United States or Puerto Rico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He wore a loose morning gown of colored linen, and his bare feet were thrust carelessly into unmatched slippers. It was past noon already; nor, though his favorite freedman Thrasea had warned him several times of the lateness of the hour, had he shewn the least willingness to exert himself, so far even as to dress his hair, or put on attire befitting the business of the day.
"Who goes with me to hold the reins?" asked his master. "The boy Myron." "It is well. Fetch me a petasus, and lay the toga in the chariot. I may want it. Now, Thrasea, I rely on you! Remember—be prudent, sure, and silent."
Still, the care which he bestowed on examining the fastenings of the doors, and such windows as looked into the streets, the earnestness with which he inculcated watchful heed to the armed slaves of the household, and the positive manner in which he insisted on leaving Thrasea and a dozen of his own trustiest men to assist Hortensia’s people, did more to obliterate the hopes his own words would otherwise have excited, than the words themselves to excite them.
Pliny has preserved the names of several of this list Gratilla, wife of Rusticus, Arria, wife of Thrasea, Fannia, daughter of Thrasea and betrothed to Helvidius. Their husbands will be remembered as having been mentioned in 1 and 2. Carus Metius. An infamous informer, cf. Plin. Epist. 7, 19; Juv. 1, 35; Mart. 12, 25, 5. Censebatur. Was honored, ironice.
From my brother Severus, to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice; and through him I learned to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus; and from him I received the idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed; I learned from him also consistency and undeviating steadiness in my regard for philosophy; and a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hopes, and to believe that I am loved by my friends; and in him I observed no concealment of his opinions with respect to those whom he condemned, and that his friends had no need to conjecture what he wished or did not wish, but it was quite plain.
"Quick, then, quick, Thrasea, give me a reed and paper." And snatching the materials he wrote hastily: "Chance only, evil chance, most lovely Julia, and business of some weight, restrained me from you most unwilling yesterday. More I shall tell you when we meet—indeed all! for what can I wish to conceal from you, the better portion of my soul.
And I—I—Oh, ye gods! ye gods! that beheld it!" and he smote his brow heavily with his hand, and bit his lip, till the blood almost sprang beneath the pressure of his teeth; but recovering himself in a moment, he turned to Thrasea—"Who brought this billet? doth he wait?" "Phædon, Hortensia’s Greek boy, brought it, noble Paullus. He waits for your answer in the atrium."
On this dread sight Paul was still gazing in that motionless and painful silence, with which the boldest cannot fail to look upon the body of a fellow creature from which the immortal soul has been reluctantly and forcefully expelled, when a loud cry from Thrasea, who, having lagged a step or two behind, was later in discovering the corpse, aroused him from his melancholy stupor.
In fact, the Court was to Marcus a burden; he tells us himself that Philosophy was his mother, Empire only his stepmother; it was only his repose in the one that rendered even tolerable to him the burdens of the other. Emperor as he was, he thanked the gods for having enabled him to enter into the souls of a Thrasea, an Helvidius, a Cato, a Brutus.
The dying thanksgiving of Sidney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the bitterness of death was past.
Word Of The Day