"Roman Holidays" As Trope
By the outset of the nineteenth century and particularly in response to the carnage of the latter years of the French revolution, the term Roman holiday had taken on sinister aspects, implying an event that occasions enjoyment or profit at the expense, or derived from the suffering, of others, as in this passage from Childe Harold's Pilgramage (1812–18) by George Gordon, Lord Byron:
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother—he their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
Read more about this topic: Roman Festivals
Famous quotes containing the word roman:
“It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)