Literary notes about metropolis (AI summary)
Writers employ "metropolis" to evoke a sense of urban grandeur, centrality, and often a myriad of social, political, or historical connotations. In some works it designates a literal great city—the hub of power or the stage for civil and military affairs, as seen when it represents the epicenter from which historical events radiate ([1], [2], [3]). In other narratives, the word is used metaphorically to represent broader societal phenomena, such as the embodiment of collective character or even abstract vice, as in the depiction of covetousness as the "metropolis of all evils" ([4]). Some authors extend the term to describe dynamic centers of commerce and culture, imbuing them with the promise and chaos of modernity ([5], [6]), or as settings for intricate personal and political dramas ([7], [8]). This multifaceted usage demonstrates the term's rich capacity to capture not only the physical size of an urban center but also its symbolic resonance in literature.
- 21 If the sectaries of the metropolis were soon mingled with the promiscuous mass, those of the country struck a deep root in a foreign soil.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Constantine, his eldest son, had been stationed with forty thousand men at Cæsarea, the civil metropolis of the three provinces of Palestine.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - In populousness and power, in richness and luxury, London, 26 the metropolis of the isle, may claim a preeminence over all the cities of the West.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - He used to say that covetousness was the metropolis of all evils.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - The metropolis is to lots of people like a lighted candle to the moth.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. Riis - Most of the coffee houses were established in Boston, the metropolis of the Massachusetts Colony, and the social center of New England.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - On the twenty-sixth of October we arrived at the metropolis, called in their language, Lorbrulgrud , or Pride of the Universe.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World by Jonathan Swift - From the cathedral of Shakespeare to the mosque of Byron, a thousand tiny bell towers are piled pell-mell above this metropolis of universal thought.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
