"Isthmian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great dramatic poet, which has rendered the masterpieces of this art so general an object of devout admiration, to men of the greatest genius who have ever appeared upon earth. Euripides wept when he heard a tragedy of Sophocles recited at the Isthmian games; he mourned, but his own subsequent greatness proved without reason, the apparent impossibility of rivalling his inimitable predecessor. Milton, blind and poor, found a solace for all the crosses of life in listening, in old age, to the verses of Euripides. Napoleon, at St Helena, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... horse for the use of mankind, and was believed to have taught men the art of managing horses by the bridle. The Isthmian games (so named because they were held on the Isthmus of Corinth), in which horse and chariot races were a distinguishing feature, were instituted ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... kings and princes sought renown in the public games and gymnastic exercises. Chrysippus and Cleanthus distinguished themselves in these games before they were known as philosophers. Plato appeared as a wrestler both at the Isthmian and Pythian games; and Pythagoras carried off the prize at Elis. The passion which inspired them was glory—the ambition of having statues erected to their memory, in the most sacred place in Greece, to be admired by the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... questions; and the tariff was already so successful that it would have been plain folly to change it. In the foreign policy of the country the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with England dealt with the proposed isthmian canal. By this agreement the two contracting parties promised not to acquire further interests in Central America, and thus in a way nullified the concessions of Colombia of 1846, under which Polk had hoped for the building of ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... Dorians, Ionians, Achaeans, Locrians, and Phocians—all Hellenic in race. Their great centre was the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The different tribes or nations also came together regularly to take part in the four great religious festivals or games—the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemaean—the two former of which were ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... dripping with blood or being throttled; for such are the happy concomitants of victory. In my country, if a man strikes a citizen, knocks him down, or tears his clothes, our elders punish him severely, even though there were only one or two witnesses, not like your vast Olympic or Isthmian gatherings. However, though I cannot help pitying the competitors, I am still more astonished at the spectators; you tell me the chief people from all over Greece attend; how can they leave their serious concerns and waste time on such things? How they can like ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... afforded orators, poets, and historians the best opportunities of rehearsing their productions. Herodotus is said to have read his History, and Isocrates to have recited his Panegyric at the Olympic games. The four sacred games were the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean; and to these should be added the Panathenaea, or festival of Minerva. The five exercises before mentioned, together with music, in its classic sense, formed the programme. In the lesser Panathenaea occurred, first, the torch-race; next, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... knots, leaving Puget Sound on March 6 and touching at Barbados in the West Indies an May 18, just as the Spanish fleet was steaming across the Caribbean. The cruise effectively demonstrated the danger of a divided navy and the need of an Isthmian canal. Under Commodore Dewey in the Far East were two gunboats and four small cruisers, the best of them the fast and heavily armed flagship Olympia, of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... allowed to leave the country who is under forty years of age—of course military service abroad is not included in this regulation—and no one at all except in a public capacity. To the Olympic, and Pythian, and Nemean, and Isthmian games, shall be sent the fairest and best and bravest, who shall support the dignity of the city in time of peace. These, when they come home, shall teach the youth the inferiority of all other governments. Besides those who go on sacred missions, other persons shall ...
— Laws • Plato
... majority for its platform as a whole. Both parties in their platforms of 1900 stood for the admission as states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma; both declared in favor of legislation against monopolies and trusts; both favored liberal pensions, the construction of an Isthmian canal, irrigation of arid lands, reduction of war taxes and protection of American workmen against cheap foreign labor. Yet it does not by any means follow that a majority of the people voting really endorsed even these planks which ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... lever which might break successively, from her empire fragments about the Gulf—Louisiana, Florida and Texas, Cuba and Porto Rico—the Southwest and Pacific coast, and even the Philippines and the Isthmian Canal, while the American republic, building itself on the resources of the Valley, should become paramount over the independent republics into which her empire ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... that the Varangian is a proper man," said the athletic hero, softening his tone; "but the poor savage hath not, perhaps, in his lifetime, had a single drop of oil on his bosom! Hercules instituted the Isthmian Games"—- ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... organized in 1878, spent $260,000,000 in ten years, and then failed. Another French company then took up the work, and in turn laid it down for want of funds. So the matter stood when the war with Spain brought home to us the great importance of an isthmian canal. Then the question arose, Which was the better of two routes, that by Lake Nicaragua, or that across the isthmus of Panama? [12] Congress (1899) sent a commission to consider this, and it reported ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... crossing again The scenes of our Isthmian Games - JOHN caught him, and collared him, giving him pain (I felt very much ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... the hill of Corinth and the site of the city, as desolate now as when Antipater of Sidon made the sea-waves utter a threnos over her ruins. 'The deathless Nereids, daughters of Oceanus,' still lament by the shore, and the Isthmian pines are as green as when their boughs were plucked to bind a victor's forehead. Feathering the grey rock now as then, they bear witness to the wisdom and the moderation of the Greeks, who gave to the conquerors in sacred games no wreath of gold, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Greeks had been in the habit of assembling at Corinth every three years for the celebration of the Isthmian games, in honor of Poseidon, god of the sea. Here, as at Olympia, there were races, wrestling and boxing matches, and contests in verse and song; and as usual the prizes were simple crowns of olive leaves, which were considered far more ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... nothing in this progressive age. We always wonder what other marvellous inventions may be in store for us to necessitate another Exposition upon a gigantic scale, to be held somewhere in this country. Perhaps within another decade, when the Isthmian canal is finished, the golden stream which will connect the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, we may celebrate at the national capital city the greatest event of the twentieth century, bringing to the commerce of the world peace and plenty. At the same time we may hope to celebrate ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... that the body of Melicertes was thrown on the Isthmus of Corinth where Sisyphus, his uncle, who reigned in that city, instituted the Isthmian games in his honor. For this fable we are indebted to the fertile invention of the Greeks, Melicertes being no other than the Melcarthus or the Hercules of Tyre, who, from having been drowned in the sea, was called a god of it, and from his many ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... that night. Also the shouting and rumbling from a distance tells of the chariot course, where the sons of the more wealthy or pretentious families are lessening their patrimonies by training a "two" or a "four" to contend at the Isthmian games or at Olympia. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... solemnity of the Isthmian games was at hand. These have ever been attended by very numerous meetings, as well on account of the universal fondness entertained by this nation for exhibitions of skill in arts of every kind, as well as ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Panama made substantial progress toward federation. As a South American writer has expressed it, their previous efforts in that direction "amid sumptuous festivals, banquets and other solemn public acts" at which they "intoned in lyric accents daily hymns for the imperishable reunion of the isthmian republics," had been as illusory as they were frequent. Despite the mediation of the United States and Mexico in 1906, while the latter was still ruled by Diaz, the struggle in which Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador had been engaged was soon renewed between ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd |
