Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Amphitheatre   /ˈæmfəθiˈeɪtər/   Listen
Amphitheatre

noun
1.
A sloping gallery with seats for spectators (as in an operating room or theater).  Synonym: amphitheater.
2.
An oval large stadium with tiers of seats; an arena in which contests and spectacles are held.  Synonyms: amphitheater, coliseum.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Amphitheatre" Quotes from Famous Books



... capsule at each end. They picked it up carefully, and, on the orders of their chief, carried it to the municipal laboratory. Scarcely had the experts assembled to examine it, than the egg burst and blew up the amphitheatre and the dome. All the experts perished, and with them Collin, the General of Artillery, and ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... wrote under this denomination, the venerable Polycarp and Ignatius, after they had both attained the age of eighty years, sealed their faith in the blood of martyrdom. The former was burned at the stake in Smyrna, and the latter devoured by lions in the amphitheatre of Rome, In the second and third centuries, Christianity numbered among its advocates many distinguished scholars and philosophers, particularly among the Greeks. Their productions may be classed under the heads of biblical, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... A little philosopher in skirts. By Jupiter Chronos, such a disputation in this giant amphitheatre of the mountains demands ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... according to the Inner Light. "He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats leading the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games in the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land." The present writer does not profess any ability to handle philosophic problems philosophically; it seems to him, however, that if Chesterton had been writing ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... the Christian host, holding in force the borders of the plateau, and momentarily increasing in numbers and strength. Ten miles before the eyes of Alfonso and his men stretched the plain, level in the centre, in the distance rising in gentle slopes to its border of hills, like a vast natural amphitheatre. The soldiers, filled with hope and enthusiasm, spread through their ranks the story that the shepherd who had led them was an angel, sent by the Almighty to lead his people to victory over ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... the village or cross-roads of Doodletown. This reach of the river was formerly known as The Horse Race, from the rapid flow of the tide when at its height. The hills on the west bank now recede from the river, forming a picturesque amphitheatre, bounded on the west by Bear Mountain. An old road directly in the rear of Iona Island, better known to Anthony Wayne than to the modern tourist, passes through Doodletown, over Dunderberg, just west of Tompkin's Cove, to Haverstraw. Here amid these pleasant foothills ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... for making a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,—make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five thousand dollars ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... and THE BEST MAN have just emerged from the Anesthetic Room and are standing before him. Both are dressed exactly as he is, save that THE BRIDEGROOM'S rubber gloves are white. The benches running up the amphitheatre are filled with spectators, chiefly women. They are in dingy oilskins, and most ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... and the amphitheatre was, then, becoming an exhausted branch of investigation. But during the present century the study of the human body has changed its old aspect, and become fertile in new observations. This rejuvenescence was effected ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... track into rocky eminences, and we now came to the brow of a sharp descent. The valley of Aroukeen wound as it were like a snake far down at the bottom of an immense hollow, surrounded on all sides by an amphitheatre of savage-looking mountains—great stony swells, made hideous here and there by crags and ravines, and piled away on all sides in shattered magnificence. This is the grandest desert prospect I have yet seen, and must strongly clash with the ordinary notion ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... Father in spirit and truth? Think of the religious wars, of the religious persecutions: did natural religion ever do anything as bad as this? We cry out against Nero, who covered Christians with pitch, and burned them as torches in the amphitheatre. But how many were thus tortured? Perhaps ten, perhaps twenty, or let us say a hundred. But, according to Llorente, the Holy Office of the Inquisition, in Spain, burned alive, under Torquemada, 8800: under Deza, 1669; under Ximenes, 2536; in all, from ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... be far healthier and more strengthening than that of Rome. In spite of the public calamity Nero continued to give games for the amusement of the populace, other rich men followed his example, and the sports of the amphitheatre were carried on on an even more ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... was not so absorbed in his admiration of the ruined corner of a bath, or the half-demolished portico of an amphitheatre, as to neglect those entertainments which more affect the senses, and consequently give the most natural delight;—the exquisite music performed at the churches, carried him there much oftener than devotion would have done, and rarely did he fail ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... when, at the sound of our bugles, the pickets reported they saw a number of Indians moving off. On looking around us, we perceived ourselves and the caravan in the most unfavorable defenceless situation possible—in the area of a natural amphitheatre of sand hills, about fifty feet high, and within gun-shot all around. There was the narrowest ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minyeh and Siut, the new capital was founded on a strip of land protected from attack by a semi-amphitheatre of cliffs. The city, with its palaces and gardens, extended nearly two miles in length along the river bank. In its midst rose the temple of the new god of Egypt, and hard by the palace of the king. Both were brilliant with painting and sculpture, and inlaid work in ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... steady pulling. Once in an opening in the hill we passed along and then ascended an exceedingly steep spur on one side of a narrow and very deep natural amphitheatre, formed by surrounding mountains. We then came to a lagoon, and eventually the brow of the hill was reached. Thus the Wuchai Valley is arrived at, where, owing to a collection of water, the road is often impassable to man and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... soon have been ended, had any one of them uncovered her Face. It is past all Doubt, that the Heart of Zeokinizul, which longed for an Object, would have received the Impression with Transport. He went to one of the Ends of the Saloon, where Women of an ordinary Rank were seated in a Kind of Amphitheatre. Their Dress was in nothing inferior to those of a higher Rank; and besides, they had those fresh healthful Countenances, which being the Result of Temperance, and a plain Way of living, was not to be found among the Quality. Zeokinizul stood viewing them, but his Hour ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... Arithmetic to express the degrees of weight, elasticity, temperature, pitch of sound. When other means fail, qualities are suggested by the names of things which exhibit them in a salient way; figures by such terms as amphitheatre, bowl-like, pear-shaped, egg-shaped; colours by lias-blue, sky-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue; and similarly with sounds, smells and tastes. It is also important to express by short terms complex qualities, as harmony, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... day, and among the pennons of the challenging knights, which made gay the ancient amphitheatre of Arles where the lists were staked, there fluttered one bearing the device of a golden cup from which ran a stream of silver water. Also when Richard, with visor drawn and all in mail of shining steel, caracoled in the field, he was hailed Knight of the Spilling ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... The amphitheatre, where stood Spell-bound the mighty multitude, Rested its long and gilded walls Upon two pillars' capitals: His brawny arms, with labor spent, He threw around the pillars there, And to the deep blue firmament Lifted his sightless orbs ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... we followed them, passing through a deep pine forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre, surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine long before it left the external world. It was here that we obtained our first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of mountains. ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... remained folded up in deep masses, forming a wall on every side, which obscured the horizon from their sight. It appeared as if nature had gratuitously cleared away a sufficient portion of the mist, and had thus arranged a little amphitheatre for the approaching combat ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... most fascinating adventure recorded in history—an exploit which puts to shame the imagination of the greatest masters of romance. It is true that the Mexico City of to-day shows scanty traces (except in its Museum) of the Tenochtitlan of Montezuma; but the vast amphitheatre on which it stands is still wonderfully impressive, and still the great silver cones of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl look down upon ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... Raoul, after your Forum and famous Amphitheatre, our pavement must seem a poor trifle—though it by no means exhausts our list of interesting remains. The praefurnium, for instance; I must show you ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the mutual relations between the young and the aged. Oh, for a return in our youth to that ancient bowing deference to old age a beautiful instance of which Cicero preserves for us. Into the crowded amphitheatre at Athens, with the multitudes' expectant hush, there staggered an aged man, who made his tottering progress, beneath tier after tier of indifferent or averted faces, looking in vain for a place, until finally ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... of the Reader with as surprizing and glorious an Idea as any that arises in the whole Poem. He looks down into that vast Hollow of the Universe with the Eye, or (as Milton calls it in his first Book) with the Kenn of an Angel. He surveys all the Wonders in this immense Amphitheatre that lye between both the Poles of Heaven, and takes in at one View the whole Round of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... in little hand carts. About three thousand of the decayed soldiers were lodged in the Hotel des Invalids, at the time of my visit. Passing the National Assembly on my return, I spent a moment or two in it. The interior of this building resembles an amphitheatre. It is constructed to accommodate 900 members, each having a separate desk. The seat upon which the Duchesse of Orleans, and her son, the Comte de Paris, sat, when they visited the National Assembly after the flight of Louis Philippe, was shown with considerable alacrity. ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... front; a line of tall, well-built houses, not in the least rural in their aspect, but that seem rather as if they had been transported from the centre of some stately city entire and at once, sweeps round its inner inflection, like a bent bow; and an amphitheatre of mingled rock and wood rises behind. With all its beauty, however, there hangs about the village an air of melancholy. Like some of the other western coast villages, it seems not to have grown, piece-meal, as a village ought, but to have been made wholesale, as Frankenstein made ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... the press. There was much in the book * about early Christianity and ecclesiastical antiquities. I imagined that this parish was, in British and Druidic times, a populous place, and somewhat important. There was a "Round," or amphitheatre, for public games, and four British castles; also a great many sepulchral mounds on the hills, the burial-place of chieftains. I supposed that St. Piran came here among these rude natives (perhaps painted savages) to preach the Gospel, and then built himself a cell by the sea-shore, near a ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... afterwards removed to one of the porticos, and the centre was used for a fireplace, which, if the old prints are to be trusted, was large enough to roast half a score of people at once. We have "A Perspective View of the Inside of the Amphitheatre in Ranelagh Gardens," drawn by W. Newland, and engraved by Walker, 1761; also "Eight Large Views of Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens," by Canaletti and Hooker, 1751. The roof of this immense building was covered with slate, and projected all round beyond ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... light. But, at the outbreak of war, the Turk had closed his Dardanelles and put out the lamp. He would never kindle it again, for the Queen Elizabeth, or a warship of her kidney, had lain off shore and reduced the lighthouse to these white stones. Across the amphitheatre of the bay were the village and broken forts of Seddel Bahr; and, aground at this point, the famous old hulk, the River Clyde. You remember—who could forget?—how they turned this vessel into a modern Horse of Troy, cramming its belly with armed men, running ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... century has elapsed since the fall of Louisburgh. The great American fortress of Louis XV. surrendered to Amherst, Wolfe, and Boscawen in 1758. A broken sea-wall of cut stone; a vast amphitheatre, inclosed within a succession of green mounds; a glacis; and some miles of surrounding ditch, yet remain—the relics of a structure for which the treasury of France paid ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... place through an arcade of verdure which brought them to a short flight of steps. It was a sunk amphitheatre, surrounded by a stone balustrade, with a small pond in the middle and, opposite, in a leafy frame, a female statue, with a moonbeam quivering upon it. A musty smell arose from this ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... figures, all well fitting in with their neighbours. Again, in this case, the lava, flowing over a convex surface, had contracted on the surface and caused the wonderful network of grooves. In one section the crater had the appearance of an ancient Roman or Etruscan amphitheatre with seats in many tiers or steps, separated by vertical cracks—as if cut out ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... cannot fail to excite interest and awaken reflection. They carry the mind back to the times "when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre." And they also lead us to speculations of the future, till we wonder whether the traveller shall some day inspect, with unconcerned composure, the few scraps of stone and iron which may indicate the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... inglorious occupation of growing turnips and potatoes, and could talk of nothing meaner than hypocausts and thermae. So we, like the farmer, slight the really beautiful Early Gothic "Liebfrauenkirche" and roam and muse for hours about the ruins of the Amphitheatre, the Roman Baths, the Roman ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... been more read in England than most historical works; and the Mexico of Montezuma has a well-defined idea attached to it. The amphitheatre of dark hills surrounding the level plain, the two snowy mountain-peaks, the five lakes covering nearly half the valley, the city rising out of the midst of the waters, miles from the shore, with which it was connected by its four causeways, the straight streets of low flat-roofed houses, the ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... seats of the rude amphitheatre sat the gayly-decked wives and daughters of the Gascons, from the metaries along the Ridge, and the chattering Spanish women of the Market, their shining hair un-bonneted to the sun. Next below were their husbands and lovers in Sunday blouses, milkmen, butchers, bakers, black-bearded fishermen, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... her with wonders. He had sold her a model of the Alexandrian library, a specimen of the original type invented by Memnon the Egyptian, and a manuscript of the first play acted by Thespis. These had not exhausted the stock of the dealer: he possessed the skin of a giraffe killed in the Roman amphitheatre; the head of King Arthur's spear; and the breech of the first cannon fired at the siege of Constantinople. The jury, however, thought that the virtuoso having ordered those curiosities, ought to pay for them, and brought in ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... surrounded by an amphitheatre of lofty downs, beautifully checquered by pasture and cultivation, cottages and villas,—the environs are of the most agreeable and inviting character, and the climate mild and salubrious; to those therefore who love to blend social intercourse with the pleasures of a cheerful ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon

... unoccupied, and the next moment Quesada, in complete general's uniform, and mounted on a bright bay thorough bred English horse, with a drawn sword in his hand, dashed at full gallop into the area, in much the same manner as I have seen a Manchegan bull rush into the amphitheatre when the gates of his pen are suddenly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... was well calculated to arrest the attention and impress the mind. The rudely majestic circle of stones in their temples, the enormous Cromlech, the massy Logan, the huge Carnedde, and the magnificent amphitheatre of woods, would all very strongly lay hold upon that religious thoughtfulness of soul, which has ever been so natural to man, amid all the wrecks of humanity—the monument of his former perfection!" That Druidism, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... the naturalist in the third voyage of captain Cook, advises physicians to send their patients to Teneriffe, on account of the mildness of the temperature and the equal climate of the Canaries. The ground on these islands rises in an amphitheatre, and presents simultaneously, as in Peru and Mexico, the temperature of every climate, from the heat of Africa to the cold of the higher Alps. Santa Cruz, the port of Orotava, the town of the same name, and that of Laguna, are four places, the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... They had come to what seemed a vast semicircle of ice and snow, a huge amphitheatre in the plains. It was wonderful: a great round wall on which the northern lights played, into which the stars peered. It was open towards the north, and in one side was a fissure shaped like a Gothic arch. Pierre ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of those below. One of these resembled the other houses in construction, and was surrounded by a separate enclosure; but the second, which was placed on higher ground, so far as they could judge at that distance, was roofless, and had all the characteristics of a Roman amphitheatre. At the far end of this amphitheatre stood a huge mass of polished rock, bearing a grotesque resemblance to the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... More than a power to know, Genius, incarnated in Art, By thee the nations grow. Lawgiver thine, and priest, and sage, Lit up the Oriental age. Persuasive groves, and musical, Of love the illumined mountains all. Eagles and rods, and axes clear, Forum and amphitheatre; These in thy plastic forming hand, Forth leapt to life the classic Land. Old and new, the worlds of light, Who bridged the gulf of Middle Night? See the purple passage rise, Many arch'd of centuries; Genius built it long and vast, And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... distraction and bewilderment, people knew not where to flee. The streets were obstructed with goods and in many narrow places were simply closed. Those who took refuge in those markets and squares of the city where the Flavian Amphitheatre stood afterward, near the temple of the Earth, near the Portico of Silvia, and higher up, at the temples of Juno and Lucinia, between the Clivus Virbius and the old Esquiline gate, perished from heat, surrounded by a sea of fire. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... into the Glory of God. And this is the great end to be desired—this strength and exaltation of the soul. This imparts the profoundest significance to that great life-struggle which goes on in these crowded streets. The city! what is it but a vast amphitheatre, filled with racers, with charioteers, with eager competitors; surrounded by an unseen and awful array of witnesses? And here, daily, the lists are opened, and men contend for success, for station, for power. But these are meretricious and perishable ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... of an amphitheatre of hills destitute of vegetation, which appeared low from the valley, although they must have been high enough above the level of the sea, was such a busy scene as one may find in the back settlements of Eastern Russia. Within an extensive inclosure of high palings was ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... Nearly opposite to us, upon the other side of the bay, were the extensive barracks, hospital, and the long line of the Marino, their white stuccoed walls glowing in the moonlight. On our left the beautiful city rose like an amphitheatre around the head of the bay; the hum of the populace, and the rumbling of wheels sounding faintly in the distance. Behind the town the blue conical peaks of the mountains melted into the sky. On our right was the roadstead and open sea, the moon's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... toward the very zenith. Monarch of a white-clad semicircle of kingly peaks it stood, while the sun, not yet risen to our view, colored the pure-white of its crest with a blush of rose-tint, and in a minute or two had set the whole vast amphitheatre a-glitter with the warm hues of its earliest rays. Across forty-five miles of massive chasms and rugged foothills (these "foothills" themselves perhaps as high as the highest Alps or Rockies) we looked to where, thousands of feet higher yet, there began the eternal snow-line ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... a turret, about fifteen feet in diameter, and opens into the shell of a large bedchamber. Its large croisees, which look out in three directions, command an extensive bird's eye view of the Comtat Grignan, surmounted by the long Alpine ridge of Mont Ventou, and an amphitheatre of other smaller mountains: and enough remained of both apartments to give a full idea of the lightness and airiness of their situation, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... found out along the Valmontone road[130] coincide nearly enough with the provenience of the inscription to settle an amphitheatre here of late imperial date. The tradition of the death of the martyr S. Agapito in an amphitheatre, and the discovery of a Christian church on the Valmontone road, have helped to make pretty sure ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin

... who has been so successful in the acoustic arrangements of this theatre. Not a sound, so it is said, is lost from the stage upon any part of the house. The lowest sob of a dying heroine, in her very last agony, is heard as plainly by the occupant of the back seat of the amphitheatre, as are the thundering denunciations of the tragic actor in the wildest of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... stupendous masses of rock in the fore ground, here strike the eye with admiration and astonishment. The circular form in which the whole is so wonderfully disposed, induced the governor to give the name of Pitt's Amphitheatre to this offset or branch from the Prince Regent's Glen. The road continues from hence for the space of seventeen miles, on the ridge of the mountain which forms one side of the Prince Regent's Glen, ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... given by Dion Cassius, Juvenal, and Fronto. We are told by these authors that during his consulship, A. D. 91, and before his banishment, he was compelled by Domitian to fight against a lion and two bears in the amphitheatre adjoining the emperor's villa at Albanum. The event created such an impression in Rome, and its memory lasted so long that, half a century later, we find it given by Fronto as a subject for a rhetorical composition to his pupil Marcus ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... considering in its overwhelming sorrow developed in hurried flight, and its lofty hope through triumphal pomp and the significant symbolism of resurrection,—the epos and the epic rhapsodies,—the circus and the amphitheatre,—and even the impetuous song and dance of painted savages,—all these, which at first we may pass by with a glance, have for our deeper search a meaning which we can never wholly exhaust. Let it be that they have grown from feeble beginnings, they ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... perished. He was a member of Burton's company at the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, and was one of the chorus in that great actor's revival of Antigone—which there is little doubt that the chorus extinguished. He was the low comedian in Joseph Foster's amphitheatre, where he sang Captain Kidd to fill up the "carpenter scenes," and where he sported amid the turbulent rhetorical billows of Timour the Tartar and The Terror of the Road. He acted in New ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... and enterprise. The exhibition of sculpture and painting alone made them attractive and intellectual, while the athletic exercises amused ordinary minds. They were not demoralizing, like the sports of the amphitheatre, or a modern bull-fight, or even fashionable races. They were more like tournaments in the martial ages of Europe, but superior to them vastly, since no woman was allowed to be present at the Olympic games ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... camping-place was a lovely spot, being an open amphitheatre of about ten acres in extent surrounded on all sides by the forest, and having a tiny rivulet of pure sparkling fresh water flowing through it. Daphne of course at once took the lead in the arrangements necessary for what threatened to be a somewhat protracted sojourn; ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... this amphitheatre was once almost as large as the one at Nimes, but that it would only hold about ten thousand spectators," explained the chauffeur, who was engaged partly for his French ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... situated on the N. side of the river upon two terraces or plateaus—the first about 60 ft., the second from 100 to 150 ft., above low water—and upon hills which enclose these terraces on three sides in the form of an amphitheatre, rising to a height of about 400 ft. on the E. and of about 460 ft. on the W., and commanding magnificent views of the river, the valley, the numerous suburbs, and the more distant wooded hills. About half of the hill-enclosed plain lies S. of the river, and it is upon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... an amphitheatre of hills, some wooded, some precipitous, and behind these rose the summits of loftier ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... ascended the hill, the whole scene was instantly before us: a large lake, surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, bleak, uncomfortable, and desolate. In the lake itself, about half a mile from the edge next us, was to be seen the "Island," with two or three slated houses on it, naked and un-plastered, as desolate-looking almost as ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... where our observations were made, and the results of which are as follows; latitude 19 degrees 42 3/4 minutes South; longitude 15 degrees 36 1/2 minutes East of Port Essington, is surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills. Had it been on the seaward side of the Cape, I might have been readier to imagine that it could have been thrown up by the sea in its ordinary action, or when suddenly disturbed by an earthquake wave; ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... the town, before the ebb had run long, it appeared to be a very Venice of hovels, a river Cybele rising from the water. For those who like it, the locality is not ill chosen. The hills recede from the river, and form an amphitheatre; and several other rivers or streams flowing in, cause a muddy deposit, on which the houses are built. At high water they are surrounded; at low water stand on a sheet of mud. On nearing it, we were encompassed ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... valley ringed by an amphitheatre of mountains, up the harsh slopes of which spruce forests climb desperately until beaten by the height and rock on the scarps beneath crests which are often snow-capped. Through this broad valley, and winding ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... a totally different character; it forms an amphitheatre with three tiers. The first tier above the field is of mould and contains a row of cottages surrounded by trees: this is the village. On the second tier, where the ground is clay, stands the manor-house, almost on top of the village, with which an avenue of old lime-trees connects it. To the right ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... reaches his ears. The snapping of the branches is resumed; and presently the moose is seen stalking into the middle of the moonlit "barren." Our weapons are ready; and as the magnificent animal stands looking eagerly around in the woodland amphitheatre, a rifle ball, laden with death, brings him to ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... arranged as a semicircular amphitheatre, the orchestral conductor may conduct a considerable number of performers alone, all eyes then being able to look towards him. Nevertheless, the employment of a certain number of sub-conductors appears to ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... and, smiling scornfully, assured us that he had seen and heard enough to strengthen him in his verdict. Heine told us that shortly after he and Spontini had taken their seats in the almost empty amphitheatre, and as soon as the Bacchus chorus had started, Spontini had said to him: 'C'est de la Berliner Sing-Academie, allons-nous-en.' Through an open door a streak of light had fallen on a lonely figure behind one of the columns; Heine ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... field of ice every day, and trying to scale the sides of our highest peaks. I thus examined in succession all the glaciers descending from the majestic summits of Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn, whose numerous crests form a most gigantic amphitheatre, which lifts itself above the everlasting snow. Afterward I visited the sea of ice which, under the name of the glacier of Aletsch, flows from the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the Eiger toward Brieg; thence I ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... were faded and lost in the blue ether, I had time to look around me and notice the mead in which I was standing. Here, clover covered its surface; there, crops of grain; further on, beds of herbs and the sweetest flowers. An amphitheatre of hills and rocks, broken into a variety of glens and precipices, guards the plain from intrusion, and opens a course for several clear rivulets, which, after gurgling amidst loose stones and fragments, fall down the steeps, and are concealed ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... of Roman or Gallo-Roman architecture stand with others that belong to the dawn of mediaeval art, and others, again, that are marked by the florid and graceful fancy of the Renaissance. The ruins of the amphitheatre are insignificant compared to those at Nimes and Arles, and there is no beautiful example of Roman art like the Maison Carree at Nimes; but there is an exceedingly curious monument of antiquity, which was long a puzzle to archaeologists, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... together rise, And the whole year in gay confusion lies. Immortal glories in my mind revive, And in my soul a thousand passions strive, 70 When Rome's exalted beauties I descry Magnificent in piles of ruin lie. An amphitheatre's amazing height Here fills my eye with terror and delight, That on its public shows unpeopled Rome, And held uncrowded nations in its womb; Here pillars rough with sculpture pierce the skies; And here the proud triumphal arches ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... fellow sitting there and walked on. The valley was about a half mile long and from a quarter to a third of a mile in width. It resembled a huge amphitheatre ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... is likely well to repay the inconvenience one has to stand in such an excursion from exposure to the sun, &c. The lake is of very considerable extent, measuring, I think, about twenty-eight miles at its greatest length, by about twenty-two at its extreme breadth; it is formed by an amphitheatre of mountains, the various streams from which feed it; and its opening or outlet forms the origin of the river Pasig, which, bathing the walls of the fortress of Santiago and the capital of the Philippines, flows into the arm of the sea ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... a medical remedy, travel seems one of the best.' He found it so in 1833. But this and his two other voyages to Europe make no Odyssey. When Voltaire was pressed to visit Rome, he declared that he would be better pleased with some new and free English book than with all the glories of amphitheatre and of arch. Emerson in like manner seems to have thought more of the great writers whom he saw in Europe than of buildings or of landscapes. 'Am I,' he said, 'who have hung over their works in my chamber ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... every day. With the brutal roar of the first Prussian gun the cry came to the civilised world, "Follow thou me," just as truly as it did in Palestine. Men went to their Calvary singing Tipperary, rubbish, rhymed doggerel, but their spirit was equal to that of any Christian martyr in a Roman amphitheatre. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." Our chaps are doing that consciously, willingly, almost without bitterness towards their enemies; for the rest it doesn't matter whether they sing hymns or ragtime. ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... her niece, and Carlton began scrambling down the side of the amphitheatre. The marble benches were broken in parts, and where they were perfect were covered with a fine layer of moss as smooth and soft as green velvet, so that Carlton, when he was not laboriously feeling for his next foothold with the toe of his boot, was engaged ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... the road between Mantua and Verona, which, however, makes amends for all on our arrival. How beautiful the entrance is of this charming city, how grand the gate, how handsome the drive forward, may all be read here in a printed book called Verona illustrata: but my felicity in finding the amphitheatre so well preserved, can only be found in my own heart, which began sensibly to dilate at the seeing an old Roman colisseum kept so nicely, and repaired so well. It is said that the arena here is absolutely perfect; and if the galleries are a little deficient, there ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... no movement, no sound. Things began to seem queer; in the bright blaze of sunshine, and with the parched desert glistening after the welcome rain, there in the midst of the vast amphitheatre of mountains lay the dead horses before the mysterious wagon. But nowhere about was any sign of life, and the wagon might hold within its white walls death for whoever should unwarily ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... and was accommodated with a seat in a gallery commanding a perfect view of the platform whereon the sports were performed; Mr. Gumbo took his seat in the amphitheatre below; or, when tired, issued forth into the outer world to drink a pot of beer, or play a game at cards with his brother-lacqueys, and the gentlemen's coachmen on the boxes of the carriages waiting without. Lacqueys, liveries, footmen—the old society was encumbered ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... series of terraces and long stone steps extending upward from the holy water, while rising yet higher in the background are temples, towers, mosques, and palaces, all in oriental splendor. Algiers, likewise, an amphitheatre in form, might give San Francisco lessons in terrace construction, having hillsides covered with them, the scene made yet more striking by the dazzling white of the houses. After the place became French, the streets were widened ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft

... gorges of Anti-Lebanon, we entered a wide, disheartening plain, bounded by an amphitheatre of dreary mountains. Our horses had had no water for twenty-four hours, and we had had no refreshment of any kind for twenty. After two hours of more hard riding I came to another range of mountains, from beyond which opened the view of Damascus, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... Began Goethe's Iphigenie. Wrote. Oct. 7th.—Milner. Wraxall. A dinner-party. Wrote out a sketch for an essay on Justification. Singing, whist, shooting. Copied a paper for my father. 12th.—A day on the hill for roe. 14 guns. [To Liverpool for public dinner at the Amphitheatre.] 18th.—Most kindly heard. Canning's debut everything that could be desired. I thought I spoke 35 minutes, but afterwards found it was 55. Read Marco Visconti. 21st.—Operative dinner at Amphitheatre. Spoke perhaps 16 or 18 minutes. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... have heard and sung of "Tibby Fowler o' the glen;" but they may not all be aware that the glen referred to lies within about four miles of Berwick. No one has seen and not admired the romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the grey ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, whose branches, meeting ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... Wilson, Chief Justice of Ontario—regarding the Orange arch; but this was ultimately smoothed over. The city was gay with flags and decorations; nine arches had been erected in the principal streets; a large amphitheatre was built for the purposes of the formal reception; and the city was crowded with people. At the amphitheatre an address was received from the city and replied to by the Prince in a speech in which he referred to the ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... to another anecdote reported by the same authority:— On some occasion it happened that a dearth prevailed, either generally of cattle, or of such cattle as were used for feeding the wild beasts reserved for the bloody exhibitions of the amphitheatre. Food could be had, and perhaps at no very exorbitant price, but on terms somewhat higher than the ordinary market price. A slight excuse served with Caligula for acts the most monstrous. Instantly repairing ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... near Regla, within the beautiful harbor of Havana. I shall never forget the impression made on my mind by this delicious scene as it first broke on my sight at sunrise, in all the cool freshness of morning. The grand amphitheatre of hills swept down to the calm and lake-like water with gentle slopes, lapped in the velvet robes of richest green, and embroidered, as it were, with lace-like spots of castle, fort, dwelling, and villa, until the seaward ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... Cumberland." After reaching the summit of the table-land, he passed through a wilderness where for eighteen miles together he met nothing more human than a monkey, until a turn of the road disclosed the pleasant surprise of an amphitheatre of green hills encircling a small lake, whose banks were dotted with red-tiled cottages surrounding a pretty Gothic church. The whole station presented "very much the look of a rising English watering-place. The largest house is occupied by the Governor-General. It is a spacious ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... their way to the classical regions, where their fancy had been so long straying. They explored France, and the northern parts of Italy—came on the shores of the Adriatic—resided and secretly made excavations near the amphitheatre of Polo—and finally reached the Morea. Not a crag, valley, or brook, that they were not conversant with before they left it. They at length tore themselves away; and found themselves at the ancient Parthenope. It was at Pompeii Mr. Graeme first saw the beautiful Miss ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... terrace; and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful landscape, all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which the scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of Titans; right and left, immense virgin forests full of those subdued and distant harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me, a prospect of twenty leagues marvelously enhanced by the extreme transparency of ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... Bruno on the right, we entered the woods, and soon emerged from them into a large pasture, under the grand amphitheatre of mountains, having a gentle ascent before us, beyond which appeared the neat blue roofs and glittering spires of the convent, where we arrived as the moon was beginning to assume ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... of San Francisco is very uneven, embracing a series of hills, of which the highest ones, known as the Twin Peaks, reach to an elevation of 925 feet, and form the crown of an amphitheatre of lower altitudes. Several of the latter are covered with handsome residences, and afford a magnificent view of the surrounding country, with its bordering bay and ocean, and the noble Golden Gate channel, a river-like passage from ocean to bay of five miles in length and one ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... himself with only choaking him; but towards Jones he bore no such respect; he no sooner therefore found himself a little roughly handled by his new antagonist, than he gave him one of those punches in the guts which, though the spectators at Broughton's amphitheatre have such exquisite delight in seeing them, convey but very little pleasure ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... carriageable art, but none contain so much of the glorious local art, and of the springs and sources of art, which can by no means be made subjects of package or porterage, nor, I grieve to say, of salvage. Verona possesses, in the first place, not the largest, but the most perfect and intelligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, still unbroken in circle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch: it contains minor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, wrecks of temples, which give the streets of its suburbs ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... the streets and ways leading to the great Amphitheatre were alive with people, all tending toward the same goal: men and women in holiday clothes and little children running beside them. The men were heavily loaded with baskets of rush or bags of rough linen containing provisions, for many hours would be spent up there waiting for amusement, whilst ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Inland the amphitheatre of hills Sweeps round with Snowdon as their central crest, And murmurs of innumerable rills Blend with the heaving of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various

... in the group of three, Andy Wildwood imitated their graceful acknowledgment of the plaudits of the vast concourse in the great metropolitan amphitheatre. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... that you enjoy such warmth and are not made languid by it. You will perhaps remember that I am always strongest at 98 degrees Fahrenheit. I delight to think that you also can look forth as I do now upon a broad valley and a fine amphitheatre of hills, and are about to watch the stately ceremony of sunset from your piazza. But you have not this lovely Lake, nor I suppose the delicate purple mist which folds these ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... dollars to the bargain, which made me one of the happiest and, I believe, also, one of the richest men in the army. I expended the first dollar next day, in getting admission to a bullfight, in their national amphitheatre, where the first thing that met my astonished eyes was a mad bull giving the finishing prode to my unfortunate ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... Fontanes, who was appointed to pronounce the eulogy on Washington, waited courteously until the echoes of the torrent of applause, which seemed to fall in cascades through the vast amphitheatre, had died away. In the midst of these glorious individualities, M. de Fontanes was a curiosity, half political, half literary. After the 18th Fructidor he was proscribed with Suard and Laharpe; but, being perfectly hidden in a friend's house, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... proved to be as the sailor had said. They had been marched into a wide amphitheatre of trees, in the midst of which a tremendous fire was burning brightly, and by its light the English party could make out the long serpentine line of men who were marching into the amphitheatre, which was lined with hundreds ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... laughter. But the moment the wounded man was lifted from the ground, the whole strong light from the brilliant chandelier struck full on his right leg dangling from the knee, with the foot hanging limp and turned inward. A deep murmur of sympathy swelled and rolled around the crowded amphitheatre. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... the shores of the Lynn Canal, in an amphitheatre formed by precipitous cliffs, the granite peaks of which almost overhang the little town. A curious effect is produced here by rudely coloured advertisements of some one's chewing gum, or somebody's else cigars with which the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... valley to the south, a hill to the north, a table-land to the east, and to the west the broad Irish Sea. Not, of course, a place to be compared with the grand and gloomy valley of the Logberg, where in a vast amphitheatre of dark hills and great joekulls tipped with snow, with deep chasms and yawning black pits, one's heart stands still. But the place of the Manx Tynwald was an impressive spot. The Hill itself was a circular mount ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... astounding the progress that has marked the last half-century! The streets that meandered, as it were, among the valleys, or fringed the water's edge, now girdle the hills like rows of seats in a huge amphitheatre; a railway lifts the passenger to the mountain top; and other railways whirl him from hill to hill along the dizzy height. I Trade, too, has multiplied twenty fold. In a commercial report for the year ending June, 1905, it is stated that in amount of tonnage Hong ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... chain of mountains, which form the southern border of the kingdom. Alpine heights rising around them in rugged magnificence, and gigantic grandeur, presented scenery which our traveller had never seen surpassed. The passes of Hairey and of Horza, amid a superb amphitheatre of hills, closely shut in by overhanging cliffs, more than two thousand feet high, were truly striking. Here for the first time in Africa, did nature appear to the English to rival in the production ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... recommended to them was dreaming, their ridicule changed to wonder, and finally to a sort of awe-struck admiration, something like that we imagine a Roman to have felt on learning that a Christian was capable of giving up his fish-ponds and nightingales' tongues, and his afternoons at the amphitheatre, for the sake of what he called 'Truth' ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... their conquering days, as were inhuman sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased; when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... glades watered by the fair Ohio. There were bowers of myrtle, and vineyards ready for the vintage, and the rich aromatic scent wafted from groves of blossoming magnolias told me that we were in a different clime, and had reached the sunny south. And before us, placed within a perfect amphitheatre of swelling hills, reposed a huge city, whose countless spires reflected the beams of the morning sun—the creation of yesterday—Cincinnati, the "Queen City of the West." I drove straight to Burnet House, almost the finest edifice in the town, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... of Meudon-Fleury, a magical and quite ideal site, is the finest pleasure-house that ever yet the sun shone on. The park and the gardens are in the form of an amphitheatre, and are, in my opinion, sublime, in a far different way from those of Vaux. M. Fouquet, condemned to death, in punishment for his superb chateau, died slowly in prison; the Marquis de Louvois will not, perhaps, die in a stronghold; but his horoscope has already warned that minister ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... none of the round or square towers which castles usually possess, but having in plenty conical turrets, steep roofs, and the like, which give it the appearance of a fairy palace in a wide, enchanted amphitheatre of green wooded hills, making the Schloss Eltz, all in all, a most miraculous sight, such as a man may not ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... the Christians could not complain of us for that. Did not the most Christian Emperor Constantine set some three hundred German prisoners to butcher each other in the amphitheatre of Treves?' ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... her forth into the dear sunshine, and glad she was to see it and the blue sky once more. But it was only for a short time that they let her enjoy even this little pleasure; for they brought her to the amphitheatre, a great open place like the circus, with tiers upon tiers of seats all about, and crowds of faces looking down into the centre where ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown

... has cleverly done. It was an idea worthy of a "Mayor of Casterbridge." We lingered a bit, in the car, picking out "landmarks" of resemblance to the book, and there were plenty. You know, there's a magnificent Roman amphitheatre near by; but did we stay to look at it? My friend, we are motorists! And it happened to be a grand day with the car, which, though still very new, has "found" itself. "Apollo" seemed a steed of "pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... and tangled briers, over what once were paths where beauty lingered and listened to the vow of love; or to wander through the streets of a disentombed city, or seated on a fallen column, or the stone steps of the disinterred amphitheatre, to think of the human hearts that here, a thousand years agone, beat emulously with the hopes and fears, the loves and hates, the joys and sorrows, the aspiration and despair that animate or depress our own, and to reflect that they have ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... rocks. She was sitting in her favourite spot, a spur of rock overhanging a green nook in the broken ugliness of the cliffs, sheltered from the sea by an encircling arm of rock, and reached by a steep path down the cliff. Around her towered an amphitheatre of vast cliffs in which the sea sang loud music to the spirit of solitude. In the moaning waters in front of the cove a jagged rock rose from the incomparable green, tilted backward and fantastically shaped, like a great grave face watching the house on the summit ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... the Romans to pathos appears a priori in their amphitheatre, and its tendency to put out the theatre; secondly, a posteriori, in the fact that their theatre was put out; and also, a posteriori, in the coarseness of their sensibilities to real distresses unless costumed and made sensible as well as intelligible. The grossness of this demand, which ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... prodigious interval. True; but prodigious as it is, there is really nothing between them. The Roman stage, at least the tragic stage, as is well known, was put out, as by an extinguisher, by the cruel amphitheatre, just as a candle is made pale and ridiculous by daylight. Those who were fresh from the real murders of the bloody amphitheatre regarded with contempt the mimic murders of the stage. Stimulation too coarse and too intense had its usual effect in ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... magnificence Of royal Theseus, and his large expense, He first enclosed for lists a level ground, 440 The whole circumference a mile around; The form was circular; and all without A trench was sunk, to moat the place about. Within an amphitheatre appear'd, Raised in degrees; to sixty paces rear'd: That when a man was placed in one degree, Height was allow'd for him ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... intending to volunteer. Passing the rocky ridge along which ran the boundary between freedom and Austria, one descended by another precipitous path into the valley of Njegush, the birthplace of the family of the Prince, a circular amphitheatre of rocks, a narrow ridge here and there holding still a little earth on which the people raised a few stalks of maize or a few potatoes, a few square yards of wheat, or a strip of poor grass for the sheep or goats. Every tiny field was terraced ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... point which Dr. Burrow makes in his thesis. This patient, a man who was being treated for homosexual tendencies which worried him a great deal, on one of the first days brought this dream. He was a hospital interne. Someone came to him and said a nurse had cut herself. He ran up to the surgical amphitheatre where preparations were made to fix her wound. He suddenly discovered that his was the cut and that it was on the ventral surface of the penis corresponding to the primitive subincision operation. He took up a needle, sewed it up and put on a bandage. At the end of the dream he wondered ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... snow-white line zigzagging down coal-black cliffs for many a hundred feet, and above it, depth beyond depth of purple shadow away into the very heart of Snowdon, up the long valley of Cwm-dyli, to the great amphitheatre of Clogwyn-y-Garnedd; while over all the cone of Snowdon rose, in perfect symmetry, between his attendant peaks ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... picturesque buildings, the strip of far-off sea, as flat as a band of paint, the unnaturally bright moonlight, the two chief figures going through a love quarrel in the foreground, and she herself calmly seated in the shadow, as in the darkened amphitheatre, and ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... boldly, Ginepro more timidly by his side. They were such wild-looking outlaws. At last they reached a spring, and Martin left the beaten path, ascended a slope, and stood at the entrance to a large natural amphitheatre, not unlike an old chalk pit, such as men still hew from the side ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... tell you such a story, and say that the city was swallowed up by an earthquake. We moved to-day over the frontier to Verona, by a road suspected of thieves,—'the wise convey it call,'—but without molestation. I shall remain here a day or two to gape at the usual marvels,—amphitheatre, paintings, and all that time-tax of travel,—though Catullus, Claudian, and Shakspeare have done more for Verona than it ever did for itself. They still pretend to show, I believe, the 'tomb of all the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... genius of the last five-and-twenty years of the nineteenth century, and produced a limitless abortion in that of future time. Education, I tremble before thy dreaded name. The cruelties of Nero, of Caligula, what were they?—a few crunched limbs in the amphitheatre; but thine, O Education, are the yearning of souls sick of life, of maddening discontent, of all the fearsome and fathomless sufferings of the mind. When Goethe said "More light," he said the wickedest and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... deeper and deeper into the mountains, growing more and more gloomy, and then all at once displaying the bright glow of sunshine right in front, as if it came round an elbow of the way. A few minutes later Griggs led the party into a vast amphitheatre walled in by towering walls that were on the whole perpendicular, but seamed with rifts running up to natural terraces or breaks in the strata of which the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... the day hardly seemed complete or perfect unless one had seen the sun set. Thus, almost every evening, we used to spend an hour or more, pacing up and down, or sitting in that little hollow under the brow of the Flat, where, as from the topmost seat of a natural amphitheatre, one could see Rose Cottage and the old well-head where the cattle drank; our own green garden-gate, the dark mass of the beech-wood, and far away beyond that Nunneley Hill, where the sun ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... grandest ruin in Rome is the Colosseum (Plate XXVI.), an amphitheatre which was built by the two Emperors, Vespasian and Titus, and which was finished eighty years after the birth of Christ. The outside walls are nearly 160 feet high. The tiers of benches, which could accommodate 85,000 spectators, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... chapter, and the final survey and revision of my Whitman essay, I am making at a rustic house I have built at a wild place a mile or more from my home upon the river. I call this place Whitman Land, because in many ways it is typical of my poet,—an amphitheatre of precipitous rock, slightly veiled with a delicate growth of verdure, enclosing a few acres of prairie-like land, once the site of an ancient lake, now a garden of unknown depth and fertility. Elemental ruggedness, savageness, and grandeur, combined with wonderful tenderness, modernness, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... as well towards the sea as towards the land; but the ground within having originally been a mount, they have reduced it not to one level, but to several, rising in stages one above the other, like an amphitheatre, each of which is inclosed within its separate pallisade; they communicate with each other by narrow lanes, which might easily be stopt up, so that if an enemy should force the outward pallisade, he would ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... Antioch, he saw this holy man, and sentenced him to be carried to Rome, there to be thrown to the lions for the amusement of the bloody-minded Romans. As has been said, from early days the favourite sport of this nation had been to sit round on galleries, built up within a round building called an amphitheatre, to watch the gladiators fight with each other, or with savage beasts. Many of these buildings are still to be found ruined in different parts of the empire, and one in especial at Rome, named the Coliseum, where ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... we thought we were pleasing ourselves sufficiently by the airing, so we came home thinking of nothing at all, when, as we drove round, our ears were suddenly struck with the sound of music, and as if by enchantment, a fairy festival appeared upon the green. In the midst of an amphitheatre of verdant festoons suspended from white staffs, on which the scarlet streamers of the yeomen were flying, appeared a company of youths and maidens in white, their heads adorned with flowers, dancing; ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... greenhouse the judge had set up a grandstand, an amphitheatre of benches to hold some five or six thousand pelargoniums in pots—a splendid and famous show. People came to see his geraniums in flower, not only from the neighborhood, but even from the departments round about. The Empress Marie Louise, passing through ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Amphitheatre" :   dramaturgy, coliseum, gallery, bowl, theatre, vomitory, theater, stadium, amphitheatrical, amphitheater, arena, Colosseum, tiered seat, dramatics, sports stadium, Amphitheatrum Flavium, dramatic art



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com