And if a man consider the originall of this great Ecclesiasticall Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other, than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

It is not ‘the ghost of the dead Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof,’ but the legitimate heir and successor of it, justified by the ancient virtues of the Romans and the beneficence of their rule.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

It is not 'the ghost of the dead Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof,' but the legitimate heir and successor of it, justified by the ancient virtues of the Romans and the beneficence of their rule.
— from The Republic by Plato

For the Roman Pontificate, to use the famous saying of Hobbes, was but the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.
— from Roman Mosaics; Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood by Hugh Macmillan

The Papacy in a sense is the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting crowned upon its grave: the symbol is the Popes’ palace-fortress installed in Hadrian’s mausoleum, or St. Peter’s basilica overlying what is in part a pagan cemetery.
— from The Mute Stones Speak: The Story of Archaeology in Italy by Paul Lachlan MacKendrick

The terms of all regular employés shall continue until their successors are appointed.
— from A Library Primer by John Cotton Dana

But the whole of Gibbon’s history was anticipated and condensed by Hobbes in a single sentence—“If a man considers the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.
— from Romance: Two Lectures by Raleigh, Walter Alexander, Sir

Hobbes had struck the keynote in a passage of profound truth as well as of admirable beauty: 'If a man consider the original of this great [99] ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.'
— from Historical and Political Essays by William Edward Hartpole Lecky