"Medea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... serving to bring the ladies to town, should the evening prove cold; that, for the water-music, the following programme be adopted: 1. On reaching Vauxhall Bridge, the concert to commence with Madame Pasta's grand scena in "Medea," previous to the murder of the children, by Miss Corinna Grouts. 2. Nicholson's grand flute concerto in five sharps, by Mr. Frederick Snodgrass. 3. Grand aria, with variations, guitar, by Miss Euphemia Grouts. 4. Sweet Bird; accompaniment, flute ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... it wants, is, I am told, and therefore must believe, what all artists exist for. AEschylus in his 'Choephorae' and his 'Prometheus'; Sophocles in his 'OEdipus Tyrannus'; Euripides when he wrote 'The Trojan Women,' 'Medea,'—and 'Hippolytus'; Shakespeare in his 'Leer'; Goethe in his 'Faust'; Ibsen in his 'Ghosts' and his 'Peer Gynt'; Tolstoy in 'The Powers of Darkness'; all—all in those great works, must have satisfied their most comfortable and normal selves; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... noble barons who have devoted themselves to my advancement. If I have sinned in alluring them thus far, I will not deepen my guilt by betraying them. Though I knew that the crown which I am about to assume were like the gift of Medea, I would still set it on my temples: better pay the penalty of ambition by advancing than by timidly retreating, when boldness may remedy, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... neutral principle if this argument held good. But free will tends towards good, and if it meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason that this evil is concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were. These words which Ovid ascribes to Medea, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... is plenty of local color in his work, only the color belongs to his own locality, and not to that of the heroes whose adventures he purports to relate. In his work the old classical heroes are transformed into typical mediaeval knights, and heroines such as Helen and Medea, for instance, are portrayed ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... how old I felt! I am sure this is what age brings with it - this carelessness, this disenchantment, this continual bodily weariness. I am a man of seventy: O Medea, kill me, or make ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... course through his frame, he tasted again of health and strength and manhood, he saw before him years of success and power and triumph! In comparison to it the bath of Pelias, though endowed with the virtues which lying Medea attributed to it, had not seemed more desirable, nor the elixir of life, nor the herb of Anticyra. Nor was it until he had taken the magic draught once and twice and thrice in fancy, and as often hugged himself on health renewed and life restored that a thought, which had visited him ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... shepherd's flock as charmed by the evil eye.] There was as much difference as between a Roman Proconsul, surrounded with eagle-bearers, and a commercial Consul's clerk with a pen behind his ear. Apparently she was not so much a Medea as an Erichtho. (See the Pharsalia.) She was an Evocatrix, or female necromancer, evoking phantoms that stood in some unknown relation to dead men; and then by some artifice (it has been supposed) of ventriloquism,[Footnote: ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... in life as the failure to accept our fate with courage," my guardian said to me once. "Be as brave as you can. Do you remember what Medea says in reply to that cruel reminder of her losses?—'Husband, countrymen, riches, all gone from you: what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... be dissolved. And they that go about by disobedience, to doe no more than reforme the Common-wealth, shall find they do thereby destroy it; like the foolish daughters of Peleus (in the fable;) which desiring to renew the youth of their decrepit Father, did by the Counsell of Medea, cut him in pieces, and boyle him, together with strange herbs, but made not of him a new man. This desire of change, is like the breach of the first of Gods Commandements: For there God says, Non Habebis Deos Alienos; Thou shalt not have the Gods of other Nations; and in another place concerning ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... "you have yourselves judged the cause, you have yourselves signed the decree. It remains for me to cause your order to be executed, since it is you who with the heart of a negro, with the cruelty of Medea, made a fritter of this beautiful head, and chopped up these lovely limbs like sausage-meat. So quick, make haste, lose not a moment! throw them this very instant into a large dungeon, where they shall ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Chaos old! Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires, As one by one at dread Medea's strain, The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain; As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, Closed one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... was ich in dieser Absicht tun werde, soll dieses sein— Du wirst mich verstehen! Zittre fr deine Bella! Ihr Leben soll das Andenken meiner verachteten Liebe auf die Nachwelt nicht bringen; meine Grausamkeit soll es tun. Sieh in mir eine neue Medea! ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... afternoon was waning, and there was yet much to see. The bare mention of a few more curiosities must suffice. The immense skull of Polyphemus was recognizable by the cavernous hollow in the centre of the forehead where once had blazed the giant's single eye. The tub of Diogenes, Medea's caldron, and Psyche's vase of beauty were placed one within another. Pandora's box, without the lid, stood next, containing nothing but the girdle of Venus, which had been carelessly flung into it. A bundle of birch-rods which had been used by Shenstone's schoolmistress were ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... behind him, it is said, what he may have meant as his epitaph, an inscription containing the purport of three lines in the 'Medea'— ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... moral miracle seems to take place about the age of fourteen or fifteen; a violent dislocation interrupts the natural continuity of progress; and, presto! out springs a new creature from the modern cauldron of Medea. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... by one in dread Medea's train, Star after Star fades off th' ethereal plain, Thus at her fell approach and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night. Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, Sinks to her second cause, and is no more. Religion, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... THESEUS. From Kingsley's "Heroes." How Theseus lifted the stone. How Theseus slew the Corynetes. How Theseus slew Sinis. How Theseus slew Kerkyon and Procrustes. How Theseus slew the Medea and was acknowledged the son of Aegeus. How Theseus slew the Minotaur. To be told in six parts ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the marvels of the Argonautic expedition; that vessel, itself sentient and intelligent, having its prophet as well as pilot on board, darting through rocks which move and join together, like huge pincers, to crush the passing ship; think of the wondrous Medea who conducted the homeward voyage, and reflect upon the sort of people who created and credited all these marvels. Then turn to the semi-critical version of Strabo, where the whole expedition resolves itself into an invasion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the last word startled me. I looked at her and wondered if Medea wore such a countenance when she stabbed her children to the heart. But it flashed and was gone, and the next moment she had moved away from my side and I had stepped to the door. As I opened it to pass out I caught one glimpse of the bride as she came down the stairs. She looked ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... poor captain would have been a marquis," he exclaimed to himself, "the Marquis de Medea, and owner of those magnificent estates. Well, truly he had something to live for, and yet he was cut off—while I who have not a peco beyond my pay, and little enough of that, have been allowed to remain ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the expedition equipped in precisely the same manner; for this equipment is in fact Median and not Persian: and the Medes acknowledged as their commander Tigranes an Achaimenid. These in ancient time used to be generally called Arians; but when Medea the Colchian came from Athens to these Arians, they also changed their name. Thus the Medes themselves report about themselves. The Kissians served with equipment in other respects like that of the Persians, but instead of the felt caps they wore fillets: 59and of the Kissians Anaphes the son ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... scepter, which ought to be his own by right of inheritance. Thus these bad-hearted nephews of King Aegeus, who were the own cousins of Theseus, at once became his enemies. A still more dangerous enemy was Medea, the wicked enchantress; for she was now the king's wife, and wanted to give the kingdom to her son Medus, instead of letting it be given to the son of Aethra, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a republic to be perpetuated, if not in England herself, yet among her great children beyond the sea. France was to go her way through Bartholomew massacres and the dragonnades to a polished Louis the Magnificent, and thence to the bloody Medea's cauldron of Revolution, out of which she was to rise as now we know her. No common road could have been found for such destinies as these; and the French prince followed the direction of his wiser instincts when he preferred a quiet arrangement with the pope, in virtue ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... transformations, and enchantments: "The Golden Apples," "Bellerophon," "Cupid and Psyche," "The Story of Perseus," etc. Even "Jason" is treated as a romance. Of its seventeen books, all but the last are devoted to the exploits and wanderings of the Argonauts. Medea is not the wronged, vengeful queen of the Greek tragic poets, so much as she is the Colchian sorceress who effects her lover's victory and escape. Her romantic, outweighs her dramatic character. Sea voyages, emprizes, and wild adventures, like those of his own ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... traced. Gonzalo's description of an ideal commonwealth (II. i. 147 seq.) is derived from Florio's translation of Montaigne's essays (1603), while into Prospero's great speech renouncing his practice of magical art (V. i. 33-57) Shakespeare wrought reminiscences of Golding's translation of Medea's invocation in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (vii. 197-206). {253b} Golding's rendering of Ovid had been one of Shakespeare's best-loved ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Col'chis, where, by the aid of magic and supernatural arts, and through the favor of Me-de'a, daughter of the King of Colchis, he succeeded in capturing the fleece. After four months of continued danger and innumerable hardships, Jason returned to Iolcus with the prize, accompanied by Medea, whom he afterward deserted, and whose subsequent history is told by the poet Euripides in ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... would I could. If I knew Medea's secret, I would have myself chopped and boiled that I might come out young on her behalf; but, George, I can tell you ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... adorns our title-page and has been characterized as "a lucky prophecy"—written in the first century A. D. The author, Seneca, was a dramatist as well as a philosopher, the lines occurring at the end of one of his choruses—Medea, 376. We may thus translate ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... something different, something beautiful, but something deficient in dramatic vigour. Apollonius Rhodius is, no doubt, much of a pedant, a literary writer of epic, in an age of Criticism. He dealt with the tale of "Jason," and conceivably he may have borrowed from older minstrels. But the Medea of Apollonius Rhodius, in her love, her tenderness, her regret for home, in all her maiden words and ways, is undeniably a character more living, more human, more passionate, and more sympathetic, than the Medea of Mr. Morris. I could almost wish that he had closely followed ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Story-Telling," are "The Fate of the Children of Usnach," comparable, in the great wars it led to, to the rape of Helen; "The Fate of the Children of Lir," a story that has as its base the folk-tale that underlies "Lohengrin," but which takes us back farther into the past in its kinship to "Medea"; and "The Sons of Tuireann," which has been called the Irish Odyssey. Of these the first is incomparably the finest story, and Lady Gregory has told it nobly in "Cuchulain of Muirthemne," but it alone of all the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... years, on condition that the Hofburgtheater should have the right to first production of his forthcoming plays. It was, therefore, with great enthusiasm and confidence that he set to work upon his next subject, The Golden Fleece. The story of Jason and Medea had long been familiar to him, not only in the tragedies of Euripides and Seneca, but also in German dramas and operas of the eighteenth century which during his youth were frequently produced in Vienna. The immediate impulse to treat this ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... dedicated to the Goddess of Good; the celebrated Mithras with a serpent coiled round him, between the folds of which are sculptured the signs of the zodiac; Medea and her children; a mile-stone, bearing the names of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian; a basso-relievo of the Muses; several sarcophagi, votive altars, cornices, pillars, mutilated statues, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... fleece. The murder of Phryxus was amply revenged by the Greeks. It gave rise to the famous Argonautic expedition, undertaken by Jason and fifty of the most celebrated heroes of Greece. The Argonauts recovered the fleece by the help of the celebrated sorceress Medea, daughter of Aeetes, who fell desperately in love with the gallant but faithless Jason. In the story of the voyage of the Argo, a substratum of truth probably exists, though overlaid by a mass of fiction. The ram which carried Phryxus to Colchis is by some supposed to have been the name ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... call up the apparitions of future kings from the strange ingredients of the witch's caldron. Thus I will not grieve that all the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron, but believe it will have Medea's virtue, and reproduce them in the form of new intellectual growths, since centuries cannot again adorn the land with such as have ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... eat out of his hand," as Morena had once described the plight of Zona, he would see at a glance that she was no longer so easily mastered. In fact, sitting there, she looked as proud and perilous as a young Medea, black-haired with long throat and cold, malevolent lips. It was only in the eyes—those gray, unhappy, haunted eyes—that Joan gave away her eternal simplicity of heart. They were unalterably tender and lonely and hurt. It was ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Flora. The vicar is seated in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits into the garden. The door is now open, and the good man has paused from his work (he had just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of the "Medea") to look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across the scene. His wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the door, but a little aside, not ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Euripides: "Medea", "Hecabe", "Electra", and "Heracles", translated by Philip Vellacott (Penguin Classics, London, 1963). Contains four plays by Euripides, two of which concern ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... most of us heard of the terrible anger of a lioness when, surrounded by her cubs, she guards her prey. Few of us wish to disturb the mother of a litter of puppies when mouthing a bone in the midst of her young family. Medea and her children are familiar to us, and so is the grief of Constance. Mrs. Quiverful, when she first heard from her husband the news which he had to impart, felt within her bosom all the rage of the lioness, the rapacity ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... what the Egyptian priest indicated to Solon, the Athenian, as is related by Plato in the Timoeus respecting the Island of Atlantis; if he realized the hypothesis of Actian; if he accomplished the prophecy of Seneca in the Medea; if he demonstrated that the story of the mysterious Carthaginian vessel, related by Aristotle and Theophrastus, was not a dream; if he established by deeds that there was nothing visionary in what St. Gregory pointed at in one of his letters to St. Clement; if, in ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... commentators. It is to be presumed that the reference to a source so well known as the Bible would have occurred at once to the Querist, had not the allusions, in the preceding stanza, to the heathen fable of Medea, diverted his thoughts ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... Homeric fragments include one of Iliad VI., with critical signs and interesting textual notes. Sappho, Euripides (Andromache, "Archelaus," and "Medea"), Antiphanes, Thucydides, Plato ("Gorgias" and "Republic"), AEschines, Demosthenes, and Xenophon are also represented. Among the theological texts are fragments of the lost Greek original of the "Apocalypse of Baruch" and of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... characterized as cowardly, thankless, and perjured, while the Viennese were addressed as "good people, abandoned and widowed." The last acts of their flying rulers had been murder and arson; "like Medea, they had with their own hands strangled ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... town, surrounded by vast orchards and farms, is now one of the most flourishing in the country; and the most important market in the colony for the sale of cattle and agricultural produce is held there. Sixty-three miles S.W. of Algiers is Medea (4030)—supposed to stand on the site of a Roman town—finely situated on a plateau 3000 ft. above the sea. It is surrounded by a wall pierced by five gates. An ancient aqueduct is built into the eastern side of the wall. The town, which was chosen by the Turks as ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The confident of Medea in the tragedy recommends caution and submission; and enumerating all the distresses of that unfortunate heroine, asks her, what she has to support her against her numerous and implacable enemies. MYSELF, replies she; MYSELF I SAY, AND IT IS ENOUGH. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... have match'd the huge Alcides'[31] strength? Great Macedon[32] what force might have subdu'd? Wise Scipio who overcame at length, But we, that are with greater force endu'd? Who could have conquered the golden fleece[33] But Jason, aided by Medea's art? Who durst have stol'n fair Helen out of Greece But I, with love that bold'ned Paris' heart? What bond of nature, what restraint avails[34] Against our power? I vouch to witness truth. The ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Wiser, I esteem it, to give chance the credit of the successful ones. What is said here of Louis Philippe was verified in some of its minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough to have made the fortune of Delphi or Ammon, and no thanks to Beelzebub neither! That of Seneca in Medea will ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... It was a face majestical and severe. Pride was stamped in all its lines; and though each passion was, by turns, developed, it was evident that all were subordinate to the sin by which the angels fell. The contour of her face was formed in the purest Grecian mould, and might have been a model for Medea; so well did the gloomy grandeur of the brow, the severe chiselling of the lip, the rounded beauty of the throat, and the faultless symmetry of her full form, accord with the beau ideal of antique perfection. Shaded by smooth folds of raven hair, which still maintained ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... at least three of us to deal with that one woman. When I saw her in Paris she was still young and handsome, with superb eyes and a kind of eastern tread. You could imagine her, when she did not speak, as Semiramis, Medea, Clytemnestra! Except that when you saw a little more of her, you felt that she was only a heroine of a cheap theater. Wharton could not have been fascinated by her, if, at that time of his life, he had ever known a refined ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... a Schloss, which also went up in fire; disclosing certain mysteries of an almost mythical nature to the German Public. It was the Schloss of a Grafin von Callenberg, a dreadful old Dowager of Medea-Messalina type, who "always wore pistols about her;" pistols, and latterly, with more and more constancy, a brandy-bottle;—who has been much on the tongues of men for a generation back. Herr Nussler (readers recollect shifty Nussler) knew her, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... museums. Of larger representations we mention the marble statue of a girl playing with astragaloi in the Berlin Museum, and a Pompeian wall-painting in which the children of Jason play the same game, while Medea threatens their lives with a drawn sword. The celebrated masterpiece of Polykletes, representing two boys playing with astragaloi, formerly in the palace of Titus in Rome, has unfortunately been ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... a changeful, terrible beauty that beamed on her face. She looked like an inspired priestess before the altar,—then like Norma in her despair,—then like the maddened Medea in Rachel's thrilling impersonation. Then disgust and fright overcame her, and her sensitive womanly nature bore sway. It was more than she could bear, this accumulation of misfortune, disgrace, and insult. Her soul rebelled, contended ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... have heard how Medea, in Euripides, compassionates her sex on their hard lot—on the intolerable pangs they endure in travail? And by the way—Medea's words remind me did you ever have a child, when you were a woman, or were ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... than Mr. Booth, that a lady in whom we had remarked a most extraordinary power of displaying softness should, the very next moment after the words were out of her mouth, express sentiments becoming the lips of a Dalila, Jezebel, Medea, Semiramis, Parysatis, Tanaquil, Livilla, Messalina, Agrippina, Brunichilde, Elfrida, Lady Macbeth, Joan of Naples, Christina of Sweden, Katharine Hays, Sarah Malcolm, Con Philips,[Footnote: Though last not least.] or any other heroine ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... dropsy, and I know how to cure of gout, of quinsy, and of asthma; I know so much about the water and so much about the pulse that evil would be the hour in which you would take another leech. And I know, if I dared say it, of enchantments and of charms, well proven and true, more than ever Medea knew. Never spake I a word of it to you; and yet I have brought you up till now; but never reproach yourself at all for it, for never would I have said aught to you if I had not seen for a surety that such a malady has attacked you, that you have need ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... self-dependence was the grandest feature of Greek and Roman heathenism; and it is in this, if in anything, that a superiority of character is manifest in the men of ancient times. The famous passage in Seneca's tragedy, in which Medea asserts herself as sufficient to stand alone against the universe, contains its essence and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... would be all well when they should be married;—but how if, even now, there should be no marriage for her? Camilla French had never heard of Creusa and of Jason, but as she paced her mother's drawing-room that morning she was a Medea in spirit. If any plot of that kind should be in the wind, she would do such things that all Devonshire should hear of her wrongs and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... teichous].] As many of the best manuscripts have [Greek: Medeias], in this passage as well as in ii. 4. 12, ii. 4. 27, and vii. 8. 25, Kuehner adopts that reading, under the notion that the wall was named from Medea, the wife of the last king of the Medes, whom the Persians conquered and despoiled of his dominions. "Those who defend the reading [Greek: Medias]," continues Kuehner, "suppose the name to be derived from the country of Media, and believe, with Mannert, (Geog. i. p. 330,) that it is the same ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... was moaning in bed; I was beginning to be restless with fears not intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse, but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as upon some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and, like the superb Medea towering amongst her children in the nursery at Corinth, smote me senseless to the ground. Again I am in the chamber with my sister's corpse, again the pomps of life rise up in silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... caricature. Like Michelangelo, these sculptors fill their works with intense and individualised expression. Their noblest works are the careful sepulchral portraits of particular persons—the monument of Conte Ugo in the Badia of Florence, of the youthful Medea Colleoni, with the wonderful, long throat, in the chapel on the cool north side of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo— monuments such as abound in the churches of Rome, inexhaustible in suggestions of repose, of a subdued Sabbatic joy, a kind of sacred grace and ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... read, piped their iambics to a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great head-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing the fates of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... great importance of the nation in Western Asia at a period anterior to the ninth century, is derivable from the ancient legends of the Greeks, which seem to have designated the Medes under the two eponyms of Medea and Andromeda. These legends indeed do not admit of being dated with any accuracy; but as they are of a primitive type, and probably older than Homer, we cannot well assign them to an age later than b.c. 1000. Now they connect the Median name with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... pain was not caused by any reflections as to the beauty or excellence of the vanished knight. There was another element in the matter that was filling her with horror and driving her to distraction. With all due respect for the suffering of other abandoned ladies, Asnath, Ariadne, Medea, Phaedra—but Juffrouw Laps had to face Walter's family. That was ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... probably, the compositions of the Ancients, especially in their serious Plays were after this manner? And it will be found, that the subjects they commonly chose, drave them upon the necessity; which were usually the most known stories and Fables [p. 522]. Accordingly, SENECA, making choice of MEDEA, HYPPOLITUS, and HERCULES OEtaeus, it was impossible to show MEDEA throwing old mangled AESON into her age-renewing caldron, or to present the scattered limbs of HYPPOLITUS upon the Stage, and show HERCULES burning upon his ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... oceans might dry up to-morrow for all he cared so long as this sea remained; and with the story of Theseus and "lonely Ariadne on the wharf at Naxos" ringing in his ears he looked to the north-east, whither lay the Cyclades and Propontis. Medea, too, had been deserted—"Medea deadlier than the sea." Helen! All the stories of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" had been lived about these seas, from the coasts of Sicily to those of Asia Minor, whence AEneas had made his way to Carthage. Dido, she, too, had been deserted. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Oldfield still stand confronted on the historic page, and still their battle continues year after year. All readers know the sleepy voice and horrid sigh of Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth's awful scene of haunted somnambulism; the unexampled and unexcelled grandeur of Mrs. Yates in Medea; the infinite pathos of Mrs. Dancer (she that became in succession Mrs. Spranger Barry and Mrs. Crawford) and her memorable scream, as Lady Randolph, at "Was he alive?"; the comparative discomfiture of both those ladies by Mrs. Siddons, with her wonderful, wailing ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... produced tragic poets. In the first flourished Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius; in the second, Pacuvius and Attius; in the third, Asinius Pollio wrote tragedies, the plots of which seem to have been taken from Roman history. Ovid attempted a "Medea," and even the Emperor Augustus, with other men of genius, tried his ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... expectant in spite of his melancholy circumstances, and was not being overtaken by retribution. The brother and sister seemed to be on delightful terms with each other for once, and there was something of cheerful anticipation in their morning talk. I was reminded of Medea's anointing Jason before the great episode of the iron bulls, but to-day William really could not be going up country to see a railroad for the first time. I knew this to be one of his great schemes, but he was not fitted to appear in public, or to front an observing world of ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and many more cursed herbs, once known to Medea in the Colchian land, and transplanted to Greece and Rome with the enchantments of their use, had been handed, by a long succession of sorcerers and poisoners, down to Exili and Beatrice Spara, until they came into the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... great role of a criticism of life. But most of all there is revealed in the Ciris an epic poet's first timid probing into the depths of human emotions, a striving to understand the riddles behind the impulsive body. One sees why Dido is not, like Apollonius' Medea, simply driven to passion by. Cupid's arrow—the naive Greek equivalent of the medieval love-philter—why Pallas' body is not merely laid on the funeral pyre with the traditional wailing, why Turnus does not meet his foe with an Homeric boast. That Vergil has penetrated ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder at my speaking thus (making allusion to Lady Byron).... I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing but the deliberate desolation piled upon me when I stood alone ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... had discovered that all the wit and wisdom of the world were concentrated in some fifty antique volumes, and he treated the unlucky moderns with the most sublime spirit of hauteur imaginable. A chorus in the Medea, that painted the radiant sky of Attica, disgusted him with the foggy atmosphere of Great Britain; and while Mrs. Grey was meditating a visit to Brighton, her son was dreaming of the gulf of Salamis. The spectre ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... its venture and service—as its loss but gave new foil to the hardihood of La Salle and Tonty. We can imagine the golden-brown skins scattered over the blue waters as the bits of the body of the son of the king of Colchis strewn by Medea to detain the pursuers of the Argonauts. It was the first sacrifice to the valley for the fleece. In the depths of these Lakes or on their shores were buried the bones of these French mariners who, first of Europeans, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... frantic folly and selfish intemperance: till at length, on the necks of a couple so enfeebled, so perverted, so distempered both in body and soul, society throws the yoke of marriage: that yoke which, once rivetted on the necks of its victims, clings to them like the poisoned garments of Nessus or Medea. What can be expected from these ill-assorted yoke-fellows, but that, like two ill-tempered hounds, coupled by a tyrannical sportsman, they should drag on their indissoluble fetter, snarling and growling, and pulling ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... furred raiment who seduces Hylas is conceived frankly in the spirit of Teutonic romance; her song is of a garden [226] enclosed, such as that with which the old church glass-stainer surrounds the mystic bride of the song of songs. Medea herself has a hundred touches of the medieval sorceress, the sorceress of the Streckelberg or the Blocksberg: her mystic changes are Christabel's. It is precisely this effect, this grace of Hellenism ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... sort of sepulchral altar. The Hague was a Court town. I was richly dressed; my elaborate attire made the saddest possible contrast with the gloom of my surroundings. Therese, dressed in black and seated between her children at that black table, reminded me of Medea. To see these two fair young creatures vowed to a lot of misery and disgrace was a sad and touching sight. I took the boy between my arms, and pressing him to my breast called him my son. His mother told him to look upon me as his ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Athia. The sons of Chus founded a colony in Colchis; and we find a king of that country named Ait; or, as the Greeks expressed it, [Greek: Aietes]: and the land was also distinguished by that characteristic. Hence Arete in the Orphic Argonautics, speaking of Medea's returning to Colchis, expresses this place by ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... beautiful, and of a sweetness most alluring and fatal! Had Medea worn such a look, sure Jason had quite forgot the fleece, and with those eyes Circe had needed no other charm to make men what she would. Her voice, when she spoke, was no longer imperious; it was low pleading music. And she ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... investigating the thaumaturgy of his age. His letter of inquiry is preserved in fragments by Eusebius, and St. Augustine: Gale edited it, and, as he says, offers us an Absyrtus (the brother of Medea, who scattered his mutilated remains) rather than a Porphyry. {65a} Not all of Porphyry's questions interest us for our present purpose. He asks, among other things: How can gods, as in the evocations of gods, be made subject to necessity, and compelled ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... an elongated hill, 100 ft. high. Slightly beyond, preceded by a great mass of rock, was another island 200 m. long, dividing the stream in two. Two other islands, one 700 m. long—Leda Island—the other one Medea Island, of greater length but much narrower, were disclosed ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the Jew had told his tale and gone, young Melicent arose and went into a chamber painted with the histories of Jason and Medea, where her brother Count Emmerick hid such jewels as had not many ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... would be a mother!... And yet, can you fancy me torn in two between you and the infant? To begin with, if I saw any creature—were it even my own son—taking my place in your heart, I couldn't answer for the consequences. Medea may have been right after all. The Greeks ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... dread dame! to the end be thou my assistant, Making my medicines work no less than the philtre of Circe, Or Medea's charms, or yellow-haired Perimede's. Wheel of the magic spells, draw thou that man ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... bring forth some great Elephant: which when it was knowne abroad, and published throughout all the towne, they tooke indignation against her, and ordayned that the next day shee should most cruelly be stoned to death. Which purpose of theirs she prevented by the vertue of her inchantments, and as Medea (who obtained of King Creon but one days respit before her departure) did burn all his house, him, and his daughter: so she, by her conjurations and invocations of spirits, (which she useth in a certaine hole in her house, as shee her selfe declared unto me ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... of Abbotsford, a poor scholar, no soldier, but a soldier's lover, In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover, That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four million times over; And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden pieces As ever were hairs in Jason's and Medea's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... she must face the fire herself, and, like Alexander, march in the front ranks of the phalanx. She is so powerful that in some cases she would conquer unaided; for she has the right to say with Medea: 'I, myself, am enough.'" ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... facinus, ac dirum nefas A me quoque absit. Quod scelus miseri luent? Scelus est Iason genitor, et maius scelus Medea mater. Occidant: non sunt mei. Pereant? mei sunt. Crimine et culpa carent. Sunt innocentes, fateor: et frater fuit. Quid, anime, titubas? ora quid lacrimae rigant? Variamque nunc huc ira nunc illuc amor Diducit? anceps aestus ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... sexual distinction, was the woman of the Greek tragedy. [Endnote: 23] And hence generally arose for Shakspeare the wider field, and the more astonishing by its perfect novelty, when he first introduced female characters, not as mere varieties or echoes of masculine characters, a Medea or Clytemnestra, or a vindictive Hecuba, the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, but female characters that had the appropriate beauty of female nature; woman no longer grand, terrific, and repulsive, but woman "after her kind"—the other hemisphere of the dramatic world; woman, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... May 13, 1809, Napoleon wrote the bulletin addressed to the Grand Army, then the masters of Vienna, in which he said that like Medea, the Austrian princes had slain their children with their own hands; Genestas, who had been recently made a captain, did not wish to compromise his newly conferred dignity by asking who Medea was; he relied upon Napoleon's character, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... surely she could not be angry with him if he seemed to grow younger every day—rejuvenated by regular habits and rustic life—while in her wan face the lines of care daily deepened, until it would have needed art far beyond the power of any modern Medea to conceal Time's ravages. Your modern Medeas are such poor creatures—loathsome as Horace's Canidia, but without her genius ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... Love in Euripides Romantic Love, Greek Style Platonic Love of Women Spartan Opportunities for Love Amazonian Ideal of Greek Womanhood Athenian Orientalism Literature and Life Greek Love in Africa Alexandrian Chivalry The New Comedy Theocritus and Callimachus Medea and Jason Poets and Hetairai Short Stories Greek Romances Daphnis and Chloe Hero ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... certain to come to pass. The ordeal which we are undergoing is tremendous, but at any rate the nation and its allies will emerge from it rejuvenated under the spell of the present magicians, as the old ram emerged lamb-like and frisky from Medea's cauldron. That, in brief, would seem to be the picture in the mind's eye of the British Government, and to that conception all their plans ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... dreadful mouth with a masterly exactness. No—my dear Monsieur Gouache—it is a compliment I pay you. I am in earnest. I do not want a portrait of the Venus of Milo with red hair, nor of the Minerva Medica with yellow eyes, nor of an imaginary Medea in a fur cloak. I want myself, just as I am. That is exactly what you are doing for me. Myself and I have lived so long together that I desire a little memento of ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... bellying sail behind, and all around wet air and splashing grey sea, the stem ploughing it up silver and white and green, and away aft under the bend of the sail there would be Jason and the steersman, possibly Medea, with the curl out of her hair, and perhaps just a touch of the golden fleece, just a fleck of pale yellow to enliven the minor tints! Round the bows there would be men listening to the song, watching the stem pound into the green ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Medea in the house of Castor and Pollux, recalling the masterpiece of Timomachos the Byzantine are the only two Pompeian pictures which reproduce well-known paintings; but let us not, for that reason, conclude that the others are original. The ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... whose face an angry immortal once threw a rabbit; hence the marks on the surface of the planet. These same marks are accounted for in the Eskimo legend already mentioned as the impressions of the woman's sooty fingers on the face of her pursuer. By some mythologists the moon is thought to be Medea, but it is more common to interpret Medea as the daughter of the sun, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Julia! Now we'll turn to Juan. Poor little fellow! he had no idea Of his own case, and never hit the true one; In feelings quick as Ovid's Miss Medea,[52] He puzzled over what he found a new one, But not as yet imagined it could be a Thing quite in course, and not at all alarming, Which, with a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... features and incidents; that, as the world grew civilised, other alterations were made, and that, at last, Homer composed the 'Odyssey,' and somebody else composed the Story of Jason and the Fleece of Gold, and the enchantress Medea, out of a set of wandering popular tales, which are still told among Samoyeds and Samoans, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... AEschylus I was passionately fond as a boy (it was one of the Greek plays we read thrice a year at Harrow);—indeed that and the 'Medea' were the only ones, except the 'Seven before Thebes,' which ever much pleased me. As to the 'Faustus of Marlow,' I never read, never saw, nor heard of it—at least, thought of it, except that I think Mr. Gifford mentioned, in a note of his which you sent me, something about the catastrophe; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... said she, "the goblet that is set apart for kings to drink out of. And fill it with the same delicious wine which my royal brother, King AEetes, praised so highly, when he visited me with my fair daughter Medea. That good and amiable child! Were she now here, it would delight her to see me offering this wine to my ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... thing read in a book or remembered out of the far-away past; if, in fact, this be veritably nightfall, he will not wish greatly for the continuance of a twilight that only strains and disappoints the eyes, but steadfastly await the perfect darkness. He will pray for Medea: when she comes, let her either ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sure to bring him a prize? He shall have his fortune told him who buys. Who does not need counsel must surely be wise. Here's Master Tommetto, who never tells lies. And here is his brother, still smaller in size. And Madama Medea Plutonia to advise. They'll write you a fortune and bring you a prize for a single baiocco. No creature so wise as not to need counsel. A fool I despise, who keeps his baiocco and loses his prize. Who knows what a fortune he'll get till he tries? Time's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... lined with the same material. Honoria had recklessly cut up two handkerchiefs (for underclothing) and her Sunday sash, and had made the garments in secret. They were prodigies of bad needlework. With the face of a Medea she stripped the poor thing, took it in her arms as if to kiss it, but checked herself sternly. She descended to the terrace with the doll in one hand and its original calico ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the while America is sublimely unconscious that the joys of childhood are not hers. Though with the hypochondria of advancing years she demands a doctor for her soul, she knows not from what disease she suffers. She does not pray for a Medea to thrust her into a cauldron of rejuvenescence. With a bluff optimism she declares that she is still the youngest of the nations, and boasts that when she has grown up to the height of her courage and activity she will make triumphant even ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... earliest picture of romantic love, as some have called the story of "Dido," not remembering, perhaps, that even here Virgil had before his mind a Greek model, that he was thinking of Apollonius Rhodius, and of Jason and Medea. He could be himself, too, in passages of reflection and description, as in the beautiful sixth book, with its picture of the under world, and ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... these years for the Borghese, there are summed up all those artistic aims towards which the Venetian painters had been tending. The picture is still Giorgionesque in mood. It may represent, as Dr. Wickhoff suggests, Venus exhorting Medea to listen to the love-suit of Jason; but the subject is not forced upon us, and we are more occupied with the contrast between the two beautiful personalities, so harmoniously related to each other, yet so ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... all out at elbows in body and in soul; and now having lost its potatoes is come as it were to a crisis; all its windy nonsense cracking suddenly to pieces under its feet: a very pregnant crisis indeed! A country cast suddenly into the melting-pot,—say into the Medea's-Caldron; to be boiled into horrid dissolution; whether into new youth, into sound healthy life, or into eternal death and annihilation, one does not yet know! Daniel O'Connell stood bodily before me, in his green Mullaghmart Cap; haranguing his retinue of Dupables: certainly the most sordid ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bursts out into art, and achieves a great triumph. I have seen Rachel and Ristori many a time, but their best acting was shallow compared to Janauschek's, as I have seen it in by-gone years, when she played Iphigenia and Medea in German. No one save a Bohemian could ever so intuit the gloomy profundity and unearthly fire of the Colchian sorceress. These are the things required to perfect every artist,—above all, the tragic artist,—that the tree ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... marble doorway leading from the church into the cloisters. He had afterwards been employed at Bergamo, where the Colleoni Chapel and the effigy of the great Condottiere's young daughter, the sleeping virgin Medea, still bear witness to his poetic invention and rare decorative skill. One of Lodovico's first acts after his return to Milan had been to recall Amadeo to Pavia, and in 1490, this gifted artist was appointed Capo maestro of the Certosa ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... diu, postquam ratione furorem, Vincere non poterat. Frustra, Medea, repugnas. —— Excute virgineo conceptas pectore flammas, Si potes, infelix. Si possem sanior essem: Sed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... the land of Colchis, King AEetes summoned them to his palace. Beside him was seated his daughter, the beautiful witch maiden, Medea. She looked upon the Greeks and upon Jason, fairest and noblest of them all, and her spirit leaped forth to meet his. And knowing what lay before them, "surely," she thought, "it were an evil thing that men so bold ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... prime then (1831), but could sing the Classical Song, or Ballad, till much later in Life. Pasta too, whom you then saw and heard! I still love the pillars of the old Haymarket Opera House, where I used to see placarded MEDEA IN ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... face to face with men, and in my heart I secretly built shrines to those I loved best. I knew and loved the whole tribe of nymphs and heroes and demigods—no, not quite all, for the cruelty and greed of Medea and Jason were too monstrous to be forgiven, and I used to wonder why the gods permitted them to do wrong and then punished them for their wickedness. And the mystery is still unsolved. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... continued his journey, and at length reached Athens without meeting with any further adventures. When he arrived at his destination he found his father a helpless tool in the hands of the sorceress Medea, whom he had married after her departure from Corinth. Knowing, by means of her supernatural powers, that Theseus was the king's son, and fearing that her influence might be weakened by his presence, she poisoned the mind of the old ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... which Washington Irving wrote "the predictions of the ancient oracles were rarely so unequivocal," is part of the "chorus" at the end of the second act of Seneca's "Medea," written near the date of St. Paul's first Epistle ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... she said to him, "and my name is Medea. I know a great deal of which other young princesses are ignorant and can do many things which they would be afraid so much as to dream of. If you will trust to me I can instruct you how to tame the fiery bulls and sow the dragon's teeth and get the ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... of Paris have been at all times extravagance and credulity itself. They looked upon this young villain as a martyr, and at once dedicated an elegy to him, in which I was compared with Medea, Circe, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... of Moliere, and from that again to the intricate harmonies of Calderon, Goethe, and Shelley; with its use of all voices, from vociferous mob to melodious daughters of Ocean, and its command of all colour, from the gloom of Medea to the splendour of Marlowe's Helen,—it is a small matter to remember the connection of work or author with the stage—how long they held it, how soon they were dispossessed, how and at what intervals and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... classic models are first consulted,—Oenone, Evadne, Medea,—these characters being followed through the delineation of modern dramatists. We know of no more exquisite criticism than the pages devoted to Griseldis. Analyzing the accounts of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Perault, our author concludes with the play of "Munck Bellinghausen." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... my dear Mrs. Delacour, that is too strong a word," said Lady Anne: "you would not make a Medea of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... modest, Gray more modest woo; Let them with Mason bleat, and bray, and coo; Let them with Franklin, proud of some small Greek, Make Sophocles disguis'd, in English speak; Let them with Glover o'er Medea doze; Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes, Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears, Melts, as they melt, and weeps with weeping peers; Let them with simple Whitehead, taught to creep Silent and soft, lay ...
— English Satires • Various
... researches, and to political affairs; and I am astonished at my own former blindness, and at his greatness. I could not bear Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults undoubtedly. But what a poet! The Medea, the Alcestis, the Troades, the Bacchae, are alone sufficient to place him in the very first rank. Instead of depreciating him, as I have done, I may, for aught I know, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan |
