Word: tiberius
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Built on the rise of the Guadarrama mountain range 31 miles from Madrid, El Escorial casts such a gloomy aspect that the Romantic Poet Théophile Gautier called it the "granite debauch of Spain's Tiberius." Even its floor plan reflects a grim occasion. The monastery is named in honor of a humble 3rd century deacon who was burned alive on a gridiron by his Roman torturers. San Lorenzo, it is said, calmly instructed the Romans: "This side's done. You can turn me over now." His coolness under trial won him a lasting place in Spanish...
Members of the upper crust, of course, have always had their country cottages for getting out of town when the weather was hard to take. The Emperor Tiberius, for one. used to beat the Roman heat on the cliffs of Capri, where some of the house guests at his verdant Villa Jovis were said to have disappeared into the sea below. Perhaps the most famed second house of all is the exquisite Petit Trianon, begun by Louis XV for his mistress. Madame de Pompadour, and elaborated by Louis XVI's wife, Marie Antoinette. From the punkah-hung summer bungalows...
...would in an undertaking costing many times as much; most are no longer satisfied with a fishing shack or hunting cabin. And wherever they are or whatever they cost, the second houses have a consistent common denominator: they are designed for informality, relaxation, easy living and no servants. Tiberius would not have understood the situation at all. And Mrs. Astor, whose second house at Newport required a staff of 30, would simply have looked the other...
...religious leaders talked for 38 minutes, agreed that "truth and liberty" must exist among all the world's Christians. After the meeting, Pope John presented Dr. Craig and his delegation with books and medals, and in return was given a silver bookmark and a stone from Lake Tiberius in the Holy Land. L'Osservatore Romano pronounced the Vatican "grateful" for the visit; the Vatican added-lest anyone forget-that the visit had been merely a "courtesy call." The visit leaves relations among all the churches of Christianity more genial than at any time since Luther. But within...
...great Roman emperor Augustus, grandnephew of Julius Caesar, was frightened of thunder and fond of virgins, but his most publicized characteristic was opposition to ostentation. He lived, according to the historian Suetonius, in a modest house on Rome's Palatine Hill. But his successor, Tiberius, crowned the hill with an elaborate palace, and when the Roman Empire fell, barbarian kings. Popes and nobles made their homes on the Palatine...