leones

Updated: June 25, 2025

At this Barton roused. "What's the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run straight! as the party wants him to run." "All right. Ad leones! Ferrier to the Lords. I'm agreeable. Only I don't know what Marsham will say to it."

Mrs. Humphry Ward - The Testing of Diana Mallory

But yet such things may call for as much heroism as braving a rack, and the spirit that shoots out the tongue may be as bad as the spirit that yelled, 'Christianos ad leones. The great reason why professing Christians now know so little about persecution is because there is so little real antagonism.

Alexander Maclaren - Expositions of Holy Scripture : Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St. Matthew Chapters I to VIII

Singularly enough the same idea found favour with European architects in the middle ages, who often made use of it in the porches of their Christian cathedrals. Hence, the old formula often found in judicial documents, sedente inter leones, sitting between the lions which, was used of episcopal judgments delivered in the church porch.

Charles Chipiez - A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria, v. 1

Nero, indeed, from his very love of cruelty, had taken pleasure in torturing them: but statesmen and philosophers, though at times perplexed and inconsistent, yet on the whole had despised them; and the superstition of priests and people, with their “Christianos ad leones,” had been the most formidable enemy of the faith.

John Henry Newman - Callista : a Tale of the Third Century