And in all quarters musters men for Rome.
Marlowe, First Book of Lucan.
A Frenchman together with a Frenchwoman, likewise a Grecian man and woman, were let down alive into the beast-market into a vault under the ground, stoned all about.—Holland, Livy, p. 467.
Fret. This, the A.S. ‘fretan,’ the German ‘fressen,’ to eat, is with us restricted now, though once it was otherwise, to the eating of the heart through care, according to an image which we all can only too well understand; and which has given the Pythagorean ‘Cor ne edito,’ the French ‘dévoré de chagrins.’
Adam afterward ayeines his defence
Frette of that fruit.
Piers Plowman, B-text, xviii. 193 (Skeat).
He [Hercules] slough the cruel tirant Buserus,
And made his hors to frete him fleisch and boon.
Chaucer, The Monkes Tale (Morris, iii. p. 205).