With a very few exceptions the speeches are dignified in tone, full of life and have at least a dramatic propriety, while of such incongruous and laboured absurdities as the speech which Dionysius puts into the mouth of Romulus, after the rape of the Sabine women, there are no instances in Livy.
He begins, by professing profound belief in the art, and next points out the vagueness and the absurdities of the philomaths.
This national disaster opened the eyes of many Polish patriots to the necessity of changing radically the old order of things, and an attempt was made by them to remove some of the more glaring absurdities of the existing constitution: the throne was declared to be hereditary, the liberum veto by which any petty noble could annul the most important decision of the national assembly was abolished, the royal authority was greatly strengthened, and the towns were empowered to send deputies to the Diet (1791).
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So long as libertarians contend that what alone possesses moral value is unmotived choice, acts of will of which no explanation can be given save the arbitrary fiat of individual selves at the moment of decision, it is not difficult for determinists to exhibit the absurdities to which their arguments lead.
In reply to those who thought that Parmenides's theory of the existence of the One involved inconsistencies and absurdities, Zeno tried to show that the assumption of the existence of the Many, that is to say, a plurality of things in time and space, carried with it inconsistencies and absurdities grosser and more numerous.
The whole of his ransom was never paid, and his absurdities and misfortunes gave the Estates opportunity to strengthen their constitutional position.
From the mention in the letters of towns (Phintia, Alaesa and Tauromenium) which did not exist in the time of Phalaris, from the imitations of authors (Herodotus, Democritus, Euripides, Callimachus) who wrote long after he was dead, from the reference to tragedies, though tragedy was not yet invented in the lifetime of Phalaris, from the dialect, which is not Dorian but Attic, nay, New or Late Attic, as well as from absurdities in the matter, and the entire absence of any reference to them by any writer before Stobaeus (c. A.D.
In other cases his desire to give a vividness and point to what he doubtless considered the rather bald and dry style of Polybius leads him into absurdities and inaccuracies.
The main argument employed is an exposition of the con tradictions, absurdities and immoralities of Greek mythology.
The English common law, with all the absurdities and rigours of that day, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society.