No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow.
Shakespeare, Tempest, act iv. sc. 1.
| Assassin, | } |
| Assassinate. |
It is difficult to say at what date the name of ‘assassin,’ given first to the emissaries of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ who were sent forth on his errands of blood, and who bore this name because maddened with ‘haschisch,’ a drink drawn from hemp, was transferred to other secret slayers. The word does not occur in Shakespeare (‘assassination’ once), and only once in Milton’s verse. Neither is it found in our English Bible; although it may be a question whether ‘assassins’ would not be an apter, as it would certainly be a closer, rendering of σικάριοι, on the one occasion of this word’s appearing (Acts xxi. 38), than the ‘murderers’ which we have actually adopted.[4] The verb ‘to assassinate,’ as used by Milton, obtained a meaning which still survives in the French ‘assassiner’ and the Italian ‘assassinare,’ and signifies, as these often do, treacherously to assault, extremely to maltreat, without suggesting the actual taking away of life, which ‘to assassinate’ now always implies for us. Doubtless it was the Italian use of the word which influenced him.
These assassins were a precise sect of Mahometans, and had in them the very spirits of that poisonous superstition.—Fuller, Holy War, b. ii. c. 34.
As for the custom that some parents and guardians have of forcing marriages, it will be better to say nothing of such a savage inhumanity, but only thus, that the law which gives not all freedom of divorce to any creature endued with reason, so assassinated, is next in cruelty.—Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, b. i. c. 12.
Such usage as your honourable lords
Afford me, assassinated and betrayed.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1108.