"Theban" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did not think it necessary to expound to this learned Theban whether he understood him or no; but, leaving that matter uncertain, he told him he came in quest of certain packages which should have arrived at Kinross, and been placed under the chamberlain's charge the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... name is entirely a Greek invention, and is found on no Egyptian monuments. The splendid tomb, first opened by Belzoni, in the Valley of the Kings, is of the grandfather of this monarch—Rameses the First. It is evident from the Theban sculptures and inscriptions, that Rameses and his predecessors were engaged in a long war with a most powerful enemy,' and that that enemy was an Oriental people, a nation with fair countenances and flowing robes, dwelling in a hilly and well-wooded country. It is probable that this nation ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... from "Pindar" he found the art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke. He has added nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his book deserves to be read: perhaps he ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Helena, the wife of Constantius, was certainly one. However, Maximian and Galerius were determined to put down the faith. Maximian is said to have had a whole legion of Christians in his army, called the Theban, from the Egyptian Thebes. These he commanded to sacrifice, and on their refusal had them decimated—that is, every tenth man was slain. They were called on again to sacrifice, but still were staunch, and after a last summons were, ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Leatherstonepaugh bonnet—mourned that Praxiteles Periwinkle faded out of the vistas of Rome to the banks of the Thames without her. Dancing Floras seemed joyous that they had not gone wandering among the Theban Colossi with Zefferino, instead of staying to pay for his Roman lodging; while the walls smiled, wept, simpered, threatened and gloomed with Madonnas, Dolorosas, Beatrices, sprites, angels and fiends, the authors of whose being had long ago drifted away on the ocean ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... obscure trading ship in some past generation through the Atlantic Ocean. Generally, it will be quite near enough to the truth if she places upon the meridian of 1000 years B.C. the three Romances—Argonautic, Theban, Trojan; and she will then have the satisfaction of finding that, as at the opening of authentic history, she found the Roman, the Greek, and the Asiatic inaugural events coinciding in the same exact focus, so in these semi-fabulous or ante-Olympian events, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... inspect the entrails which had been taken out of the victim, as he happened to be engaged in sacrifice. 10. Cleanor the Arcadian, the oldest of them, then answered, that "they would die before they would deliver up their arms." "For my part," said Proxenus the Theban, "I wonder, Phalinus, whether it is as conqueror that the king asks for our arms, or as gifts in friendship; for if as conqueror, why should he ask for them at all, and not rather come and take them? But if he wishes to get them ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... of Sparta, Lysander and the thirty tyrants rose to oppress the citizens, and deposed a previous council of ten made for the ruling of the city. But once more after this domination democracy was restored, and under the Theban and Macedonian supremacies the old spirit of "equality of equals" was once more established. But Athens could no longer maintain her ancient position; her warlike ambitions had passed away, her national intelligence had declined; the dangers of the populace, too, threatened her at every turn, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... commence frescoes illustrating incidents in the life of St. Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, by Andrea da Firenzi, 1377. Those beyond the second door illustrate the temptations and miracles of hermits in the Theban wilderness, by the Lorenzetti. Between Nos. 39 and 40, Hell. Above 38, the Day of Judgment. Then, by Orcagna, the Power of Death,—filling those living in pleasure with horror, but those in sorrow with joy. Now follow (in ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... There is a difficulty in assigning any term as comprehensive enough to describe the Grecian heroes and their antagonists, who fought at Troy. The seven chieftains against Thebes are described sufficiently as Theban captains; but, to say Trojan chieftains, would express only the heroes of one side; Grecian, again, would be liable to that fault equally, and to another far greater, of being under no limitation as to time. This difficulty must explain and (if it can) ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... But not to mention that he is so called (we conceive) in reference to the places whence rather than the places where he was delivered,—for by either birth he may probably be challenged for a Theban,—in a strict way of speaking, he was a filius femoris by no means in the same sense as he had been before a filius alvi, for that latter was but a secondary and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by way of explanation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... his remains from New Orleans, to inter them in a land he had long and faithfully served. I was honored by a request to accompany the coffin from the cemetery to the steamer; and as I gazed upon it there arose the feeling of the Theban who, after the downfall of the glory and independence of his country, stood by ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and with ebony and ivory. And there are imitations of animals painted on it, and models worked on it. There are four Victories like dancers, one at each foot of the throne, and two also at the instep of each foot; and at each of the front feet are Theban boys carried off by Sphinxes, and below the Sphinxes, Apollo and Artemis shooting down the children of Niobe. And between the feet of the throne are four divisions formed by straight lines drawn from ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... of great antiquity, and of no slender extent. For (not to derive the same from Hercules) noble descriptions there are hereof in the Grecian funerals of Homer, in the formal obsequies of Patroclus and Achilles; and somewhat elder in the Theban war, and solemn combustion of Meneceus, and Archemorus, contemporary unto Jair the eighth judge of Israel. Confirmable also among the Trojans, from the funeral pyre of Hector, burnt before the gates of Troy: and the burning of Penthesilea ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... foreign-born citizens served in much the same proportion, and from the same motives, as the native-born. Taken as a whole, it was, even more than the Revolutionary War, a true citizens' fight, and the armies of Grant and Lee were as emphatically citizen armies as Athenian, Theban, or Spartan armies in the great age of Greece, or as a Roman army in the days ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... The rabble was tumultuous. The late-washed grass looks green. Shady trees form a delightful arbor. The setting sun makes a beautiful appearance; the variegated rainbow appears more beautiful. Epaminondas was the greatest of the Theban generals; ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... seas unexplored can the ship shun Sunk rocks? Can man fathom life's links, Past or future, unsolved by Egyptian Or Theban, unspoken by Sphynx? The riddle remains yet, unravell'd By students consuming night oil. O earth! we have toil'd, we have travailed: How long ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and Thione, and the instituter of the Trieterica. Diodorus Siculus mentions but three of the name of Bacchus; namely, the Indian, surnamed the bearded Bacchus, who conquered India; the son of Jupiter and Ceres, who was represented with horns; and the son of Jupiter and Semele, who was called the Theban Bacchus. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... coloured; that of Cheops, the builder of the great Pyramid, occurs on one. Another of these vessels, or the neck part of one, is covered with cement, and sealed with three cartouches, besides having four others painted on it. This, it is thought, may have contained the precious Theban wine, sealed with the royal signet. There are many other things taken from the tombs which our space forbids us to dwell upon; such as idols and figures, papyri and phylacteries, paint-pots and colours, workman's tools, stone and wooden pillows or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... indeed there is which must always make the thought of Pindar's Theban citizenship painful to us, and that is the shameful part taken by Thebes in the Persian war, when compulsion of her exposed situation, and oligarchical cabal within her walls, drew her into unholy alliance with the barbarian invader. Had it been otherwise how passionately pure would Pindar's ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... Poenus is 'a keen witted man, as might be expected of a Carthaginian' (cf Colum 1, 3, 8 acutissimam gentem Poenos) while Nepos, Epam. 5, 2 exercitatum in dicendo ut Thebanum implies that oratory was not to be expected of a Theban. — DOMESTICA ... EXTERNA BELLA: here the domestica bella are those wars which belong to the history of Rome, the externa bella those wars which belong to the history of other states; but usually domestica bella are civil wars, externa foreign wars in which Rome ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the early morning, and exhorts the citizens to be brave and be not over-dismayed at the rabble of alien besiegers. A messenger arrives and announces the rapid approach of the Argives. Eteocles goes to see that the battlements and the gates are properly manned, and during his absence the chorus of Theban maidens set up a great wail of distress and burst forth with violent lamentations. Eteocles, returning, upbraids them severely for their weakness and bids them begone and raise the sacred auspicious shout of the paean as an ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... the harm? In London, ladies of good birth and breeding went in for 'skirt-dancing,' and no one presumed to breathe a word against their reputations; why in Cairo should not a lady go in for a Theban dance without ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... a bedroom of the master-millwright's house, engaged in the untutored reading of Greek and Latin. It was no tale of Homeric blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding away at the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and difficult ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... That bird Heracles, the valiant son of shapely-ankled Alcmene, slew; and delivered the son of Iapetus from the cruel plague, and released him from his affliction—not without the will of Olympian Zeus who reigns on high, that the glory of Heracles the Theban-born might be yet greater than it was before over the plenteous earth. This, then, he regarded, and honoured his famous son; though he was angry, he ceased from the wrath which he had before because Prometheus ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... cathedral, many have seen it, and more have seen at least photographs of great accuracy, and pictures of it which, if less strict in detail, give it a more lifelike look and include some of its surroundings. The church of St. Gereon, a martyr of the Theban Legion massacred at Cologne to a man for refusing to worship the imperial ensigns, under which no one denied that they had fought like lions, is a massive Romanesque building older than the cathedral, dating from the days of Constantine and Saint Helena. The church ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... hardly treated fairly, and have suffered much. They arrived in Egypt during the reign of Usertuen I., and had land allotted to them. During the reign of the king and other successors of his dynasty they were held in favor and multiplied greatly; but when the Theban dynasty succeeded that of Memphis, the kings, finding this foreign people settled here, and seeing that they were related by origin to the shepherd tribes who at various times have threatened our country from the east, and have even conquered portions of it and occupied it for ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... space of ingathered shore and mountain, and solemn foliage, and fiery animal life; Tintoret with profounder luxury of delight in the nearness to each other, and imminent embrace, of glorious bodily presences; and both alike with consummate beauty of physical form. Hardly less humanised is the Theban legend of Dionysus, the legend of his birth from Semele, which, out of the entire body of tradition concerning him, was accepted as central by the Athenian imagination. For the people of Attica, he comes from Boeotia, a country of northern marsh and mist, but from whose sombre, black ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and the ankh in the other. ("My dear, the moment I saw him, I knew I had once prayed to him!") and she always wore a scarab ring. She had bought both in an antique-shop just off Washington Street. I thought this rather a far cry from Thebes, myself, but The Author insisted that if a Theban vestal of the time of Sesostris had to reincarnate, she would naturally and inevitably come to life ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... igitur sancte reginee religiosorumque ac virginum preces summus Altitonans." (Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 263.) The learned Theban borrows an epithet more familiar to Greek and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... marble and works of art, in order that those who should see them should become astonished, and therefore reverent inquirers into the honourable conditions of the King. Therefore Statius, the sweet Poet, in the first part of the Theban History, says that, when Adrastus, King of the Argives, saw Polynices covered with the skin of a lion, and saw Tydeus covered with the hide of a wild boar, and recalled to mind the reply that Apollo ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... oath that both shots had been a success, but they sheered off with the stately movements of a clipper about to tack. When they ran they had an ungainly, dislocated motion, somewhat like the contortions of an Indian nautch or a Theban danseuse—a dreamy, undulating movement, which even the tail, with its long fringe of black hair, seemed ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to have contended with him for the palm of superiority. She was famous through the whole of Greece, and many places possessed statues in honour of her. The second poetess was Corinna, of Tanagra, sometimes called the Theban because of her long residence at Thebes. She flourished about 490 B.C., and was a contemporary of Pindar. Like Myrtis, she is said to have instructed him, and is credited with having gained a victory over him in the public games at Thebes. Only a few fragments of her work ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... And M. Renouf says: "The Egyptian god Tehuti is known to the readers of Plato under the name of Thoyth. He represents the moon, which he wears upon his head, either as crescent or as full disk." [187] The same learned Egyptologist tells us that Khonsu or Chonsu was one of the triad of Theban gods, and was the moon one of his attributes being the reckoner of time. [188] Of the former divinity, Rawlinson relates an instructive myth. "According to one legend Thoth once wrote a wonderful book, full of wisdom and science, containing in it everything relating to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... but headlong fell In smoking stream upon the Italian flank. Then black Charybdis, from her boundless depth, Threw up a gory sea. In piteous tones Howled the wild dogs; the Vestal fire was snatched From off the altar; and the flame that crowned The Latin festival was split in twain, As on the Theban pyre (22), in ancient days; Earth tottered on its base: the mighty Alps From off their summits shook th' eternal snow (23). In huge upheaval Ocean raised his waves O'er Calpe's rock and Atlas' hoary ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... pencil paint, Thy love too vehement hastens to destroy Each blooming maid, and each celestial boy. Now Manto comes, endu'd with mighty skill, The past to explore, the future to reveal. Thro' Thebes' wide streets Tiresia's daughter came, Divine Latona's mandate to proclaim: The Theban maids to hear the orders ran, When thus Maeonia's prophetess began: "Go, Thebans! great Latona's will obey, "And pious tribute at her altars pay: "With rights divine, the goddess be implor'd, "Nor be her sacred offspring unador'd." Thus Manto spoke. ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... proceed to instances of a fresher date. Harmodius and Aristogiton are in everybody's mouth; the memory of Leonidas the Lacedaemonian and Epaminondas the Theban is as fresh as ever. Those philosophers were not acquainted with the many instances in our country—to give a list of whom would take up too much time—who, we see, considered death desirable as long as it was accompanied with honor. But, notwithstanding this is the correct view of the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... opportunities to experiment with modern life under the absolving witchery of Oriental conditions, he gave himself over to the subtler influences of the past. Pilgrim rather than tourist, he visited eagerly the pyramids and the Sphinx, the temples of Karnak and Thebes, the tombs of the Theban kings, the colossi of the desert. In the frightful course of the centuries, as they unrolled before him, he seized upon the guidance of Herodotus, to whom the monuments of Egypt had seemed as incalculably old as ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... birth a Thracian; some an Arcadian: others a Theban. Pausanias mentions it as an opinion among the [1025]Egyptians, that both Orpheus, and Amphion, were from their country. There is great uncertainty about his parents. He is generally supposed to have been the son of Oeagrus, and Calliope: but Asclepiades made him the son of Apollo, by that [1026]Goddess. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... brickwork looks good. But what of it? So does a cheap cotton night-shirt—you know the gaudy things those Theban peddlers sell to my sand-hogs down on the river bank. But does it last? Of course it doesn't. Well, I am putting up this pyramid to stay put, and I don't give a damn for its looks. I hear all sorts of funny cracks about it. My barber is a sharp nigger and keeps his ears open: he brings ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... me the auncient Iphianassa, and after the old father Himerinus his daughters and their drinke, and one betwixt the two Theban brothers: These with pleasant noises, sweete musicke and fine agilities, paste on about the ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... wealth to the cathedral chapter during many centuries. But other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church of St. Gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones distributed over the walls as the relics of St. Gereon and his Theban band of martyrs! Again, at the neighbouring church of St. Ursula, we have the later spoils of another cemetery, covering the interior walls of the church as the bones of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgin martyrs: the fact that many of them, as anatomists now declare, are the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a tiger for your mate, whose amber sides are flecked with black, And ride upon his gilded back in triumph through the Theban gate, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... Achilles, friendship in Nisus and Euryalus, even to an ignorant man, carry not an apparent shining: and contrarily, the remorse of conscience in Odipus, the soon repenting pride of Agamemnon, the self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus, the violence of ambition in the two Theban brothers, the sour-sweetness of revenge in Medea, and to fall lower, the Terentian Gnatho and our Chaucer's Pandar, so expressed, that we now use their names to signify their trades. And finally, all virtues, vices, and passions so in their own natural seats laid to the view, that we seem not ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... men say also, but I do not believe them, that the god himself comes often to the cell and rests upon the couch, as happens likewise in the Egyptian Thebes according to the report of the Egyptians, for there also a woman sleeps in the temple of the Theban Zeus (and both these women are said to abstain from commerce with men), and as happens also with the prophetess 187 of the god in Patara of Lykia, whenever there is one, for there is not always an Oracle there, but whenever there is one, then she ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... derived from an impure source? Will an innocent man, attacked by assassins, repulse the aid of one hastening to save him, on the ground that he, too, is a murderer? Certainly not. History, too, proves it by noble examples. Pelopidas, the Theban hero, invokes the aid of the Persian king, the natural enemy of the Greeks; Cato, who prefers a free death by his own hand to life under a Caesar, fights side by side with Juba, a king of barbarians; Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism in Germany, acts in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... but myself, Shall I expel this poison in the blood; For whoso slew that king might have a mind To strike me too with his assassin hand. Therefore in righting him I serve myself. Up, children, haste ye, quit these altar stairs, Take hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither The Theban commons. With the god's good help Success is sure; 'tis ruin if we fail. ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... 1592, could have imitated "Mother Bombie," produced in 1594. "Alexander and Campaspe" is "taken from the well known story of the magnanimity and self-command with which Alexander curbs his passionate love for his beautiful Theban captive, and withdraws in favor of her lover Apelles." The most important comic scenes afford Diogenes the opportunity of emerging from his tub and silencing all ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... king of the gods, his wife, mother of gods, and the moon god, were the Theban triad to whom the holy buildings of Thebes on the two banks of the Nile were dedicated; and this temple of Luxor, the "House of Amun in the Southern Apt," was built fifteen hundred years before Christ by Amenhotep III. Rameses II., that vehement builder, added to it immensely. One ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... he trod some Theban street, And sought compassion on his aged woe, We know not if on Chian sand his feet Left footprints once; but only this we know, How the high ways of fame ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... or editions, in the various libraries of Europe and also in the East, and no two of them are identical in the text. Lepsius translated from the Turin papyrus; Budge bases his translations on what is called the Theban recension. But in all the text is exceedingly corrupt, and translation is often no more than a guess. Owing to the number of proper names and technical terms which we have no means of understanding, it is often quite impossible ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... me, some kind Power invisible! To that extended lawn, where the gay court View the swift racers, stretching to the goal; Games more renowned, and a far nobler train, Than proud Elean fields could boast of old. Oh! were a Theban lyre not wanting here, 70 And Pindar's voice, to do their merit right! Or to those spacious plains, where the strained eye In the wide prospect lost, beholds at last Sarum's proud spire, that o'er the hills ascends, And pierces through the clouds. Or to thy downs, Fair Cotswold, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Stunning is the answer after that period of relaxation: "Ye must go another way, ye must pass into the Houses of Hades." It is indeed a terrible response. But for what purpose? "To consult the soul of the blind Theban seer Tiresias, whose mind is still unimpaired; to him alone of the dead Proserpine gave a mind to know." Clearly this means the pure intelligence without body; Ulysses must now reach forth to the incorporeal spirit, to the very Idea ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... savage uncouth strain; And grant that yet an Austral Milton's song Pactolus-like flow deep and rich along, — An Austral Shakespeare rise, whose living page To nature true may charm in ev'ry age; — And that an Austral Pindar daring soar, Where not the Theban eagle reach'd before. And, O Britannia! shouldst thou cease to ride Despotic Empress of old Ocean's tide; — Should thy tamed Lion — spent his former might, — No longer roar the terror of the fight; — Should e'er arrive that dark disastrous hour, When bow'd by luxury, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... there were rich flesh-pots in Logie House—richer than those which supplied the muscles of the Theban mummies, so enduring through long ages, no doubt, from being so well fed; for Mr. Fletcher of Lindertes,[*] who was proprietor of the mansion, was the greatest epicurean and glossogaster that ever lived since Leontine times. Then ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... caused here by the arrival of a marvellous dahabeeyah called the Loulia. She is the most lovely boat on the Nile, I am told, and every one is longing to go over her. But there is no chance for any of us. In the first place the Loulia is tied up at the western bank, on the Theban side of the river, and, in the second place, she belongs for the season to the Nigel Armines. And, as of course you remember, Mrs. Nigel Armine was Mrs. Chepstow, and utterly impossible. Now she is married again she may think she will be received, but she never ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... set Every silly old-man threat While Lampito's with me. Or dear Ismenia, the noble Theban girl. Then let decree Be hotly piled upon decree; in vain will be your labours, You futile rogue abominated by your suffering neighbour To Hecate's feast I yesterday went— Off I sent To our neighbours in Boeotia, asking as a gift to me For them to pack immediately That darling dainty ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... few days after my repulse from before the walls of Hotoo-Otoo that I heard a curious case of casuistry argued between one of the most clever and intelligent natives I ever saw in Tahiti, a man by the name of Arheetoo, and our learned Theban of a doctor. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... moment an official had summoned him to come and look at the entrails which had been taken out, for, as it chanced, he was engaged in sacrificing. As soon as he was gone, Cleanor the Arcadian, by right of seniority, answered: "They would sooner die than give up their arms." Then Proxenus the Theban said: "For my part, I marvel if the king demands our arms as our master, or for the sake of friendship merely, as presents. If as our master, why need he ask for them rather than come and take them? But if he would fain wheedle ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... seven champions. The Argive army is drawn out in array against the city in seven divisions, each division facing one of the seven gates of Thebes, and with a champion at its head. The champions are described to Eteocles by a Theban, who has been sent to watch the movements of the enemy. Under the name of Amphiaraus lurks a description of Aristides "the just," the head of the conservative party to which Aeschylus belonged, whose conscientiousness and moderation are obliquely contrasted with the revolutionary violence of the ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... When the great Theban, in his midnight tramp, A sleeping guard beside the postern saw, He slew him on the instant, that the camp Might read in blood a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as mere instruments for supporting the Spartan dominion; whilst Sparta in her turn looked upon them as the tools of Lysander's ambition. Many of the Athenian exiles had found refuge in Boeotia: and one of them Thrasybulus, with the aid of Ismenias and other Theban citizens, starting from Thebes at the head of a small band of exiles, seized the fortress of Phyle in the passes of Mount Parnes and on the direct road to Athens. The Thirty marched out to attack Thrasybulus, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... is," said the young man, "that I shall be obliged, like Epaminondas the Theban, to stay two days at home, for I have but one doublet and trousers. But, pardon, you did me the honor to ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... of reason are Amphion's lyre, Wherewith he did the Theban city found: These are the notes wherewith the heavenly choir, The praise of Him which ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in the Waterloo Road had the following announcement displayed on the front of his house: "The Acme of Stencil!" A "learned Theban" in the same line in an adjoining street, in order to outdo the "old original" stenciller, thus set forth his pretensions: "Stencilling in all its branches performed in ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... god we deemed, Or king of palmy Nile, colossal shapes Such as Syene's rosy quarries yield To Memphian art; Horus, Osiris called, Or Amenoph, who, on the Theban plain, With magic melody the sun salutes; Or he, far mightier, to whose conquering car Monarchs were yoked, Rameses: by the Greeks Sesostris styled. And yet no sculptor's art Moulded this shape, for form it seemed of flesh, Yet motionless; its dim unlustrous orbs Gazing ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... [50], and he then proceeds to inform us of its origin, which he traces to Thebes in Egypt. But here we are beset by contradictions: Herodotus, on the authority of the Egyptian priests, ascribes the origin of the Dodona and Lybian oracles to two priestesses of the Theban Jupiter—stolen by Phoenician pirates—one of whom, sold into Greece, established at Dodona an oracle similar to that which she had served at Thebes. But in previous passages Herodotus informs us, 1st, that in Egypt, no priestesses served the temples of any deity, male or female; and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fatigue, and thoroughness in the performance of military service; like Kapaneus, in Euripides, who "had plenty of wealth, but was far from proud on account of his wealth," for he felt ashamed to be seen using more bodily luxuries than the poorest Theban citizen. Epameinondas, whose poverty was hereditary, made it lighter and more easily borne by the practice of philosophy, and by choosing from the beginning a single life; while Pelopidas made a brilliant marriage and had children born to him, yet, in spite of this, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... that poet and from the works of Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch verse. Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which Pallavicino, like Marino, declared that poetry must make men raise their eyebrows in astonishment. For Chiabrera, educated as he had been, that new world toward which he navigated was a new Hellenic style of Italian poetry; and the Theban was to guide him toward its shores. But on the voyage Chiabrera drowned: drowned for eternity in hyper-atlantic whirlpools of oblivion. Some critics, pitying so lofty, so respectable an ambition, have ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Oeclus.—Ver. 317. This was Amphiaraues, who, having the gift of prophecy, foresaw that he would not live to return from the Theban war; and, therefore, hid himself, that he might not be obliged to join in the expedition. His wife, Eriphyle, being bribed by Adrastus with a gold necklace, betrayed his hiding-place; on which, proceeding to Thebes, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... loud-roaring thunders of Jove, and thou blasting fire of the lightning, do thou quell this more-than-mortal arrogance. This is he who will with his spear give to Mycenae, and to the streams of Lernaean Triaena,[13] and to the Amymonian[14] waters of Neptune, the Theban women, having invested them with slavery. Sever, O awful Goddess, never, O daughter of Jove, with golden clusters of ringlets, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well illustrates the multiplicity of conceptions which clustered about the daily career of the solar orb. His father, Laios, had been warned by the Delphic oracle that he was in danger of death from his own son. The newly born Oidipous ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... warm and bright;[43] Chant 'I am weary' in infectious strain, And 'catch the blue-fly singing on the pane;' Though praised by critics and adored by Blues, Though Peel with pudding plumb the puling muse; Though Theban taste the Saxon purse controls, And pensions Tennyson ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Theban avenue, Sphinx ranged by Sphinx, goes awestruck, nor may read That ancient awful creed Closed in their granite calm:—so dim the clue, So tangled, tracking through That labyrinthine soul which, day by day Changing, yet kept one long imperious way: Strong in his weakness; confident, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... and whisky. Charge properly with birsled pease, and if you take a caulkers just as you begin your run, there is the linstock to the gun for you, and away you fly through the air on the self—propelling principle of the Congreve Rocket. Well might that amiable, and venerable, and most learned Theban, Cockibus Bungo, who always held the stakes on these great occasions, exclaim, in his astonishment, to Cheesey, the janitor of many days—as 'Like fire from flint I glanced away,' disdaining the laws of gravitation—by Mercury, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... I am now at writing, as I used to be at riding, slow, heavy, and awkward at mounting, but when I did get fixed in my saddle, could screed away with any one. I have got six pages ready for my learned Theban[495] to-morrow morning. William Laidlaw and his brother George dined with me, but I wrote in the evening ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... alphabet is composed of Lybian characters, and these are closely related to the signs engraved on certain vases of the Nile valley that are probably six thousand years old. Moreover, among the rock-cut images of the African desert is the likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents, and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade contacts far below the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... the character of the Ode to Thrasidaeus the Theban, in which the Poet is insensibly led from one digression to another, until his readers lose sight of the principal subject which is dropped almost ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... well as victory to serve its mighty ends. The very implements of our warfare change less than we think. Our bullets and cannonballs have lengthened into bolts like those which whistled out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with weapons, such as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a newly invented head-gear as old as ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... eat garlic or black beans more. No, not a word! my anger is at boiling point, and I'll do with you what the beetle did with the eagle's eggs.[443] I laugh at your threats, so long as I have on my side Lampito here, and the noble Theban, my dear Ismenia.... Pass decree on decree, you can do us no hurt, you wretch abhorred of all your fellows. Why, only yesterday, on occasion of the feast of Hecat, I asked my neighbours of Boeotia for one of their daughters for whom ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... him. So also, it is said, was the mountain itself, though in a more round-about way. Hercules, as you will doubtless learn, was feigned to have been the son of the heathen god Zeus and Alcmena, a Theban lady. Now one of the appellations of Zeus was Ves, which was applied to him as being the god of rains and dews—the wet divinity. Thus Hercules was Vesouuios, the son of Ves. How this name should have become corrupted into "Vesuvius," you ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... can learn exact particulars about the mode in which Rameses II made war, from the poem of Penta-Our, a Theban writer of the fourteenth century B.C. It is only by a figure of speech that this poem can be called an epic; it is rather a historical narrative couched in terms of poetic exaggeration with the object of flattering ...
— Egyptian Literature
... remember the king who threw his signet-ring into the sea, that he might in his too happy fortunes avert this suspected presence; we remember, too, the apprehension of the Chorus in the "Seven against Thebes," looking forward from the noontide prosperity of the Theban ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Such was the cavalry on either side. Of the foot, it was said that the Lacedaemonians advanced with each enomoty drawn up three deep, this arrangement making them not more than twelve deep in all. The Theban infantry, in close array, were not less than fifty deep, considering that if they could defeat the body of the enemy posted around the king, the rest of the army ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... the King and Queen of Thebes, and when the worship of Lato was established in that city Niobe was very angry. She thought of Lato as her playmate and not a goddess, and was so imprudent as to drive in her chariot to the temple and command the Theban women not to join in this worship. Niobe also asserted that she was superior to this Lato, who had but two children, while she had fourteen lovely sons and daughters, any one of which was worthy of honor. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... honour or fame, nor inablement for | in Confessiones X,35). He speaks of business, that are the true ends of | curiositas also in "Actaeon et knowledge; some of these being more worthy | Pentheus, sive Curiositas" in: De than other, though all inferior and | sapentia veterum", VI: The Theban king degenerate: but it is a restitution and | Pentheus is punished with madness reinvesting (in great part) of man to the | because out of curiosity he has dared sovereignty and power (for whensoever he | to observe certain mysteries which are shall be able to call the creatures by ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... Easterners, and Southerners, the North being represented by Semites, the East by the men of Punt, the South by negroes, and the West by the Keftiu; and we can compare the men of the Knossos frescoes with their fellow-countrymen as depicted on the tomb-walls of the Theban grandees, and be certain that, allowing for the differences in the style of art, they are essentially the same people. The tombs which preserve best the figures of the Keftiu are those of Sen-mut and Rekh-ma-ra. That of Sen-mut is the earlier, though only by a generation, or perhaps rather ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... explore! Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er, Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe and words that burn; But ah! 'tis heard no more. O lyre divine! what dying spirit[2] Wakes thee now? though he inherit Nor the pride nor ample pinion That the Theban eagle[3] bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air, Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun; Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... Assyriology by his publication of some of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, and in this connection M. Maspero states that the intention of the school is to extend their researches to Syria and Mesopotamia and to include the entire East both ancient and modern. In the Egyptian domain, besides the Theban fragments of the Old Testament and the remains of the Acts of the Council of Ephesos, the notable event is the appearance of the first fasciculus of the work on Edfu by M. de Rochemonteix. In it a Page 101 complete temple will be placed before students. The entire Egyptian religion ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... pyramids and obelisks. I look on chisell'd histories, records of conquering kings, dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks, I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm'd, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries, I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Augeae stabulum purgare, to subdue tyrants, as [596]he did Diomedes and Busiris: to expel thieves, as he did Cacus and Lacinius: to vindicate poor captives, as he did Hesione: to pass the torrid zone, the deserts of Libya, and purge the world of monsters and Centaurs: or another Theban Crates to reform our manners, to compose quarrels and controversies, as in his time he did, and was therefore adored for a god in Athens. "As Hercules [597]purged the world of monsters, and subdued them, so did he fight against envy, lust, anger, avarice, &c. and all those ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... meaning "blessed one," is here applied to ideal womanhood and must not be confused with Makaria of p. 103, the mythical Theban princess. ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... the Pancratium. Casting about for the best means of perpetuating his fame, he found the alternative to lie between a statuette to be erected in the temple of the hero-god, or one of the odes of the learned Theban. Choosing the latter, he proceeded to the poet's shop, cheapened the article, and would have secured it without hesitation, had not the extortionate bard demanded the sum of three drachmas,[3] nearly equal to half a dollar, for the poem, and refused to bate a fraction. The disappointed bargainer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... heroes and demi-gods, embracing, among others, the twelve wonderful labors of Hercules; the exploits of the Athenian king The'seus, and of Mi'nos, King of Crete, the founder of Grecian law and civilization; the events of the Argonautic expedition; the Theban and Argol'ic wars; the adventures of Beller'ophon, Per'seus, and many others; and concluding with the Trojan war and the supposed fall of Troy. These seem to have been the times which the archangel Michael foretold to Adam ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... attracted you because of your tastes." Puzzled by this cryptic introduction, the poet then noted that the address read: Charles Baudelaire, Hotel de Thebes. He did not stop at a hotel bearing that name, but, fancying him a Theban, Meryon took the matter for granted. This letter was forwarded. Meryon appeared. His first question would have startled any but Baudelaire, who prided himself on startling others. The etcher, looking as desperate and forlorn as in the Bracquemond etched portrait (1853), demanded ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... water the Theban bard spoke, He of Teos sang sweetly of wine; Miss Flounce is a Pindar in cashmere and cloak, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... fantastic lies, I had passed into that mood when the grotesque wickedness of Fate's awards can draw from the victim no loud lamentations—when there are no frantic blows aimed at the sufferer's own poor eyeballs till the beard—like the self-mutilated Theban king's—is bedewed with a dark hail-shower of blood. More terrible because more inhuman than the agony imagined by the great tragic poet is that most awful condition of the soul into which I had passed—when the cruelty that seems to work at Nature's ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... three Plays (an arrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect their dramatic representations), elucidating the wonderful and appalling fortunes of the SWELLFOOT dynasty. It was evidently written by some LEARNED THEBAN, and, from its characteristic dulness, apparently before the duties on the importation of ATTIC SALT had been repealed by the Boeotarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the PIGS proves him to have been a sus Boeotiae; possibly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... question whether the tamarisk did not originally come from Asia. In that case it must have been brought to Egypt from remote antiquity, for it figures in the Pyramid texts. Bricks of Nile mud, and Memphite and Theban tombs have yielded us leaves, twigs, and even ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to me with milder lip He spake: "This of the seven kings was one, Who girt the Theban walls with siege, and held, As still he seems to hold, God in disdain, And sets his high omnipotence at nought. But, as I told him, his despiteful mood Is ornament well suits the breast that wears it. Follow me now; and look ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Arcite (2 syl.), two young Theban knights, who fell into the hands of Duke Theseus (2 syl.), and were by him confined in a dungeon at Athens. Here they saw the duke's sister-in-law, Emily, with whom both fell in love. When released from captivity, the two knights ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... sudden. A tray followed them, upon which was served a wild boar of immense size, wearing a liberty cap upon its head, and from its tusks hung two little baskets of woven palm fibre, one of which contained Syrian dates, the other, Theban. Around it hung little suckling pigs made from pastry, signifying that this was a brood-sow with her pigs at suck. It turned out that these were souvenirs intended to be taken home. When it came to carving the boar, our ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... victory,[696] but relax their rage, which like small daggers they can easily take back. But anger kills myriads before it is glutted with revenge, as happened in the case of Cyrus and Pelopidas the Theban. But Agathocles bore mildly the revilings of those he was besieging, and when one of them cried out, "Potter, how are you going to get money to pay your mercenaries?" he replied laughingly, "Out of your town if I take it." And when some of those on the wall threw his ugliness into ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... you're told, keep back, Though wine or anger put you on the rack; Nor puff your own, nor slight your friend's pursuits, Nor court the Muses when he'd chase the brutes. 'Twas thus the Theban brethren jarred, until The harp that vexed the stern one became still. Amphion humoured his stern brother: well, Your friend speaks gently; do not you rebel: No; when he gives the summons, and prepares To take the field with hounds, and darts, and snares, Leave your ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... cruel dame, And Semele's Theban boy, and Licence bold, Bid me kindle into flame This heart, by waning passion now left cold. O, the charms of Glycera, That hue, more dazzling than the Parian stone! O, that sweet tormenting play, That too fair face, that blinds when look'd upon! Venus comes in ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Diomed, and said: "The man is near at hand, nor far to seek, If ye will hear, nor take offence, that I, The youngest of you all, presume to speak. Yet of a noble sire I boast me sprung, Tydeus, who sleeps beneath the Theban soil: To Portheus three brave sons were born, who dwelt In Pleuron and in lofty Calydon, Agrius, and Melas; bravest of them all, My father's father, OEneus, was the third. He there remain'd; my father, wand'ring long, To ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... age improves: The Muse alone unequal dealt her rage, And graced with noblest pomp her earliest stage. 20 Preserved through time, the speaking scenes impart Each changeful wish of Phaedra's tortured heart; Or paint the curse that mark'd the Theban's[54] reign, A bed incestuous, and a father slain. With kind concern our pitying eyes o'erflow, 25 Trace the sad tale, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. But ah! 'tis heard no more— O! Lyre divine, what daring Spirit Wakes thee now! Tho' he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion That the Theban Eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air: Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun: Yet ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... life. Hence arose principally their fondness, or rather frenzy, for public shows. The death of Epaminondas, which seemed to promise them the greatest advantage, gave the final stroke to their ruin and destruction. "Their courage," says Justin,(217) "did not survive that illustrious Theban. Freed from a rival, who kept their emulation alive, they sunk into a lethargic sloth and effeminacy. The funds for armaments by land and sea were soon lavished upon games and feasts. The seaman's and soldier's pay was distributed ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the distinction between "Pippa Passes" and "Sordello" that there is between the Venus of Milos and a gigantic Theban Sphinx. The latter is, it is true, proportionate in its vastness; but the symmetry of mere bulk is not the symmetria prisca of ideal sculpture. I have already alluded to "Sordello" as a derelict upon the ocean of poetry. This, indeed, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... sea-green eyes, and Aphrodite, girded with her magic cestus; the old men of Troy rising to honour Helena as she passed through the Skaian gate, a subject taken from one of the poems of the blind man of Meles. Others exhibited in preference scenes taken from the life of Heracles, the Theban, through flattery to Candaules, himself a Heracleid, being descended from the hero through Alcaeus. Others contented themselves by decorating the entrances of their dwellings with garlands and wreaths in token ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... Eteocles to the citizens of Thebes to prove themselves stout defenders of their State in its hour of peril. A messenger enters, and describes the sacrifice and oath of the seven chiefs. The Chorus of Theban maidens enter in confusion and sing the first ode. The hostile army is hurrying from its camp against the town; the Chorus hear their shouts and the rattling din of their arms, and are overcome by terror. Eteocles reproves them for their fears, and bids them sing a paean that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... will not keep thee," she said, "against thy will. But a long journey lies before thee, even to the very ends of the earth, and not until that is past canst thou set thy sail for home. To the halls of Hades thou must go, and consult the spirit of Theban Teiresias, who alone among all the dead hath an understanding heart, while the rest are but flitting shadows. Now hearken, and I will tell thee all that thou must do. When thou leavest these shores thou shalt sail ever southward, until thou hast reached the farther side of the River ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell |
