"Acropolis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been sacked by the Gauls, Brennus being at the head of that expedition of theirs, as the Gauls were on the point of capturing the Capitol by ascending secretly to the Acropolis at night, a great outcry of geese arose in that quarter; and one Marcus Manlius roused from sleep saw the enemy creeping up, and by striking some with his oblong shield and slaying others with his sword he repulsed them all and saved ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... Mars Hill, and climbed to the top of the ruined Acropolis, disturbing a few lizards, spiders, bats, rooks and pigeons that made their homes where the eloquence of Greece once ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... personified, the "acropolis" of The Purple Island, fully described in canto v. of that poem, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Marina into the purlieus of the city, let us first of all instil into our minds the essential difference that exists between the ruins of Pompeii and the historic fragments of Rome or Athens. When we gaze upon the well-known sites of the vanished glories of the Palatine or the Acropolis, we experience no effort in looking backward through the vista of the past and in conjuring up some vague representation of the scenes that were once enacted in these places; the more imaginative feel the very air vibrating with the unseen spirits of men and women famous in the world's ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... other conspirators, she refused to do so, and held out to the end, showing that those famous men in loving such a one as her had done nothing unworthy of them. And the Athenians erected to her memory a bronze lioness without a tongue, and placed it near the entrance to the Acropolis, signifying her dauntless courage by the nobleness of that animal, and by its being without a tongue her silence and fidelity. For no spoken word has done as much good as many unspoken ones. For at some future day we can give utterance if we ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of saints or of heathen gods, according to the taste of the purchaser. But when they found me impracticable, they brought out their greatest curiosity—a flint arrow-head, such as used to be plowed up in scores near the place where I was born. Thoroughly disgusted with the sight of this Acropolis, with this ancient Athens of mud, I turned my horse's head toward Puebla; and as I rode on, I met scores of these modern Athenians trotting homeward, bare-headed and bare-footed, carrying "papooses" on their backs, while their faces, forms, and ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... ruin. He had, besides, another inducement, and an example before him, in the conduct of the last French embassy sent to Turkey before the Revolution. French artists did then attempt to remove several of the sculptured ornaments from several edifices in the Acropolis, and particularly from the Parthenon. In lowering one of the Metopes the tackle failed, and it was dashed to pieces; one other object was conveyed to France, where it is held in the highest estimation, and where it occupies a conspicuous place in the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... in mind the special audience for whom his plays were intended, and at whom they were aimed. Sophocles composed his stately tragedies for the cultivated citizens of Athens, seated on the curving hillside under the shadow of the Acropolis; Shakspere prepared his histories and his comedies to hold the interest of the turbulent throng which stood about the jutting platform in the yard of the half-roofed Tudor theater; and Moliere, even when he was writing to order for ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... soften the picture a little, and perhaps make the principle even clearer by so doing. The shipwreck observed from the shore does not leave us wholly unmoved; we suffer, also, and if possible, would help. So, too, the spectacle of the erring world must sadden the philosopher even in the Acropolis of his wisdom; he would, if it might be, descend from his meditation and teach. But those movements of sympathy are quickly inhibited by despair of success; impossibility of action is a great condition ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... while our Britannia Agoraia is the principal type of ours. And all your great architectural works are, of course, built to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral; and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral on the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis! But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires! your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!—all ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... did not last long," writes Sienkiewicz. "Soon from the Archipelago appeared the pale Selene and began to sail like a silvery boat in the heavenly space. And the walls of the Acropolis lighted again, but they beamed now with a pale green light, and looked more than ever like the vision ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... saw in April, 1913, was an out-of-the-way provincial city of little importance outside of its situation as the nucleus of a great fortress. There were two cities—an old one, la ville des eveques, on a kind of acropolis rising from the left bank of the Meuse, and a newer one built on the meadows of the river. Round the acropolis Vauban had built a citadel whose steep, green-black walls struck root in the mean streets and narrow lanes on the slopes. Sunless by-ways, ill-paved ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... more Greek than served him to stumble through a play. Of ancient history he knew nothing. However, as he tramped into London it seemed to him that they were making the flagstones ring on the road to the Acropolis, and that if Socrates saw them coming he would bestir himself and say "my fine fellows," for the whole sentiment of Athens was entirely after his heart; free, venturesome, high-spirited. ... She had called him Jacob without asking ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... courage chose rather to be persuaded than forced into compliance. He therefore destroyed the prytaneia, the senate house, and the magistracy of each individual township, built one common prytaneum and senate house for them all on the site of the present acropolis, called the city Athens, and instituted the Panathenaic festival common to all of them. He also instituted a festival for the resident aliens, on the sixteenth of the month, Hekatombeion, which is still kept up. And having, according ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the boat we rode over a level plain with green trees by the wayside till we reached Athens and put up at a good tarven. Athens, "The eye of Greece," mother of arts and eloquence, wuz built in the first place round the Acropolis, a hill about three hundred feet high, and is a place that has seen twice as many ups and downs as Jonesville. But then it's older, three or four thousand years older, I spoze, and has had a dretful time on't since Mr. Theseus's ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do not speak of the degenerate days when, after his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... worked in gold, silver, tin, copper, and bronze and made beautiful pottery. There is evidence of religious significance in the buildings, and what is called the temple was the royal residence and served as a sort of acropolis. The surrounding residences in the valley were evidently occupied by wealthy traders and were not fortified. Here the gold was received from surrounding districts ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... devoted the treasure which had been contributed by the other Greek cities for defence against the barbarians to the beautifying of Athens, and to furnishing them with games and amusements, and especially to the erection of the group of temples upon the Acropolis, in this way distributing patronage and keeping his people employed much as a modern political "boss" does the same in ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 08, August 1895 - Fragments of Greek Detail • Various
... own culture, very little deeper than a surface reading of them; to know very little of that perfect architecture and what it expressed; nor of that marvelous sculpture and the conditions of its immortal beauty; nor of that artistic development which made the Acropolis to bud and bloom under the blue sky like the final flower of a perfect nature; nor of that philosophy, that politics, that society, nor of the life of that polished, crafty, joyous race, the springs of it and the far-reaching, still unexpended ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... right angles—and they went down it towards the Gate of Helios in the south wall. The Serapeum lay to their right, several streets leading to it from the street of the Sun. To reach the house where Eusebius lived they ought to have turned down the street of the Acropolis, but a compact mass of frenzied creatures came storming down it from the Serapeum, and towards them. The sun was now fast setting over the City of the Dead on the western horizon. Marcus tried to get out of the middle of the road and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Greece and enabled her to assume the beginning of the states; in fact, enabled her to establish an empire. Pericles rebuilt Athens after the destructive work of the Persians. The public buildings, the Parthenon and the Acropolis, were among the noted structures of the world. A symmetrical city was planned on a magnificent scale hitherto unknown. Pericles gathered about him architects, sculptors, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... obtain the extradition of persons who have elsewhere taken the name of the law in vain. It is with a feeling of national pride and security that the true-born Greek takes sanctuary beneath the shadow of the Acropolis. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... said, "what great misfortune do you announce to us? Have the Barbarians at last seized upon the Piraeus, and are they even now marching irresistibly on the Acropolis? Are you sent out to summon us to arms? Here are a few of us who will join with you, laying aside even their most pressing private business, and will help to defend the State and themselves to the last gasp. Only do you deliver your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... is now about ten miles from the sea. It is backed by a range of hills, on which the wealthier residents had villas, while the high glens of Taurus, nine or ten miles further inland, provided a summer residence for those who could afford it, and a fortified acropolis in time of war. The town on the plain must have been almost intolerable in the fierce Anatolian summer-heat. The harbour was a lake formed by the Cydnus, five or six miles below Tarsus; but light ships could sail up the river into the heart of the city. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... that have been considered to rival it in this respect, and is the name of over twenty places in the United States. The two chief monuments of the architecture of ancient Athens, both erected on the Acropolis, are the PARTHENON (q. v.), dedicated to Athena, the finest building on the finest site in the world, and the Erechtheum, a temple dedicated to Poseidon close by; is the capital (100) of modern Greece, the seat of the government, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sometimes continued along the long sides of the building, and sometimes not. When it is so continued, water-spouts are inserted into it at intervals, usually in the form of lions' heads. Fig 53 shows a fine lion's head of this sort from a sixth century temple on the Athenian Acropolis. If it be added that upon the apex and the lower corners of the pediment there were commonly pedestals which supported statues or other ornamental objects (Fig. 52), mention will have been made of all the main features of the exterior ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Council, but wire-pulling, influence, or what not, turned the current in another direction, and to-day there is left in all its original and winsome glory the famous Adelphi, planned and built by the brothers Adam, as a sort of acropolis as a site for ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... beautiful house," and bewails her unreturning heroes of the sword and pen. He then summons an Oriental, a "Son of the Morning," Moslem or "light Greek," possibly a Canis venaticus, the discoverer or vendor of a sepulchral urn, and, with an adjuration to spare the sacred relic, points to the Acropolis, the cemetery of dead divinities, and then once more to the urn at his feet. "'Vanity of vanities—all is vanity!' Gods and men may come and go, but Death 'goes on for ever.'" The scene changes, and he feigns to be present at the rifling of a barrow, the "tomb of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... of October we caught sight of the Grecian mainland. Sailing near the coast, we saw on the lofty prominence of a rock twelve large columns, the remains of the Temple of Minerva. Shortly afterwards we came near the hill on which the beautiful Acropolis stands. I gazed for a long time on all that was to be seen; the statues of the Grecian heroes, the history of the country came back to my mind; and I glowed with desire to set my foot on the land which, from my earliest childhood, had appeared to me, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... downpour neither archery nor fire could harm him. Immediately he captured nearly everything, for the inner circle was not very strong by reason of the confidence felt in the outer works beyond it. Among those that fled to the acropolis, whom he subsequently caused to capitulate, was the brother of Tigranes. He also obtained considerable money ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... which will last for ever, an eternal type of beauty, without a single blemish, local or national. I of course knew before I went there that Greece had created science, art, and philosophy, but the means of measurement were wanting. The sight of the Acropolis was like a revelation of the Divine, such as that which I experienced when, gazing down upon the valley of the Jordan from the heights of Casyoun, I first felt the living reality of the Gospel. The whole world then appeared to me barbarian. The ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the water-line of gray heads is the coming generation of Irish priests, who, like the [Greek: lampadephoroi] of old in the Athenian games, will take the torch of faith from our hands and carry it to the Acropolis of Heaven,—clean-cut, small of stature, keen-faced, bicycle-riding, coffee-drinking, encyclopaedic young fellows, who will give a good account of themselves, I think, in the battles of the near future. It ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... ship upon the waves. The audiences in the tragedies should be shown like wheat-fields on the hill-sides, always stately yet blown by the wind, and Athena the one sower and reaper. Crowds should descend the steps of the Acropolis, nymphs and fauns and Olympians, carved as it were from the marble, yet flowing like a white cataract down into the town, bearing with them Athena, their soul. All this in the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... is found in Greek literature. This is because Lincoln had an essentially Hellenic mind. First of all the architecture of his thought was that of the Greek masters, who, whether as Phidias they built the Parthenon to crown with harmonious beauty the Acropolis, or as Homer they recorded in swelling narrative from its dramatic beginning the strife of the Achaeans before Troy, or even as Euclid, they developed from postulates the relations of space, had a deep insight into the order in which mother ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... and typewriter of the Acropolis Hotel (there! I've let the name of it out!) was Miss Ida Bates. She was a hold-over from the Greek classics. There wasn't a flaw in her looks. Some old-timer paying his regards to a lady said: "To have loved her was a liberal education." Well, even to have looked over ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... a wide, stepped street of gleaming white stone that climbed like an immense stairway straight up the slope to that broad plaza at the top where clustered the great temples and palaces—the Acropolis of the city. Into it the streets of the terraces flowed, each pouring out upon it a living torrent, tumultuous with tuliped, sparkling little waves, the gay coverings and the arms and armor of Ruszark's desperate thousands seeking safety at the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... being a work of art than almost anything we possess to-day, because it tells the truth, because it is the material form of a spiritual idea, because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of New York in the way that the Acropolis was a sublime and beautiful expression of Athens. The Acropolis was beautiful because it was the abode of heroes, of great individuals; and the Brooklyn Bridge, because it expresses the bringing together of millions of men. It ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Montepulciano can scarcely spend it better than in an excursion to Pienza and San Quirico. Leaving the city by the road which takes a westerly direction, the first object of interest is the Church of San Biagio, placed on a fertile plateau immediately beneath the ancient acropolis. It was erected by Antonio di San Gallo in 1518, and is one of the most perfect specimens existing of the sober classical style. The Church consists of a Greek square, continued at the east end into a semicircular tribune, surmounted by a central cupola, and flanked by a detached bell-tower, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... lvii. Capital from the Parthenon, Athens. lviii. Capital from the Erechtheion, Athens. lix. Base from the Erechtheion, Athens, lx. Cap of Anta from the Erechtheion, Athens. lxi. Fragment found on the Acropolis, Athens. lxii. Capital from the Propylam, Athens. lxiii. Cyma from the Tholos, Epidauros. lxiv. ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, 1895 • Various
... "roll" with so much zest and assiduity at our fashionable watering places. Think of Paul dancing! Well, think of him! Think of Paul wearing a blue swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons! How he would have looked under the shadow of the Acropolis, the winds of the AEgean gently swaying his cerulean skirts, and the eager faces of Stoic and Epicurean reflected in the bright buttons! Think of Peter skating; cutting figures of eight, and performing "outer edge backwards!" Think of John in a white cravat; or of ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... comparatively small apartment within the magnificent enclosure. This image, which was said to have fallen down from Jupiter, [121:5] was not like one of those pieces of beautiful sculpture which adorned the Acropolis of Athens, but rather resembled an Indian idol, being an unsightly female form with many breasts, made of wood, and terminating below in a shapeless block. [122:1] On several parts of it were engraved mysterious symbols, called "Ephesian letters." [122:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... front of a brick building adorned with many fire-escapes. Afterward he remembered a bare, brilliantly lit hall hung with photographs of the Acropolis, and a stout, capable woman in a cap, who looked him ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... the night of March 1, 86 B.C., he broke into the town amid the blare of trumpets and the shouts of his troops. He told his men to give no quarter, and the blood, it was said, ran down through the gates into the suburbs. [Sidenote: Aristion slain.] Aristion fled to the Acropolis. Hunger forced him in the end to capitulate, and he was killed. Sulla meanwhile had forced on the siege of Piraeus still more vigorously. He got past the crescent wall, only to find other walls similarly constructed behind it; but he gradually drove Archelaus into Munychia, or ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... child on all the excursions I made, to Marathon and other of the local points of interest, for he was a great reader, and interested in Greek history and archeology already, passing most of his time with me in my work on the Acropolis. He limped painfully over all the sites we visited, and presently we accepted an invitation to Aegina, to the home of the Tricoupis, the parents of the well-known premier of later years. We spent some days ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... a small town but fine. It is chiefly yellow houses with red roofs, and mountains around it, which remind you of pictures you have seen when a youth. Also olive trees and straight black pines and the Acropolis. There is not much of it left as far as I can see from the city, but what there is is enough to make you wish you had brushed up your Greek history. I have now reached the place where Pan has a cave, where the ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Lefevre, to mention only a few. Pontiffs and kings sought for support in academic pronouncements, nor could they always force the doctors to give the decision they wished. In fact, each university stood like an Acropolis in the republic of letters, at once a temple and a fortress for those who loved truth ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... inference seems to be that the stones represent the centre or focus of the life of kangaroos, and when they are quickened by the painting, and the supply of blood, they will manifest their creative activity and increase the kangaroos. If we suppose that some similar stone existed on the Acropolis and was considered by the owl clan as the centre of the life of the owls which frequented the hill, then when the art of sculpture had made some progress, and the superiority of the human form and intellect began to be apprehended, if a ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell |
