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Ancient history   /ˈeɪntʃənt hˈɪstəri/   Listen
Ancient history

noun
1.
A history of the ancient world.
2.
Knowledge of some recent fact or event that has become so commonly known that it has lost its original pertinence.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ancient history" Quotes from Famous Books



... the limitations of Carlyle's critical power are exhibited in his second Series of Lectures, delivered in 1838, when (aet. 43) he had reached the maturity of his powers. The first three of these lectures, treating of Ancient History and Literature, bring into strong relief the speaker's inadequate view ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... and therefore there was less opportunity of dazzling and moulding him, which was a passion with Waldershare, that he soon quitted the Great Rebellion for pastures new, and impressed upon his pupil that all that had occurred before the French Revolution was ancient history. The French Revolution had introduced the cosmopolitan principle into human affairs instead of the national, and no public man could succeed who did not comprehend and acknowledge that truth. Waldershare lent Endymion books, and book with which otherwise he would not have become ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... learned German philologist, born at Marburg; became professor of Ancient History and Philology at Heidelberg; his chief work, and one by which he is most widely known, "Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Voelker, besonders der Griechen," "Symbolism and Mythology of Ancient Peoples, especially the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Monument de Ninive; Budge, Babylonian Life and History; Duncker, History of Antiquity; Layard, Nineveh and its Remains; Layard, Discoveries Among Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; Lenormant, Manual of the Ancient History of the East; Loftus, Travels in Chaldaea and Susiana; Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria; Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldaea and Assyria; Place, Ninive et l'Assyrie; Sayce, Assyria: Its Palaces, Priests, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... joke," said the colonel, restraining his displeasure. "But that's ancient history. Can we sit down over here in the shade and talk by ourselves for ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... have been invented—of which Paley's 'Horae Paulinae' is a memorable example. The diligent collation of the text, too, has removed many difficulties; the diligent study of the original languages of ancient history, manners and customs, has cleared up many more; and by supplying proof of accuracy where error of falsehood had been charged, has supplied important additions to the evidence which substantiates the truth of Revelation. Against the alleged absurdity ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... had shifted it, nothing could seem more natural than the habit which historians once had, of saying that the mighty career of Rome had ended, as it had begun, with a Romulus. Sometimes the date 476 was even set up as a great landmark dividing modern from ancient history. For those, however, who took such a view, it was impossible to see the events of the Middle Ages in their true relations to what went before and what came after. It was impossible to understand what went on in Italy in the sixth century, or ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... cordiality, the good wishes you have been pleased to bestow on me, and pray devoutly that we may both witness, and that shortly, the return of peace; for a more bloody, expensive, and eventful war is not recorded in modern, if to be found in ancient history." ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... questions of policy as well as questions of faith, both strongly agitated by the stormy years of Anne Hutchinson's stay in Boston, and it is very probable that she sought refuge from the anxiety of the troubled days, in poetical composition, and in poring over Ancient History found consolation in the fact that old times were by no means better than the new. The literary life of New England had already begun, and it is worth while to follow the lines of its growth and development, through the colonial days, if only to ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... any of your ancient history, Tayoga?" he asked. "Are the great deeds of the Greeks and ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... magnified by the mists of ancient history and the praises of the Church. For him they were the greatest men in the world after the Popes, and, indeed, often far superior to them. He was astonished that the Spaniards of the present times were so blind that they ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... became remarkable; I am well read in the Scriptures, the classics, and ancient history; was acquainted with geography; could draw; learnt fencing, riding, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... her in order to increase her confidence in them and her docility to their counsels. But once seated at the table, the attack began. It first took the form of a desultory conversation on devotion to a cause. Examples from ancient history were cited: Judith and Holofernes, and then, without any apparent connection, Lucretia and Sextus, Cleopatra admitting to her couch all the hostile generals, and reducing them to the servility of slaves. Then began a fantastic history, which had sprung up in the minds of these ignorant ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... candidate burst into the room, and was followed by two of his friends (the latter in evening-dress), whom he presented to the President. The ceremonious costume impressed the President himself, for at this period of ancient history Felons dined in frock-coats or cutaways; it proved that the wearers were so accustomed to wearing evening-dress of a night that they put it on by sheer habit and inadvertence even for electioneering. The candidate only desired to shake hands with a few ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... attempt to fix the time when a name becomes a talisman, and passes current for power. This is peculiarly difficult in the case of Eldon Parr. Like many notable men before him, nobody but Mr. Parr himself suspected his future greatness, and he kept the secret. But if we are to search what is now ancient history for a turning-point, perhaps we should find it in the sudden acquisition by him of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... answered. Janet. "It is a bit of ancient history, but it may interest you. Your mother renounced your father when you were scarcely a year old. I met Jason Jones soon afterward, and believing,—as your own deluded mother did—that he would become a great artist, I gambled with him ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... his lips served to confirm the marvellous truth which had so dazzlingly burst upon the professor's eager brain, and with a glib tongue he named each weapon, each garment, as accurately as ever set down in ancient history, not a little to the wide-eyed amazement of ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. And at least, they needn't talk before six months, or—if we have luck, and there's a whaler handy—three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it's ancient history." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... alike had a way of using the phrase, "By Gemini!" Gemini, of course, was the constellation of the Twins, Castor and Pollux. Both were useful stars for astrogation. The Roman horse soldiers of ancient history had sworn, "By Gemini," or "By the Twins." The Romans believed the stars were the famous Greek warriors Castor and Pollux, placed in the heavens after their deaths. In later years, the phrase degenerated to simply "by jiminy" and its meaning ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... the amendment passed it would go to the states for ratification, and their votes were certain to follow that of Congress. The Navy had fought a last-ditch battle to no avail. The balloting was going to be pretty much of a sure thing—the wet water Navy would soon become ancient history. ...
— Navy Day • Harry Harrison

... consequently ill treated with impunity, while the Japanese were "treated very cordially, as they are a race that demand good treatment, and it is advisable to do so for the friendly relations between the Islands and Japan," to quote the ancient history once more. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... "That would spoil the charm: for there is a charm, isn't there? But we won't call each other Brat and Brute any more. That's ancient history. I'll be for you—just Boy. I think I will call ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... diaries, and that the only uninterrupted time which he could find in this pleasant whirl of life at Tilling was when he was alone in the evening. Captain Puffin, on his part, confessed to a student's curiosity about the ancient history of Tilling, with regard to which he was preparing a monograph. He could talk, when permitted, by the hour about the reclamation from the sea of the marsh land south of the town, and about the old Roman road ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... we came on ten miles over a plain to Govardhan, a place celebrated in ancient history as the birthplace of Krishna, the seventh incarnation of the Hindoo god of preservation, Vishnu, and the scene of his dalliance with the milkmaids (gopis); and, in modern days, as the burial—or burning-place of the Jat chiefs ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... wonderful recitations and amazing marks. You just couldn't rag a fellow who made one hundred right along. When he married, he found a lovely, gentle girl, who believed him the greatest of all men and held his position as Professor of Ancient History in Princeton as the highest of all earthly positions. But when Elinor was a year old, the little wife died, quite worn out from looking after Professor Benjamin Mollingfort Morris, who had proved to be her most ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston

... best known in what is usually styled ancient history, in other words from Greece and Rome, and the regions into which the spirit of conquest led the people of Rome and Greece, it is time we should turn to the East, and those remoter divisions of the world, which ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... are best acquainted with their general course. If they find nothing attractive in the style of the book, they may find perhaps something useful, something that will deserve their serious reflection, in the matter of it. For let it not be said that a story starting in 1914 is ancient history. Unless one studies the record of Allied action in Greece from the very beginning, he cannot approach with any clear understanding the present crisis—a struggle between Greeks and Turks on the surface, but at bottom a conflict between French and British policies ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... had no idea at that time of coming here to live; and shore land was of no value then, anyhow. The strip came to me as a part of my father's estate. I thought myself lucky to get anything for it. But what's all this ancient history got to do with it now? And what do you mean by sending me this letter and ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... regarded as self-evident. 2. If the king devastates the church and violates God's law, he may be resisted at least passively as far as private men are concerned, but actively by magistrates and cities. The author, who quotes from the Bible and ancient history, evidently has contemporary France in mind. 3. The people may resist a tyrant who is oppressing or ruining the state. Originally, in the author's view, the people either elected the king, or confirmed him, and if they have not exercised ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... remember. O, QUANTUM MUTATUS AB ILLO!) If I remember rightly, the money was repaid before the end of the week - or, to be more exact and a trifle pedantic, the sennight - but the service has never been forgotten; and I send you back this piece of ancient history, CONSULE PLANCO, as a salute for your dedication, and propose that we should drink the health of the nameless one, who opened my eyes as to the true nature of what you did ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... skins below no doubt talk to Sir Walter. But are we not all historical—men, women, even children? To exist is to take your place in history, though, as in my case, the fact will not be recorded save in the 'Chronicles' of the everlasting. Yes, I am ancient history now, and go far back, before Italy was a united kingdom. Much entertaining information will be lost for ever when I die. Believe me, while the new generation is crying forth the new knowledge and glorying in its genius, we of the old guard are sinking into our graves and taking the old ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... Egyptians, who each challenge the honour to themselves. But leaving all contested points in this matter, I now apply to my proposed deduction, resting only upon what has been recorded in authentic histories. Ancient history says that Tubal, in the hundred and forty-third year after the flood, came by sea into Spain[8]; whence it appears that in these early times navigation was usual from Ethiopia to our parts of western Europe. It is also said, that Semiramis invaded the country on the river Indus, whence the Indians ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... about Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom of Babylon. Unknown subjects to most of the members of the class; Mr. Wharncliffe had to tell a great deal about ancient history and geography. He had a map, and he had a clear head of his own, for he made the talk very interesting and very easy to understand; Matilda found herself listening with much enjoyment. A question at last came to her; why the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into the hands of the king of Babylon? ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner

... know that the black man was the author of much of the world's history, and that Moro, the capital of Ethiopia, was at one time the great seat of learning. She should be taught early in life to read Ancient History, that she may see what the black man has done for the world, that she may have pride in her black blood as well as in her white blood. Tell her the record of the Negro as a soldier, statesman, and explorer. Read to her about the brave part that he played in the war of 1812 and subsequent wars, ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... Islander, 'it's ancient history, so I don't suppose it's true. But they say that when the government had to make sure that we should always be happy troops of gentle islanders, they decided that the only way was for us to be children. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... in the Creation, to give us some idea of astronomy and natural history. Robert read all these books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equalled. My father had been a subscriber to Stackhouse's History of the Bible ...; from this Robert collected a competent knowledge of ancient history; for no book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to dampen his researches. A brother of my mother, who had lived with us some time, and had learned some arithmetic by our winter evening's candle, went into a book-seller's shop in Ayr to purchase the Ready Reckoner, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... down to luncheon, the preliminary attack was initiated. It was at first a vague discussion about self-sacrifice. They quoted instances from ancient History, such as Judith and Holophern, then, without any reason Lucretia with Sextus, Cleopatra who admitted to her intimacy all the enemy generals and reduced them to slavish servility. Then a fancy History was propounded, originating ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... "That is ancient history, as far as I am concerned, but I heard the girls talking about her, just the other day. Her family, it seems, was respectable but unimportant; yet Mrs. Dyer is very well liked. She's not brilliant, but kindly. When we first came here, the Dyers lived in a little cottage ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... lately been pleased to make me Professor of Ancient History in the Royal Academy of Painting which he has just established, but there is no salary annexed; and I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit to myself. Honors to one in my situation are something ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... great deal about her," observed Dr. Dean indulgently, "and why should she not go herself? She is evidently well instructed in the ancient history of Egypt, and, as she reads the hieroglyphs, she will be a delightful guide and a most valuable assistant to me in ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... The present race, a mixture of Angles and Danes, still preserve much which speaks strongly of their northern ancestry; amongst them ye will find the light-brown hair of the north, the strong and burly forms of the north, many a wild superstition, ay, and many a wild name connected with the ancient history of the north and its sublime mythology; the warm heart and the strong heart of the old Danes and Saxons still beats in those regions, and there ye will find, if anywhere, old northern hospitality and kindness of manner, united with energy, perseverance, and dauntless ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... said so to-day, and now you say just the same thing. I don't believe one word of ancient history. Not—one—word! They wrote it about their own nations, didn't they? All right. Then you might just as well expect them to tell what really happened, as think that I'd tell on another boy in my own school. I must say it would be as mean as dog pie of them ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... Sir Charles Lyell, ever an active collector of geological facts, and an excellent writer on the science of Geology, has engaged with his usual zeal in verifying the researches of the French, Swiss, and German geologists, and has written a very readable book on these new revelations concerning the ancient history of the human race. It is the best English presentation of the subject, and is written in a style that every one can read ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... has apparently a somewhat elementary knowledge of ancient history, and who seems to rely for information on a primer such as "Little Willie's First History Book," recommends Communism because "In Sparta there were not only common lands, but also a common table, whilst dogs ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... chairs of Fine Art (belated), Experimental Physics, Applied Mechanics, Anglo-Saxon, Animal Morphology, Surgery, Physiology, Pathology, Ecclesiastical History, Chinese, more Divinity, Mental Philosophy, Ancient History, Agriculture, Biology, Agricultural Botany, more Biology, Astrophysics, and German, before arriving in 1910 at a Chair of English Literature which by this time I have not ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... came to London in 1646, and the next year, through his friend's endeavours, he was allowed to preach. He visited Charles at Carisbrooke in 1648. He died in 1656, and was buried, by order of Cromwell, in Westminster Abbey. He wrote "On the Original State of the British Churches," "The Ancient History of the British Churches," and his great work on sacred chronology, "The Annals of the Old Testament." It is said that Baxter wrote his famous "Call to the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley

... of this organ when unrestrained,—that it is the most conspicuous faculty in carnivorous animals, and alas! that it has a terrible and at times predominant action in the masculine portion of the human race. Throughout the greater part of ancient history the murderous violence of this faculty has been as conspicuous in the human race as in the wild beasts. Even to-day, after centuries of so-called civilization and religion, no man's life would be safe if ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... ruler, peace abounded on the earth. Therefore it was a fitting time for the birth of Christ, for "He is our peace, who hath made both one," as it is written (Eph. 2:14). Wherefore Jerome says on Isa. 2:4: "If we search the page of ancient history, we shall find that throughout the whole world there was discord until the twenty-eighth year of Augustus Caesar: but when our Lord was born, all war ceased"; according to Isa. 2:4: "Nation shall not lift up sword ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... halt, old triumphs aid, To-day's the thing, to-morrow soon will be; Get in the fight and face it unafraid, And leave the past to ancient history; What has been, has been; yesterday is dead And by it you are neither blessed nor banned, Take courage, man, be brave and drive ahead, Start ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... ancient history now: The fingers of Time have touched my brow, And I hear with never a start to-day That Beauty has passed from the earth away. Gone!—her death-song (it killed her) sung. Gone!—her fiddlestrings all unstrung. Gone to the bliss of a new regime Of turkey smothered in seas of cream; Of roasted ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... political wisdom and far-seeing sagacity, ancient history is full. Alone of all his contemporaries, he clearly, and from his very infancy, perceived the extent of the danger which threatened his country from the insatiable ambition and growing power of the Romans; alone he pointed out the only mode in which it could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... all of a piece by Peter the Great, could claim no ancient history at all; but through every stick and stone that had been laid there stirred the spirit and soul of the ground, so that out of one of the sluggish canals one might expect at any moment to see the horrid and scaly head of some palaeolithic monster with dead and greedy eyes slowly push its way up ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... of ancient history extend back to the earliest traces of music which we have, beginning perhaps with the early Aryans in central Asia, whom Max Mueller represents as circling around the family altar at sunrise and sunset, and with clasped hands repeating ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... are versed in the ancient history of the island, tell of the time when all were amazed by the appearance of bags of flour, boxes of tobacco, and cases of goods drifting ashore. None at the time knew what flour was; only one boy had previously smoked, and the goods were too mysterious to be tested. Many tried to eat flour direct ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... in the least, missed the suffering behind Miltoun's mask; his eyes were still good, and there was a little matter of some twenty years' suffering of his own on account of a woman—ancient history now—which had left him quaintly sensitive, for an old man, to signs of suffering ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... attention to that of the last three and a half centuries."[39] Discussing the subject before the advanced historical students of Harvard a number of years ago, I gave an extension to Motley's counsel by saying that ancient history had better be left to the Germans. I was fresh from reading Holm's History of Greece and was impressed with his vast learning, elaboration of detail, and exhaustive treatment of every subject which seemed to me to require a steady application and patience, hardly consonant with ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... distance that separates us from the stars that as for the great majority had they been blotted out of existence before the Christian era, we of to-day should still receive their light and seem to see them just as we do. When we scan the nocturnal skies we study ancient history. We do not see the stars as they are but as they were centuries on ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott

... Thursday, in fact, and if you'll do me that kindness, I should be grateful if you would join me that evening in celebrating the melancholy occasion. I've got a great mind to enlist your sympathy in a little ancient history, if it won't be too great a tax upon your goodness; but I'll think it over ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... properly to be remembered as 'Lydia,' the country which infects with passion, and tempts with wealth; which taught the Lydian measure in music and softened the Greek language on its border into Ionic; which gave to ancient history the tale of Troy, and to Christian history, the glow, and the decline, of ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... decided to overhaul our loads and reject a lot of things not strictly necessary to preserve life. I know I threw out a good many valuable and pretty things by the roadside. I remember six volumes of Rollin's Ancient History, nicely bound, with my name on the back, that were piled up and left. We followed along near the Santa Clara River till it emptied into the Virgin River. It was somewhere along here that we first saw some Yucca trees. The boys often set fire to them ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... Justice Cockburn, whose "sunny face and voice of music, which lent melody to scorn and sometimes reached the depth of pathos," were gracefully commemorated by Lord Beaconsfield in his sketch of Hortensius. But this belongs to ancient history, and my business is with the conversation ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... capital of Sicily, rose to prominence in ancient history through its three famous sieges. The first of these was that long siege which ruined Athens and left Syracuse uncaptured. The second was the siege by Timoleon, who took the city almost without a blow. The third was the siege by the Romans, in which the genius of one man, the celebrated mathematician ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... was brought up to hard labor, with short intervals of schooling now and then. But his thirst for knowledge seems to have been insatiable, and he read everything he could lay his hands on, even to translations of Homer and Plutarch and Rollin's "Ancient History." A century ago, a book was a far greater treasure than it is to-day, when their very number has made us in a way contemptuous of them; and the few which young Parker could secure were read and re-read and learned ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... how many revolutions of thought they underwent, how much they learnt and took over from earlier inhabitants of the country in which they finally settled, we cannot even guess. As I said in the last lecture, we have no really ancient history of the Romans, as we have, for example, of the Egyptians or Babylonians; to us it is all darkness, save where a little light has been thrown on the buried strata by archaeology and anthropology. That little light, which ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... which these observations point is fairly clear. Sex penetrates the whole of life. It is not a branch of mathematics, or a period of ancient history, which we can elect to teach, or not to teach, as may seem best to us, which if we teach we may teach as we choose, and if we neglect to teach it will never trouble us. Love and Hunger are the foundations of life, and the impulse ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... adopted an alphabet, but have adhered to an invariable state of the graphic art, which is probably more ancient by several thousand years than our present method, may we not venture to conjecture that the traces of their very ancient history have been, for that reason, better preserved? and that their pretensions to a very high antiquity, which we have been used to think extravagant and ridiculous, are really not without foundation? If so, we might then allow ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... everything you did yesterday, and put about half of it in again. If you're diligent, and keep on at this pace, you'll finish triumphantly with a blank canvas, like Penthesilea and her tapestry in my ancient history." ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... City of Mexico and also had visited Europe. In both places she had had the opportunity of seeing some of the greatest dancers of the day and was able to draw comparisons between their conceptions of the art and hers. But when she began the study of ancient history her attention was called to the Greeks' conception of the art, and she soon discovered that modern dancing was a direct violation of that which was most plastic in art, and consisted chiefly of contortions, high kicking and pirouetting ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... anecdotes are the commonplaces of ancient history, such as the friendship of Damon and Pythias, the sword of Damocles, the chastity of Scipio, the magnanimity of Alexander, the fable of the Dog and the Shadow, &c. Others current in the middle ages had great popularity, and even in our own days occasionally renew their youth. The ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... hereafter. At supper, she timidly asked a question of Bridget. "Did ye ever hear the loikes uv that, Ma'am," said the Irish handmaid with affectionate pride, "Shure the darlint's head is filled noight and day with ancient history. She's after asking me now if Queen's ever run away!" To Polly's remorseful confusion here her good father equally proud of her precocious interest and his own knowledge, at once interfered with an unintelligible account of the abdication of various Queens in history until Polly's ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... siecles de Rome. (See Mem. de l'Academ. des Inscr., vol. ix.) Beaufort followed out the same line of inquiry in 1738. The two writers are considered to have laid the basis of the modern historical criticism of ancient history. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... will be said, is ancient history, but the fact that it is fifty years old does not affect my point, which is this—that the maintenance of an unnatural polity can only be secured by means of a series of subterfuges such as these employed by Unionist Governments, both Whig and Tory, by which, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... were entertainments of no ordinary distinction. The host himself was of greater interest than the most eminent of his guests. All but he, were more or less one's contemporaries: Rogers, if not quite as dead as he looked, was ancient history. He was old enough to have been the father of Byron, of Shelley, of Keats, and of Moore. He was several years older than Scott, or Wordsworth, or Coleridge, and only four years younger than Pitt. He had known all these men, and could, and did, talk as no other could ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... names, then are they false in fact? and if so, what did the authors die for? The sufferings of primitive Christians were great; the persecutions which they endured were outrageous, cruel and inhuman in their character. Such is the universal verdict of ancient history. Of the persecution under Nero, Tacitus, a celebrated Roman historian, who was born in the year 56, just twenty-three years after Pentecost, writes, that Nero "laid upon the Christians the charge of that terrible conflagration at Rome of which he himself was the cause." He says, "A ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various

... things even about the ancient literature and civilization which can be taught more effectively without the loss of time and the division of attention involved in reading the ancient authors in the original, and (c) that in courses such as those dealing with ancient history ancient books on these subjects, either in the original or in translations, cannot properly be used as textbooks for the reason that, quite apart from their errors and misconceptions, these books do not contain, except incidentally, those phases of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... more than a thousand years had looked from its elevation out upon the sea, was no more, and its destruction was one of the thrilling tragedies of ancient history. On its site there exists to-day a town called Mur Viedro (old walls), and these old walls are the last vestige ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... attached to it. They were supposed to be dispersed over the Highlands, each in his own wild recess, but the solemn stated meetings of the order were regularly held in this Cave of Benvenue. This current superstition, no doubt, alludes to some circumstance in the ancient history of this country' (Scenery on the Southern Confines of Perthshire, p. 19, 1806). It must be owned that the Coir, or Den, does not, in its present state, meet our ideas of a subterraneous grotto or cave, being only ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... books of Virgil's Aeneid; Mythology; Watts on the Mind; Political Geography, (Woodbridge's large work); Natural History; Treatise on the Globes; Ancient History; Studies of Poetry concluded; English Grammar, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... the reason for the eastern disability. He had lived in the West long enough to know that it is an ill thing to pry too curiously into any man's past. So there should be present efficiency, no man in the service should be called upon to recite in ancient history, much less one for whom Ford had spoken a ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... from their unwilling hosts. The district was separated from St. Andrew's in 1832, and became an independent ecclesiastical parish seven years later. As the Liberty of Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, and Ely Rents, it has a very ancient history. It was cut in two by a recent Boundary Commission, and put half in Holborn and ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... is ancient history now, and who bothers about ancient history? Did you ever meet anybody who fretted over the overthrow of Carthage, or made a trouble of the siege ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... The Ancient History of the Six Nations, by David Cusick, gives us in one particular a strange coincidence with the Edda. It tells us that the Bad Mind, the principle of Evil, forced himself out into life, as Cusick expresses it in his broken Indian-English, "under the side of the parent's arm;" that is, through the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... "That is ancient history," muttered Juve, "... and I am not afraid of anyone.... Besides ... did I tell you that now?" he hinted, with the hope of obtaining further details. But Bobinette seemed to think she had had enough ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... The ancient history of Ceylon is involved in much obscurity, but nevertheless we have sufficient data in the existing traces of its former population to form our opinions of the position and power which Ceylon occupied in the Eastern Hemisphere when England was ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... rooms, or after a surfeit of print, or when the moon floats among the waves of the hills, or in hollow, sallow, fruitless London days, like a specific; a clean blade; always a miracle. Jacob knew no more Greek than served him to stumble through a play. Of ancient history he knew nothing. However, as he tramped into London it seemed to him that they were making the flagstones ring on the road to the Acropolis, and that if Socrates saw them coming he would bestir himself and say "my fine fellows," for the whole sentiment of Athens was entirely after his heart; free, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... doing. When she came to her new abode and was turning out the corners, she discovered upstairs in a cupboard a number of brown-looking old books, which had not been touched for many a long day. Amongst them were Rollin's Ancient History, some of Swift's Works with pages torn out, doubtless those which some impatiently clean creature had justly considered too filthy for perusal. There were also Paul and Virginia, Dryden's Virgil, Robinson Crusoe, and above all a Shakespeare. Miriam had never been ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... almost equally soft black mustaches, with probably a heart to match, and only a year ago Florrie had been busied making a hero of him when he, the blind one, took unto himself an Indian bride and in all innocence heaped shame high upon the blonde head. How Elmer unearthed such ancient history was a mystery to Florrie; but none the less she "hated" him for it. They saw a very great deal of each other, each serving as a sort of balance-wheel to the other's self-centred complacency. Perhaps the one subject upon which they could agree was Jim Galloway; Elmer still liked to look upon the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... duke of Buckingham is composed in a style rich, free and forcible; the examples brought from ancient history, of the suspicion and inward wretchedness to which tyrants have ever been a prey, and afterwards, of the instability of popular favor, might in this age be accounted tedious and pedantic; they are however pertinent, well recited, and doubtless possessed the charm of novelty with respect to the majority ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... before had put five straggling plays on the stage in quick succession, all derived from stories in Ovid and dramatised with little taste or discrimination. Shakespeare had a finer conception of form, but even he was contented to take all his ancient history from North's translation of Plutarch and dramatise his subject without further inquiry. Jonson was a scholar and a classical antiquarian. He reprobated this slipshod amateurishness, and wrote his "Sejanus" like a scholar, reading Tacitus, Suetonius, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... have been to him special objects of study; and a work embodying the chief results of the recent investigations seemed to him a not unsuitable termination to the historical efforts which his resignation of the Professorship of Ancient History at Oxford, and his entrance upon a new sphere of labour, bring ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... soul," he went on, with a reckless laugh; "but it is not particularly pleasant. As I told your husband, I quarrelled with my people. It was my own fault in a great measure; but I do not mean to take all the blame; if they had treated me differently, things would not have come to this; but this is all ancient history; if a man sows thistles he must expect a harvest of the same. I have had my evil things certainly, and perhaps ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... added to the attractions of the Latin Quarter, giving each Bohemian a new thrill. Vernabelle said it was by way of being ancient history; that from time immemorial these little groups of choice spirits who did things had been scorned and persecuted, but that every true Bohemian would give a light laugh and pursue his carefree way, regardless of the Philistine And ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... fragments of chronicles which I have collected here are all taken from the various "Books of Chilan Balam." They constitute about all that remains to us, so far as I know, of the ancient history of the peninsula. There are, indeed, in other portions of these "Books" references to historical events before the Conquest, but no ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various

... translating a French fable, and Jamie to reconsidering a neglected page of ancient history. Looking through the west window, he saw that Alexander had taken his geometry out through the great rent in the wall. Book and student perched beneath the pine-tree, in a crook made by rock and brown root, overhanging ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... it better to be discreet, "I doubt if I should be welcome. I've a letter from the governor in my pocket, which I haven't yet had courage to open. I dare say it won't be pleasant reading; besides which, it's been chasing me round the country for the last five or six weeks, and must be rather ancient history." ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... the convention must disband without effecting its object. Franklin arose and said: "Mr. President, the small progress we have made after five weeks is a melancholy proof of the imperfection of human understanding—we have gone back to ancient history for models of government—we have viewed modern states—we find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances—we are groping in the dark to find political truth, and are scarcely able to distinguish it when presented to us. How has it happened, sir, ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... the social phenomena, so far grander in scale and purpose and more felicitous in issue, of other western nations. It is remarkable for keeping up an antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Greek and Latin, not merely as languages, but as illustrations of philological science; if a vivid picture of life on the shores of the Mediterranean, two thousand years ago, were imprinted on the minds of scholars; if ancient history were taught, not as a weary series of feuds and fights, but traced to its causes in such men placed under such conditions; if, lastly, the study of the classical books were followed in such a manner as to impress boys with their beauties, and with ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... without a degree of cultivation which commended her to the more intellectual people of Ashfield. She was a reader of "Rokeby" and of Miss Austen's novels, of Josephus and of Rollin's "Ancient History." The Miss Hapgoods, who were the blue-stockings of the place, were charmed to have such an addition to the cultivated circle of the parish. To make the success of Miss Johns still more decided, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... scroll of ancient history, unrolled by the sculptured terraces, represents the birth, growth, and development of Buddhist faith. Queen Maya, jewelled and flower-crowned, with the miraculous Babe on her knee, sits among her ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... English, and a deal of Latin, names of things, declensions of articles and nouns, exercises thereon, and preliminary rules; a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures, and a little general information. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he found he had no idea of number one, fragments whereof obtruded themselves into number three, which slided into number ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... time to reply one word, let him say to the end; then coldly observed, that if he had been a little more familiar with ancient history, he would not have found what astonished him very strange, since he (the Abbe) had only followed the example of Saint- Ambrose, whose ordination he began to relate. I did not wait for his recital; at the mere mention of Saint-Ambrose I flew to the other end of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... known." This answer of the Volscians was applauded by the other nations of Spain, as far as it was known, and the Roman embassadors, despairing of success in that country, went on into Gaul, which is the name by which the country now called France is known in ancient history. ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... ancient history. Lee could not repeat that chapter if he would. Nay, I believe he ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... the centre, would in turning around, as our earth does upon its axis, tend to bulge out in those parts which were remote from the line upon which the turning took place. Thus the flattening of our sphere at the poles corroborates the opinion that its mass was once molten—in a word, that its ancient history was such ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... me to such a degree that I should not sleep for weeks. But, strangely enough, they had just the opposite effect. I think Mr. Washburn must be writing a book on modern history, and Mr. Hoffman must be writing one on ancient history. I sat between them—a drowsy victim—feeling as if my brain was making spiral efforts to come out of the top of ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... words to the church at Colosse, a city of Asia Minor, in the Roman province called Phrygia. It may be of interest to you for me to tell you something about the character of these people at the time Paul first visited them. Ancient history gives a very dark picture of this. What Paul said of Athens applied equally to Colosse: "The city was wholly given to idolatry." The lower classes, especially, were very ignorant, having no knowledge of God save that which the light of nature ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... There was no necessity for enlightening Colonel Rodriguez. Hardly, therefore, had the old gentleman vehemently exclaimed, "They never can take San Juan de Ulua!" than Ned went hastily back to his first subject of the ancient history. ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard

... timber, in making and burning bricks, and the like hard services, but without taking away their lives. We never elsewhere, that I remember, meet with such methods of cruelty in putting men to death in all the Bible, or in any other ancient history whatsoever; nor do the words in Samuel seem naturally to refer to ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... who had defied Falk in that time long ago, which we had come to regard almost as ancient history, only Neddie Benson had fallen. Although we had laughed time and again at the charming plump lady who had prophesied such terrible events, it had proved in bitter earnest a sad ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... Weald to worry about. Weald was hysterically resolved to end what it considered the blueskin menace for once and for all. There were parallels to such unreasoning frenzy even in the ancient history of Earth. A word still remained in the dictionaries ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. iii. p. 182) has observed an emigration from the Palus Maeotis to the north of Germany, which he ascribes to famine. But his views of ancient history are strangely darkened by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... in that passage, perhaps the most splendid among all the remains of ancient history, where Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, describes the sea-fights ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... need only refer to ancient history, and to the writings of Xenophon, Cicero, Horace, or Virgil, for evidence of the value they have all attached to the encouragement of manly, active, and hardy pursuits, and the evils produced by a degenerate and effeminate life on the manners and characters of a people (cheers). Many of the ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... on the 4th of April 1796. Napoleon as first consul suppressed the second class, as subversive of government, and reconstituted the other classes as follows: (1) as before, (2) French language and literature, (3) ancient history and literature, (4) fine arts. The class of moral and political science was restored on the proposal of M. Guizot in 1832, and the present Institute consists of the five classes named above. Each class ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... any 'physical degradation.'" It may be true that the Greeks are not physically degenerated, and that Constantinople contained on the day when it changed masters as many men of six feet and upwards as in the hour of prosperity; but ancient history and modern politics instruct us that something more than physical perfection is necessary to preserve a state in vigour and independence; and the Greeks, in particular, are a melancholy example of the near connexion between moral degradation ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... too have contributed in no small measure to the progress of science. To the victorious march of the French army we owe the discovery of new facts relative to the ancient history of Algeria; it was the advance of the English and Russian forces that revealed the secret of the mysterious lands in the heart of Asia, whence many scholars believe the European races to have first issued, and of this ever open book the French expedition to Tonquin may be considered at present ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... demanded heavy ransoms for their release. They sent many thousands to the markets to be sold,—the men to be degraded to slavery, the women, praying for death, to be dragged away to harems of their purchasers. Among the captives held for ransom were many Americans. But you are familiar with all this ancient history." ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... spoke of the Terror, about which I was eager to know every then unwritten detail. Doctor Chantry had told me many things. It fascinated me far more than ancient history, which my master was ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the six attributes, had Agni been cursed in the days of yore by Bhrigu. And such is the ancient history connected with the destruction of the Rakshasa, Pauloma and the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... study of history and archeology took an upward turn with Brentano's publication of old German ballads and Lachmann's original version of the Nibelungen songs. At this time an Italian archeologist, Belzoni, was adding new chapters to ancient history by his original researches in Egypt, which resulted in the removal of the Colossus of Memnon to Alexandria, and in the opening of the great Cephren pyramid. In distant South Africa the first English missionaries began their labors among the blacks. Although the Governor ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... people accustomed to live under a prince by any accident become free, as did the Romans on the expulsion of the Tarquins, we know from numberless instances recorded in ancient history, how hard it will be for it to maintain that freedom. And this is no more than we might expect. For a people in such circumstances may be likened to the wild animal which, though destined by nature to roam at large in the woods, has been reared in the cage and ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... Iphis being changed from a young woman into a man, of which Ovid lays the scene in the isle of Crete, is one of those facts upon which ancient history is entirely silent. Perhaps, the origin of the story was a disguise of a damsel in male dress, carried on, for family reasons, even to the very point of marriage; or it may have been based upon an account of some remarkable instance ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... history is threaded with incidents of dream prophecy. Ancient history relates that Gennadius was convinced of the immortality of his soul by conversing with an apparition ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... the particular tribe to which it has more especially been ascribed being the Turdetani. These—and the passage I am about to quote is the passage of Strabo just alluded to—are "put forward as the wisest of the Iberi, and they have the use of letters; and they have records of ancient history, and poems, and metrical laws for six thousand ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... nations which have been long civilised the defects are generally those dependent on excess of sensibility—defects which are cured in the next generation by the strength and power belonging to a ruder tribe. In looking back upon the vision of ancient history, you will find that there never has been an instance of a migration to any extent of any race but the Caucasian, and they have usually passed from the North to the South. The negro race has always been driven before these conquerors of the world; and the red men, the aborigines ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... every nation must have reached its present quarters from some other distant parts of the world, must be reckoned a few students of the ancient history of China. Coincidences in language and in manners and customs, mostly of a shadowy character, have led some to suggest Babylonia as the region from which the Chinese migrated to the land where they are now found. The Chinese possess authentic ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... schools made their appearance wherever the need was greatest; and in other parts of the South the response was similarly energetic. The reform is not yet complete, but the description that Page gave of Southern education in 1897, accurate in all its details as it was then, has now become ancient history. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... observe, how generally traditions and records will spread and be transmitted among nations destitute of the benefits of the art of printing. In Europe, the mass were certainly better acquainted with their ancient history before this great discovery than they are in our days, as traditions were then handed down from family to family—it was a duty, a sacred one, for a father to transmit them to his son, unadulterated, such in fact, as he had received ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... a few passages from this "Plea for Captain John Brown." To fully realize its power, you should read it all for yourselves. You must put yourselves back into history, now already seeming almost ancient history to us, to the period when Buchanan was President—the terrible sultry lull just before the great storm. You must picture the audience of the best people in Massachusetts, half-sympathizing with Captain Brown, half-afraid of ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... the house in scholarship doubtless dated from the reign of the Marchese Gian Francesco Gonzaga. This nobleman cherished a genuine love for ancient history and was not without an appreciation of Roman verse. Believing, as he did in common with most Italians, that the republican thought of Rome was the foundation of all exalted living, he realized that his children ought to be committed ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... a fixture until that fog lifted. It was an impenetrable barrier. Upon the point of entering one of the most wonderful harbors in the world, the glory of the newest of new lands, we found ourselves prisoners, and for a time at least involved in the mazes of ancient history. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... If we consult ancient history, the case is the same; the Jews, a people of progress, were ruined, as appears on the face of Scripture, by internal causes; they split into sects, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes, as soon as the Divine Hand retired from the direct government of their ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... mountain or hill, tower or hamlet, had received a name from some historical fact recorded in the public annals; so that even now the geographical etymologies frequently throw a sudden and decisive light on disputed points of ancient history. So far, this cannot be called a literature; it might be classed under the name of statistics, or antiquarian lore; and if their history consisted merely of what is contained in the old annals of the race, it would be presumptuous to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... that "the year 1858 was the last of a term during which the peace of the Church of England was singularly unbroken," and there no doubt he is right; "The Evangelical Movement ... had become almost a matter of ancient history. Tractarianism had subsided into a tenth-day's wonder; it was at work, but it was not noisy." Then he says the calm was broken by the publication of three books: Essays and Reviews, The Origin of Species, Criticisms on the Pentateuch by Colenso. Few persons probably now ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... under the title of "Legend of Genevieve, with other Tales and Poems." "The Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," originally supplied in a series of chapters to Blackwood, and afterwards published in a separate form, much increased his reputation as an author. In 1831 appeared his "Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine;" a work which was followed, in 1832, by a pamphlet entitled, "Practical Observations on Malignant Cholera;" and a further publication, with the title, "Proofs of the Contagion of Malignant Cholera." A third volume of poems ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... I can only speak of what I remember. History continued to be my strongest predilection, and most of all ancient history. Mitford's Greece I read continually; my father had put me on my guard against the Tory prejudices of this writer, and his perversions of facts for the whitewashing of despots, and blackening of popular institutions. These points he ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... to Madame Hanska, Balzac referred to Madame De Berney. This seems to have caused Madame Hanska once to say, "Why do you so often refer to ancient history and tell me of that motherly body who once acted as your nurse, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... patient with me. "There's 'Chantecler,' to be sure, although that is ancient history by this time. Have you read the play?" I had not, but just here an inspiration came. "You sneered at Homer just now," I said. "Well, there was another Greek who wrote a bird play 2,300 years before Rostand. I mean Aristophanes——" The editor leaped from his chair. "Great, great!" he cried. "We'll ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... it may not be amiss to remark a very curious phaenomenon, which the present subject suggests to us. It is evident there is no point of ancient history, of which we can have any assurance, but by passing through many millions of causes and effects, and through a chain of arguments of almost an immeasurable length. Before the knowledge of the fact coued come to ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... (for that's what Casey said, An' Casey passed the French ez well ez any Frenchie bred); But no one ever reckoned that it really wuz his name, An' no one ever asked him how or why or whence he came,— Your ancient history is a thing the Coloradan hates, An' no one asks another what his name wuz ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... partisanship with the Israelites, having made a troublesome acquaintance with the minutiae of their ancient history in the form of "cram," was amusing himself by playfully exaggerating the notion of each speaker, while Anna begged them all to understand that he was only joking, when the laughter was interrupted by the bringing in of a letter for Mrs. Davilow. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... all which they have at present: by which means we may see the state of languages at different periods of the world, even such as they must have been ages before the building of the tower of Babel; which knowledge will, it is presumed, throw great light on the ancient history of the world, since men must, in the composition of words, have ever made allusion to things already known, and such as might serve to explain the words they made. Thus is it even in our own times, and thus has it ever been. I intend towards the end of this work to give numerous instances of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... twelve years earlier—before Bessie, the oldest girl, was born—and seemed to the children's minds like a bit of ancient history—almost as far off as the exploits of Hannibal or Julius Caesar appear to us. So, as I have said, the girls and boys of the settlement shouted joyously at their play, or ran in merry groups to the rough log hut, called "The ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge

... more favourable than others, for prying into the secrets of futurity. The following, copied verbatim from the popular Dream and Omen Book of Mother Bridget, will shew the belief of the people of England at the present day. Those who are curious as to the ancient history of these observances, will find abundant aliment in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... study of ancient history, our attention is immediately riveted on the mighty name of Rome. Even the history of Greece cannot compare with it in interest. Greece was always great in the arts, and for long she was eminent in arms: but the arms of her citizens were too often turned against each other; and the mind gets ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... in Schleswig, a man of immense historical knowledge; his greatest work the "History of Rome"; was professor of Ancient History at Berlin; his forte was his learning more than ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... inspected the relics of the "eternal city:" the former was more versed than his companion in ancient history, but the other surpassed him in acquaintance with modern times, as well as with the objects of antiquity that ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... some extinct animal," she added, naively. "We have so many new things to study and investigate, that we pay but little attention to ancient history." ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... On an outline map of the lands around the Mediterranean mark on each land, Spain, Greece, northern Africa, Asia Minor, and Egypt, the dates at which the Romans conquered each, finding these dates in any brief Roman or Ancient History—Botsford, Myers, ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... public feeling throughout the world for nearly a quarter of a century, and endangered not only the ascendancy of the Republican Party, but the financial strength of the United States, has become almost wholly one of theory and ancient history. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... was ten years old when she read Rollin's Ancient History, spending the noon intermission, when of course she ought to have been at play, out of sight under her desk, where she "read, and munched, and forgot ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach



Words linked to "Ancient history" :   common knowledge, chronicle, story, history, account



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