Crossword-Solution: TERGA 5 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

The President had been, consciously or not, uncivil, but one knew his origin! Upon these interjections, placable flicks of the lionly tail addressed to Britannia the Ruler, who expected him in some mildish way to lash terga cauda in retiring, Sir Willoughby Patterne passed from a land of alien manners; and ever after he spoke of America respectfully and pensively, with a tail tucked in, as it were.

The form of the oath in the rude school of gladiators was in these words: “We swear to suffer ourselves to be chained, burnt, wounded, and killed with the sword, and to endure all that true gladiators suffer from their master, religiously engaging both body and soul in his service.” Uire meum, si vis, flamma caput, et pete ferro Corpus, et iutorto verbere terga seca.

Yet the passage of Virgil does not appear to me less valuable for this latter object, and I crave permission to bring it forward again under this point of view:-- Ecce autem gemini Tenedo tranquilla per alta (Horresco referens) immensis orbibus angues Incumbunt pelago, pariterque ad litora tendunt; Pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta jubaeque Sanguineae exsuperant undas; pars caetera pontum Pone legit, sinuatque immensa volumine terga.

The lines are-- "Etiam purpureo suras include cothurno, Altius et revocet volueres in pectore sinus: Pressaque iam gravida crepitent tibi terga pharetra; Derige odorisequos ad certa cubilia canes." In their present form these verses are obviously a century and a half at least later than Livius.

From the gross lack of taste and humour that characterizes so many of his contemporaries he is comparatively free, though his description of the historic 'crab' caught by Hercules reaches the utmost limit of absurdity: laetus et ipse Alcides: Quisnam hos vocat in certamina fluctus? dixit, et, intortis adsurgens arduus undis, percussit subito deceptum fragmine pectus, atque in terga ruens Talaum fortemque Eribotem et longe tantae securum Amphiona molis obruit, inque tuo posuit caput, Iphite, transtro.