“A few months before the murder [of Domitian] a raven perched on the Capitol and croaked out the words: "All will be well!" – a portent which some wag explained in the following verse:
There was a raven, strange to tell,
Perched upon Jove's own gable, whence
He tried to tell us "All is well!" –
But had to use the future tense.”

— Sueton, book The Twelve Caesars

Ante paucos quam occideretur menses cornix in Capitolino elocuta est: εσται πάντα καλως, nec defuit qui ostentum sic interpretaretur:
Nuper Tarpeio quae sedit culmine cornix,
"Est bene" non potuit dicere, dixit: "Erit."
Source: The Twelve Caesars, Domitian, Ch. 23

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A few months before the murder [of Domitian] a raven perched on the Capitol and croaked out the words: "All will be wel…" by Sueton?

Sueton28

Roman historian 70–126

Related quotes

“BALTHAZAR: Sin is a raven croaking her own fall.”

Thomas Dekker The Noble Spanish Soldier

The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622)

“Sorrow is not a raven perched persistently above a chamber door. Sorrow is a thing with teeth, and while in time it retreats, it comes back at the whisper of it's name.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

“We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear," he said. "Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: The White Witch

“He [Welles] was an onlooker at the clumsy, poignant suicide of "The Man on the Ledge," which took place in New York in 1938, when a boy perched for fourteen hours on a window-sill of the Gotham Hotel before plunging into the street. "I stood in the crowd outside for a long time," Welles says pensively, "and wanted to make a film of it all. But they tell me that in the Hollywood version of the film they gave the boy a reason for what he did. That's crazy. It's the crowd that needs explaining."”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Kenneth Tynan, "Orson Welles," from Persona Grata (1953); later printed in Profiles (1990) [ISBN 0-06-096557-6], page 66.

“It was not for nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand.”

Plautus Aulularia

Aulularia, Act iv, sc. 3, 1; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Referenced in "That raven on yon left-hand oak/(Curse on his ill-betiding croak!)/Bodes me no good", John Gay, 'Fables, Part I, The Farmer’s Wife and the Raven.
Aulularia (The Pot of Gold)

“Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)
Variant: Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth a raven´s claws…

“Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 7.
The Raven (1844)

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“That raven on yon left-hand oak
(Curse on his ill-betiding croak!)
Bodes me no good.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Fable, The Farmer's Wife and the Raven. Comparable to: "It wasn't for nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand", Plautus, Aulularia, act iv. sc. 3
Fables (1727)

“Let us be very strange and well-bred:
Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while;
And as well-bred as if we were not married at all.”

William Congreve The Way of the World

Act IV, scene v
The Way of the World (1700)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Sueton28

Related quotes

Related topics