Sardanapallus
historical figure · 5 works · 7 mentions · 7 anchored passages
Sardanapallus king of Ninus
in the texts
Stromata
Legendary Assyrian king cited as the type of the worst, desire-ruled kingship.
And fourth, the worst of all, is set down the kingship that is according to the desires, like that of Sardanapallus and of those who make their end in the desires, to gratify as much as possible.
For in what do these differ from Sardanapallus, whose life the epigram shows:
Orations
Legendary luxurious and effeminate king used as a foil to Alexander's martial spirit.
For Sardanapallus would never have been roused from his chamber and from among his women, not only not by a Timotheus or any other of the younger musicians, but not even by Marsyas himself or Olympus;
For that notorious Sardanapallus held Nineveh, and held Babylon, the greatest of the cities that had ever been;
Nicomachean Ethics
Legendary Assyrian king proverbial for a life devoted to pleasure, invoked to characterize the vulgar identification of the good with pleasure.
but they get a hearing for their view as reasonable because many persons of high position share the feelings of Sardanapallus.
On the Commonwealth
Legendary Assyrian king cited as an exemplar of vice and deformity of character.
362] That Sardanapallus, far more deformed by his vices than by the very name.
The Histories
King of Ninus (Nineveh) whose underground treasury was robbed by thieves tunneling from a neighboring house, an episode Herodotus cites as a parallel to the digging of Lake Moeris.
Sardanapallus king of Ninus had great wealth, which he kept in an underground treasury.