These are the criticisms of most moment which have been made against the "AEneis" by the ancients or moderns.
Macrobius has answered what the ancients could urge against him, and some things I have lately read in Tannegui le Febvre, Valois, and another whom I name not, which are scarce worth answering.
Let these three ancients be preferred to all the moderns as first arriving at the goal; let them all be crowned as victors with the wreath that properly belongs to satire.
Thus much I have urged elsewhere in the defence of Virgil: and since, I have been informed by Mr. Moyle, a young gentleman whom I can never sufficiently commend, that the ancients accounted drowning an accursed death.
This inconvenience is common to all modern tongues, and this alone constrains us to employ more words than the ancients needed.
In several, perhaps all of these, the ancients remain unrivalled.
It is true, that Plato sometimes says quite different and even quite contrary things; it is the privilege of the Greek philosophers; and Plato has made use of his right more than any of the ancients or moderns.
There will be civil wars; then Saint Bartholomew will come; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that the ancients and moderns have ever said of hell.
The ancients paint Jupiter taking thunder, composed of three burning arrows, and hurling it at whomsoever he chose.
Everywhere the ancients went to bed, like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock.
Sand answered that he was ready that very moment, and only asked time enough to take a bath, as the ancients were accustomed to do before going into battle.
When you have thrown the ancients into the fire it will be time to denounce the moderns.
One day my father, who would still be talking of ancient things, and cared for little of more modern date than the Gospels, told me of a practice among the ancients by which they thought to look into the future.
Such are the memorable quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and the philosophe idea of perfectibility and human progress.
Even Paganism, with its aping of the ancients and its depreciation of Christian doctrine and morality, has yielded before the human craving for spirituality, and is falling to pieces rapidly.
Browne ranges freely from the "quincunx" of the gardens of the ancientsto the highest flights of metaphysical speculation.
He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel.
Footnote e: Man is capable of speaking with spirits and angels, and the ancients on our Earth frequently spoke with them, nos.
Between the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, the shores of Europe and Asia receding on either side include the Sea of Marmora, which was known to the ancients by the denomination of the Propontis.
Did the ancients actually regard the owl as a wise bird, or was the fashion of depicting it in the following of Minerva merely dictated by the presence of these birds on the Akropolis?
Among the ancientsscarcely anything of the sort was known.
It was the custom with the ancients when they exposed their children, to leave with them some pledge or token of value, that they might afterward be recognized by means of them.
Wherefore it is but just that you should know this, and make allowance, if the moderns do what the ancients used to do.
A full account of the secret signs and correspondence in use among the ancients will be found in the 16th and 17th Epistles of the Heroides of Ovid, in his Amours, B.
Everything said by the ancients of Indicum seems to agree perfectly with our indigo.
In order to avoid confusion, I shall here call the nitrum of the ancients nitrum, and the nitrum of the mineralogists saltpetre.
If the nitrum was carbonated alkali, there is reason to suppose that the ancients must have occasionally mentioned in their writings that it effervesced with acids.
From the latter, Count von Veltheim has explained, in a very ingenious manner, the fable of the ancients concerning the ants which dug up gold[837].
I cannot, however, attach much importance to this circumstance, as the ancientsbecame acquainted with iron at an early period, though not so early as with copper.
That the nitrum of the ancients was an alkali more or less impure, but not saltpetre, has been long admitted by those who had the least knowledge of mineralogy, as well as by the most sagacious physicians.
As far as I know, the ancients were not acquainted with the art of making them, unless some propositions of Ctesibius, mentioned by Vitruvius, allude to that subject.
The ancients used, as a peculiar metal, a mixture of gold and silver, because they were not acquainted with the art of separating them, and afterwards gave it the name of electrum.
Had the ancients really used carp on their tables, we must have ascribed to them the discovery of these delicious fish.
The ancients were well acquainted with the resemblance of their nitrum to lime, and especially of that which was burnt.
That the ancients employed their struthium for washing wool is confirmed by various authorities; but I do not remember to have found any evidence of its being used for cleaning clothes which had been worn.
What the ancientssay of the taste of their nitrum seems, however, not entirely applicable to pure carbonated alkali; and much less, or not at all, to our saltpetre.
It has been suggested that these festivals were originated by, or gave rise to, those enormous aberrations of the Greek female mind known to the ancients as Lesbian love.
The ancients asserted that she owed her name, Lamia, which means a sort of vampire or bloodsucker, to the most loathsome depravities.
It was often said by the ancients that the more prostitutes there were, the safer would be virtuous women.
That the ancients held the same belief that the witches violate corpses, is evident from the third episode in the Golden Ass of Apuleius.
Among the ancients this kind of insanity went by the names of Lycanthropy, Kuanthropy, or Boanthropy, because those afflicted with it believed themselves to be turned into wolves, dogs, or cows.
Thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious examples, never even equalled.
Thales saw it in one of the four elements of Nature as the ancients divided them; and this is the earliest recorded theory among the Greeks of the origin of the world.
The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed rather in epic and dramatic poetry.
But we have the testimony of the ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of pictures as they were of statues.
The genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained.
One of the favorite doctrines of Confucius was the superiority of the ancientsto the men of his day.
The ancients regarded Livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies.
Nor has any one of the ancients exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence.
They had their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we also shall be ancients in our turn.
Revered Father,--There is a common saying among the ancients which I remember to have had from your mouth; there is no equivalent that can be given back to parents.
They built their Mosques round, disliking the Christian form of a Cross: the old quarries whence the Ancients took their large blocks of marble for whole Columns and Architraves were neglected, for they thought both impertinent.
But I perceive I am falling into the danger of another rebuke from my opponent; for when I plead that the ancients used verse, I prove not that they would have admitted rhyme, had it then been written.
For this reason of delight, the ancients (whom I will still believe as wise as those who so confidently correct them) wrote all their tragedies in verse, though they knew it most remote from conversation.
I never heard of any other foundation of Dramatic Poesy than the imitation of nature; neither was there ever pretended any other by the ancients or moderns, or me, who endeavour to follow them in that rule.
And now I come to the boldest part of his discourse, wherein he attacks not me, but all the ancients and moderns; and undermines, as he thinks, the very foundations on which Dramatic Poesy is built.
But I am not now to defend my own cause, when that of all the ancients and moderns is in question.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "ancients" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
