"Mythological" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... How strange! Yet it is not strange. Anyone of us might fall in love with a donkey! It happened in mythological times," said Madame Epanchin, looking wrathfully at her daughters, who had begun to laugh. "Go ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... satisfactory explanation of its origin; for how was it arranged, and who was it that ordained at first, that the jackal should be the emblem of Anubis, the cat of Bast, the crocodile of Sebak, and so on? (3) Various mythological and quasi-historical accounts of the origin of the practice are given, such as that men long ago chose different animals for their standards in war, or that some early king, wishing to keep his subjects disunited, ordered ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... and his Man William.—These mythological personages, the grotesque creation of Mr. Grosvenor Bedford's fertile imagination, are frequently referred to and dilated on in the letters addressed to him by Southey (Life of Southey, by his Son, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... toward the political, economic, or national events taking place outside of his village, be they of his own or of a foreign country, he is completely indifferent, and even if he has learned something of them, this is described by him in a fantastic, mythological way, and only in this adopted form is it added to his cultural condition and transmitted to his descendants. Every peasant farm produced almost exclusively for itself, only to the most limited extent for exchange; every village formed ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... then, fairly afloat, with three horses harnessed to our vessel, like the steeds of Neptune to a huge scallop-shell in mythological pictures. Bound to a distant port, we had neither chart nor compass, nor cared about the wind, nor felt the heaving of a billow, nor dreaded shipwreck, however fierce the tempest, in our adventurous navigation ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... monotheism, by which formerly a place in the Providence of God had been allotted to everything, even to moral evil,[52] became corrupted, under the influence of Parsism, by the conception of two kingdoms, of God and of the Devil. The angels, originally the messengers of Providence, became under mythological names, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, &c., so many middle beings who filled the space between the Deity, existing apart from the world, and the world. The lower world (sheol, [Greek: aides]), formerly the general abode of the dead, of bad and good without distinction, was split into two parts, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... in 'Clotho'? Is it the whim of a nomenclator, at a loss for words to denote the ever-swelling tide of beasts that require cataloguing? Not entirely. A mythological name came to his mind, one which sounded well and which, moreover, was not out of place in designating a spinstress. The Clotho of antiquity is the youngest of the three Fates; she holds the distaff whence our destinies are spun, a distaff wound with plenty of rough flocks, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... that this tendency of the mind to personify isolated qualities or impulses, was essentially the mythological tendency(647) which had created the religion and expressed itself in the poetry of the Greeks, and possibly contributed to foster Shelley's sympathies with heathen religion. His mind was peculiarly Greek, simple not complex, imaginative rather than fanciful, abstract not concrete, intellectual ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Chronicle of the Cid." But these were not due to the compelling bent of his genius, as in Scott. They were miscellaneous jobs, undertaken in the regular course of his business as a manufacturer of big, irregular epics, Oriental, legendary, mythological, and what not; and as an untiring biographer, editor, and hack writer of all descriptions. Southey was a mechanical poet, with little original inspiration, and represents nothing in particular. Wordsworth again, though innovating in practice and theory ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... serpent, too, in mythology is a regular symbol of water. Possibly the narrator, or redactor, desired to tone down the traces of mythology. Just as the Gathas (the ancient Zoroastrian hymns) omit Gaokerena, and the Hebrew prophets on the whole avoid mythological phrases, so this old Hebrew thinker prunes the primitive exuberance ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... evidence of the magnitude of this influence in certain spheres. I suppose it is not doubted that the Greek went to school with the Oriental for his primary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic; and that Semitic theology supplied him with some of his mythological lore. Nor does there now seem to be any question about the large indebtedness of Greek art to that of Chaldaea and that ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... found in another chapter. But there exists a great deal of Maori tradition connected with various spots, and some of us do the best we can to preserve the tales that adorn certain localities. Some of the legends are mythological. Of such sort is that which gives such vivid interest to lonely Cape Reinga; the place where the spirits of dead Maori take their plunge into the sea, on their way from earth to the next world. Such, too, is the dragon legend, the tale ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... conditions that then prevailed, to select the books that seemed to them to contain the truth. It is impossible to believe that if the majority at these Councils had supposed that such an account as the account in Genesis of the Creation was mythological, they would thus have attested its literal truth. It never occurred to them to doubt it, because they did not understand the principle that, while a normal event can be accepted, if it is fairly well confirmed, an abnormal event requires a far greater amount of converging testimony ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... under his right leg. Southeast, "Earth," a woman leaning against a tree, apparently sleeping; at back two human figures struggle to uproot tree, symbol of man's war with nature. Southwest "Air" woman holding star to ear; birds, symbol of air; Icarus, mythological aviator who fell into sea, tied to wings of woman, typifying man's effort to conquer ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... given in the course of the ages, and they are both of them current to-day. One of the answers is biological—man is an animal, a certain kind of animal; the other answer is a mixture partly biological and partly mythological or partly biological and partly philosophical—man is a combination or union of animal with something supernatural. An important part of my task will be to show that both of these answers are radically wrong and that, beyond all things else, they are primarily responsible for what is dismal ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... of the play comes from this trivial incident in it. A wicked, vain, and shallow-pated prince intervenes and is taken as a biolog, or standing type of person. Modern Hindoo dramas require a whole night for the representation. They represent the loves and quarrels of the gods and other mythological stories. "The actors are dressed and painted in imitation of the deities they represent, and frequently the conversations are rendered attractive by sensual and obscene allusions, whilst in the interludes boys dressed in women's clothes dance with the most indecent gestures. The worst dances ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... braid, with embroidered ends, which fell over black silk stockings. At the end of the ante-chamber where this numerous personnel was grouped, opened a long gallery, ornamented with old tapestries representing mythological subjects in lively and well-preserved coloring. This room, which was intended to serve as a ballroom at need, was next to two large drawing-rooms. The walls of one were covered with a rich material, on which hung costly ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he had for the splendid previous space of time been living. The young Lord himself, in his radiant costly barbarism, figured far better than John Berridge could do the prepossessing shepherd, the beautiful mythological mortal "distinguished" by a goddess; for our hero now saw that his whole manner of dealing with his ridiculous tribute was marked exactly by the grand simplicity, the prehistoric good faith, as one might call it, of far-off romantic and "plastic" creatures, figures of exquisite Arcadian ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... I was taken for the first time to a real play, and it was to that paradise of juvenile spectators, Astley's, where we saw a Highland horror called "Meg Murdoch, or the Mountain Hag," and a mythological after-piece called "Hyppolita, Queen of the Amazons," in which young ladies in very short and shining tunics, with burnished breastplates, helmets, spears, and shields, performed sundry warlike evolutions round her Majesty Hyppolita, who was mounted on ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... was armed with moral forces not a whit less great. Confronting mythological traditions and poetical or philosophical allegories, appeared a religion truly religious, concerned solely with the relations of mankind to God and with their eternal future. To the pagan indifference of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... younger generation. There are few of his papers in which the past years of his life are more delightfully revived. The house had been "reduced to an antiquity." But we go with him to the grass plat, were he used to read Cowley; to the tapestried bedrooms, where the mythological people of Ovid used to stand forth, half alive; even to "that haunted bedroom in which old Sarah Battle died," and into which he "used to creep in a passion of fear." These things are all touched with a delicate ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Everybody came to her house; she delighted in contrasts; life was to her one prolonged antithesis. Soame Rivers said of her parties that they resembled certain early Italian pictures, which gave you the mythological gods in one place, a battle in another, a scene of pastoral peace in a third. It ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... of the noblest Agrippina that ever trod the French stage since the days of Racine: on the contrary, it evoked a vulgar joy. In 1816 the Rabouilleuse saw Maxence Gilet, and fell in love with him at first sight. Her heart was cleft by the mythological arrow,—admirable description of an effect of nature which the Greeks, unable to conceive the chivalric, ideal, and melancholy love begotten of Christianity, could represent in no other way. Flore was too handsome to be disdained, and Max accepted ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... this series. Works of such quality, intended only for advanced scholars, could not be annotated in the way hitherto usual, since those for whom they have been prepared are familiar with many things and many events of which younger students have no knowledge. Geographical and mythological notes have therefore been generally omitted, as also historical events either too well known to require elucidation or easily found in the ordinary books ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... ended, it was discovered that one of the most glorious of full moons had risen over the turrets and minarets of Cairo, illumining every visible object with as clear a lustre as that of day. Then it was that warriors and nobles of mediaeval days were seen strolling with mythological goddesses and out-of-date peasants of Italy and Spain; then audacious "toreadors" were perceived whispering in the ears of crowned queens, and clowns were caught lingering amorously by the side of impossible flower-girls of all nations. Then it was that Sir Chetwynd Lyle, with his paunch ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... feet of us, and yet it resembles the most ponderous limestone or granite. Then you ask yourself: How is it possible? If their burden were what it seems to be, they would be crushed to earth instead of striding proudly along. Admirable figures! As you say, the spectacle takes one back into mythological times. Would you not call it a procession of Titans, children of the Gods, storing up mountain-blocks for some earth-convulsing battle? Your eyes deceive you. Like Thomas, the doubting apostle, you must touch with ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... chansons de geste. These poems, which mediaevalise ancient literature—poems often of portentous length—have been classified in three groups—epic romances, historical or pseudo-historical romances, and mythological tales, including the imitations of Ovid. The earliest in date of the first group (about 1150-1155) is the ROMANCE OF THEBES, the work of an unknown author, founded upon a compendium of the Thebaid of Statius, preceded by the story of OEdipus. It opened the way for the vast ROMANCE OF TROY, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... given of Proper Names, Historical, Mythological, and Geographical. Tables of French Coins, Weights, and Measures, with ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... painted inscriptions, and for its frescoes.[129] There were originally one hundred and seventy-five panels, but scarcely half that number are now to be seen. They represent animals, landscapes, caricatures, scenes from daily life, and mythological and dramatic subjects. One only is historical, and, according to Petersen, represents the Judgment of Solomon (see p. 271). This subject, although exceedingly rare, is by no means unique in classical art, having already been ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... now in Greenwich Hospital; another of the death of Nelson, in his own gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, some idealized into compositions, others of definite localities; together with classical compositions, Romes, and Carthages, and such others, by the myriad, with mythological, historical, or allegorical figures—nymphs, monsters, and specters; ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... appellation of the "Desiring Heart," the other was called "Common Comfort." Common Sense might have been more to the purpose, but appeared to have no part in the play. Desiring Heart, being of an inquisitive disposition, propounded a series of puzzling questions, mythological in their nature, which seemed like classical conundrums, having reference, mainly, to the proceedings of Venus, Neptune, Juno, and other divinities. They appeared to have little to do with Matthias or the matter in hand, but Common Comfort knew ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Bear's Ear, is a great favourite in Russia. Its main interest depends not so much on him of the Bear's Ear, or even his comrade, Moustacho, who angles for trout with his moustaches, as on Baba Yaga. This personage is the grand mythological demon of the Russians, and frequently makes her appearance in their popular tales, but perhaps in none plays so remarkable a part as in the story of Yvashka. A little information with respect to her will perhaps ...
— The Story of Yvashka with the Bear's Ear • Anonymous
... himself making out, as a background of the occupant, some glory, some prosperity of the First Empire, some Napoleonic glamour, some dim lustre of the great legend; elements clinging still to all the consular chairs and mythological brasses and sphinxes' heads and faded surfaces of satin striped with ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... a year after which date the marriage took place. On the morning sacred to lovers the poet (in a dream, of course, and this time conducted by the arch-dreamer Scipio in person) enters a garden containing in it the temple of the god of Love, and filled with inhabitants mythological and allegorical. Here he sees the noble goddess Nature, seated upon a hill of flowers, and around her "all the fowls that be," assembled as by time honoured custom on St. Valentine's Day, "when every fowl comes there to choose her mate." Their huge noise and hubbub is reduced to ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... The serpent's form is also that given to different secondary personifications of the evil principle, different mythological beings created by Angromainyus to ravage the earth, and war with the good, and with the true faith—such as Azhi-Dahaka (the serpent that bites), conquered by Thraetaina, and the dragon Cruvara, slain by the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... preserved, as if by miracle, is the house on a lower level which some assert to have been that of Livia,* a house which seems very small beside all the huge palaces, and where are three halls comparatively intact, with mural paintings of mythological scenes, flowers, and fruits, still wonderfully fresh. As for the palace of Tiberius, not one of its stones can be seen; its remains lie buried beneath a lovely public garden; whilst of the neighbouring palace of Caligula, overhanging the Forum, there are only some huge substructures, akin to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... would account for the striking absence from them of some of the chief characteristics of Skaldic poetry: the obscuring of the sense by the elaborate interlacing of sentences and the extensive use of kennings or mythological synonyms, and the complication of the metre by such expedients as the conjunction of end-rhyme with alliteration. Eddie verse is governed solely by the latter, and the strophic arrangement is simple, only two forms occurring: (1) couplets of alliterative short lines; (2) six-line ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... earliest times down to the extinction of the Western Empire; those of all Greek and Roman writers, whose works are either extant or known to have exercised an influence upon their respective literatures; and, lastly, those of all the more important artists of antiquity. In the Mythological division may be noticed first, the discrimination, hitherto not sufficiently attended to, between the Greek and Roman mythology, and which in this volume is shown by giving an account of the Greek divinities under their Greek names, and the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... them. It made them angry, therefore vindictive, consequently unjust. It may be that they were not very ethical. Perhaps the bedouins were not either. Man fashions his god in proportion to his intelligence. That of the nomad was slender. He lacked, what the Aryan shepherd possessed, the ability for mythological invention. The defect was due to his speech, which did not lend itself to the deification of epithets. Even had it done so, it is probable that his mode of life would have rendered the paraphernalia ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... living with Calatinus as her third husband in about four years—was fitted up with every luxury which money, and a taste which carried refinement to an extreme point, could accomplish. The walls were bright with splendid mythological scenes by really good artists; the furniture itself was plated with silver; the rugs were magnificent. The mistress of this palatial abode was sitting in a low easy-chair, holding before her a fairly large silver mirror. She wore a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... last extremity of self-defence; and determined to maintain our post, if possible, by means of our pistol-butts, or our fists alone. In the general melee which ensued, the captain's lady, who fought in the van, and looked like a lean Helen MacGregor, or the mythological Ate, was captured by the assailants, and dragged to the deck below. Then it was that combining our forces, and inspired with all the ardour which is naturally excited by the appearance of beauty in distress, we made a desperate sally, and ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... criticism I can offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be simply a malignant witch-woman with the evil eye, but with no absolute ophidian relationship. Lamia is a serpent transformed by magic into a woman. The idea of both is mythological, and not in any sense physiological. Some women unquestionably suggest the image of serpents; men rarely or never. I have been struck, like many others, with the ophidian head and eye of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... exclusively with mythological subjects, and nothing of the Italian element comprised in modern pantomime had been apparent in our stage performances. It is probable that even upon their first introduction to our theatre the real significance of the characters of ancient Italian comedy was never wholly comprehended by the audience. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of the English drama. At first in the hands of the monks Dramatic Art was abstract, decorative and mythological. Then she enlisted Life in her service, and using some of life's external forms, she created an entirely new race of beings, whose sorrows were more terrible than any sorrow man has ever felt, whose joys were keener ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... it either. The chaste daughters of Apollo willingly left the slopes of Helicon and Parnassus at his call. Lady Helena paid him sincere compliments on his mythological visitants, and so did the Major, though he ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... too close, Monsieur, or I shall be forced to change myself into laurel," still keeping hold of the mythological thread. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... councillor to the territorial legislature. It is 460 miles north-west of St. Paul, and 330 miles distant from this town. Notwithstanding the distance, there is considerable communication between the places. West of Pembina, about thirty miles, is a settlement called St. Joseph, situated N. of a large mythological body of water called Miniwakan, or Devil's Lake; and is one of the points where Col. Smith's expedition was intending to stop. This expedition to which I refer, started out from Fort Snelling in the summer, to explore the country ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... of other religions—including Christianity—regarding the Godhead. And here we touch another pleasing characteristic of this most ancient of books—its catholic spirit and disregard of those {35} mythological and esoteric riddles that most Egyptian works propound to us continually. It will be noticed that 'the God' is not anywhere mentioned by name. Osiris (5) and Horus (41) are alluded to, but only historically, in respect of their rule upon ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... THE mythological page of a country's history has an interest of its own apart from legendary relations; it affords indications of the people's creeds and furnishes traces of the nation's genesis. In Japan's mythology there is a special difficulty for the interpreter—a difficulty of nomenclature. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the wainscoting to the oaken ceiling, vaulted and ribbed like a ship's hull, opened the wide, flat-stepped staircase, the parapet surmounted at intervals by heraldic monsters, the wall covered with oak carvings of coats-of-arms, leafage, and little mythological scenes, painted a faded red and blue, and picked out with tarnished gold, which harmonised with the tarnished blue and gold of the stamped leather that reached to the oak cornice, again delicately tinted and gilded. The beautifully damascened suits of court armour looked, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... member of the Labiatae, is a very hardy perennial, native to Mediterranean countries. Its generic name is derived from the mythological origin ascribed to it. Poets declared that Proserpine became jealous of Cocytus's daughter, Minthe, whom she transformed into the plant. The specific name means green, hence the common name, green mint, often applied to it. The old Jewish law did not require ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... human expressions. Whatever may be thought of the likelihood of these beasts being portrayed to look like men, certain it is that in the painted caves of this period the men almost invariably have animal heads, as if they were mythological beings, half animal and half human; or else—as perhaps is more probable—masked dancers. At one place, however—namely, in the rock shelter of Cogul near Lerida, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, we have a picture of a group of women dancers who are not masked, but attired in the style of the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... forgot both her errand and herself. It was the figure of a man, standing erect, and looking straight before him with a wonderfully lifelike expression. It was neither a mythological nor a historical character, Psyche thought, and was glad of it, being tired to death of gods and heroes. She soon ceased to wonder what it was, feeling only the indescribable charm of something higher ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... see at a glance that the whole of this story is mythological. Like other distinguished persons, the Prophet of Nazareth had to make a fuss, not only in the world, but in the universe; and his biographers (especially Matthew) duly provided him with extraordinary incidents. Not only was he born, like so many other "saviors," without the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... compare the founder of the fair and famous city of Athens with him, and to contrast Theseus with the father of unconquered glorious Rome. Putting aside, then, the mythological element, let us examine his story, and wherever it obstinately defies probability, and cannot be explained by natural agency, let us beg the indulgence of our readers, who will kindly make allowance for tales ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... said to our credit that after such an evening dish-washing was no longer a task, but rather a delightful prelude to another mythological feast. We wandered with Ulysses and shuddered at Polyphemus; we went in quest of the Golden Fleece, and watched the sack of Troy; we came to know Orpheus and Eurydice and Pyramus and Thisbe; and we sowed dragon's teeth and saw armed men ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... taciturn. The consul, however, was by no means certain of his victory. His alleged fellow citizen was too encyclopaedic in his knowledge: a clever youth might have crammed for this with a textbook, but then he did not LOOK at all clever; indeed, he had rather the stupidity of the mythological subject he represented. "Leave him with me," said the consul. The inspector handed him a precis of the case. The cherub's name was Karl Schwartz, an orphan, missing from Schlachtstadt since the age of twelve. Relations not living, or in emigration. Identity established ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... and especially to Layamon's use of current Welsh Arthurian tradition. The large variety of magical possessions assigned to Arthur is also a notable indication of the great emphasis that Welsh legend laid upon his mythological attributes and his ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... already established in Thomas Edison's time, and 'bug' in the sense of an disruptive event goes back to Shakespeare! In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of 'bug' is "A frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to 'bugbear', a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... account of the affairs of his own Country. Many of his Works are now said to be lost: But there is still an Edda, consisting of several Odes (whence I suspect its Name is derived) written by many several hands, and at different times, which bears his Name. The Book is a Collection of Mythological Fables, relating to the ancient State and Behaviour of the Great Woden and his followers, in terms poetical and adapted to the Service of those that were employ'd in the composure of their ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... a good deal about the personages you mention from Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," from Alexander S. Murray's "Manual of Mythology," and from Mrs. Clement's "Handbook of Legendary and Mythological Art"; but the poems of Homer,—the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey,"—of both of which there are good English translations,—are the chief sources of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... Bibbiena, of the Chigi family, and used since then by more than one Assistant Secretary of State. There is a small chapel there, with a window looking upon an inner court. This was once the luxurious cardinal's bath-room, and was beautifully painted by Raphael in fresco, with mythological subjects. In 1835, according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Passavant saw it as it had originally been, with frescoes still beautiful, though much damaged, and the marble bath still in its place in a niche painted ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... into a large court, surrounded with a corridor, the arches of which support a second series of arches above. The picture-rooms open from one into another, and have many points of magnificence, being large and lofty, with vaulted ceilings and beautiful frescos, generally of mythological subjects, in the flat central part of the vault. The cornices are gilded; the deep embrasures of the windows are panelled with wood-work; the doorways are of polished and variegated marble, or covered with a composition as hard, and seemingly as durable. The whole has a ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that 'Mannhardt's mythological researches have never been fashionable.' They are now very much in fashion; they greatly inspire Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell. 'They seemed to me, and still seem to me, too exclusive,' says Mr. Max Muller. {0f} Mannhardt in his second period ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... performance which so many thousands have laboured to imitate, would be to judge with too little deference for the opinion of mankind: yet whoever shall read it with impartiality, will find that most of the images are of the mythological kind, and therefore easily invented; and that there are few sentiments of rational praise ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... we are indebted to the Norman love of pageantry for the development of the drama in England is an unanswered question. During the Middle Ages it was customary, in welcoming a monarch or in celebrating a royal wedding, to represent allegorical and mythological scenes, like the combat of St. George and the dragon, for instance, on a stage constructed for the purpose. These pageants were popular all over Europe and developed during the Renaissance into the dramatic form known as the Masque. Though the drama was of religious origin, we must ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a few tablets dealing with mythological subjects and written in Babylonian, and two which contain inventories, all the tablets were letters. Most of them were from Egyptian officials in Syria and Canaan, and usually they were addressed to the king. ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... harum-scarum sort of girl, she was good to the children and found no end of diversions for them. Nora was a curious, grave little thing, and her large dark eyes in her small, sallow face looked almost uncanny. She devoured fairy stories and knew many of the mythological gods and goddesses. They had a beautiful big cat called Old Gray. It really belonged to Mr. Theodore, but Nora played with it and tended it, and dressed it up in caps and gowns and shawls and carried ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... belief in the Unity of the Supreme God and in His attributes as Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom He has endowed with an immortal soul, .... these are the primitive notions, enchased in the midst of mythological superfetations accumulated in the centuries." Franz Lenormant reached the same conclusion. Elsewhere, Renouf says: "It is incontestably true, that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religions are ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... of escaping through the latticed window, Zarah could scarcely have realized that she was a prisoner still. The floor of the apartment was inlaid with costly marbles; on the walls were depicted scenes taken from mythological subjects; luxurious divans invited to repose; and vases, wreathed with brilliant flowers and filled with rose-water, were surrounded by others loaded with a profusion of fruit and a variety of dainties. The young Hebrew maiden, accustomed to the simplicity of Hadassah's humble ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... reproach you for my deeds. I came Tess, to say that I don't like you to be working like this, and I have come on purpose for you. You say you have a husband who is not I. Well, perhaps you have; but I've never seen him, and you've not told me his name; and altogether he seems rather a mythological personage. However, even if you have one, I think I am nearer to you than he is. I, at any rate, try to help you out of trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face! The words of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to read ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... are a compendium of the Mythological narratives of ancient Greece and Rome, so ingeniously framed, as to embrace a large amount of information upon almost every subject connected with the learning, traditions, manners, and customs of antiquity, and have afforded a fertile field of investigation to the learned of the civilized ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without a pang of regret. We are reluctant to believe that William Tell was a mythological marksman and Gessler a wholly impossible bailiff. Nevertheless the inexorable laws of evidence demand that this sacrifice should be made on the altar of historical truth. M. Gastine has now ruthlessly quashed out another picturesque ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Aristotle's rules, The Vade Mecum of the true sublime, Which makes so many poets, and some fools: Prose poets like blank-verse, I'm fond of rhyme, Good workmen never quarrel with their tools; I've got new mythological machinery, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... both the winds and the sea are personified, and mentioned by their mythological names, as in Juvenal; but when they are mentioned in plain language, the application of the epithets suggested by me, is the most obvious; and accordingly my friend himself, in his imitation of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... reacted against the decorative methods of the fifteenth century. If he had to paint a biblical or mythological subject, he avoided landscapes, trees, flowers, birds, beasts, and subordinate groups of figures. He eschewed the arabesques, the labyrinths of foliage and fruit enclosing pictured panels, the candelabra and gay bands of variegated patterns, which enabled a quattrocento ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... was wood-carving. The first thing he made for her was a butter-stamper. In it he carved a mythological bird, a phoenix, something like an eagle, rising on symmetrical wings, from a circle of very beautiful flickering flames that rose upwards from the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... air, had disappeared long ago, promising to return after a certain period, and to govern them in peace and happiness; and on the first appearance of the Spaniards on their coast, observing certain marks of resemblance between them and their mythological notions of this god, they believed their god of the air had returned, and was about to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... an article I have just read, Biedermann reproaches Strauss with being too negative, and with having broken with Christianity. The object to be pursued, according to him, should be the freeing of religion from the mythological element, and the substitution of another point of view for the antiquated dualism of orthodoxy—this other point of view to be the victory over the world, produced by ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought upon the relations of man to the divine, played an important part in the development of the human mind. As a result of their speculative activity of thought the old religious systems sank into the background; the simple worship of primitive times was overshadowed by intricate mythological systems, splendid in worship and creed; cosmogonies and philosophies were devised; and human thought, once fairly set loose in this field, went on with great ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... receive it as such, the following hypothesis becomes necessary, viz., that Chaucer imagined a double impersonation of Mercury—one absent, the other present,—one sidereal, the other mythological,—one ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... Constantinople and Barbary, Massilia, Aquitaine, Navarre, Portugal, Rome, England, Paris, Alexandria, Arcadia, Olympus, Asgard, and the Jerusalems Old and New. As many ages of history likewise converge upon Poictesme in its ostensible thirteenth or fourteenth century, from the most mythological times only a little this side of Creation to the most contemporary America of Felix Kennaston who lives at comfortable Lichfield with two motors and with money in four banks but in his mind habitually ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... from Elba, an historical fact as marvellous and incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god, found General D'Hubert still quite unable to sit a horse. Neither could he walk very well. These disabilities, which Madame Leonie accounted most lucky, helped to keep her brother out of all possible mischief. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... love with a certain country girl, whose name is Cowslip, to whom he makes a declaration of his passion in a strange mythological, grammatical style and manner, and to whom, among other fooleries, he sings, quite enraptured, the following air, and seems to work himself at least up to such a transport of passion as quite overpowers him. He begins, you will ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... His "Crucifixion," which we shall see at the Scuola of S. Rocco, must ever be this giant painter's most tremendous achievement; but the picture before us must equally remain his culminating effort in serene, absolute beauty. Three other mythological paintings, companions of the "Bacchus," are here too, of which I like best the "Minerva" and the "Mercury"; but they are far from having the quality of that other. I have an idea that "The Origin ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... but only to the game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such subjects? From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the "Mythological Dictionary." What a classicism, inspired by rouge, gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lempriere, and copied, half from ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the world by Dr. Taylor, who recognized, as James has said, page 157, that, "a permanently existing 'Idea' which makes its appearance before the footlights of consciousness at periodic intervals, is as mythological an entity as the Jack of Spades." The entire organization from the highest to the lowest must conform to these standards. It is out of the question to permit the deviations resulting from individual initiative. ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... in the room, but they were of a most uninviting appearance. The room was rather a large one, with a corner, in which there was a bed, partitioned off. It was covered with old and tattered yellow paper, and had horrible lithographs of mythological subjects on the walls; in the corner facing the door there was a long row of painted ikons and several sets of brass ones. The whole room with its strangely ill-assorted furniture was an unattractive mixture of the town element and of peasant traditions. But he did not even glance at it ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... practical accommodation between these hostile elements she owed her wide supremacy. The Christianity she formed and propagated was different from that of the New Testament, inasmuch as it had taken up into itself a mass of mythological anthropomorphic elements. Thus transmuted and materialised, thus accepted by the vivid faith of an unquestioning populace, Christianity offered a proper medium for artistic activity. The whole first period of Italian painting was occupied with the endeavour to set forth in form ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... refined upon it, varied it, produced new phases of it; reviving the strangest paradoxes of the Alexandrian school; and teaching—in this, the nineteenth century—with the gravest confidence in the world—with all the assurance of an ancient Scald chanting forth his mythological fables, a whole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Gnostics and their adherents was to form little coteries and to keep much of their teaching secret from those who were attracted by their more popular tenets. The esoteric element seems to have been the so-called "systems" in which the fanciful and mythological element in Gnosticism appears. This, as being the most vulnerable part of the Gnostic teaching, was attacked most bitterly by the opponents of heresy. There are no extant writings of the earlier Gnostics, Simon, Menander, or Cerinthus. They are ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... was so hard to bear at the time, was really a blessing in disguise, as it enabled him to turn his attention to more general subjects, and devote himself to those philological, philosophical, religious and mythological studies, which found their expression in a series of works commencing with his Lectures on the Science of Language, 1861, and terminating with his Contributions to the Science of Mythology, 1897,—"the thread that connects the ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... flung a rosy light over this homely privilege. He appreciated highly the fare that was set before him. There was a kind of fresh-looking abundance about it which made him think that people must have lived so in the mythological era, when they spread their tables upon the grass, replenished them from cornucopias, and had no particular need of kitchen stoves. But the great thing that Felix enjoyed was having found a family—sitting in the midst ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... children who are not used to their natural appearance; they will pass over the stories of love and jealousy, merely because they do not understand them. We should rather leave them completely unintelligible, than attempt, like Mr. Riley, in his mythological pocket dictionary for youth, to elucidate the whole at once, by assuring children that Saturn was Adam, that Atlas is Moses, and his brother Hesperus, Aaron; that Vertumnus and Pomona were Boaz and Ruth; that Mars corresponds with Joshua; ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... of transmigration. Hence, referring to bygone times, we are told by Empedocles that "there are two destinies for the souls of highest virtue —to pass either into trees or into the bodies of lions."[28] Amongst the numerous illustrations of this mythological conception may be noticed the story told by Ovid,[29] who relates how Baucis and Philemon were rewarded in this manner for their charity to Zeus, who came a poor wanderer to their home. It appears that they not only lived ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... d. 1665) was a French painter, who became one of the most remarkable artists of his age. His fame chiefly arises from his historical and mythological paintings. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Chaldaean sources. We can scarcely doubt but that, in some way or other, there was a communication of beliefs—a passage in very early times, from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the lands washed by the Mediterranean, of mythological notions and ideas. It is a probable conjecture that among the primitive tribes who dwelt on the Tigris and Euphrates, when the cuneiform alphabet was invented and when such writing was first applied to the purposes of religion, a Scythic or Scytho-Arian race existed, who subsequently ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... whether this is supposed to be number two, but I can't find any other piece for it (previous 1., next 3.). Sampo Niskanen <sampo.niskanen@iki.fi> —> % 2. Mythological and other fabulous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... risen up against me, and my later publications. Such is Truth! men dare not look her in the face, except by degrees; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to irritate. But I ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Lyrics in our language, should still remain the best in a style which so many great poets have since attempted. The Bright and the Thoughtful aspects of Nature are their subjects: but each is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian manner. The meaning of the first is that Gaiety is the child of Nature; of the second, that Pensiveness is the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Plato tells us in his mythological fashion, of this perfect Beauty, because we had seen it once before in another life, before our souls were born into this world, 'that blissful sight and spectacle' (Phaedrus, 250 B) when we followed Zeus in his winged car and all the company of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... astronomical mythology," was a "Man submerged in celestial waters." If the legend of the lost Atlantis is only "like those of Airyana-Vaejo and Jambu-dvipa," it is terrestrial enough, and therefore "the mythological origin of the Deluge legend" is so far an open question. We claim that it is not "indubitably demonstrated," however clever ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... figure, for whom she devised the name Corambe, was to combine all the spiritual qualities of the Christian ideal with the earthly grace and beauty of the mythological deities of Greece. For very many years she cherished this fantasy, finding there the scope she sought for her aspirations after superhuman excellence. It is hardly too much to say that the Christianity which had been expressly left out in her teaching she invented for ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the first shocks of its formation. Procopius (died ca. 535) describes a monumental water clock which was erected in Gaza ca. 500.[17] It contained impressive jackwork, such as a Medusa head which rolled its eyes every hour on the hour, exhibiting the time through lighted apertures and showing mythological interpretations of the cosmos. All these effects were produced by Heronic techniques, using hydraulic power and puppets moved by strings, rather ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... there before, nor since, its era such mythological wall-paintings as are here to be seen. The aspirants for the Prix de Rome protest each year against such subjects being set them for their concours, but their judges, recalling how effective such examples are, are insistent. The best examples of the School ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... hear the sound of their feet in the tall grass and the wind howl when their voices filled the caves? Are we not, moreover, in the land of fairies, in the home of the Knights of the Round Table and of Merlin, in the mythological birthplace of vanished epopees? These, no doubt, revealed something of the old worlds which have become mythical, and told something of the cities that were swallowed up, of Is and Herbadilla, splendid and barbaric places, filled with the loves of their ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... Ireland. Songs of the Isle of Man. Songs of Wales. Songs of the Gaelic Highlands. Songs of Anglo-Saxon England. Songs of the North, Mythological. Songs of the North, Heroic. Songs of Iceland. Songs of Sweden. Songs of Germany. Songs of Holland. Songs of Ancient Greece. Songs of the Modern Greeks. Songs of the Klephts. Songs of Denmark, Early Period. Songs of Denmark, Modern Period. Songs of the Feroe Isles. Songs of the Gascons. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... was Ulysses; which, with the common fate of mythological stories, is now generally neglected. We have been too early acquainted with the poetical heroes to expect any pleasure from their revival; to show them as they have already been shown, is to disgust by repetition; to give them new qualities, or new ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... scholars, no trace is to be found in aboriginal America. The clan itself, too, always had a name, which was usually that of some animal,—as Wolf, Eagle, or Salmon, and a rude drawing or pictograph of the creature served as a "totem" or primitive heraldic device. A mythological meaning was attached to this emblem. The clan had its own common religious rites and common burial place. There was a clan-council, of which women might be members; there were instances, indeed, of its being composed entirely of women, whose position was one of much more ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... preparing the present work, Dr. Smith has had peculiar reference to the wants of the younger class of students. He has wished to furnish them with a Dictionary, on the same plan with that of Lempriere, containing in a single volume the most important names, biographical, mythological, and geographical, occurring in the Greek and Roman writers usually read in the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Corinna once offered to beautify his earlier efforts with mythological allusions. The pupil, nettled by this criticism, soon brought to his instructress a new poem, of which the first six stanzas touched upon every part of Theban mythology; whereupon she cooled his enthusiasm by remarking ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice; its many peculiarities ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... appeared. Not sensuous enough for an Aphrodite, and too subdued for a Hebe, she would yet, with the adjunct of doves or nectar, have stood sufficiently well for either of those personages, if presented in a pink morning light, and with mythological scarcity of attire. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... invented medicines is due is unknown, the origins of pharmacy being lost in the twilight of myth. OSIRIS and ISIS, BACCHUS, APOLLO father of the famous physician AESCULAPIUS, and CHIRON the Centaur, tutor of the latter, are among the many mythological personages who have been accredited with the invention of physic. It is certain that the art of compounding medicines is extraordinarily ancient. There is a papyrus in the British Museum containing medical prescriptions which was written about 1200 B.C.; and ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... day, during his reception hours, several visitors called—an unheard-of thing. They glanced indifferently at his mythological daubs, but were enthusiastic in their praises of his rustic subjects. The day following, more visitors came. He was offered and accepted four hundred dollars for one of his cabinet pictures. In a word, orders flowed in upon him; he could hardly ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... yet day, and beheld those celebrated paintings of Michael Angelo, which represent the Last Judgment, with all the terrible power of the subject and the talent which has handled it. Michael Angelo was penetrated with the study of Dante; and the painter, in imitation of the poet, represents mythological beings in the presence of Jesus Christ; but he always makes Paganism the evil principle, and it is under the form of demons that he characterises the heathen fables. On the vault of the chapel are represented the prophets, and ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... an Icelandic priest and scald. He compiled the Elder or Rythmical Edda, often called Saemund's Edda. This compilation contains not only mythological tales and moral sentences, but numerous sagas in verse or heroic lays, as those of V[:o]lung and Helg[^e], of Sigurd and Brynhilda, of Folsungs and Niflungs (pt. ii.). Probably his compilation contained all the mythological, heroic, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... earned his livelihood by making and selling bamboo fans. He could of course keep no army, but he knew magic, and when he broke his fan the army of the enemy broke up in unison. Venu is a Sanskrit word meaning bamboo. But a mythological Sanskrit king called Vena is mentioned in the Puranas, from whom for his sins was born the first Nishada, the lowest of human beings, and Manu [250] states that the bamboo-worker is the issue of a Nishada or Chandal father and a Vaideha [251] mother. So that ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... quarters of London represented Blake's four great mythological personages, the Zoas, and also the four elements. These few sentences were the foundation of all study of the philosophy of William Blake, that requires an exact knowledge for its pursuit and that traces the connection between his system and ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... Montfaucon, who conjectures that they were allegorical, and probably intended to represent the triumph of religion. Each tablet contains a triumphal car, drawn by different animals, one by elephants, another by lions, and so on, and crowded with mythological figures and attributes.—A friend of mine, who examined them this summer, tells me, that he thinks the subjects are either taken from the triumphs of Petrarch, or imitated from the triumphs introduced ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... against mechanism is a good instance of the difficulties which mythological habits of mind import unnecessarily into science. An equilibrium would not displace itself! But an equilibrium is a natural result, not a magical entity. It is continually displaced, as its constituents are modified by ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... labors, of the home and the field. While Homer paints for us the warlike life of his day, Hesiod paints the peaceful labors of the husbandman, the holiness of domestic life, the duty of economy, the education of youth, and the details of commerce and politics. He also collects the flying threads of mythological legend and lays down for us the story of the gods in a work of great value as the earliest exposition of this picturesque phase of religious belief. The veil is lifted from the face of youthful Greece by these two famous writers, and we are shown ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to read this, and to an even greater degree some of the other stories, which have been translated by Mr. Joyce and others, without perceiving how thoroughly impregnated with old-world and mythological sentiment they are. An air of all but fabulous antiquity pervades them, greater perhaps than pervades the legends of any other north European people. We seem transplanted to a world of the most primitive type conceivable; ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... on gems, and can rarely be distinguished, unless they are accompanied by an inscription, from the similar objects obtained in such abundance from Babylonia and Assyria. They reproduce, with scarcely any variation, the mythological figures and emblems native to those countries—the forms of gods and priests, of spirits of good and evil, of kings contending with lions, of sacred trees, winged circles, and the like—scarcely ever introducing any novelty. The ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... we might suppose it to be a mythical form of a raid of pirates, who, not catching the woman, carried off something of hers, which proved an object of contention in Egypt. But such renderings are unlikely, and we may the rather expect to find some explanation in a mythological parallel. ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... courts, availed themselves of the very form of the sacred drama of the people in the treatment of subjects entirely profane. Thus did Poliziano, whose 'Orfeo,' as the evident reproduction of that form in a mythological subject is an isolated type in the history ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... only careless indulgence in the vanities of this world and blindness to the eternal concerns of life. The pagan will not appreciate the delicacy of his art, and will find the abundance of his literary, mythological, historical, and geographical allusion, the compactness of his expression, and the maturity and depth of his intellect, a barrier calling for too much effort. Both will prefer Virgil—Virgil of "arms and the man," the story-teller, Virgil the lover of Italy, Virgil ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... is described as "tapping on her snuff-box," and frequently taking snuff. At this time nothing was so monstrous as the head-dresses of the ladies in Queen Anne's reign: they formed a kind of edifice of three stories high; and a fashionable lady of that day much resembles the mythological figure of Cybele, the mother of the gods, with three towers ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli |
