person
Sardanapallus
also: Sardanapalli
The legendary last king of Assyria, a byword in Greek and Roman moralizing for luxury and for an inglorious death in his own bed.
Reading notes
- Ad Atticum 10.8 §7 I prefer, after the manner of Sardanapallus, to die in my own little bed
Sardanapallus was the proverbially luxurious and effeminate last king of Assyria, a byword for dying soft amid pleasures rather than nobly. Cicero contrasts such an ignoble bed-death with the honourable hardship of a Themistoclean exile.
- On the Ends of Good and Evil §2.106 the epitaph of Sardanapallus
Sardanapallus, the legendary last king of Assyria (here called "of Syria"), whose epitaph boasted that he carried into death only the gratifications of his lusts. Aristotle ridiculed it; Cicero uses it to show bodily pleasure leaves nothing behind.
- Tusculan Disputations §5.101 the folly of Sardanapalus, the richest king of Syria
Sardanapalus, the legendary last king of Assyria (Cicero says Syria), proverbial for luxury, who had inscribed on his tomb that all he kept was what he had eaten and indulged. Aristotle's retort that this fits an ox, not a king, exposes the emptiness of mere pleasure.