"Acheron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fished in turbid waters for marital nibbles and had told mutual falsehoods to unbelieving tradesmen. And yet the younger woman, when tempted with a bribe worth lies and tricks as deep and as black as Acheron, now stood on her dignity and her purity and stamped her foot ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... grounded, hardly is dissembled. These lovers parled by the touch of hands: True love is mute, and oft amazed stands. Thus while dumb signs their yielding hearts entangled, The air with sparks of living fire was spangled; And Night, deep-drench'd in misty Acheron, Heav'd up her head, and half the world upon Breath'd darkness forth (dark night is Cupid's day): And now begins Leander to display Love's holy fire, with words, with sighs, and tears; Which, like sweet music, enter'd Hero's ears; And yet at every word she ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Amore The Dead Child Carthusians The Three Witches Villanelle of the Poet's Road Villanelle of Acheron Saint Germain-en-Laye After Paul Verlaine-I After Paul Verlaine-II After Paul Verlaine-III After Paul Verlaine-IV To his Mistress Jadis In a Breton Cemetery To William Theodore Peters on his Renaissance Cloak The Sea-Change Dregs A Song Breton Afternoon Venite Descendamus Transition Exchanges ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... the guilty soil, That earthly darkness teemed with gibbering ghosts And Stygian terrors. Victory foully won Thus claimed its punishment. The slumbering sense Already heard the hiss of vengeful flames As from the depths of Acheron. One saw Deep in the trances of the night his sire And one his brother slain. But all the dead In long array were visioned to the eyes Of Caesar dreaming. Not in other guise Orestes saw the Furies ere he fled To purge his sin within the Scythian bounds; Nor in more fierce convulsions raged the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... both have alike lost heart and sunk into deepest dejection. Never crossed Acheron two spirits more despairing—less hopeful of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... They hear, and glare around with hollow eyes, Like greedy eagles. In their murky dens They stir themselves, and from the corners creep Their comrades, dire Remorse and pallid Fear; Before them fumes a mist of Acheron; Perplexingly around the murderer's brow The eternal contemplation of the past Rolls in its cloudy circles. Once again The grisly band, commissioned to destroy, Pollute earth's beautiful and heaven-sown fields, From which an ancient curse had banish'd them. Their ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... strange new sacrilege the advance Of prows that ploughed that time-forgotten tide. But soon rude flaws, cross currents, tortuous channels Bewildered them, and many a league they drove As down some vaster Acheron, while the coasts With wailing voices cursed them all night long, And once again the hideous fires leapt red By many a grim wrenched crag and gaunt ravine. So for a hundred leagues of whirling spume They groped, till suddenly, far away, they saw Full of the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and rest, putting into his hands the keys of human eyes. With his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of mortals— herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered from a grove in Heaven; and, from the meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death; expressing from it one single drop only, no bigger than a tear that one might hide. 'With this juice,' he said, 'pour slumber upon the eyelids of mortals. So soon as it hath touched them they will lay themselves down motionless, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... mysterious valley, where one heard continually a low, sad murmur. This proceeded from a nymph in terra-cotta, from whose urn dripped, day and night, a thin rill of water into a small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows threw upon its surface, even at mid-day, the blackness of Acheron. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of your hands about your heads, before the gale of sighs, which ever wafts on its passage the bark, on which no sighs are heard, with sable sails, the freighted with the dead, untrodden for Apollo, the sunless, across Acheron, and to the invisible ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... the dog camping near the dwelling of Acheron, and without paying any attention to the bellowing of the three heads, which was like the echo of fearful resounding thunder, he seized the dog by the legs, put his arms around his neck, and would not let him go, although the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... and Acheron!" exclaimed a voice which sounded like music in the porter's ears, "I think you are mistaken in your man, my lord. It does not ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... severely, now that they had lost the covering of their bodies. Among the group, Larry recognised his old master, by the same means that Ulysses, Aeneas, and others, recognised the bodiless forms of their friends in the regions of Acheron. "What brings a living person," said the man in black, "on this pathway? I shall make legal capture of you, Larry Sweeney, for trespassing. You have no business here." "I have come," said Larry, plucking up courage, "to bring your honour's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... and unsteady, that they know not what they believe. They have little round-built temples, which they call pagodas, in which are images in most monstrous shapes, which they worship. Some of them dream, of Elysian fields, to which their souls pass over a Styx or Acheron, and there assume new bodies. Others hold that ere long, this world shall have an end, after which they shall live here again, upon a new earth. They talk of four books which were sent them about 6000 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... as I am proud to think, has been the influence of the Snob of England upon Clubs in general:—Captain Shindy is afraid to bully the waiters any more, and eats his mutton-chop without moving Acheron. Gobemouche does not take more than two papers at a time for his private reading. Tiggs does not ring the bell and cause the library-waiter to walk about a quarter of a mile in order to give him Vol. II., which lies on the next table. Growler has ceased to walk from ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... uttered in deep bass, accompanied with a smart smack of the whip, to urge the horse up the ascent. Joe was a decent sort of boy enough for his avocation, not to be ranked among those who "troop under the sooty flag of Acheron;" but a clean, square-built fellow, with a broadish face and forehead, blue eyes, nose rather short, expanded, and inclined upwards, and tinted with that imperial hue that indicated his knowledge was not confined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... given to the patient constantly. This was a work of no little trouble, for Salvator showed the greatest aversion for—utter loathing of the stuff, which looked, and smelt, and tasted, as if it had been concocted from Acheron itself. Whether it was that the disease, since it had now received a name, and in consequence really signified something, had only just begun to put forth its virulence, or whether it was that Splendiano's potion made too much of a disturbance ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... just sending Fortnoye to the gloomiest shades of Acheron when a strong hand entered the carriage-door, helped me handsomely down the steps, and then began warmly to shake my own. Fortnoye!—Fortnoye in flesh and blood was before me. While my mouth was yet filled with maledictions he began to pour out a storm of thanks with all his own particular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... strange shapes, and "idols" of the light-bereaved,' Lucretius expressly advances this doctrine of 'films' (an application of the Democritean theory of perception), 'that we may not believe that souls break loose from Acheron, or that shades fly about among the living, or that any part of us is left behind after death'. {341a} Believers in ghosts must have replied that they do not see, in sleep or awake, 'films' representing a mouldering corpse, as they ought to do on the Lucretian hypothesis, but the image, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... could discover the causes of things, and place under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan, and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."—Virgil, Georg., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... unworthy, and as groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of his muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those who start up three at a time, and fall upon and ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... "The spirits beyond redemption, for the multitude of their murders or sacrileges, Fate hurls into Tartarus, whence they never any more come forth." But souls of lighter guilt abide a year in Tartarus, and then drift out down the streams Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon. Thence they reach the marsh of Acheron, but are not released until they have received the pardon of the souls whom in ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the west of Epirus is the island of Corcyra (Corfu), famous for the shipwreck of Ulysses, and for the gardens of Aleinous, and for having given rise to the Peloponnesian war. Epirus is also distinguished as the country over which Pyrrhus ruled. The Acheron, supposed to communicate with the infernal regions, was one of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... fields suburban, and the towers of men, I would confront the strangest things that haunt In horrid shades of brooding desolation: Griffin, or satyr, sphinx, or sybil ape, Or lop-eared demon from the dens of night, Let loose to caper out of Acheron. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Who left that crock of water at my side? Who stole my dog that loved no one but me? Why was the tent unstruck, I unawaked, I left, most loved, and last to be forgotten By much obtaining, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... vilest villain! Who seized our Cerberus by the throat, and fled, And ran, and rushed, and bolted, haling off The dog, my charge! But now I've got thee fast. So close the Styx's inky-hearted rock, The blood-bedabbled peak of Acheron Shall hem thee in: the hell-hounds of Cocytus Prowl round thee; whilst the hundred-headed Asp Shall rive thy heart-strings: the Tartesian Lamprey, Prey on thy lungs: and those Tithrasian Gorgons Mangle and tear thy kidneys, mauling them, Entrails and all, ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... dreadful Acheron, is not far from Avernus and is likewise a lake, tho' call'd a river in the mythology. It is also sulfuric and the ground about it is woody, low, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... you by the waves forlorn Of marshy Styx or dismal Acheron, By Chaos, where the mighty world was born, Or by the sounding flames of Phlegethon; But by the fruit that charmed thee on that morn When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne! O queen, if thou reject this pleading breath, I will no more return, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... exceptions since the beginning of the world, and these were made for very urgent reasons. His realm is encompassed by vast rivers, whose very names inspire awe: Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon, and the like. Most formidable of all, and first to arrest the progress of the new-comer, is Acheron, that lake which none may pass save by the ferryman's boat; it is too deep to be waded, too broad for the swimmer, and even defies the flight of birds deceased. At the very beginning of the descent is a ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... shores of Acheron, he is ferried over in Charon's boat—Xanthias has to walk round—the First Chorus of Marsh Frogs (from which the play takes its title) greeting him with prolonged croakings. Approaching Pluto's Palace in fear and trembling, he knocks timidly at the gate. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... promised that Proserpine should be restored, provided she had not yet tasted any thing in hell. Ceres joyfully descended, and Proserpine, full of triumph, prepared for her return, when lo! Ascalaphus, son of Acheron and Gorgyra, discovered that he saw Proserpine, as she walked in the garden of Pluto, eat some grains of a pomegranate, upon which her departure was stopped. At last, by the repeated importunity of her mother to Jupiter, she extorted as a favor, in mitigation of her ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... He journeyed to the cave Tainaron, which was an entrance to the Underworld. Far into that dismal cave he went, and then down, down, until he came to Acheron, that dim river that has beyond it only the people of the dead. Cerberus bayed at him from the place where the dead cross the river. Knowing that he was no shade, the hound sprang at Heracles, but he could neither bite nor tear through that impenetrable lion's skin. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... broad expanse of Ocean, and shall reach The oozy shore, where grow the poplar groves And fruitless willows wan of Proserpine, Push thither through the gulphy Deep thy bark, 620 And, landing, haste to Pluto's murky abode. There, into Acheron runs not alone Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud, From Styx derived; there also stands a rock, At whose broad base the roaring rivers meet. There, thrusting, as I bid, thy bark ashore, O Hero! scoop the soil, op'ning a trench Ell-broad on ev'ry side; then pour around Libation consecrate to all ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... that having first entered while the soldier's shadow was interposed between her and the lamp, it had fully occupied her quick imagination, when, with deep reverence and great surprise at her sudden appearance on the ladder of Acheron, the Varangian advancing, knelt down, and lent his arm to the assistance of the fair lady, in order to help her ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... invokes the pity of the stern god by the name of Chaos whence the world had birth, and by the dread rivers of the nether world, by Styx and Acheron: 'E pel sonante ardor di Flegetonte'; and lastly, turning to 'the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and there to guess the causes why the tradition of the place wore so gloomy and stern a hue; why, in those smiling plains, for miles around—to Baiae and Misenum—the poets had imagined the entrance and thresholds of their hell—their Acheron, and their fabled Styx: why, in those Phlegrae, now laughing with the vine, they placed the battles of the gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have sought the victory of heaven—save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared and blasted summit, fancy ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... bold adventure to discover wide That dismal world, if any clime perhaps Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge Into the burning lake their baleful streams— Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton, Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls Her watery ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... have seen many of the torments which take place at Acheron [1] often represented in paintings [2]; but most certainly there is no Acheron equal to where I have been in the stone- quarries. There, in fine, is the place where real lassitude must be undergone by the body in ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... you understand? an hermaphrodite. And his whole life was one of long, incessant torture, of physical and moral suffering, which was more maddening than that which Tantalus endured on the banks of the river Acheron. He had nearly everything of the woman about him; he was a ridiculous caricature of our sex, with his shrill voice, his large hips, his bust concealed by a loose, wide coat, his cheeks, his chin, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... denominated: for it is certain that it has that name at this [406]day. Cocutus, which we render Cocytus, was undoubtedly a temple in Egypt. It gave name to a stream, on which it stood; and which was also called the Charonian branch of the Nile, and the river Acheron. It was a foul canal, near the place of Sepulture, opposite to Memphis, and not far from Cochone. Cocutus was the temple of Cutus, or Cuth; for he was so called by many of his posterity. A temple of the same was to be found in Epirus, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... the poets and legislators and philosophers: all alike teaching the existence of gods, but greatly differing as to their number and order, nature and power. For the gods of the philosophers 'know nothing of disease or old age or pain, and have not to cross the resounding Acheron;' nor do the philosophers accept as gods Strifes, or Prayers, which are found in poetry;[121] nor will they admit Terror and Fear as gods or as the sons of Ares. And on many points also they are at variance with the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the more depressing forms of drama when she pays her annual visit to London. There was a silence after which she enquired whether I fished. As my ideas of fishing were restricted to the patient hosts—pale shades of Acheron—who have angled off the quays of the Seine for centuries and have till now caught nothing, I smiled ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... little better than Cibber's, and a little worse than Hayley's. Here and there a manly sentiment which deserves to be in prose makes its appearance in company with Prometheus and Orpheus, Elysium and Acheron, the Plaintive Philomel, the poppies of Morpheus, and all the other frippery which, like a robe tossed by a proud beauty to her waiting woman, has long been contemptuously abandoned by genius to mediocrity. We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is made by Plato elsewhere, that the two extremes of human character are rarely met with, and that the generality of mankind are between them. Hence a place must be found for them. In the myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds, and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners, who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the Acherusian cave, which the natives call Mychopontion; and the harbour of Acone, and several rivers, the Acheron, the Arcadius, the Iris, the Tibris, and near to that the Parthenius, all of which proceed with a rapid stream into the sea. Close to them is the Thermodon, which rises in Mount Armonius, and flows through ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... a few minutes only to stuff down coffee and coarse thick sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then made their way across the river, which under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as Acheron. They reached the bottom of the huge block of buildings which they had seen from across the river, and began in silence to mount the naked and numberless stone steps, only pausing now and then to make short remarks on the rail of the banisters. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the child's hero, when he found the footprint on the sand of his peaceful, dreamy island. His elaborate philosophy had not put beneath his feet the terror of mere bodily evil; much less of "inexorable fate, and the noise of greedy Acheron." ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... everlasting fire, everlasting torment, eternal damnation; lake of fire and brimstone; fire that is never quenched; worm that never dies. purgatory, limbo, gehenna, abyss. [Mythological hell] Tartarus, Hades, Avernus[Lat], Styx, Stygian creek, pit of Acheron[obs3], Cocytus; infernal regions, inferno, shades below, realms of Pluto. Pluto, Rhadamanthus[obs3], Erebus[Lat]; Tophet. Adj. hellish, infernal, stygian. Phr. dies irae dies illa[Lat]; "the hue of dungeons and the scowl ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... which spread terror far and wide, and which Heaven, in its anger, ordains for the punishment of wickedness upon earth—a plague in fact; and so dire a one as to make rich in one day that grim ferryman who takes a coin from all who cross the river Acheron to the land of the dead—such a plague was once waging war against the animals. All were attacked, although all did not die. So hopeless was the case that not one of them attempted to sustain their sinking lives. Even the sight of food did not rouse them. Wolves and foxes no longer turned eager ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... vasty caves Of Orcus, or by some divine decree Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang, Who first from lovely Helicon brought down A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves, Renowned forever among the Italian clans. Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be, Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare, But only phantom figures, strangely wan, And tells how once from out those regions rose Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears And ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... represented as the grim, stern ruler over hell. He is also called Hades and Orcus. He has a throne of sulphur, from beneath which flows the Rivers Lethe, or "Oblivion," Phlegethon, Cocytus and Acheron. In one hand he holds his fork and in the other the keys of hell, and beside him is the dog with three heads. He is described as being well qualified for his position, being inexorable and deaf to supplications, and an object of aversion and hatred ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... lamentations and terrible voices were heard from the depths below as they passed through this evil doorway, and now they were in a region of murky gloom, where no ray of sunlight ever had entered. All around them were the spirits of the dead. They came flocking to the Acheron or River of Death, where the ferryman named Charon, with eyes like flaming wheels, bore them across. When Charon saw a living man among the dead he sternly ordered Dante to return whence he had come. Vergil interceded for him, and they ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... hard by them in the starry darkness the divine Huntress was abroad, and about the base of AEtna she and her forest maids drove the chase with horn and hound. In the cities ladies sang the psalm of Adonis brought back from 'the stream eternal of Acheron.' Under the mystic moon love-lorn damsels did their magic rites, and knit up spells of power to bring home the men they loved. Among the vines and under the grey olives songs were singing of Daphnis all day long. There ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... laughing, beside the forty Shillings Peter Plod-all has given me; and if I get no more, I'm sure of that. But soft; Now I must try my cunning, for here he sits.— The high commander of the damned souls, Great Dis, the duke of devils, and prince of Limbo lake, High regent of Acheron, Styx, and Phlegeton, By strict command from Pluto, hell's great monarch, And fair Proserpina, the queen of hell, By full consent of all the damned hags, And all the fiends that keep the Stygian plains, Hath sent me here from depth of underground To summon thee to appear ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the summit of the Tumiriquiri, and went down into the Guacharo cavern, the entrance to which, framed as it is with the most luxuriant vegetation, is truly magnificent. From it issues a considerable river, and its dim recesses echo to the gloomy notes of birds. It is the Acheron of the Chayma Indians, for, according to their mythology and that of the natives of Orinoco, the souls of the dead go to this cavern. To go down into the Guacharo signifies in ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Fear, Famine, War, Toil, Death and her half-brother Sleep—Death, to whom it is useless for man to offer either prayers or sacrifice. In that land of forgetfulness and shadows there is the unnavigable lake Avernus, Acheron, Styx, the groaning Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with its waves of fire. There are all kinds of monsters and forms of fearful import: Cerberus, with his triple head; Charon, freighting his boat with the shades ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Acheron, the dreadful Acheron, is not far from Avernus and is likewise a lake, tho' call'd a river in the mythology. It is also sulfuric and the ground about it is woody, low, marshy and ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... and return again, in their course forming lakes and rivers, but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on either side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice. These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal ones, Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus is the river which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite direction, and after flowing under the earth through desert places, at last reaches the Acherusian lake,—this is the river at which the ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... His voice, and the questions he asked me, were not of a kind to remove this notion, so that, far from its requiring any effort of imagination, I found it not easy to avoid believing that, at length, I had actually reached Avernus, was about to cross Acheron, and ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... Longer, O maiden, arises before me as strange and unlooked for: All things have I foreknown, and in soul have already endured them. One special thing I crave, since here, it is said, that the gateway Stands of the monarch infernal, and refluent Acheron's dark pool: Let it be mine to go down to the sight and face of my cherished Father, and teach me the way, and the sacred ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... rott'nness, And earths base built on stubble. But corn let's on. Against th' opposing will and arm of Heav'n 600 May never this just sword be lifted up, But for that damn'd magician, let him be girt With all the greisly legions that troop Under the sooty flag of Acheron, Harpyies and Hydra's, or all the monstrous forms 'Twixt Africa and Inde, Ile find him out, And force him to restore his purchase back, Or drag him by the curls, to a foul death, Curs'd as ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the Stygian waves. Sometimes it is level, and is white with resounding foam. The Trachinian ship too, is influenced by these vicissitudes; and now aloft, as though from the summit of a mountain, it seems to look down upon the vallies and the depths of Acheron; at another moment, when the engulphing sea has surrounded it, sunk below, it seems to be looking at heaven above from the infernal waters. Struck on its side by the waves, it often sends forth a low crashing sound, and beaten against, it sounds with no less noise, than ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... united in one skillful composition, arranged in groups. The other picture, the descent of Ulysses into Hades to interrogate Teiresias, might be called a pictorial epic of Hades. On one side was the entrance, indicated by Charon's boat crossing: the Acheron, and the evocation of Teiresias by Ulysses, besides the punishment of Tityos and other wicked men; on the other side were Tantalos and Sisyphos. Between these scenes, on the flanks, were various groups of heroes and heroines ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... Pluto hihte, and was the brother Of Jupiter, and he fro youthe With every word which cam to mouthe, Of eny thing whan he was wroth, He wolde swere his commun oth, Be Lethen and be Flegeton, Be Cochitum and Acheron, 1110 The whiche, after the bokes telle, Ben the chief flodes of the helle: Be Segne and Stige he swor also, That ben the depe Pettes tuo Of helle the most principal. Pluto these othes overal Swor of his commun custummance, Til it befell ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... of sand between My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence, Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron, Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire! And may this intervening earth be snow, And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna, Plunging me, through it all, into the core, Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds, If I do not—O, but he ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... skimming in the wake it mock'd the care Of the old Boat-God for his farthing fare; Tho' Irus' Ghost itself he ne'er frown'd blacker on The skin and skin-pent Druggist cross'd the Acheron, Styx, and with Periphlegeton Cocytus,— (The very names, methinks, might frighten us) Unchang'd it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fairy tale, but a wild, savage drama, primeval, the picture of a soul battling with itself on the little lonely isle. She could see the hot, angry sun, feel its scorching rays, hear the hissing of the waves. All the man's strength for good, for ill, went into the story; the isle became as the pit of Acheron; at first there were no stars overhead. The girl was very pale; she could not have left now; she had never imagined anything like this. She had looked into Greek books, seen pictures of men chained to rocks and ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... peace! What boots it singing on? Since long ago grace-giving Phoebus died, And all the train that loved the stream-bright side Of the poetic mount with him are gone Beyond the shores of Styx and Acheron, In unexplored realms of night to hide. The clouds that strew their shadows far and wide Are all of Heaven that visits Helicon. Yet here, where never muse or god did haunt, Still may some nameless power of Nature stray, Pleased with the reedy stream's continual chant And purple pomp of these ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... six months' life as jocular as Bradshaw's Railway Guide or the dietary of a prison. I prefer to look on what is before me as a high adventure, and with that prospect in view I propose to jot down my experiences from time to time, so that when I am wandering, a pale shade by Acheron, young Dale Kynnersley may have not only documentary evidence wherewith to convince my friends and relations that my latter actions were not those of a lunatic, but also, at the same time, an up-to-date version of Jeremy Taylor's edifying though humour-lacking ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... him, "to beware of the Acherusian waters and the city Pandosia, for there were fixed the limits of his destiny." For that reason he made the greater haste to pass over to Italy, in order to be at as great a distance as possible from the city Pandosia in Epirus, and the river Acheron, which, after flowing through Molossis, runs into the lakes called Infernal, and is received into the Thesprotian gulf. But, (as it frequently happens, that men, by endeavouring to shun their fate, run directly upon it,) after having often defeated the armies ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... there are four certain streams, of which the largest, and that which flows most outwardly round the earth, is called Ocean; but directly opposite this, and flowing in a contrary direction, is Acheron, which flows through other desert places, and, moreover, passing under the earth, reaches the Acherusian lake, where the souls of most who die arrive; and, having remained there for certain destined periods, ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough,"[56] he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Aides asserted his rights. These were, that if any immortal had tasted food in his realms they were bound to remain there for ever. Of course the ruler of the lower world had to prove this assertion. This, however, he found no difficulty in doing, as Ascalaphus, the son of Acheron and Orphne, was his witness to the fact.[25] Zeus, pitying the disappointment of Demeter at finding {56} her hopes thus blighted, succeeded in effecting a compromise by inducing his brother Aides to allow Persephone to spend six months of the year with the gods above, whilst ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Great Bear wheeled faintly clear in the dark zenith, but the borders of the east were grey as glass; and far away a fierce hound was answering from his echo-place in the gloom, as if the dread dog of Acheron ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of its muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those who start up, three at a time, and fall upon ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not probable that Avernus, if not corrupted from [Greek: aornos], is related to iffrin, the Irish inferi? This derivation is at any rate more probable than that of Grotefend, who connects the word with [Greek: Acheron]. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... bodies, he says in Phaedo; they are ever being born again from Hades and returning to life on earth; each man has his daimon,[136] who follows him throughout his existences, and at death takes him to the lower world[137] for Judgment.[138] Many souls enter Acheron,[139] and, after a longer or shorter period, return to earth to be incarnated in new bodies. Unpardonable sins fling ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... sailed in thy ship across the stream Oceanus, where is a waste shore and the groves of Persephone, even tall poplar trees and willows that shed their fruit before the season, there beach thy ship by deep eddying Oceanus, but go thyself to the dank house of Hades. Thereby into Acheron flows Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx, and there is a rock, and the meeting of the two roaring waters. So, hero, draw nigh thereto, as I command thee, and dig a trench as it were a cubit in length ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... we stand waiting, like ghosts upon the banks of Acheron? Come, let us to a tavern! (All ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... countrymen, my last farewell I make; My journey's done. One last fond, lingering, longing look I take At the bright sun. For Death who puts to sleep both young and old Hales my young life, And beckons me to Acheron's dark fold, An unwed wife. No youths have sung the marriage song for me, My bridal bed No maids have strewn with flowers from the lea, 'Tis Death ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... had left undone in killing and driving into exile, this Periander completed. And in one day he stripped all the wives of the Corinthians of their clothing on account of his own wife Melissa. For when he had sent messengers to the Thesprotians on the river Acheron to ask the Oracle of the dead about a deposit made with him by a guest-friend, Melissa appeared and said she would not tell in what place the deposit was laid, for she was cold and had no clothes, since those which he had buried ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... the Banks of Acheron, and found Charon scooping his wherry, who seeing me approach him, bid me sit down a little, for he had been hard worked lately, and could not go with a single passenger: I was willing enough to embrace the proposal, being much fatigued and weary. Having finished what he was about, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... Shadow which the Kaiser chased, shaking all the world, poor crank world, as he strode after it; and this also ended in zero, and several tons of diplomatic correspondence, carried once by breathless estaffettes, and now silent, gravitating towards Acheron all of them, and interesting ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... brunt of their villainies. "But, soft," as they say in the play, "where am I?" I thought I was a virtuous miner again. Here we are at this devil-discovered, demon-haunted old Hollow again—first cousin to the pit of Acheron. There's no help for it, Dick. We must play our parts gallantly, as demons of this lower world, or get hissed ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... limits. Ulysses had to cross the Ocean stream, which ran round the whole earth; to go over it was indeed to go over the border. There below is the gloomy grove of Proserpine; there too, are the four rivers of the Lower Regions, with names terribly suggestive; into Acheron the stream of pain (or lake) flow Pyriphlegethon (Fire-flames) and Cocytus (the Howler), the latter being an offshoot of Styx (Hate or Terror). Where "the two loud-sounding rivers meet" the third one (Acheron) is a rock, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... moonless Acheron, Farm for the goodly earth and joyous day Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May Chequers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor, Where thrushes never sing, and ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... presently, brave in the shirt of Nessus, and mimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgen was playing tag with the three little Eumenides, the daughters of Anaitis by her former marriage with Acheron, the King of Midnight. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... somewhat singular that there is not a single river or brook in the whole Island of Antigua. In this it differs from Tartary in the other world, which, according to old writers, has five rivers—viz. Acheron, Phlegeton, Cocytus, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... huge, enlarging on the sight, Nature's volcanic amphitheatre, Chimera's Alps, extend from left to right; Beneath, a living valley seems to stir. Flocks play, trees wave, streams flow, the mountain fir Nodding above; behold Black Acheron! Once consecrated to the sepulchre. Pluto! if this be hell I look upon, Close shamed Elysium's gates; my shade shall ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he pulls with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour. Only when they stand on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have taken. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... horde far-flown To prey on Hellas; lead my spouse, mine own Harmonia. Ares' child, discorporate And haunting forms, dragon and dragon-mate, Against the tombs and altar-stones of Greece, Lance upon lance behind us; and not cease From toils, like other men, nor dream, nor past The foam of Acheron find my ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... invariably the land of performance; a land which may be bounded by the aurora borealis, but which has also undeniable acquaintance with the flames of the bottomless pit; a land which is laved at once by the rivers of Paradise and the leaden waters of Acheron. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the touch of the wind has the warmth of flesh. There is no moon; the sea-circle is black as Acheron; and our phosphor wake reappears quivering across it,—seeming to reach back to the very horizon. It is brighter to-night,—looks like another Via Lactea,—with points breaking through it like stars in a nebula. From our prow ripples rimmed with fire keep fleeing away to right and left ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... that matchless man Whom Nature led throughout her whole domain, While he embodied breathed etherial air! Though panting in the play-hour of my youth I drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught, That roused within the feverish thirst of song, Yet never may I trespass o'er the stream Of jealous Acheron, nor alive descend The silent and unsearchable abodes Of Erebus and Night, nor unchastised Lead up long-absent heroes into day. When on the pausing theatre of earth Eve's shadowy curtain falls, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... Styx, the flood of deadly hate, Sad Acheron of sorrow black and deep; Cocytus named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks Forthwith his former ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... for their love's sake; and prayed, "Would, O Father Cronides, and would, ye ageless immortals, that this might be, and that when two generations have sped, one might bring these tidings to me by Acheron, the irremeable stream: the loving-kindness that was between thee and thy gracious friend is even now in all men's mouths, and chiefly on the lips of the young." Hill and fountain and pine, the gray sea and Mother Etna, are here; but no ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... down, entombed amid smiling green hills and frowning forest peaks, lies the pearl of Grardmer, its sweet lake, a sheet of turquoise in early morn, silvery bright when the noon-day sun flashes upon it, and on grey, sunless days gloomy as Acheron itself. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... among cows and barns and homely rail-fences, and that was comfort; so we strolled contentedly through the pasture, found a river,—I believe it was the Hudson; at any rate, Halicarnassus said so, though I don't imagine he knew; but he would take oath it was Acheron rather than own up to ignorance on any point whatever,—watched the canal-boats and boatmen go down, marvelled at the arbor-vitae trees growing wild along the river-banks, green, hale, stately, and symmetrical, against the dismal mental background of two little consumptive ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Louers seeke a place to fight, Hie therefore Robin, ouercast the night, The starrie Welkin couer thou anon, With drooping fogge as blacke as Acheron, And lead these testie Riuals so astray, As one come not within anothers way. Like to Lysander, sometime frame thy tongue, Then stirre Demetrius vp with bitter wrong; And sometime raile thou like Demetrius; And from each other looke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... blades wet with April dew, Nor waits till summer hath o'erpassed her prime? Give back, give back my hope one little day!— Not for a gift, but for a loan I pray. I pray not to you by the waves forlorn Of marshy Styx or dismal Acheron, By Chaos where the mighty world was born, Or by the sounding flames of Phlegethon; But by the fruit which charmed thee on that morn When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne! O queen! if thou reject this pleading ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... companionship of the great and the wise, I am trying to realize what my life might have been, if Dr. Howe had failed in the great task God gave him to perform. If he had not taken upon himself the responsibility of Laura Bridgman's education and led her out of the pit of Acheron back to her human inheritance, should I be a sophomore at Radcliffe College to-day—who can say? But it is idle to speculate about what might have been in connection with Dr. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... thou wert not, forlorn; I could not live, O lost Eurydice!— Not Acheron itself could fright me back From where thy footsteps wander'd, best beloved! And so I sought thee e'en at Hades' gate, Charm'd wide its leaves with melody of woe, And dared the grave to keep me from thine arms; I flow'd away upon a stream of song, E'en to dark Pluto's grimly guarded throne, ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... offerings;—it may be They heard, and did perceive, and were well pleased,— A little music in their ears; perchance, A grain more savor to their nostrils, sweet Tho' scarce accounted of. But when for me The mists of Acheron have striven up, And horror was shed round me; when my knees Relaxed, my tongue clave speechless, they forgot. And when my sharp cry cut the moveless night, And days and nights my wailings clamored up And beat about their golden homes, perchance They shut their ears. No happy music this, Eddying ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... comrades who braved not alone the actual dangers thus described, but stood continually alert for unknown perils, which any bend in the swift, snake-like river might disclose, and which would make the gloomy groove through which they slipped a black-walled oubliette, or gate to Acheron. ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... worshipped more, And, doubtful, deemeth it to be Anchises' guardian ghost Or godhead of the place: so there he slayeth double host, As custom would; two black-backed steers, and e'en as many swine, And calleth on his father's soul with pouring of the wine, On great Anchises' glorious ghost from Acheron set free. From out their plenty therewithal his fellows joyfully 100 Give gifts, and load the altar-stead, and smite the steers adown. While others serve the seething brass, and o'er the herbage strown Set coaly morsels 'neath ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... made, Him Leon finds, and yields to him his prize: Informed of all — already with that maid He wives; already in her bosom lies: When thither he that Sarza's sceptre swayed To infect such bliss with impious venom hies, But falls in combat; and, blaspheming loud, To Acheron ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... heart to despair. ant. 6. No lamentation can loose Prisoners of death from the grave; But Zeus, who accounteth thy quarrel his own, Still rules, still watches, and numb'reth the hours Till the sinner, the vengeance, be ripe. Still, by Acheron stream, Terrible Deities throned Sit, and eye grimly the victim unscourged. Still, still the Dorian ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... souls of the dead, which were universally thought to possess a knowledge of the future, could be called up and consulted—e.g., the temple at Phigalia, in Arcadia, used by Pausanias, the Spartan commander;[53] or the [Greek: nekyomanteion], the oracle of the dead, by the River Acheron, in Threspotia, to which Periander, the famous tyrant of Corinth, had recourse;[54] and it was here, according to Pausanias, that Orpheus went down to the lower world ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... her voice was a sigh of hopeless grief. In mad desperation Orpheus sought to follow her, but his attempt was vain. At the brink of the dark, fierce-flooded Acheron the boat with its boatman, old Charon, lay ready to ferry across to the further shore those whose future lay in the land of Shades. To him ran Orpheus, in clamorous anxiety to undo the evil he had wrought. But Charon angrily repulsed him. There ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... involved peculiar hazards, since it carried the diver below the familiar turret-chamber, through the inextricabilis error of entangling machinery in the engine-room, groping among floating and sunken objects, into a remote state-room, the Acheron of the cavernous hold. He was to find by touch a seaman's chest; handle it in that thickening gloom; carry it, push it, move it through that labyrinthine obscurity to a point from which it could be raised. To add ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... ones into the abyss, the proud by the hair of the head, and so also every sinner by the member through which he sinned. Beneath them is seen Charon with his black boat, just as Dante described him in the "Inferno," on muddy Acheron, raising his oar to strike some laggard soul. As the bark touches the bank, pushed on by Divine justice, all these souls strive to fling themselves ashore, so that fear, as the poet says, is changed into ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... there was no need for carrying. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth branches were easily fordable. The seventh was broad and deep, and I found it a heavy matter; nor should I have waded it but for my guide, for the water bore against me like a man wrestling, and it was as cold as Acheron, the river of the dead. Then on the further shore, and warning him (in Lingua Franca) of his peril, I gave him his wage, and he smiled and thanked me, and went back, choosing ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Cocytus, and the gloomy Hades, were either invented or allegorized from the names of Egyptian places. Diodorus assures us that by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead—were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal of Acheron, and the Elysian plains; and according to the same equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the waters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue. But previous to the embarkation, appointed judges on the MARGIN of ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... waves of Acheron, Where many soules sit wailing woefully, 290 And come to fiery flood of Phlegeton, Whereas the damned ghosts in torments fry, And with sharpe shrilling shriekes doe bootlesse cry, Cursing high Jove, the which them thither sent. The house of endlesse paine is ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... called Kiroon, stands at some distance to the west, upon the lake [360]Moeris; where only the kings of Egypt had a right of sepulture. The region of the catacombs was called the Acheronian and [361]Acherusian plain, and likewise the Elysian: and the stream, which ran by it, had the name of Acheron. They are often alluded to by Homer, and other Poets, when they treat of the region of departed souls. The Amonians conferred these names upon other places, where they settled, in different parts of the world. They are therefore to be met with in [362]Phrygia, [363]Epirus, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... A Christian once, Macon he now adores, Nor could he quite his wonted faith forsake, But in his wicked arts both oft implores Help from the Lord, and aid from Pluto black; He, from deep caves by Acheron's dark shores, Where circles vain and spells he used to make, To advise his king in these extremes is come, Achitophel so ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... by the poets to the lower world, and over which the souls of the dead were said to be first conveyed, before they were borne the Le'the, or "stream of oblivion," beyond. The true Acheron of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Athena's wisest son![118] "All that we know is, nothing can be known." Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun? Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of Evil all their own. Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron: There no forced banquet claims the sated guest, But Silence spreads the couch of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... splendid and unequalled interest! the shores of Baia, where Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Pliny, Mecaenas, lived; the white towers of Puzzuoli and the Islands of Ischia, Procida, and Nisida. There was the Sybil's Cave, Lake Acheron, and the fabled Lethe; there the sepulchre of Misenus, who defied the Triton; and the scene of the whole sixth book of the AEneid, which I am now reading in Annibal Caro's translation: there Agrippina mourned Germanicus; and there ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... direct line the Kings of Epirus. He was also cousin of an Alexander, who, in the year 332, had crossed over from Epirus to help the Tarentines against the Lucanians, had formed an alliance with the Romans, and had finally been killed by a Lucanian on the banks of the Acheron, in 326. After a variety of vicissitudes, Pyrrhus had ascended the throne of his father at the age of twenty-three, and, taking Alexander the Great as his model, had soon become popular and powerful. Aiming at the conquest of the whole of Greece, he attacked ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... and a new train of fevers settled upon the earth, and the slow approaching necessity of death, which, till now, was remote, accelerated its pace. Daedalus essayed the empty air with wings not permitted to man. The labor of Hercules broke through Acheron. There is nothing too arduous for mortals to attempt. We aim at heaven itself in our folly; neither do we suffer, by our wickedness, Jupiter to ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... and sit in your ship in peace: the north wind shall waft you through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the ocean, and come to where grow the poplar groves, and willows pale, of Proserpine: where Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus and Acheron mingle their waves. Cocytus is an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit, and make it a cubit broad and a cubit long, and pour in milk, and honey, and wine, and the blood of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, and turn away thy face while thou pourest in, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... gone now, the comeliness Demetrios was pleased to like. I would have waded Acheron—singing—rather than let his little finger ache. He knew as much. Only it seemed a trifle, because your eyes were bright and your fair skin was unwrinkled. In consequence the man is dead. Oh, Melicent, I wonder ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... prince, will you look for him? Already, to content your just alarm, Have I not cross'd the seas on either side Of Corinth, ask'd if aught were known of Theseus Where Acheron is lost among the Shades, Visited Elis, doubled Toenarus, And sail'd into the sea that saw the fall Of Icarus? Inspired with what new hope, Under what favour'd skies think you to trace His footsteps? Who knows if the King, your father, Wishes the secret of his absence known? Perchance, ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his chin; ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero |
