"Delphi" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carved "MAN—KNOW THYSELF" over the entrance to the Temple at Delphi knew what they were talking about, for it is largely owing to the fact that man knows so little of himself—and generally knows that little wrong—that his philosophy has taken such a perverted turn. The world, and more especially our western world, ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... Delphi, another consecrated city, was enriched with the contributions of all Greece, and was the seat of the Dorian religion. So rich were the shrines of its oracle that Nero carried away from it five hundred statues of bronze at ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Walking to the great gate by the highway she looked wistfully between its iron rods, for one last glimpse of him. A sudden realization came to her that she knew nothing about him, not even an address, "except Delphi," she said whimsically to herself. Only a minute ago he had been there; and now she had wantonly let him go out ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... should be established in this place; and that the other, having flown into Lybia, had there formed or founded the oracle of Jupiter Ammon. These origins are certainly very frivolous and very fabulous. The Oracle of Delphi is more recent and more celebrated. Phemonoe was the first priestess of Delphi, and began in the time of Acrisius, twenty-seven years before Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus. She is said to have been the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Apollo have been accustomed by an old-fashioned and ridiculously incompetent priesthood to look for an instant and mechanical relation between sound and sense. I would not exaggerate, sire; but the kind of poetry lately cultivated, not only at Delphi, but in Delos also, ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... Chase, groceries and commission, Delphi. E. J. Darby and W. H. Chase compose the firm; seem to be men of good character and business capacity. They are thought to ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... ended, they offered sacrifice and partook of the holy banquet, after which the two youths fell asleep in the temple. They never woke again, but so passed from the earth. The Argives, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made, which they gave to the shrine at Delphi." ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... represented in Homer, connects itself, on the one side, with those fabulous jewels so prominent in mythological story, and entwined sometimes so oddly in its representation of human fortunes—the necklace of Eriphyle, the necklace of Helen, which Menelaus, it was said, offered at Delphi to Athene Pronoea, on the eve of his expedition against Troy—mythical objects, indeed, but which yet bear witness even thus early to the aesthetic susceptibility of the Greek temper. But, on the other hand, the art of the heroic age connects itself also ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the damned idols of the heathen, keeps yet St. Bacchus and St. Venus, St. Mars and St. Apollo, perched in sobered robes upon the so-called Christian altar; which yet pays divine honours to an ancyle or a rusty nail; to the black stones at Delphi, or the gold-shrined bones at Aix; which yet sanctifies the chickens of the capitol, or the cock that startled Peter; which yet lets a wealthy sinner, by his gold, bribe the winking Pythoness, or buy dispensing clauses from "the Lord our God, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... honor to his memory upon much juster grounds than to Silanio and Parrhasius, for making pictures and statues of Theseus. There being then a custom for the Grecian youth, upon their first coming to a man's estate, to go to Delphi and offer firstfruits of their hair to the god, Theseus also went thither, and a place there to this day is yet named Thesea, as it is said, from him. He clipped only the fore part of his head, as Homer says the Abantes did. And ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... it. I have sent to Delphi and Dodona and every other oracle from Olisipo to Pattala, but I can find no record of any such oracle having been uttered. The people, however, credit it as if it came ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... whose mane he had hung a votive wreath of water-lilies, across whose unresponsive neck the Lord Mayor had wound his arms in supplication, imploring it that it might speak, and give a sign like the Oracle in Delphi. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... to the Mannering library and its collections. At the end of the room stood now a huge archaic Nike, with outstretched peplum and soaring wings. To her left was the small figure, archaic also, of a charioteer, from the excavations at Delphi, amazingly full of life in spite of hieratic and traditional execution. But the most conspicuous thing of all was a mutilated Eros, by a late Rhodian artist—subtle, thievish, lovely, breathing an evil and daemonic charm. It stood opposite ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assume an aggressive attitude towards their neighbors. Gyges' revenue was so great that his wealth became proverbial, and he could afford to spread his fame by sending from his superfluity to the distant temple of Delphi presents of such magnificence that they were the admiration of later ages. The relations of his predecessors with the Greeks of the Asiatic coast had been friendly, Gyges changed this policy, and, desirous of enlarging his seaboard, made war upon the Greek maritime towns, attacking Miletus ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... still evidently flow at the same places as in the times of Hellenic antiquity. The spring of Erasinos, two hours' journey to the south of Argos, on the declivity of Chaon, is mentioned by Herodotus. At Delphi we still see Cassotis (now the springs of St. Nicholas) rising south of the Lesche, and flowing beneath the Temple of Apollo; Castalia, at the foot of Phaedriadae; Pirene, near Acro-Corinth; and the hot baths of Aedipsus, in Euboea, in which ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... had worshipped. Zeus, father of the Gods, the twin-brothers, Apollo in his glorious shrine at Delphi, Hermes who is the conductor of enterprises: the dear son of the house is harnessed to the car of calamity, moderate its pace—and may Murder cease to breed new Murder. But the Avenger, like Perseus, must not look on the deed as he does it; as she calls the name Mother let ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... struck the king's heart with sudden terror, as it filled him with anxious solicitude. Accordingly, since Etruscan soothsayers were only employed for public prodigies, terrified at this so to say private apparition, he determined to send to the oracle of Delphi, the most celebrated in the world; and not venturing to intrust the responses of the oracle to any other person, he despatched his two sons to Greece through lands unknown at that time, and yet more unknown seas. Titus and Arruns were the two who set out. They ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... centre. The Egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human figure, in which Egypt was the heart, and the centre of it Thebes. For the Assyrians, it was Babylon; for the Hindus, it was Mount Meru; for the Greeks, so far as the civilized world was concerned, Olympus or the temple at Delphi; for the modern Mohammedans, it is Mecca and its sacred stone; the Chinese, to this day, speak of their empire as the "middle kingdom." It was in accordance, then, with a simple tendency of human thought that the Jews believed the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the same is to be said touching several points of chronological confusion; such as the making Whitsun pastorals, Christian burial, Julio Romano, the Emperor of Russia, and Puritans singing psalms to hornpipes, all contemporary with the Oracle of Delphi; wherein actual things are but marshalled into an ideal order, so as to render Memory subservient to Imagination. In these and such points, it is enough that the materials be apt to combine among themselves, and that they agree in working out the issue ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... exposed by his parents on Mount Cithaeron. But he was saved by a compassionate shepherd, and became the adopted son of Polybus, king of Corinth. When he grew up he was troubled by a rumour that he was not his father's son. He went to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and was told—not of his origin but of his destiny—that he should be guilty of ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Hermes of Andokides, which was erected by the tribe AEgeis, and stands before the house in which Andokides lived at that time. A man likewise leaped upon the altar of the Twelve Gods, sat astride upon it, and in that posture mutilated himself with a sharp stone. At Delphi too there is a golden statue of Pallas Athene standing upon a brazen palm tree, an offering made by the city of Athens from the spoils taken in the Persian war. This was for many days pecked at by crows, who at last pecked off and cast upon the ground the golden fruit of the palm tree. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Tell—that is, with the sun, which of course brings us back to Roth's view of the hawk, or solar Gladstone, though this argument in his own favour has been neglected by the learned mythologist. He might also, if he cared, adduce the solar stone of Delphi, fabled to have been swallowed by Cronus. Kuhn, indeed, lends an involuntary assent to this conclusion (Ueber Entwick. der Myth.) when he asserts that the stone swallowed by Cronus was the setting sun. Thus we have only to combine our information to see how correct is the view of ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... oracle of Delphi, you old rascal," cried the Prince, with great good-humour. "That's a crumb of the mouldy bread of learning you used to cram down my throat in the old days. It makes Master Wheatman writhe to hear it. The only advantage I ever got out of being ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Experience, partly upon pretended Revelation, have added innumerable other superstitious wayes of Divination; and made men believe they should find their fortunes, sometimes in the ambiguous or senslesse answers of the priests at Delphi, Delos, Ammon, and other famous Oracles; which answers, were made ambiguous by designe, to own the event both wayes; or absurd by the intoxicating vapour of the place, which is very frequent in sulphurous Cavernes: Sometimes in the leaves of the Sibills; of whose Prophecyes (like ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... know everything, in Boston—but we do know where to find it. We have an excellent newspaper press, daily and weekly, and should either or both ever, by any chance, fail to know anything—past, present, or to come—we have a Monday Lectureship, beside which the Oracle of Delphi was a last year's ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... announced his purpose to leave the country for a period, and moved the citizens to take an oath that they would observe the laws until he should return. He departed to remain away to the end of his life, but first repaired to Delphi and obtained an oracle promising prosperity to the Spartans, so long as they should maintain faithfully ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... hinted, she had consulted his second sight in preference to her own, and she had not been deceived. His greater learning and his vast experience lent to his sayings something divine in her eyes; she looked upon him as the Pythoness of Delphi looked upon the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... which lies far north of Delphi, there lived a young girl whose name was Daphne. She was a strange child, wild and shy as a fawn, and as fleet of foot as the deer that feed on the plains. But she was as fair and good as a day in June, and none could know her but ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... was still practised by the morning newspapers the dear old farce of purporting to forecast the unknown. On the morning that opens the new Session there appears in all well-conducted morning papers an article delivered in the style of the Priestess Pythia in the temple at Delphi. Nothing is positively assumed, but the public are told that when the Queen's Speech is disclosed "it will probably contain promise of legislation" on such a head, whilst it will "doubtless be found that Her Majesty's Ministers have not been unmindful ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... thus gathered together called this assembly the Am-phic-ty-on'ic Council, in honor of Amphictyon. After making plans to drive back the Thracians, they decided to meet once a year, either at Thermopylae or at the temple at Delphi, to talk over all ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... use to which Xenophon applied the tithe voted by the army at Kerasus to the Ephesian Artemis; the other tithe, voted at the same time to Apollo, he dedicated at Delphi in the treasure-chamber of the Athenians, inscribing upon the offering his own name and that of Proxenus. His residence being only at a distance of a little more than two miles from the great temple of Olympia,[121] he was enabled to enjoy society with every variety of Greeks—and ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... But, O Athenians! do not cry out against me, even though I should seem to you to speak somewhat arrogantly. For the account which I am going to give you is not my own; but I shall refer to an authority whom you will deem worthy of credit. For I shall adduce to you the god at Delphi as a witness of my wisdom, if I have any, and of what it is. You doubtless know Chaerepho: he was my associate from youth, and the associate of most of you; he accompanied you in your late exile, ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... not ashamed to confess that I was in error. For self-knowledge would certainly be maintained by me to be the very essence of knowledge, and in this I agree with him who dedicated the inscription, 'Know thyself!' at Delphi. That word, if I am not mistaken, is put there as a sort of salutation which the god addresses to those who enter the temple; as much as to say that the ordinary salutation of 'Hail!' is not right, and that the ...
— Charmides • Plato
... teachings a practical character founded upon the knowledge of man. He took for his point of departure man himself, and established (according to this idea) a morality with the motto of the temple of Delphi,—"Know thyself." This doctrine related more especially to ethics than to aesthetics—as later did that of Pierre Leroux—and it was far from being able to direct artists ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... continued to maintain its ascendency; and the oracles delivered from its dark and mysterious shrine, were held in no less repute among the natives of Tavantinsuyu, (or "the four quarters of the world," as Peru under the Incas was called,) than the oracles of Delphi obtained among the Greeks. Pilgrimages were made to the hallowed spot from the most distant regions, and the city of Pachacamac became among the Peruvians what Mecca was among the Mahometans, or Cholula with the people of Anahuac. The shrine of the deity, enriched by the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... and termed it cibus deorum, food of the gods. John Evelyn says (in his Acetaria) "the ancient Silphium thought by many to be none other than the fetid asa, was so highly prized for its taste and virtues, that it was dedicated to Apollo at Delphi, and stamped upon African coins ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... submit or to evacuate Athens, removing their families and their goods to Troezen or Aegina or Salamis. In the fleet, their contingent was by far the largest and best, but the commanding admiral was the Spartan Eurybiades. Then the Persians, passing through Boeotia, but, being dispersed before Delphi by thunderbolts and other portents, took possession of Athens, after a fierce fight with the garrison ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... early age was identified with the Ram or Lamb, into whose form he was for the time being changed. At times also he was worshiped in the form of a Bull. (2) He travelled far and wide; and brought the great gift of wine to mankind. (3) He was called Liberator, and Saviour. His grave "was shown at Delphi in the inmost shrine of the temple of Apollo. Secret offerings were brought thither, while the women who were celebrating the feast woke up the new-born god.... Festivals of this kind in celebration of the extinction and resurrection of the deity were held (by women and ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... books, traditions, proverbs,—all perished,—which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard speak with authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of originality: ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... nomizomenon par' humin Theon OPHIS sumbolon mega kai musterion anagraphetai]. It is remarkable, that wherever the Amonians founded any places of worship, and introduced their rites, there was generally some story of a serpent. There was a legend about a serpent at Colchis, at Thebes, and at Delphi; likewise in other places. The Greeks called Apollo himself Python, which is the same as Opis, Oupis, and Oub. The woman at Endor, who had a familiar spirit, is called [189][Hebrew: AWB], Oub, or Ob; and it is interpreted Pythonissa. The place where she resided, seems to have been named ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... go to Delphi, of course," she said. "But," she asked herself, "what do I want from him? Perhaps it is something that I ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... off the streets, although at Alexandria she has shrines and temples, with an inscription as Aphrodite Belestiche, which she owes to the king's love? And she who has in this very town[75] a temple and rites in common with Eros, and at Delphi stands in gold among kings and queens, by what dowry got she her lovers? But just as the lovers of Semiramis, Belestiche, and Phryne, became their prey unconsciously through their weakness and effeminacy, so on the other hand poor and obscure men, having contracted alliances with rich women of rank, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... recognised as legitimate by the Oracle. Above all, the honour shown by the Oracle to Pindar, one of the chief representatives of the earlier thought, testifies to this. Hence there is nothing incredible in the assumption that Socrates attracted notice at Delphi as a defender of the old-fashioned religious views approved by the Oracle, precisely in virtue of his opposition to the ideas then ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... teacher of rhetoric hard by the Forum—I will give you a letter to him when you become wise enough to accept a suggestion which I am reminded to make you—a little practise of the art of mystery, and Delphi will receive you as Apollo himself. At the sound of your solemn voice, the Pythia will come down to you with her crown. Seriously, O my friend, in what am I not the Messala I went away? I once heard the greatest logician in the world. His subject was Disputation. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... that this is true devotion to one's profession. They will be able, they think, to discourse easily and, God help us, picturesquely about what they have seen, to intersperse a Thucydides lesson with local colour, and to describe the site of the temple of Delphi to boys beginning the Eumenides. It is very right and proper, no doubt, but it produces in me a species of mental nausea to think of the conditions under which these impressions will be absorbed. The arrangements for luncheon, the brisk interchange of shop, the cheery ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... have been assisted in this difficult task by the goddess Metis, who artfully persuaded Cronus to drink a potion, which caused him to give back the children he had swallowed. The stone which had counterfeited Zeus was placed at Delphi, where it was long exhibited as ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... known to men in different ways—by dreams, by the flight of birds, or by a direct message from Olympus. Very often it was learned by consulting seers, augurs or soothsayers. These were persons believed to have the power of prophecy. There was a famous temple of Apollo at Delphi, in Greece, where a priestess called Pyth'i-a gave answers, or oracles, to those who came to consult her. The name oracle was also applied to the place where such answers were received. There were a great many oracles in ancient times, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... Peter's, perhaps, in especial; Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me: This, however, perhaps, is the weather, which truly is horrid. Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful, That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai, Though but to see with my eyes that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the mountaineers of the wild border highlands of Persia as, if Herodotus' story is well founded, they were ignorant of their quality. Croesus took his time, sending envoys to consult oracles near and far. Herodotus tells us that he applied to Delphi not less than thrice and even to the oracle of Ammon in the Eastern Sahara. At least a year must have been spent in these inquiries alone, not to speak of an embassy to Sparta and perhaps others to Egypt and Babylon. These preliminaries ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... her the story of Ion, and managed well enough in describing the boy and how he ministered before the shrine at Delphi, sweeping the temple and scaring the birds away from the precincts: but when he came to the plot of the play and, looking up, caught Honoria's eyes, it suddenly occurred to him that all the rest of the story was a sensual one, and he could not tell it to her. He blushed, ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... demi-gods, heroes, giants, etc., such as Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Trophonius, Geryon, Ulysses, Calchas, AEsculapius, Hercules, Pasiphae, Phryxus, etc. The most celebrated and most patronized of them all was the great oracle of Apollo, at Delphi. The "little fee" appears to have been the only universal characteristic of the proceedings for obtaining an answer from the god. Whether you got your reply in words spoken by the rattling of an old ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... to Greece. Corinth, Athens, the islands, Tempe, Delphi, Crete—how good to have money and be able to see all these! Italy and Greece are Europe's pleasure grounds; there the cultivated and the prosperous traveller may satisfy his soul and forget carking cares and stabbing ambitions, and drug ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... self-knowledge such an easy thing, and was he to be lightly esteemed who inscribed the text on the temple at Delphi? Or is self-knowledge a difficult thing, which few ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... of unknown space, with a card from the "Atlantic Monthly," on a corner of which is written a mysterious "Go, if you can," and says, "Come with me to Labrador," what can I do but accept the omen? Therefore, after due delay, and due warning from dear friends, and due consultations of the connubial Delphi, not forgetting to advise with Dr. Oramel, the discreet lip obeys the instant indiscreet wish, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... belonging to] both temples [the temple of Isis and that of Bubastis]:—Seventeen statues; one head of the Sun; four silver images; one medallion; two bronze altars; one tripod (in the shape of one at Delphi); a cup for libations; a patera; a diadem [for the statue of the goddess] studded with gems; a sistrum of gilded silver; a gilt cup; a patera ornamented with ears of corn; a necklace studded with beryls; ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... almost till our own day, bore three serpents twined together, whose heads long ago supported a golden tripod. This bronze monument is none other than the votive offering to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, presented by the confederated states of Greece, to celebrate the victory of Plataea. The golden tripod was melted down at the time of Philip of Macedon, but the twisted serpents, brought by Constantine to adorn and hallow his new ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... bodings, I moved slowly out of the cloisters; and, gaining my gondola, arrived, I know not how, at the flights of steps which lead to the Redenptore, a structure so simple and elegant, that I thought myself entering an antique temple, and looked about for the statue of the God of Delphi, or some other graceful divinity. A huge crucifix of bronze soon ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... you believe it right that his relatives should lose their property? 39. It is not likely, gentlemen of the jury. For the death of Conon and the will which he made in Cyprus clearly showed that his money was a very small part of what you expected, for to Athena and to Apollo in Delphi he dedicated five thousand staters. 40. And to his nephew who kept guard for him and had charge of his affairs in Cyprus, he gave ten thousand drachmae, and three talents to his brother; the rest, seventeen talents, he left to his son. The sum total is about forty ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... from which they drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,—all perished,—which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard speak with authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi[580] whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and rely on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... regions of Greece were particularly renowned for temples from which oracles were issued. The temple of Apollo at Delphi, situated upon a lofty rock near Parnassus, and that of Jupiter in the groves of Dodona, were celebrated for the responses of the Pythia and the priests; they were held in the greatest veneration for many ages, and their oracles were consulted even in the most enlightened times by philosophers ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... the holy blood that flows from the neck of a captive and dying bull. Down into classical times bull's blood was a sacred thing which it was dangerous to touch and death to taste: to drink a cup of it was the most heroic form of suicide.[20:3] The sacrificial bull at Delphi was called Hosioter: he was not merely hosios, holy; he was Hosioter, the Sanctifier, He who maketh Holy. It was by contact with him that holiness was spread to others. On a coin and a vase, cited by Miss Harrison,[21:1] we have a bull entering ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... that wave o'er Delphi's steep, Isles that crown the AEgean deep, Fields that cool Ilissus laves, Or where Meander's amber waves In lingering labyrinths creep, I How do your tuneful echoes languish, Mute but to the voice of Anguish? Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breathed around; Every shade and ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... quickly back, and picked up the two halves. "The oracle of Delphi was not more impudently worked," he said. "Observe this sponge, these plates of metal that close down upon it and exert the pressure necessary to send the liquid with which it is laden oozing forth." As he spoke he tore out the fiendish mechanism. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... propriety of making the journey; and Socrates, fearing that if he attached himself to Cyrus it might prove a ground for accusation against him with his country, because Cyrus was thought to have zealously assisted the Lacedaemonians in their war with Athens, advised Xenophon to go to Delphi, and consult the god respecting the expedition. 6. Xenophon, having gone thither accordingly, inquired of Apollo to which of the gods he should sacrifice and pray, in order most honourably and successfully ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... reconcile the inhabitants of those cities to the administration of their respective rulers, Pariander and Pisistratus. One of these ambassadorial missions, undertaken at the command of Croesus, was the occasion of his death. Having been sent to Delphi with a large sum of gold for distribution among the citizens, he was so provoked at their covetousness that he refused to divide the money, and sent it back to his master. The Delphians, enraged at this treatment, accused him of impiety, and, in spite of his sacred character as ambassador, ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree, Set apart for the Fane and its service divine, So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree, Are by Liberty claimed for the use of ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... mysteries. Until man fathoms his own universe, he cannot understand God. "Know thyself" is as applicable to-day as when the famous, immortal and mystic utterance was inscribed on the porch of the temple at Delphi. ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... him that they scarce dared to look a Hellene in the face. Everywhere he saved the territory of his friends from devastation, and reaped the fruits of the enemy's soil to such good effect that within two years he was able to dedicate as a tithe to the god at Delphi more ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... animals,—tame it or crush it. The India mail brings stories of women and children outraged and murdered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-killers. England takes down the Map of the World, which she has girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus: [DELPHI] Dele. The civilized world ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... from abroad more than from her own native ones; it being known that in Rhodes, the city of an island in no way large, there were more than 30,000 statues counted, either in bronze or in marble, nor did the Athenians have less, while those at Olympia and at Delphi were many more and those in Corinth numberless, and all were most beautiful and of the greatest value. Is it not known that Nicomedes, King of Lycia, in his eagerness for a Venus that was by the hand of Praxiteles, spent on it almost ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... the Gypsies. It is the greatest picture of the modern world; for, Mr. Aylwin, it renders in Art the inevitable attitude of its own time and country towards the unseen world, and renders it as completely as did the masterpiece of Polygnotus in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi—as completely as did the wonderful frescoes of Andrea Orcagna on the walls of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... alumen was a product of Spain, Egypt, Armenia, Macedonia, Pontus, Africa, and the Islands of Sardinia, Melos, Lipara, and Strangyle, and that the most esteemed is that of Egypt. And Herodotus mentions that King Amasis of Egypt sent the people of Delphi a thousand talents of this substance, as his contribution toward the rebuilding of their temple. Notwithstanding considerable confusion in Pliny's account of this substance, our belief is, that it refers to different salts of alumina, and whether or not they were all ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the two masters made an abortive attempt to visit Italy, and at Easter there was talk of a cruise in the Aegean. Herbert actually went, and enjoyed Athens and Delphi. The Elliots paid a few visits together in England. They returned to Sawston about ten days before school opened, to find that Widdrington was again stopping with the Jacksons. Intercourse was painful, for the two families were scarcely on speaking terms; nor did the triumphant ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Delphi's steep, Isles, that crown th' Aegean deep, Fields that cool Ilissus laves Or where Maeander's amber waves In lingering lab'rinths creep, How do your tuneful echoes languish, Mute, but to the voice of anguish! Where each old ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... those of the chief Greek cities and states are of comparatively minor importance in the Homeric world; Athens is mentioned, but not with any prominence; Corinth is merely a dependency of its neighbour Mycenae; Sparta only ranks along with other towns of Laconia; Delphi and Olympia have not yet assumed anything like the place which they afterwards occupy as religious centres during the historic period. The chief cities of Hellas are Mycenae, Tiryns, and Orchomenos. Crete, although its ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... Drpfeld it was opposite this Pythium that the Panathenaic ship came to rest.[124] In Ion, 285, Euripides makes it clear that, from the wall near the Pythium, the watchers looked toward Harma for that lightning which was the signal for the sending of the offering to Delphi. This passage would have no meaning if referred to lightning to be seen by Page 61 looking toward Harma from any position near the existing Olympieum; for the rocks referred to by Euripides are to the northwest, and so could not be visible from the later Pythium. To be sure, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... England and France, laid bare to its base and carefully copied the inscription, engraved some twenty-three centuries ago, upon the brazen stand of the famous tripod which was dedicated by the confederate Greeks to Apollo at Delphi, after the defeat of the Persian host at Platea,—an inscription that Herodotus himself speaks of, and by which, indeed, the Father of History seems to have authenticated his own battle-roll of the Greek combatants. Archaeology has busied itself also, particularly ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... calls 'The Life of Aesop,' that perhaps cannot be matched in any language for ignorance and nonsense. He had picked up two or three true stories,—that Aesop was a slave to a Xanthus, carried a burthen of bread, conversed with Croesus, and was put to death at Delphi; but the circumstances of these and all his other tales are pure invention.... But of all his injuries to Aesop, that which can least be forgiven him is the making such a monster of him for ugliness,—an abuse that has found credit so universally that all the modern painters ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... favourable gale in all my affairs, I still expected some change and reflux of things. In one day I passed the Ionian Sea, and reached Corcyra from Brundisium; thence in five more I sacrificed at Delphi, and in other five days came to my forces in Macedonia, where, after I had finished the usual sacrifices for the purifying of the army, I entered on my duties, and in the space of fifteen days put an honourable period to the war. Still retaining ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Witchcraft, lib. viii. chap. 12. The contrivance of this illusion was possibly like that at Delphi, where in the centre of the temple was a chasm, from which arose an intoxicating smoke, when the priestess was to announce divine revelations. Seated over the chasm upon the tripod, the Pythia was inspired, it seems, by ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... charmed circle of Hellas. For Apollo, who in one of his aspects is a figure so typically Hellenic, the ever-young and beautiful god of music and the arts, was also the Power of prophetic inspiration, of ecstasy or passing out of oneself. The priestess who delivered his oracle at Delphi was possessed and mastered by the god. Maddened by mephitic vapours streaming from a cleft in the rock, convulsed in every feature and every limb, she delivered in semi- articulate cries the burden of the divine message. Her own personality, for the time being, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... 'Childe Harold' at Ioannina Visits Actium, Nicopolis; nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war proceeds through Acarnania and AEtolia towards the Morea Reaches Missolonghi Visits Patras, Vostizza, Mount Parnassus, Delphi, Lepanto, Thebes Mount Cithaeron Arrives, on Christmas-day, at Athens 1810. Spends ten weeks in visiting the monuments of Athens; makes excursions to several parts of Attica The Maid of Athens Leaves Athens for Smyrna ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you the early thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be the tracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only, but in sculpture, and on the portal of the Temple of Delphi itself, you have the "[Greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisi giganton]," and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight from the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, "[Greek: leusso Pallad' eman theon]," ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... dispose of, either in town or countrey, may have ready money for them of Will. Newton, Bookseller in Little Britain, London. Also all gentlemen, and schoolmasters, may be furnished with all sorts of classics, in usum Delphi, Variorum, etc. Likewise, he will exchange with any person, for any books they have read and ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... hast! It is owing to thy care, thou tenderest child, that my grave was not dug long years ago, in some valley, or on some hillside, that lies far, far behind us. It is enough. Thou shalt wander no more on this hopeless search. But when thou hast laid thy mother in the earth, then go, my son, to Delphi, and inquire of the oracle ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... knew that they were setting out on a dangerous enterprise, but to the Spartans it meant more than that. Leonidas himself felt that he was going to his death, for the oracle at Delphi had foretold that Sparta should be saved if one of her kings should perish, and Leonidas was more than willing to make this sacrifice for his state. His three hundred followers, trained from childhood to look upon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... loved me before. I know she took possession of me, body and soul. I married her. I would just as willingly have jumped into the Seine with her if she had preferred it. For three months we lived together while I finished the picture which I called the Priestess of Delphi, painted from my drawings of her in her agony. The picture made a great noise in Paris, and brought me some new friends, among the rest one who, I think, really saved me from Charenton. Hazard called at my studio just as my troubles were beginning to tear me to pieces. ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... gods.[93] Every one also has rather marvelled at the somewhat lame and impotent conclusion of the play when Athene—herself in reality one of the most infamous of the Olympian deities—is brought on the stage to save the prestige of the oracle at Delphi and to explain away the altogether disreputable behaviour of the no less infamous Apollo. But no one before Verrall had thought of coupling together the free-thinking and the episode in the play. This is what Verrall did. Ion sees that the oracle can lie, and, therefore, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Leonidas. But the veil of the centuries hides from posterity events that the pen of the historian might have bequeathed to the everlasting admiration of the nations. Somnath might have appeared as a rival of Delphi, the treasures of Hind might outweigh the riches of the King of Lydia, while compared with the army of the brothers Pandu, that of Xerxes would seem an inconsiderable handful of men, worthy only to rank in ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... is truly ennobling. I do not mean as the egotist thinks. But to think of our individual capacity and obligations. The Greeks had a motto over their temple at Delphi, it was 'Know Thyself.' To know ourselves is the beginning of wisdom. Young men, learn to know yourselves and your responsibility; but none of these is ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... a lamb from the wolf, as a deer from the lion, or as a dove with trembling wings Bees from the eagle! I am no common man! I am no shepherd! Thou knowest not, rash maid, from whom thou art flying! The priests of Delphi and Tenedos pay their service to me. Jupiter is my sire. Mine own arrow is unerring, but Cupid's aim is truer, for he has made this wound in my heart! Alas! wretched me! though I am that great one who discovered the art of healing, yet this love may ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... why, twist it how you will, Thy chaplet must be foolscap still. When next you visit Delphi's town, Enquire amongst your fellow-lodgers, They'll tell you Phoebus gave his crown, Some years before ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... 56: The Corycian Nymphs.—Ver. 320. The Corycian Nymphs were so called from inhabiting the Corycian cavern in Mount Parnassus; they were fabled to be the daughters of Plistus, a river near Delphi. There was another Corycian cave in Cilicia, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... person is a house into which he never enters, and of which he studies the outside alone. Each of us need have continually before him the famous inscription which once instructed Socrates, and which was engraved on the walls of Delphi by ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... beautiful islands of the blue AEgean; had wandered in the classic vale of Eurotas, and amongst the ruins of Sparta; had traversed Thessaly, and surveyed the famous Pass where Leonidas and his warriors stood at bay against the hosts of Persia; had mused in the oracular shades of Delphi and gazed at the haunted peak of Parnassus, and looked upon all that remains of hundred-gated Thebes. It is impossible for us to follow in all this extended circuit, and over ground so rich in tradition and association. Wherever she went she carried the great gift of a refined taste and a ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... throughout in palaces, camps, and temples; kings, high-priests, and satraps, figure in every page; the hero himself is a prince of his own people; and the heroine, who at first appears of no lower rank than a high-priestess of Delphi, proves, in the sequel, the heiress of a mighty kingdom. In the work of Achilles Tatius, on the contrary, (the plot of which is laid at a later period of time than that of its predecessor,) the characters are taken, without exception, from the class ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Hermione speaks of herself as a daughter of the Emperor of Russia, that her statue is represented as executed by Julio Romano, an Italian painter of the 16th century, that a puritan sings psalms to hornpipes, and, to crown all, that messengers are sent to consult the oracle of Apollo, at Delphi, which is represented as an island! All this jumble, this gallimaufry, I say, does not impair the spiritual worth of the play. As an Art-product, it invites a rectified attitude toward the True and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... bribes, she might authorize and kindle the same aspiring views in other great officers. Thus, in the new condition of the Roman power, there was a perpetual peril, lest an oracle, so potent as that of Delphi, should absolutely create rebellions, by first suggesting hopes to men in high commands. Even as it was, all treasonable assumptions of the purple, for many generations, commenced in the hopes inspired by auguries, prophecies, or sortileges. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... gods and daemons and demoniacal men, of the "azonic" and the "aquatic gods," daemons with fulgid eyes, and all the rest of the Platonic rhetoric, exalted a little under the African sun, sail before his eyes. The acolyte has mounted the tripod over the cave at Delphi; his heart dances, his sight is quickened. These guides speak of the gods with such depth and with such pictorial details, as if they had been bodily present at the Olympian feasts. The reader of these books makes new acquaintance with his own mind; new regions of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... business going on than in the toy quarter, and in the Atmeidan. Although you may see there the Thebaic stone set up by the Emperor Theodosius, and the bronze column of serpents which Murray says was brought from Delphi, but which my guide informed me was the very one exhibited by Moses in the wilderness, yet I found the examination of these antiquities much less pleasant than to look at the many troops of children assembled on the plain to play; and to watch them as they were dragged about ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when the people of Croton went to war, they also left a vacant space for Ajax in the forefront of their line. However this may be, Leonymus was wounded in the breast, and as the wound refused to heal and weakened him considerably, he applied to Delphi for advice. The god told him to sail to the White Isle, where Ajax would heal him of his wound. Thither, therefore, he went, and was duly healed. On his return he described what he had seen—how that Achilles was ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... son of Agenor, king of Phoenicia and brother of Europa. After his sister had been carried off by Zeus, he was sent out to find her. Unsuccessful in his search, he came in the course of his wanderings to Delphi, where he consulted the oracle. He was ordered to give up his quest and follow a cow which would meet him, and to build a town on the spot where she should lie down exhausted. The cow met him in Phocis, and guided him to Boeotia, where he founded the city of Thebes. Intending to sacrifice ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... this idea is certainly confirmed by various passages in ancient authors. Cicero expressly informs us, that even so early as the age of Pythagoras, a great number of people attended the religious games for the express purpose of trading. At Delphi, Nemaea, Delos, or the Isthmus of Corinth, a fair was held almost every year. The amphyctionic fairs were held twice a year. In the time of Chrysostom, these lairs were infamously distinguished for a traffic in slaves, destined ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of the gods am I, sent forth From the ancient council of the Amphictyons That speaks its judgments in that holy town Of freedom, Delphi. And I follow close, With cries of vengeance, on the guilty tracks Of those false kinsmen of King Pelias, Who ruled Iolcos, ere he fell ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was evidently fresh from the East.[448] A frieze eight cubits high was composed of niches containing groups of tragic, comic, and Satyric figures "in their natural garb;" and nymphs and golden tripods from Delphi. The tent was separated from the outer peristyle by scarlet hangings, covered with choice skins of wild beasts. Upon these were hung the celebrated Sikyonian pictures, the heritage of the Ptolemaic dynasty, alternating with portraits and rich hangings, on which were embroidered ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... college-rooms rather than the visitor to Florence and Rome. For one thing, his allusions are too many, and too transitory, to appear anything but artistic tricks and verse- making tools. The 'Aegean deep', and 'Delphi's steep', and 'Meander's amber waves', and the 'rosy-crowned Loves', are too cursorily summoned, and dismissed, to suggest that they have been brought in ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... unwelcome to them, a religious or mystic character. He has a "vocation" thus to proceed, has been literally "called," as he understands, by the central religious authority of Greece. His seemingly invidious testing of men's pretensions [82] to know, is a sacred service to the God of Delphi, which he dares not neglect. And his fidelity herein had in turn the effect of reinforcing for him, and bringing to a focus, all the other rays of religious light cast at random in the world ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... manner of death of the mainly pleasant old country poet, still more the supposed cause of it—but it may not be true. The Oracle at Delphi, which it seems he consulted after his triumph at Chalkis, warned him that he would come by his end in the grove of Nemean Zeus. He took pains, therefore, to avoid Nemea in his travels, and chose to stay for a while at OEnoe in Lokris, "where," says Mr. Evelyn-White, his editor ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum. Spina and Caere had their special treasuries in the temple of the Delphic Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the shrine; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle, is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome. These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... that it extended to men usually supposed to be most pious and exemplary in their lives: Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals and the Pope himself, though celibats and holders of ecclesiastical dignities, did not arrive at Delphi without touching at Cythera: indirect evidence is afforded of this by the treatises which physicians, shortly after the commencement of the next century, wrote on the disease then called "Morbus Gallicus," when Gaspard Torella ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... fragment of antiquity—the bodies of three serpents twisted into one pillar of brass. Their triple heads had once supported the golden tripod which, after the defeat of Xerxes, was consecrated in the temple of Delphi by the victorious Greeks. The beauty of the Hippodrome has been long since defaced by the rude hands of the Turkish conquerors; but, under the similar appellation of Atmeidan, it still serves as a place of exercise for their horses. From the throne ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... moonless night, in profound silence; and, if they saw a shooting star, it was understood to indicate that the kings of Sparta had disobeyed the gods, and their authority was, in consequence, suspended till they had been purified by an oracle from Delphi or Olympia. [W. H. S.] This statement rests on the authority of Plutarch, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... full of the most curious interest; but I may confirm for you my interpretation of this one, and prove its importance in the Greek mind, by noting that Polygnotus painted these maidens, in his great religious series of paintings at Delphi, crowned with flowers, and playing at dice; and that Penelope remembers them in her last fit of despair, just before the return of Ulysses, and prays bitterly that she may be snatched away at once into nothingness by the Harpies, like Pandareos' ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... her, as on most sleep-wakers, a distinguished magnetic effect. We thus see why the priestess at Delphi, previous to uttering her oracles, shook a laurel tree, and then seated herself on a tripod covered with laurel boughs. In the temple of Aesculapius, and others, the laurel was used to ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... could confer on man. And the young men, after having feasted with their mother, fell asleep; and in the morning they were found dead. Trophonius and Agamedes are said to have put up the same petition, for they, having built a temple to Apollo at Delphi, offered supplications to the God, and desired of him some extraordinary reward for their care and labor, particularizing nothing, but asking for whatever was best for men. Accordingly, Apollo signified to them that he would bestow it on them in three days, and on the third day at daybreak ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... great esteem for the Greeks. He granted them large privileges; and permitted such of them as were desirous of settling in Egypt to live in the city of Naucratis, so famous for its harbour. When the rebuilding of the temple of Delphi, which had been burnt, was debated on, and the expense was computed at three hundred talents, Amasis furnished the Delphians with a very considerable sum towards discharging their quota, which was the fourth part of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... from the head of Zeus, which probably signified that her mother's name was not known—she was a foundling. Athena caused the first olive-tree to grow on the Acropolis of Athens, parent of all the olive-trees of Greece. Poseidon seems to have had settlements at Corinth, AEgina, Naxos, and Delphi. Temples were erected to his honor in nearly all the seaport towns Of Greece. He sent a sea-monster, to wit, a slip, to ravage part ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... construct, most noble judges, under most unhappy auspices, this little unfortunate tripod which you see, in the likeness of that at Delphi, making it of laurel twigs: and having consecrated it with imprecations of mysterious verses, and with many decorations and repeated ceremonies, in all proper order, we at last moved it; and the manner in which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... soldiers, dreading death infinitely less than shame. Leonidas had already made up his mind that the expedition would probably be his death, perhaps because a prophecy had been given at the Temple at Delphi that Sparta should be saved by the death of one of her kings of the race of Hercules. He was allowed by law to take with him 300 men, and these he chose most carefully, not merely for their strength and courage, but selecting those who had sons, so that no family might be altogether destroyed. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... earth and heaven. When we want to go to Delphi, we ask the Boeotians(1) for leave of passage; in the same way, when men sacrifice to the gods, unless the latter pay you tribute, you exercise the right of every nation towards strangers and don't allow the smoke of the sacrifices to pass ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... quietly, "the warrior appealing to his oracle of Delphi like a savage to his moon. Passing gods of ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... entertain any ill-feeling towards those neighbours and rivals who, like ourselves, are slaves of Istar; but, if somebody is to be starved, the modern world has no Oracle of Delphi to which the nations can appeal for an [213] indication of the victim. It is open to us to try our fortune; and, if we avoid impending fate, there will be a certain ground for believing that we are the right people to escape. Securus ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... expulsion. Out of his garden vultures drove the young of eagles, and in the men's hall, where he was having a banquet with his friends, a huge serpent appeared and caused him and his companions at table to decamp. In consequence of this he sent his sons Titus and Aruns to Delphi. But as Apollo declared that he should not be driven from his domain till a dog should use human speech, he was elated with hopes for the best, thinking that the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because a woman sat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because a woman wore the helmet and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... later to be almost artificially cultivated in the "mysteries." They respected the gods rather than feared them, and they felt that the gods would do them no harm unless they themselves first sinned against them or their own fellow-men, and the oracles of Delphi were no more terrifying to them than the coming of the word of God was to the prophets of Israel. They were accustomed to these messages, which were almost every-day affairs. It was all a part of that marvellous poise of nature which made ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... wager that he would prove the Oracle at Delphi to be untrustworthy by procuring from it a false reply to an inquiry by himself. So he went to the temple on the appointed day with a small bird in his hand, which he concealed under the folds of his cloak, and asked whether ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... among the Lydians. The two parties, instead of coming to blows, agreed to refer the matter to the decision of the Delphic oracle, which declared in favour of Gyges. The king made large presents to the temple of Delphi, which undoubtedly preceded, and had no little influence upon, the oracle's answer. Among other things of value, Herodotus mentions six golden cups, weighing thirty talents, amounting to near a million of French money, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... into eleven districts, among which were Phocis, Boeotia, and Attica. In Phocis was the city of Delphi, famous for its oracle and temple; in Boeotia, the city of Thebes; and in Attica, the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the Saviour, to whom every one may appeal. He is the source of all wisdom; all revelations come from him. The other god who occupies a marked position is Apollo, the god of light and the prophet of his father Zeus. His oracle at Delphi was the most important in Greece; it was held to be the centre of the earth, and was a meeting-place for Greeks from every quarter. His priests exercised through the oracle a great influence on Greek life, and as their god required strict purity and truthfulness ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Fort Wayne quarter past one A.M. After breakfast take train to Delphi; then go in hack ten miles to place of Annual Meeting. Preaching in afternoon. Revelation 5 is read. Brother J. Quinter speaks on the chapter. We take supper on the meeting grounds and then go to Brother John ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... you what I take to be the explanation. It is due to a certain wisdom with which I seem to be endowed—not superhuman at all like that of these gentlemen. I speak not arrogantly, but on the evidence of the Oracle of Delphi, who told Chaerephon, a man known to you, that there was no wiser man than Socrates. Now, I am not conscious of possessing wisdom; but the God cannot lie. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... beautiful spot at the head of the Adonis river,[472] a sacred stream fabled to run with blood once a year, at the festival which commemorated the self-mutilation of the Nature-god Adonis. Aphaca was a sort of Delphi, a collection of temples rather than a town. It was dedicated especially to the worship of the Syrian goddess, Ashtoreth or Venus, sometimes called Beltis or Baaltis, whose orgies were of so disgracefully licentious a character that they were at last absolutely forbidden ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... enterprise. For when, in the last year of the siege, the soldiers, disgusted with their protracted service, began to clamour to be led back to Rome, on the Alban lake suddenly rising to an uncommon height, it was found that the oracles at Delphi and elsewhere had foretold that Veii should fall that year in which the Alban lake overflowed. The hope of near victory thus excited in the minds of the soldiers, led them to put up with the weariness ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... had to flee for his life, it was a "companion" who went with him, and being present at his end performed the funeral rites over him.[283] Praxiteles carved a statue of Phryne in gold, and the work stood in a place of honour in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Apelles painted a portrait of Lais, and, for his skill as an artist, Alexander rewarded him with the gift of his favourite concubine; Pindar wrote odes to the hetairae; Leontium, one of the order, sat at the feet of Epicurus to imbibe ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of the town of Chaeroneia, in Boeotia; the times of his birth and death are not exactly known, but we learn from his own works that he was a young student at Delphi, in the thirteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Nero, A.D. 66. He visited both Italy and Rome, and probably resided at Rome for some time. He wrote his Life of Demosthenes, at least after his return to Chaeroneia: he says (Life of Demosthenes, c. 2), that he had not time to exercise ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... interpretation, however, Ragnarok and the consequent submersion of the world is but a Northern version of the Deluge. The survivors, Lif and Lifthrasir, like Deucalion and Pyrrha, were destined to repeople the world; and just as the shrine of Delphi alone resisted the destructive power of the great cataclysm, so Gimli stood radiant to receive the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... it from among the by-ways and back alleys of Jailpore. And the chaplain married him and Jane Emmett out of hand. He sent her off at once with her former mistress to the coast, and marched off with his regiment to Delphi. And at Delphi his name was ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... voice like that as a ruler for the wisdom of the world's ten wisest men? We laugh at the Greeks for their practice of consulting the oracle at Delphi and rightly, for our oracle beats theirs which used to hedge in its answers and leave them in doubt. Ours never equivocates; we know its answer beforehand, for the public mind is compounded of prejudices, fears, herd instincts, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... results. The first instance of this arose out of temple worship, where members of different states met about a common shrine erected to a special deity. This led to temporary organization and mutual aid. Important among these centres was the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. This assemblage was governed by a council of general representation. Important customs were established, such as the keeping of roads in repair which led to the shrine, and providing that pilgrims ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... temple; and by the aid of such inspiration as I may from time to time see meet to vouchsafe him, administer its affairs indifferently well. Do thou, Eubulides, consecrate thy powers to a more august service than Apollo's, to one that shall endure when Delphi and ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... noticeable that in Mona alone do we meet with "Druidesses." Female ministers of religion, whether priestesses or prophetesses, are always exceptional, and usually mark a survival from some very primitive cult. The Pythoness at Delphi, and the Vestals at Rome, obviously do so. And amongst the races of Gaul and Britain the same fact is testified to by such female ministrations being invariably confined to far western islands. Pytheas, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... recess. Shakespeare (Cor. iii. l. 123) speaks of the 'navel of the state'; and in Greek Calypso's island was 'the navel of the sea,' while Apollo's temple at Delphi was ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Croesus, tell me one thing more. How did matters go between you and the oracle at Delphi? It is said that you did much reverence to Apollo and obeyed him ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... Arcadian Club; but in order to avoid gossip, and the usual ridicule, to which we were all more or less sensitive, in case our plan should become generally known, it was agreed that the initials only should be used. Besides, there was an agreeable air of mystery about it: we thought of Delphi, and Eleusis, and Samothrace: we should discover that Truth which the dim eyes of worldly men and women were unable to see, and the day of disclosure would be the day of Triumph. In one sense we were truly ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... as the electric shock always felt by Mesmer at the approach of a particular manservant was the starting-point of his discoveries in magnetism, a science till then interred under the mysteries of Isis, of Delphi, of the cave of Trophonius, and rediscovered by that prodigious genius, close on Lavater, and the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac |
