Sardanapalus
historical figure · 6 works · 8 mentions · 8 anchored passages
that king of Syria
in the texts
Orations
Legendary Assyrian king cited as an example of excessive, unkingly luxury.
"For altogether this is a better adornment for temples than emeralds and carnelians and onyx stones, such as Sardanapalus had about Ninus.
And all who, through weakness and softness, have emulated the women's life—like Sardanapalus—are infamous to this day for their disgraces.
For the one despises glory and thinks it nonsense, and often quotes the elegy of Sardanapalus:
Birds
The legendary luxurious Assyrian king, invoked by Pisthetaerus as a mocking comparison for the pompous newly arrived Inspector.
Who is this Sardanapalus?
De legendis gentilium libris
Legendary Assyrian king proverbial for luxury and ease, invoked ironically.
Then ease would be worth much in life, and Sardanapalus would be borne to first place of all in happiness, or Margites too, if you like, whom Homer said was neither ploughman nor digger nor any other thing useful for life—if indeed these verses are Homer's.
On Moral Ends
Legendary king of Syria/Assyria whose epitaph boasted of a life of pleasure
But if bodily pleasure delights even when past, I do not understand why Aristotle so greatly derides the epitaph of Sardanapalus, in which that king of Syria boasts that he has carried away with him all the pleasures of his lusts.
Tusculan Disputations
Opulent king of Syria whose self-composed epitaph celebrating indulgence is mocked as fit for an ox
From which the error of Sardanapalus, the most opulent king of Syria, is recognized, who ordered to be cut on his tomb:
De Pallio
Legendary Assyrian king cited as notorious for luxury and softness.
But one must keep silence, lest those people too should mutter something about certain of your own Caesars, equally shameful — lest perchance it should be entrusted to a dog-like constancy to designate as more impure than Physcon and softer than Sardanapalus a certain Caesar, and indeed an under-Nero.