...Persian distich which has been so often requoted: "The spider has woven his web in the palace of kings, and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab." By the sixteenth century little was left of it but a few columns and the ruins of the Bucoleon. The...

...the storming of the city are thus briefly but memorably narrated : — "A melancholy reflection upon the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself...in the Imperial Palace ; and the owl hath sung her watch song on the towers of Afrasiab.' " One more illustrative quotation — suggesting the whole history...

...he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of a hundred successors of the great Constantine ... A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human...hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab'. 17 The Roman Empire had ceased to exist. In the course of their conquest of the eastern Mediterranean,...

...dirge of these forsaken cities. And here the distich of I li.fi/ is most true: ' " The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace ; And the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasian." ' I paid a visit to the city of Colossse,— if that, indeed, may be called a visit, which...

...he entered as a conqueror the palace of the dead Paleolagus at Constantinople. "The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch song on the towers of A.frasiab." Where is now that palace, or its conqueror, or that conquerors'...

...looked on the shattered dwelling of the last of the Christian Emperors : — " The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace ; and the owl hath sung her" watch song on the towers of Afrasiab." The daily hospitality of a friend of my companion's, who holds...