Ornamental headband worn as a badge of royalty

Usage examples of diadem.

Griffeides, Orpheus with his lute of eight blue stars, Miraldra the Enchantress with blazing Fenim for her diadem, and low in the southeast the star-veils of Alastor Cluster.

So delightful was the sudden change of circumstances that I became quite boyish, and seizing the old man in my exuberance by the hands, dragged him to his feet, and danced him round and round in a circle, while his ancient hair flapped about his head, his skin cloak waved from his shoulders like a pair of dusky wings and half-eaten cakes, dried flesh, glittering jewels, broken diadems, and golden finger-rings were flung in an arc about us.

But the freeborn Barbarians were not dazzled by the lustre of the diadem, and the people asserted their indefeasible right of choosing, deposing, and punishing the hereditary servant of the state.

To his astonishment, he perceived that they were prostrating themselves before him, all save one, dressed as it seemed in a robe of placoid scales, and crowned with a luminous diadem, who stood with his reptilian mouth opening and shutting, as though he led the chanting of the worshippers.

The diadem in the center of the circlet of gold upon the brow of Lakor proclaimed him a Holy Thern, while his companion, not thus adorned, was a lesser thern, though from his harness I gleaned that he had reached the Ninth Cycle, which is but one below that of the Holy Therns.

Lord Ragnr and Styl puffed up his chest until it almost overshadowed his belly, which was proud and taut beneath a layer of sashes and diadems.

A vision in tiered and tasseled skirt of embroidered flame and saffron, a short-sleeved coat upon his upper body, and on his head a towerlike tiara tied round with the white ribbon of the diadem.

Time, too, though in moral sadness wisely called a shadow, has been clothed with terrific attributes, and the sweep of his scythe has shorn the towery diadem of cities.

These coins were emblazoned with the profile of the second King Mithridates of the Parthians, a short-necked old man with a nose suitable for catching fish, carefully curled hair and pointed beard, and on his head the little round brimless hat his ambassadors had worn, except that his boasted the ribbon of the diadem and had ear-flaps and neck-shield.

Tigranes fled a second time, so certain he would be captured that he gave his tiara and diadem to one of his sons to keep, exhorting the princeling to gallop faster because he was younger and lighter.

Aspacuras, who owed his diadem to the choice of Sapor, was obliged to declare, that his regard for his children, who were detained as hostages by the tyrant, was the only consideration which prevented him from openly renouncing the alliance of Persia.

Better his end had been as the end of a cloudless day, Bright, by the word of Zeus, with a golden star, Wrought of a golden fame, and flung to the central sky, To gleam on a stormless tomb for evermore: -- Whether or not there fell To the touch of an alien hand The sheen of his purple robe and the shine of his diadem, Better his end had been To die as an old man dies, -- But the fates are ever the fates, and a crown is ever a crown.

The patrician Aspar might have placed the diadem on his own head, if he would have subscribed the Nicene creed.

Still excessively abundant, it was dressed in a manner of which the poor lady appeared not yet to have recognised the supersession, with a glossy braid, like a large diadem, on the top of the head, and behind, at the nape of the neck, a dingy rosette like a large button.

Castle, seen from a distance, was an irregular diadem that perched on the craggy brow of a rock overlooking the wattled rooftops of the Old Town across the river.