What is "antients"

Usage examples of "antients".

The antients would certainly have invoked the goddess Flora for this purpose, and it would have been no difficulty for their priests, or politicians to have persuaded the people of the real presence of the deity, though a plain mortal had personated her and performed her office.

For which reason the antients used, on such occasions, to sacrifice to the goddess Nemesis, a deity who was thought by them to look with an invidious eye on human felicity, and to have a peculiar delight in overturning it.

He was deeply read in the antients, and a profest master of all the works of Plato and Aristotle.

The antients may be considered as a rich common, where every person who hath the smallest tenement in Parnassus hath a free right to fatten his muse.

Or, to place it in a clear light, we moderns are to the antients what the poor are to the rich.

In like manner are the antients, such as Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and the rest, to be esteemed among us writers, as so many wealthy squires, from whom we, the poor of Parnassus, claim an immemorial custom of taking whatever we can come at.

Thou hast often offended thy antients, and especially me that am thy mother, thou hast pierced mee with thy darts thou contemnest me as a widow, neither dost t thou regard thy valiant and invincible father, and to anger me more, thou art amorous of harlots and wenches : hot I will cause that thou shalt shortly repent thee, and that this marriage shal be dearely bought.

I must inform you, too, that this was the way of thinking of the Antients on this Subject.