"Ajax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Iliad, besides being pretty familiar with passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book, the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the funeral games in the twenty-third. I have also done some Hesiod, a little scrap of Thucydides, and a lot of the Greek Testament... ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... of the asses of our own country, which are ill fed, beaten, and contemned. You feel that they think as much of themselves as other animals do, and that they are not the whole day long a butt for stupid jokes. Perhaps they are aware that Homer compared Ajax to an ass, a comparison which is ridiculous in the West; and they also remember that one of their ancestors bore Miriam, the Virgin Mother of Issa, under the sycamore of Matarieh. Their coat varies from dark-brown to white, through all the shades ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... bench as proudly as a queen upon her throne, with shining eyes, scornful lips, and arms tightly folded under her cashmere shawl, with that haughty gesture familiar to her, the young woman looked as invulnerable under this light wrap as if she had been covered with Ajax's shield, formed, if we can credit Homer, of seven bulls' hides and a sheet ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... up. It seemed to his crew that he actually gained in girth and height. The soul, in certain great moments, seems to have power to expand the body and inform it with the quality of immortality; Ajax, in his magnificent gesture of defiance, is all spirit. Cleggett, with his hand on his hip, uttered these words, not ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... the coadjutor aforesaid—a bashful Teucer, over whom Professor Tyndall has, like a second Ajax Telamon, extended, with chivalrous haste, the shelter of his shield—does 'not hesitate to propose that one single ward or hospital under the care of first-rate physicians or surgeons, containing a number of patients afflicted with those diseases which have been best ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... in ten tribes, who were formerly in four; and he changed the names by which they were called after the sons of Ion, namely Geleon, Aigicoreus, Argades, and Hoples, and invented for them names taken from other heroes, all native Athenians except Ajax, whom he added as a neighbour and ally, although ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... exact and more various operation; they are ever increasing their stock of thoughts and of knowledge: ever creating, comparing, disposing, and improving. Hence, while bodily strength is the token of barbarian power, mental ability is the honourable badge of civilized states. The one is like Ajax, the other like Ulysses; civilized nations are constructive, barbarous are destructive. Civilization spreads by the ways of peace, by moral suasion, by means of literature, the arts, commerce, diplomacy, institutions; ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... in many ways the ablest of the Greeks. Next to Achilles, Ajax was accounted the strongest; but Ulysses threw him in wrestling. Oilemenus was regarded as the swiftest of men, but Ulysses in a race outran him. When Achilles was slain Ulysses alone held back all the Trojans, while his comrades ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... accept those restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses. He jeers at the one as hypocrisy and superstition and at the other as mere "middle-class respectability." He himself is the perpetual Ajax standing defiant upon the headland of his own inflamed desires, and scoffing at the lightnings either of heaven or society. Neither devoutness nor progress but mere personal expansion is his goal. The humanist curbs both the flesh and the imagination ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... she are both of age. Consider the late Mr. Ajax of Greece—he defied the lightning and got away with it! They can't do more than excommunicate you with bell and book ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... testimony to that effect, rendered before the War Committee, months ago, wherein, with a chivalrous generosity, he ceased not to exalt himself on the ruined reputation of his late commander? Even as Ajax prayed for light, the people cried aloud for one week of fair weather: no more was wanted to crush and utterly confound the hopes of Rebels, Copperheads, and perfidious Albion. Every illustrated journal was ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the most trifling colloquialism. "There is no darkness but ignorance," says the pleasantest of stage fools; "in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog." And what many-languaged millions of passably brave men have sympathised with Ajax in his prayer—not for courage or strength; he had those already— not for victory; that was outside the province of his interference—but for light to see ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... your Galileo now, Your hero that like Ajax should defy The lightning? Yesterday I saw him stand Trembling before our court of Cardinals, Trembling before the colour of their robes As sheep, before the slaughter, at the sight And smell of ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... the old Homeric battles that Paul told about came to his mind. He knew these men as they lay panting against the sides of the boats, the light from the bonfire tinting their faces to crimson hues. This gallant fellow was Hector, and that was Achilles, it was Ajax who sat in the prow there, and the wiry old fellow behind him, with the wary eyes, was even ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hour is supposed to elapse, for refreshments, and when the curtain rises, GIMFRISKY, who has emerged through a diminutive hole, is discovered in the costume of AJAX defying the lightning, or something ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... probability of a gentleman marrying anybody? How many of the wise and learned have married their cooks? Did not Lord Eldon himself, the most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids? And are we to expect a heavy dragoon with strong desires and small brains, who had never controlled a passion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his charges of incontinence against Morus, and of petty knavery against Vlac, is only saved from being unseemly by being ridiculous. The comedy is complete when we remember that Morus had not written the Clamor, nor Vlac the preface. Milton's rage blinded him; he is mad Ajax castigating innocent sheep ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... only claim'd the labour of the day, But vice now steals his nightly rest away. Where are the swains, who, daily labour done, With rural games play'd down the setting sun; Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball, Or made the pond'rous quoit obliquely fall; While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong, Engaged some artful stripling of the throng. And fell beneath him, foil'd, while far around Hoarse triumph rose, and rocks return'd the sound? Where now are these?—Beneath yon cliff ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... obvious way, not on the labour of compositors, but on the quality of the directions which the author imposes on this labour through his manuscript—the author's mind being typical of directive ability generally. And what has Mr. Hillquit—the intellectual Ajax of the socialists—got to say about this? "Whether a book," he says, "is a work of genius or mere rubbish will largely affect its literary or artistic value; but it will have very little bearing on its economic or commercial value." This, he goes ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... This outdefied Ajax, and every trace of the matter in hand went to the four winds. Eskew, like Rome, was saved by a cackle, in which he joined, and a few moments later, as the bench loafers saw, was pulled down into his seat ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... services as aide-de-camp to our then hero of great ambition and small capacity, La Fayette, who declined the honour. The Jacobins were not so nice. In 1792, they appointed him a general under Dumouriez, who baptized him his Ajax. This modern Ajax, having obtained a separate command, attacked Treves in a most ignorant manner, and was worsted with great loss. The official reports of our revolutionary generals have long been admired for their modesty as ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that I dare not serve him in such a cause, and against such heroes: but rather fight under their protection; as HOMER reports of little TEUCER, who shot the Trojans from under the large buckler of AJAX Telamon— ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... the time as he listened; the lad's sensitive frame thrilled with passionate envy at the narrative. At last he had met a hero face to face. What were those old Greek fellows—Ajax, or Hector or any of those gaudy warriors—compared with this ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... city of Troy. In this ancient city of Troy, according to Homer, the beautiful Grecian princess Helen, abducted by Paris, the son of the King of Troy, was detained for ten years. The enraged Greeks under Ulysses and Ajax, seeking to rescue the princess, besieged the city and finally succeeded in entering its gates and accomplishing their purpose by means of the stratagem of a ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... never be!" M. Leandre was storming passionately. "Never! I swear it!" And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven—Ajax defying Jupiter. "Ah, but here comes our subtle friend..." (Andre-Louis did not catch the name, M. Leandre having at that moment turned to face the gap in the hedge.) "He will bring ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... more concerning his three new-made friends. He formed, therefore, the resolution of believing for the present all that was said of their past, hoping for more certain and extended revelations in the future. In the meanwhile, he looked upon Athos as an Achilles, Porthos as an Ajax, and Aramis ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... gigantic mould, was cast for Hercules, and Frank Elliott for Ajax. When Patty told the girls that Kenneth Harper could do trick riding on a bicycle, they unanimously voted to invite him to ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... speculation failed, but when about forty he commenced again, and this time fortune made amends for her former ill-treatment. His warehouse was a small, dingy place, filled with bars of iron, with a bust of Shakspeare looking down on the whole. His country-house contained busts; of Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon. Here is a poet who earned a competence as an iron-merchant; here is a monomaniac on the Corn-laws, who loved nature as intensely as ever did Burns or Wordsworth. Here is a John Bright uttering himself in fiery and melodious verse,—Apollo with iron dust ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... quivering leafage having exactly the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, and inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the disembodied spirit.[94] The likeness to the poplars by the streams of Amiens is more marked still in the Iliad, where the young Simois, struck by Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies parching by the side of the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... falls to wrack, And light must eyes, or eyes their light must lack. She without you, a diamond sunk in mine, Its worth unprized, to self alone must shine; You without her, like hands bereft of head, Like Ajax rage, by blindfold lust misled. She light, you eyes; she head, and you the hands, In fair proportion knit by heavenly hands; Servants in queen, and queen in servants blest; Your only glory, how to serve her best; And hers how best the adventurous might to guide, Which knows no check of foemen, wind, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... position. Lord Marshmoreton cleared his throat again. His tanned face had taken on a deeper hue, and there was a look in his eyes which seemed to suggest that he was defying something or somebody. It was the look which Ajax had in his eyes when he defied the lightning, the look which nervous husbands have when they announce their intention of going round the corner to bowl a few games with the boys. One could not say ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... tribes, and nations, presents a greater variety of models for the artist than the Gipsy. If an artist wants to paint a thief he can find a model among the Gipsies. If he wants to paint a dark highwayman lurking behind a hedge after his prey he goes to the Gipsy. If he wants to paint Ajax he goes to the Gipsy. If he wants to paint a Grecian, Roman, or Spaniard he goes to the Gipsy. Of course there are exceptions, but if an artist wants to paint a large, fine, intellectual-looking figure, with ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... The ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer, yet Sibylla tells Aeneas in Virgil, that the then habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapons. The spirits put off their malice with their bodies; and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latin hell; yet Ajax in Homer, endures ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... beauty of his works to heart. When Sophocles repeats himself—the Electra is but a feeble study for the Antigone, or possibly a feeble copy of it—we get near the man; the limitations of his outlook are characteristic: when he deforms his Ajax with a tag of political partisanship, his servitude to surroundings defines his conscience as an artist; and when painting by contrasts he poses the weak Ismene and Chrysothemis as foils to their heroic sisters, we see that his dramatic power ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... the shield of Ajax,' interrupted Dr. Melmoth, 'or David with his stone and sling. No, no, young man; I have left unfinished in my study a learned treatise, important not only to the present age, but to posterity, for whose sakes I must take heed to my safety. But lo! ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... of one hundred thousand warriors was speedily gathered. Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus and "king of men," was chosen leader of the expedition. Under him were the "lion-hearted Achilles," of Thessaly, the "crafty Ulysses" (Odysseus), king of Ithaca, Ajax, "the swift son of Oileus," the Telamonian Ajax, the aged Nestor, and many more—the most valiant heroes of all Hellas. Twelve hundred galleys bore the gathered clans from Aulis in Greece, across the AEgean ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... containing them was published in 1797, conjointly with other verses by Coleridge and Charles Lloyd. "We came into our first battle" (Charles says in his dedication to Coleridge, in 1818) "under cover of the greater Ajax." In this volume Lloyd's verses took precedence of Lamb's, at Coleridge's suggestion. This suggestion, the reason of which is not very obvious, was very readily acceded to, Lamb having a sincere regard for Lloyd, who (with a fine reasoning ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... post of honour. A Highland bard might easily have found in the history of the year 1689 subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished the great poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent, and announces his intention to depart with all his men. The next day Ajax is storming about the camp, and threatening to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Orpheus, and Musaeus, and Homer, and Hesiod? I would even, were it possible, willingly die often, in order to prove the certainty of what I speak of. What delight must it be to meet with Palamedes, and Ajax, and others, who have been betrayed by the iniquity of their judges! Then, also, should I experience the wisdom of even that king of kings, who led his vast troops to Troy, and the prudence of Ulysses and Sisyphus: nor should I then be condemned for prosecuting my inquiries on ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "His name bane Ajax II, und Ay take care of him myself. My assistant, Carol Linescu, bane no good, und Ay vouldn't trust him. He bane asleep up in the hayloft now. My name bane ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... "Ajax," he said sternly, "you are lying to me! I know that your family are not in distress, and that you can make an honest living if you choose to be industrious and faithful to your employers. You were well paid ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... despairing weariness. There are traces yet in the thin, wan face of the beauty which enslaved Loxian Apollo, and of the pride which turned his great love into a greater hate: round it hang the black elf-locks, disheveled, that have never been braided since the gripe of Telamonian Ajax ruffled them so rudely. In her great, troubled eyes you read terrible memories, and a prescience of coming death—death, most grateful to the dishonored princess, but before which the frail womanhood can not but shudder and quail. No ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... set sail for the opposite coast of Asia Minor, on which stood the city of Troy. Agamemnon, who brought one hundred ships, was chosen leader of the army, which included all the heroes of the age, among them the distinguished warriors Ajax and Diomedes, the wise old Nestor, and many others ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... doctrines, then he both is in reality and is called a Jew. So we philosophers too, dipped in a false dye, are Jews in name, but in reality are something else.... We call ourselves philosophers when we cannot even play the part of men, as though a man should try to heave the stone of Ajax who cannot lift ten pounds." The passage is interesting not only on its own account, but because of its curious similarity both with the language and with the sentiment of St. Paul—"He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... must be taught. But not the less pitiful is it to see men of thirty undergoing the goose-step, and tortured by orders as to the proper mode of handling a long instrument which is half gun and half spear. In the days of Hector and Ajax, the thing was done in a more picturesque manner; and the songs of battle should, I think, be confined ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... lecture were made. But I chose it because I could have it to myself, and I resign it, with a wish that it were more worthy of regret, into the hands of my successor, with my parting benediction. Within its twilight precincts I have often prayed for light, like Ajax, for the daylight found scanty entrance, and the gaslight never illuminated its dark recesses. May it prove to him who comes after me like the cave of the Sibyl, out of the gloomy depths of which came the oracles which shone with the rays of truth ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ancient Greek alphabet are of the same form as those of the Etruscan alphabet; but there are in the latter some particular characters which will prevent any confusion. The names of the personages on the vases are spelt differently from those on the Greek, as Ainas for Ajax, Atreste for Adrastus, Akle for Achilles, Alesti for Alcestis, etc. We must also observe, that Etruscan painted vases are very rare, and are but few in number, compared with those for which we are indebted to the arts ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and was so delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from "Ogilby's Iliad," with some verses of his own intermixed, which he persuaded his schoolfellows to act, with the addition of his master's gardener, who personated Ajax. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... by every species of grimace and buffoonery, and a fierceness of dramatic action and posture far more ludicrously affecting than the classic attitudes of Gen. Tom Thumb, who was defying the lightning, as Ajax, dying like the Gladiator, and taking snuff like Napoleon, in the room overhead. At the bottom of all this ridiculous exhibition, which drew repeated shouts of laughter from the very large and respectable audience, lay ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... deserere ministerium evangelii. And I confess that I have given the same advice to the Francans (Francis). This I have done; the doctrine of the Confession I have never changed.... Afterwards you began to contradict. I yielded; I did not fight. In Homer, Ajax fighting with Hector is satisfied when Hector yields and admits that the former is victor. You never come to an end with your accusations. Where is the enemy that does such a thing as striking those who yield and cast their arms away? Win! I yield. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... heroic ages of antiquity. At Florence is my dying Hercules, at Venice my Cleopatra, the raging Ajax at Rome, where, in the Vatican, the heroes of former times rise again ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... whatsoever terms I please. (Oh! oh!) (No! no!) I, too, propose, To pull his nose: No matter if the law objects or not; And if the printer's nose cannot be got, The small proboscis of the printer's devil Shall serve my turn for language so uncivil! The "Thunderer" I defy, And its vile lie. (As Ajax did the lightning flash of yore.) I likewise move this House requires— No, that's too complimentary—desires, That Mr. Lawson's brought upon the floor. The thing was done: The house divided, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the early pieces, which were first published among your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken, —who snapped the three-fold cord,—whether yourself (but I know that was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions,—or whether (which is by much the more probable) some ungracious ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of sending your letter yesterday, nor do I see any prospect at present. The Ajax and Thunderer are joining; but, it is nearly calm, with a swell from the westward. Perseverance has got us thus far; and the same will, I dare say, ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... what to do, seeing that, whomsoever he chose for his son-in-law, he would make thirty powerful enemies. The most famous among them were Ulysses, King of the island of Ithaca; Diomed, King of Aetolia; Ajax, King of Salamis, the bravest and strongest man in Greece; his brother Teucer; Philoctetes, the friend of Hercules; and Menelaus, King of Sparta. At last, as there was no other way of deciding among them, an entirely new idea occurred ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... received humane shape, and felt, heard and walked: And smelling the sent of their owne haire, came and rapped at our doores in stead of Boetius. Then you being well tipled, and deceived by the obscurity of the night, drew out your sword courageously like furious Ajax, and kild not as he did, whole heard of beastes, but three blowne skinnes, to the intent that I, after the slaughter of so many enemies, without effusion of bloud might embrace and kisse, not an homicide ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... that he was a hero would be doing him great injustice; he was in truth a combination of heroes; for he was of a sturdy, raw-boned make, like Ajax Telamon, with a pair of round shoulders that Hercules would have given his hide for (meaning his lion's hide) when he undertook to ease old Atlas of his load. He was, moreover, as Plutarch describes Coriolanus, not only terrible for the force ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... a different time from the other two. He would have us believe that the parts embodying the Troilus and Cressida story were written in Shakespeare's earliest period, those concerning Hector in his middle period, and the Ajax parts in the last. That these three stories were interwoven is manifest; but they came naturally together in this Greek historical play—for it is that—and their interweaving was hardly to have been avoided; the manner of each is not distinct from that of the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... and pedestrians robbed. Naturally the entire household kept indoors, except such slaves as went out for fresh vegetables, fruits and fish. I solaced myself by reading the Tragedies of Ennius. I read parts of his Hector, Achilles, Neoptolemus, Ajax and Andromache, with much emotion, and especially the Bellerophon, forgetting everything else. Then I slept ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... now, and measur'd the ground, Then they form a large ring, and stand gazing around, Since AJAX fought HECTOR, in sight of all TROY, No contest was seen with such fear and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... and unmitigated softness to excess, and transferred this kind of luscious verse from small poems, where it is often a merit, to large ones, where it is a mistake. In his "Iliad," for instance, the fierce ire of Achilles, the dignified resentment of Agamemnon, the dull courage of Ajax, the chivalrous sentiment of Hector, the glowing energy of Diomede, the veteran wisdom of Nestor, the grief of Andromache, the love of Helen, the jealousy of Juno, and the godlike majesty of Jupiter, are all ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... flung in death Along the rugged rocks Silenian. And Dadaces no longer leads his troop, But, smitten by the spear, from off the prow Hath lightly leaped to death; and Tenagon, In true descent a Bactrian nobly born, Drifts by the sea-lashed reefs of Salamis, The isle of Ajax. Gone Lilaeus too, Gone are Arsames and Argestes! all, Around the islet where the sea-doves breed, Dashed their defeated heads on iron rocks; Arcteus, who dwelt beside the founts of Nile, Adeues, Pheresseues, and with them Pharnuchus, from one galley's deck went down. ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow: Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... promontory; and the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of those promontories was occupied by Achilles with his invincible myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to his disappointed pride, and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepulchre was erected on the ground where he had defended the navy against the rage of Jove and of Hector; and the citizens of the rising town of Rhaeteum ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... given a look into the Distant and Future, a glance into the soul of things separated from him by Space and Time. He will know concerning the Returners, in deep accord with the spirit of the poem. He hears of the awful death of Ajax, son of Oileus, he hears of the sad fate of his brother Agamemnon; also the Old Man of the Sea tells him a few words concerning Ulysses, who is still alive but cannot get away from the isle of Calypso. News just good enough to give hope ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... The sublime, says Longinus, is often nothing but the echo or image of magnanimity; and where this quality appears in any one, even though a syllable be not uttered, it excites our applause and admiration; as may be observed of the famous silence of Ajax in the Odyssey, which expresses more noble disdain and resolute indignation than any language can convey [Footnote: ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... notion what Cuculain looked like, and what Conall Carnach; you are familiar with the fire trailed from the chariot wheels, the sods kicked up by the horses' hoofs; you believe in them all, as you do in Odysseus and Ajax, in Bhishma and Arjuna, in Hamlet and Falstaff;—as I for my part never found it possible to believe in Malory's and Tennyson's well-groomed gentlemen of the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... golden urn, together with those of Patroclus, at a place on the Hellespont, where a tomb was erected to his memory; his soul dwells in the lower world, where it is seen by Odysseus. The contest between Ajax and Odysseus for his arms is also mentioned. The Aethiopis of Arctinus of Miletus took up the story of the Iliad. It told how Achilles, having slain the Amazon Penthesileia and Memnon, king of the Aethiopians, who had come to the assistance of the Trojans, was himself slain by Paris (Alexander), ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... AJAX: Hullo, Socrates, what are you doing patrolling the streets at this late hour? Surely it would be more seemly to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... should appear either over vain or talkative. For, as Homer says, "from his lips flowed discourse sweeter than honey," for which sweet breath he wanted no bodily strength. And yet, after all, the famous leader of the Greeks nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax, but like Nestor: if he could get them, he feels no doubt of ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Iron Age; the first part a history containing the Rape of Helen, the Siege of Troy, the Combat between Hector and Ajax. Hector and Troilus slain by Achilles, the Death ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... should transgress his path, they would punish him. The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector[122] dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded, that when the Thasians[123] erected a statue ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... lose their way (as I did) in a cursed quagmire of the Scamander, who wriggles about as if the Dardan virgins still offered their wonted tribute. The only vestige of Troy, or her destroyers, are the barrows supposed to contain the carcasses of Achilles, Antilochus, Ajax, &c.;—but Mount Ida is still in high feather, though the shepherds are now-a-days not much like Ganymede. But why should I say more of these things? are they not written in the Boke of Gell? and has not H. got a journal? I keep none, as I have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... come this way," he remarked, prodding the earth with his cane. "This crust will scarcely sustain the weight of an old Tithonus like myself, let alone a vigorous young Ajax ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... It is rare in Greek tragedy for the Chorus to leave the stage altogether in the middle of a play. But they do so, for example, in the Ajax of Sophocles. Ajax is lost, and the Sailors who form the Chorus go out to look for him; when they are gone the scene is supposed to shift and Ajax enters alone, arranging his own death. This very effective scene of the revelling Heracles is to be explained, I think, ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... Agamemnon, of astuteness from Ulysses, of patriotism from Hector, of tenderness from Andromache, of age from Nestor. The galleys of Rome were, the line-of-battle ships of France and England still are, called after his heroes. The Agamemnon long bore the flag of Nelson; the Ajax perished by the flames within sight of the tomb of the Telamonian hero, on the shores of the Hellespont; the Achilles was blown up at the battle of Trafalgar. Alexander the Great ran round the tomb of Achilles before undertaking the conquest of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... nothing to say. You have sighed over my dejection for months past, dear friend, but it has vanished with the tidings I have just received I am ready to rush out into the storm, bold and defiant as Ajax!" ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... I the issue learn, If red or black the gods will favor most, Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn, Struggling to heave some rock ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... seal their victory with his blood; Cobb, Dearborn, Laurens, Tilghman, green in years But ripe in glory, tower'd amid their peers; Death-daring Hamilton with splendor shone, And claim'd each post of danger for his own, Skill'd every arm in war's whole hell to wield, An Ithacus in camp, an Ajax in the field. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... compared with the Achaian manners are to a great extent what we should now call Asiatic as distinguished from European. Of the great chieftains, Achilles, Diomed, Ajax, Menelaos, and Patroclus appear chiefly to exhibit the Achaian ideal of humanity; Achilles, especially, and on a colossal scale. Odysseus, the many-sided man, has a strong Phoenician tinge, though the dominant ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... turn Lycon still held advantage, and down the other track went the twain, even as Odysseus ran behind Ajax, "who trod in Ajax' footsteps ere ever the dust had settled, while on his head fell the breath of him behind." Again at the lower goal the Mantinean was panting wearily in the rear. Again Lycon led, again ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of imagination which makes the Breton warrior unceasingly pursue the unknown;— nothing of all this is as yet to be observed. Roland differs from the heroes of Homer only by his armour; in heart he is the brother of Ajax or Achilles. Perceval, on the contrary, belongs to another world, separated by a great gulf from that in which the heroes of antiquity live ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... the effect of darkness on danger. "Let Ajax perish in the face of day." Who has not shuddered over the description of that Arkansas duel, fought by two naked combatants, with pistol and bowie-knife, in a dark room? One thrills to think of those first few moments of breathless, sightless, hopeless, hushed expectation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sluggish pulse like wine, He melts me like the wind of spice, Strong as strong Ajax' red right hand, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... peasantry." His first dim recollection of such a public appearance is as the "child," in Kotzebue's play, "Pizarro," who is carried across the bridge by Rolla. His next appearance was in a new entertainment, called "Living Statues," where he struck attitudes as "Ajax Defying the Lightning," or "The Dying Gladiator." At four years of age he made a hit by accompanying T. D. Rice, the original "Jim Crow," as a miniature copy of that once famous character, and the first money he earned ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... to abandon my baffled purpose, powerless to keep the Teucrian king from Italy? and because fate forbids me? Could Pallas lay the Argive fleet in ashes, and sink the Argives in the sea, for one man's guilt, mad Oilean Ajax? Her hand darted Jove's flying fire from the clouds, scattered their ships, upturned the seas in tempest; him, his pierced breast yet breathing forth the flame, she caught in a whirlwind and impaled on a spike of rock. But I, who move queen among ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... four things are suitable, because the noble Nature reveals them in it, even as the Song says. And that the example given may be the more memorable, AEacus says that he was the father of Telamon and Peleus and of Phocus, from which Telamon sprang Ajax ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... young feller," Cappy shrilled. "You know dad-blamed well it isn't a question of health or politics. It's the fact that in my old age I find myself totally surrounded by the choicest aggregation of mental duds since Ajax defied the lightning." ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... and inflames the new; Heightens the lustre of our age and clime, And sheds rich seeds of worth for future time. Proud chiefs alone, in fields of slaughter fam'd, Of old, this azure bloom of glory claim'd, As when stern Ajax pour'd a purple flood, The violet rose, fair daughter of his blood. Now rival wisdom dares the wreath divide, And both Minervas rise in equal pride; Proclaiming loud, a monarch fills the throne, Who shines illustrious not in wars alone. Let fame look lovely in Britannia's eyes; They ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... (though they say he never used one), or even that of the worthy who wasted precious years in writing a Homer Burlesqued, what heroic exploits might not I immortalise! In every stupid serf and cunning ruffian there, there was a heart as brave as Ajax's own; but then they fought with sticks instead of lances, and hammered away on fustian jackets instead of brazen shields; and, therefore, poor fellows, they were beneath 'the dignity of poetry,' whatever that may mean. If one of your ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... manubes, for so did they call the darting hurls or slinging casts of the Vulcanian thunderbolts, did only appertain to her and to Jupiter her father capital. This was verified in the conflagration of the ships of Ajax Oileus, nor doth this fulminating power belong to any other of the Olympic gods. Men, therefore, stand not in such fear of them. Moreover, I will tell you, and you may take it as extracted out of the profoundest mysteries of mythology, that, when ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... was descended from Ajax, by his father's side; and by his mother's side from Alcmaeon. Dinomache, his mother, was the daughter of Megacles. His father (Clinias) having fitted out a galley at his own expense, gained great honor in the seafight ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... pulse like wine, He melts me like the wind of spice, 30 Strong as strong Ajax' red right hand, And grand like ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is something besides, for it is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fiercely round them, well knowing that ere long they must be like those lying dead at their feet. Still they fought on, keeping their assailants at bay. In their midst was a chief, known by his tall plume and stalwart figure, a very Ajax in appearance. Cetchwayo, seeing the determined resistance offered, and that numbers of his men were falling, summoned a company of his own regiment, and led them on to the attack. The struggle was fierce, but of short duration. Scarcely a minute elapsed before ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... his vague fashion. "Ajax suggests somebody who defies lightning and fools about with a spear. It's a silly name. A maiden aunt persuaded my mother to give it to me. I think she mixed it up with Achilles. She admired the statue in Hyde Park. She got run ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... immense influence at Athens. Young, rich, handsome, profligate, and clever, Alcibiades was the very model of an Athenian man of fashion. In lineage he was a striking contrast to the plebeian orators of the day. He traced his paternal descent from Ajax, whilst on his mother's side he claimed relationship with the Alcmaeonidae and consequently with Pericles. On the death of his father Clinias Pericles had become his guardian. From early youth the conduct of Alcibiades was marked by violence, recklessness, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... [8]—Ajax the Less, son of Oileus, either ravished or attempted to ravish Cassandra (the story occurs in both forms) while she was clinging to the Palladium or image of Pallas. It is one of the great typical sins of the Sack of Troy, ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... everybody had something stirring to tell about him. I daresay this account of the man sounds exaggerated; perhaps it is; I've never seen him since; but at that time he seemed to me a tremendous fellow—a kind of scientific Ajax. He was a capital travelling-companion, at any rate: good-tempered, cheerful, easily amused, with none of the been-there-before superiority so irritating to youngsters. He made us feel as though it were all as new to him as to us: he never ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... word-painters; it is quite another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax[14] or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is something besides, for it is ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gulf, stood Eleusis, the scene of the Eleusinian mysteries, the most famous of all the religious ceremonials of Greece, sacred to Ceres, and celebrated every four years, and lasting for nine days. Opposite to Eleusis was Salamis, the birthplace of Ajax, Teucer, and Solon. There the Persian fleet of Xerxes was defeated by the Athenians. The capital, Athens, founded by Cecrops, 1556 B.C., received its name from the goddess Neith, an Egyptian deity, known by the Greeks ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Ajax was for light; Through all that dark and desperate fight, The blackness of that noonday night, He asked but the return of sight, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... kinds of Tragedy, the Complex, depending entirely on Reversal of the Situation and Recognition; the Pathetic (where the motive is passion),—such as the tragedies on Ajax and Ixion; the Ethical (where the motives are ethical),—such as the Phthiotides and the Peleus. The fourth kind is the Simple <We here exclude the purely spectacular element>, exemplified by the ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... 11/2 in. The carpenter shop remained the same except that the electric motor was replaced by a 25-h.p. single-cylinder air motor; there was added to the repair shop a drill shop containing: Four forges with compressed air blowers, four anvils, two Ajax 20-ft. drill sharpeners, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Site of the Terminal Station. Paper No. 1157 • George C. Clarke
... are dead, they cannot be insulted with impunity. Ajax was popularly believed, owing to the form taken by his madness, to be especially responsible for any misfortune that might befall flocks and herds. On one occasion some shepherds, who had had bad luck with ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... transpose the classical writers as to give, not the literal translation word for word, but what is really the modern equivalent. Let me give an odd sample or two to show what I mean. Take the passage in the First Book of Homer that describes Ajax the Greek dashing into the battle in front of Troy. Here is the way it runs (as nearly as I remember), in the usual word for word translation of the classroom, as done by the very best professor, his spectacles glittering with the literary rapture ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... and village-cotted hill, is (Flank'd by the Hellespont and by the sea) Entomb'd the bravest of the brave, Achilles; They say so (Bryant says the contrary): And further downward, tall and towering still, is The tumulus—of whom? Heaven knows! 't may be Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus— All heroes, who if living ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron |
