteichismos, perpetually garrisoned and on guard to harry the flanks of Catholics. Faithful to the Roman See in a strict sense of the term, there remained only Spain, Portugal, and Italy. As the events ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... wretch—to love where he should not, to hazard the world's esteem, to grieve his wife, and to dishonour his name! And yet, I wonder, is he happier in his sinful indulgence than if he had played a Roman part, or, like the Spartan lad we read of, had let the wild-beast passion gnaw his heart out, and yet made no sign? To suffer and die, that is virtue, I take it, Mr. Evelyn; and you Christian sages assure us that virtue is happiness. A strange kind ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... placed the Macedonian monarchy in the hands of the Romans, was decided by a panic befalling the Macedonian cavalry after the phalanx had been broken. At Leuctra and at Mantinea, battles so fatal to the Spartan supremacy in Greece, the defeated armies suffered from panics. The decision at Pharsalia was in some measure owing to a panic occurring among the Pompeian cavalry; and at Thapsus, the panic terror that came upon the Pompeians gave to Caesar so easy a victory that it cost him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... comparative strangers about their duties with incredible insolence. The clergyman's life was made a burden to him, and the doctor's as well. Though he was the most luxurious and comfort-loving old wretch, his great text was the value of Spartan discipline for everyone else. If any dish was not exactly to his mind, he would allow no one to taste it, send it away, and complain bitterly that even his simple wants could not be supplied. Even when he got more ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... exertion necessitates meals at odd hours, silence and rest at impossible times of the day, a general Spartan behavior so utterly inconsistent with my nature, that if you were to give me a happy inch, I should take an ell, and frightfully disappoint you in public. I don't want to do that, if I can help it, and so I will be good in spite ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... mannish—driven to that extremity by the super-femininity of Henrietta Bryne-Stivers; pretending to be frivolous, to shock rigid Mrs. Pemberton; pretending to be a blue-stocking with a passion for the solid and heavy in literature; pretending to be a Spartan who must rise at dawn and, after a plunge in ice-cold mountain water, climb, with only big Don, the Newfoundland, for company, up to the sluice-box; there to pretend she was an esthete to whom the sunrise, while she communed ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... magnificent civilization exalted citizenship and the service of the state far beyond any modern attainment. The way of the youth today is tame, empty, and selfish as compared with the Spartan road to manhood and the Roman ceremonies attendant upon the assumption of the toga virilis. As a rule modern churches have too lightly regarded the profound significance of ancient confirmation services—Jewish, ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... the weapons of warriors and the courage of despair—fought side by side with the Indian braves in the effort to arrest Rutherford's progress and compass his defeat. More than forty frontiersmen fell beneath the deadly shots of this truly Spartan band before the final ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... pictures and altars—even going so far as to forbid the presence of her subjects at mass or in religious processions. "Her natural eloquence, the lightning flashes from her eyes, her reputation as a Spartan matron and an intractable Calvinist, all contributed to give her great influence with her party. The military leaders—Coligny, La Rochefoucauld, Rohan, La Noue—submitted their plans of campaign ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... memory they survive so long as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving—peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of time! To thee, Heaven, though severe, is not unkind. Heaven is kind, as a noble mother—as that Spartan mother, saying, as she gave her son his shield, 'with it, my son, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... compliment. Among the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in deeply graven letters the friendship and devotion to each other of Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes what ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... a weakling!" Halloran snapped. "You are a—sentimentalist. You lack my stern, uncompromising moral fiber. Like him? Pah! What has that to do with it? I have no weakness, no bowels of compassion. I am a Spartan. I am—" ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... was that I wore through the remaining hours of darkness upon the sodden hillside. Superlative Miss Gilchrist! Folded in the mantle of that Spartan dame; huddled upon a boulder, while the rain descended upon my bare head, and coursed down my nose, and filled my shoes, and insinuated a playful trickle down the ridge of my spine; I hugged the lacerating fox of self-reproach, and hugged ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me, the only thing to be done. But I had the courage to hold my tongue, to gnaw at my entrails like the Spartan boy. I wished to leave ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... buccaneer, lighting a Spartan cigar. "We're penned up; whoever has us cornered may now come round and knock us on the head ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... nerves upon which depends the mere animal courage is to be roused suddenly, in the depth of night, by a violent hand. The impulse of Gabriel, thus startled, was neither of timidity nor surprise. It was that of some Spartan boy not new to danger; with a slight cry and a fierce spring, the son's hand clutched at the father's throat. Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile, half in approval, half in irony, played by the moonlight ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... until they came to the promontory of Sunium, which forms the southeastern extremity of it. They doubled this cape, and then followed the southern shore of the peninsula until they arrived at the point opposite to Athens on that side. In the mean time, however, the Spartan troops which had been sent for to aid the Athenians in the contest, but which had not arrived in time to take part in the battle, reached the ground; and the indications which the Persians observed, from the decks of their galleys, that the country was thoroughly aroused, and was ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... quest of the Cave of Gold might mean—hardships, dangers, even death for those she loved. But she was of pioneer stock, had often seen her dearest go forth to face the dangers of the unknown wilderness; and, at last, with something of Spartan-like fortitude, ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... welcome the brave soldiery. A Spartan force, on its way to join the Athenians, arrived too late to take part in the battle, and they quietly returned home. As the news spread, loud and frantic rejoicings were heard throughout Greece, and the name of Persia, so long ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... bitter blow to add to all the rest, but Virgie, conscious of her own purity, bore it with Spartan-like heroism. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Irish lover. She was proud of her own subsequent conduct, and gave herself credit for coming out strongly as a noble-minded matron. "I believe she thinks," said Mrs. Mackinnon, "that her virtue is quite Spartan and unique; and if she remains in Rome she'll boast of it through the ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... there prevailed there an equal poverty; and the commons were less ambitious, because the offices of the State, which were held to their exclusion, were confined to a few; and because the nobles never by harsh treatment aroused in them any desire to usurp these offices. And this was due to the Spartan kings, who, being appointed to that dignity for life, and placed in the midst of this nobility, had no stronger support to their authority than in defending the people against injustice. Whence it resulted that as the people neither feared nor coveted the power which ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... constituted the general's entire fortune. Roland's departure on this adventurous expedition deeply afflicted the poor widow. The death of the father seemed to presage that of the son, and Madame de Montrevel, a sweet, gentle Creole, was far from possessing the stern virtues of a Spartan ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... can no' change our sentiments of the enemy, for they are far from indicating that any injustice will be done the prisoners. I'm sure that neither Master Cap nor myself has any cause of complaint since we have given ourselves up to Master Arrowhead, who reminds me of a Roman or a Spartan by his virtues and moderation; but ye'll be remembering that usages differ, and that our scalps may be lawful sacrifices to appease the manes of fallen foes, unless you save ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... contrary, so highly developed a Kultur nation as the German Empire puts itself in a position where it is almost impossible to acquire any considerable degree of culture. Culture is the enemy of such a state—it must remain in the Spartan or Macedonian stage. Rome began to decline as soon as Hellenistic culture got the ascendency over the old Latin Kultur. Kultur, in short, galvanizes; culture liberates. A survey of modern Germany hardly warrants a desire ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the day—the midnight, rather—when this same oak coffin, long before the death of the King made ready by his orders in the old Palace of Potsdam close at hand, at last received its burden, and was borne in Spartan simplicity to this place, the torch-lighted ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... distributed into three unequal bodies occupying various parts of the plain. Mardonius unhesitatingly seized his opportunity. He crossed the Asopos, ordered the Thebans to attack the Athenians, and with the bulk of his Asiatic troops charged the Spartan contingents. Here, as at Marathon, the superiority of equipment soon gave the Greeks the advantage: Mardonius was killed while leading the charge of the Persian guard, and, as is almost always the case among Orientals, his death decided the issue of the battle. The ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... from the dining-room by Joseph's apartment—a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on the threshold. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... was fain to say, If you had liv'd, Sir, Time enough to have been interpreter To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood. He adds, If of court-life you knew the good, You would leave loneness. I said, Not alone My loneness is, but Spartan's fashion, To teach by painting drunkards, doth not last Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste; No more can princes' courts, though there be few Better pictures of vice, teach me virtue. He, like to a high-stretch'd lute-string, ...
— English Satires • Various
... but on finding that there they would be overwhelmed by the host of the barbarians, they returned to the Corinthian isthmus. When Xerxes arrived in Pieria, the Greek fleet took its post near Artemisium on the north coast of Euboea, under the command of the Spartan admiral Eurybiades, under whom Themistocles condescended to serve in order not to cause new dissensions among the Greeks, although Athens alone furnished one hundred and twenty-seven ships, and supplied the Chalcidians with twenty others; while the Spartan contingent was incomparably smaller. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... not share the ideas of the Greeks in regard to modesty. While the youths of Achaia made no scruples of allowing their oil-anointed torsos to shine under the sun in the stadium, and while the Spartan virgins danced ungarmented before the altar of Diana, those of Persepolis, Ebactana, and Bactria, attaching more importance to chastity of the body than to chastity of mind, considered those liberties allowed to the pleasure of the eyes by Greek manner as impure and highly reprehensible, and held ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... found great favour in Umbrian palaces and convents. Thenceforward he painted but little else; and when, in the Sala del Cambio, he was obliged to treat the representative heroes of Greek and Roman story, he adopted the same manner[220]. Leonidas, the lionhearted Spartan, and Cato, the austere Roman, who preferred liberty to life, bend their mild heads like flowers in Perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy. Jove is a reproduction of the Eterno Padre, conceived as a benevolent old man for ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... with a grave nod of her head. Ever since the artillery had commenced to roar she had been watching eagerly for her son's return, but she was a Spartan mother, and concealed her gnawing anxiety under a cloak of brave silence. And then she remembered what was the object ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... recollecting the effect produced on his valour by a single glance from the instrument of law. He had not yet lived long enough to be aware that men are sometimes the Representatives of Things; that what the scytale was to the Spartan hero, a sheriff's writ often is to a Waterloo medallist: that a Bow Street runner will enter the foulest den where Murder sits with his fellows, and pick out his prey with the beck of his forefinger. That, in short, the thing called LAW, once made tangible and present, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... faculty of lying to a high point of efficiency, and no one who knows him will contend that he is inferior to the European in this respect. The natural education of the Natives include the art of lying as the education of Spartan boys included the practice of larceny. Lying, we know, develops the memory, for a good memory is essential to successful lying. Some of the ruses and stratagems thought out by Natives fleeing from the king's wrath or the witch doctor's doom, ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... this Spartan composition by the post, Geoffrey lit his pipe, and waited the event of the interview between Lord Holchester and his ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... all the arts of the card-table: a true Spartan girl; and had even courage, occasionally, to wrangle off a detection. Late hours (turning night into day, and day into night) were the almost unavoidable consequences of her frequent play. Her parents pleased themselves that their Sally had a charming constitution: ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... play the Spartan, I advise you. One may cry, but between the cries one always speaks ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... at all events, nakedness in women was not ridiculous, since the institutes of Lycurgus ordained that at solemn feasts and sacrifices the young women should dance naked and sing, the young men standing around in a circle to see and hear them. Aristotle says that in his time Spartan girls only wore a very slight garment. As described by Pausanias, and as shown by a statue in the Vatican, the ordinary tunic, which was the sole garment worn by women when running, left bare the right shoulder and breast, and only reached to the upper third of the thighs. (M.M. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... during his exile are to me very touching, though I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember the story of the Spartan boy who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. I think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public, before some herd of school-fellows, or a bench of masters, or amid the sternness of parental authority; but ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... than any other government which has yet been known in the world. Judging of them also by their fruits, they were of the highest order of republics. Sparta could scarcely be any other than a republic, when a Spartan matron could say to her son just marching to battle, "Return victorious, or ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... the same time take to thy house another wife in addition to this one, to bear thee children." When they spoke to him after this manner, Anaxandrides consented, having two wives, a thing which was not by any means after the Spartan fashion. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... this was at an end when Carthage and Macedon were overthrown. National danger and the necessity for national effort being removed, self-devotion failed, egotism broke loose, and began to revel in the pillage and oppression of a conquered world. The Roman character was corrupted, as the Spartan character was corrupted when Sparta, from being a camp in the midst of hostile Helots, became a dominant power and sent out governors to subject states; though the corruption in the case of Sparta was far more rapid, because Spartan excellence was more exclusively military, more formal and more ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... with a company of sixty-three white men and twenty Cape Indians, was advancing upon the enemy, was surrounded by about nine hundred Indians at a point on the Blackstone not far from William Blaxton's house. With true Spartan courage he and his little band resolved to sell their lives at a high price; so forming a circle back to back, they made a desperate resistance for two mortal hours, and after they had fallen it was found that about three hundred of their cruel captors had ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... said Chaumette. "It is a Spartan breakfast. If I had a root I would give you half."—[Lamartine's "History of the Girondists," edit. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... disease. He should get only just so much as is good for him. I have seen a physician examining a patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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