"Hecate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and principally the Aethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Aegyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee, doe call mee Queene Isis. ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... joined to a kind of mist that floated about it, rendered the unearthly shapes of the witches obscure and shadowy. It was not three decrepid old hags that bent over their pot throwing in the grim ingredients of the magic charm, but forms frightful, unreal, and fanciful. The entrance of Hecate, and the wild music that followed, took us out of this world. The cavern shape the stage assumed, the beetling rocks, the glare of the fire, the misty shades that crossed the scene at times, the music in harmony with all witch-like fancies, permitted the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Authorship.—The speeches of Hecate and the dialogue connected with them in III, v and IV, i, 39-47 are suspected by many to be the work of Thomas Middleton, a well-known contemporary playwright. They are unquestionably inferior to most of the play. Messrs. Clark and Wright have assigned ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... 14: Asterie.—Ver. 108. She was the daughter of Caeus, the Titan, and of Phoebe, and was ravished by Jupiter under the form of an eagle. She was the wife of Perses, and the mother of Hecate. Flying from the wrath of Jupiter, she was first changed by him into a quail; and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... court Of peaceful Thespia, my muse consort, Making her drunken with Gorgonean dews, And therewith all your ecstasies infuse, That she may reach the topless starry brows Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring (As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind, And in her force, the forces of the mind: An argument to ravish and refine An earthly soul and make it more devine. Sing then with all, her palace brightness bright, The dazzle-sun perfection of ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... crouched in the wind-swept sand, watching their banquet, decreed by the king. The dust had been scattered from a black vase that bore on its front, in a circular medallion, the lurid head of grinning Hecate; and the last rite to appease the unquiet manes was performed by the uplifted right arm that poured libations from a burnished brass urn, held aloft over the pall of earth that denned the figure beneath. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... having his hand quite buried in his waistcoat. "For instance, the Sphinx and Isis, whose veil no man had ever lifted, were both ladies, Kitty! And so was Persephone, who must be always either in heaven or hell; and Hecate, who was one thing by night and another by day. The Sibyls were females, and so were the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself; in short, all representations ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... His Britannic Majesty's Frigate 'Hecate,' of which I have the honour of being third lieutenant," announced the young man. "And as for changes, though you are lovely as ever, I shall not know soon whether I am standing on my head or my feet;" he looked fixedly at Pearce ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... le gout des heros. Le sabreur Effroyable, trainant apres lui tant d'horreur Qu'il ferait reculer jusqu'a la sombre Hecate, Charme la plus timide et la plus delicate. Sur ce, battez tambours! Ce qui plait a la bouche De la blonde aux yeux doux, c'est le baiser farouche. La femme se fait faire avec joie un enfant, Par l'homme qui tua, sinistre et triomphant. Et c'est la volupte de toutes ces colombes D'ouvrir leur ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... gan more boldly him to wake, And threatned unto him the dreaded name 380 Of Hecate[*]: whereat he gan to quake, And lifting up his lumpish head, with blame Halfe angry asked him, for what he came. Hither (quoth he) me Archimago sent, He that the stubborne Sprites can wisely tame, 385 He bids thee ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... though he were follow'd Fast, fast by the Erl King! The wild wizard-work Of the forest at last open'd sharp, o'er the fork Of a savage ravine, and behind the black stems Of the last trees, whose leaves in the light gleam'd like gems, Broke the broad moon above the voluminous Rock-chaos,—the Hecate of that Tartarus! With his horse reeking white, he at last reach'd the door Of a small mountain inn, on the brow of a hoar Craggy promontory, o'er a fissure as grim, Through which, ever roaring, there leap'd o'er the limb Of the rent rock a torrent of water, from sight, Into pools that were ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... country, carry all he can with him; or, like those who go to possess a new-found land, by the excessive number of his own friends, incommode or exclude the friends of the inviter, so that the inviter must be in the same case with those that set forth suppers to Hecate and the gods who turn away evil, of which neither they nor any of their family partake, except of the smoke and trouble. It is true they only speak in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... spoken of by Tracy as the crown of Emilia's forehead, had begun to glow with a furnace-colour in Wilfrid's fancy. It worked a Satanic distraction in him. The girl sat before him swathed in a darkness, with the edges of the briony leaves shining deadly—radiant above—young Hecate! The next instant he was bleeding with pity for her, aching with remorse, and again stung to intense jealousy of all who might behold her (amid a reserve of angry sensations ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with very different aspirations. There was a love—there was a dislike—and there was a certain amount of parental solicitude and determination—excellent materials from which to construct a serious disagreement and an eventual family row. Not Hecate, when she threw "eye of newt and tail of frog" into the infernal brew on the blasted heath, could have been more certain of the final nature of her compound, than may the presiding genius of any "well regulated family" ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... perceptible air: imagine such a dreadful world, with neither air nor water! incapable of feeding life like ours, but competent to be a place where undying wretchedness may struggle for ever. A melancholy orb, the queen of night, chief nucleus of all the dark idolatries of earth; the Moon, Isis, Hecate, Ashtaroth, Diana ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... [Greek: aoroi], who had to wander till the span of their natural life was completed;[23] those who had met with violent deaths, the [Greek: biaiothanatoi]; and the unburied, the [Greek: ataphoi]. In the Hymn to Hecate, to whom they were especially attached, they are represented as following in her train and taking part in her nightly revels in human shape. The lot of the murdered is no better, and executed criminals belong to ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... convinced of my existence; when I looked through the blinds of the carriage, and saw nothing but barren plains and mournful willows, banks clad with rushes, and heifers so black and dismal that Proserpine herself would have given them up to Hecate. I was near believing myself in the neighbourhood of a certain evil place, where I should be punished for all my croakings. We travelled at this rate, I dare say, fifteen miles, without seeing a single shed: at last, one or two miserable cottages appeared, darkened by heath, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... has it. In this incantation, again, we have the association with moonwort; and the connection is further illustrated in an old oracle ascribed to Hecate: 'From a root of wild rue fashion and polish a statue; adorn it with household lizards; grind myrrh, gum, and frankincense with the same reptiles, and let the mixture stand in the air during the waning of a moon; then address ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... ones they could make him desist. What the big dog was they were not prepared to say. We know. It was the night goddess, represented by the dog, who was thus shrouding the world at midday. The ancient Romans sacrificed dogs to Hecate and Diana, in Egypt they were sacred to Isis, and thus as traditionally connected with night and its terrors, the Prince of Darkness, in the superstition of the middle ages, preferably appeared under the form of a cur, as that famous poodle which accompanied Cornelius Agrippa, or that which ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... is of Virtues only; of poisons and vices, it is Hecate who teaches, not Athena. And of all wisdom, chiefly the Politician's must consist in this divine Prudence; it is not, indeed, always necessary for men to know the virtues of their friends, or their masters; since the friend will still manifest, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... a mighty Titaness, sister of Hecate and Bellona, most beautiful and most terrible, who challenges universal dominion over all things in earth and heaven, sun and moon, planets and stars, times and seasons, life and death; and finally over the wills and thoughts and natures of the gods, even ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... our emancipation from many superstitions, but if we have broken any idols it is through a transfer of the idolatry. What have I gained that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate; that I do not tremble before the Eumenides or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic Judgment Day—if I quake at opinion, the public opinion as we call it, or the threat of assault or contumely, or bad neighbours, or poverty, or mutilation, or ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... the black anguish of her desolation searched for lost Persephone by the light of Hecate's torch; and searching all in vain, spurned beneath her empty feet an earth barren of her smile; froze with set brows the merry brooks and streams; and smote forest, and plain, and fruitful field, with the breath of her last despair, until even Iambe's laughing jest was still. And ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... and notorious for his dissoluteness; he was accused of having daubed the statues of Hecate at ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... wretched enough now," thought poor Ceres, "to talk with this melancholy Hecate, were she ten times sadder than ever she was yet." So she stepped into the cave, and sat down on the withered leaves by the dog-headed woman's side. In all the world, since her daughter's loss, she ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Torrington's eldest daughter; and they suppose the wedding is over.(565) Your ladyship, I am sure, will be pleased to hear that Lord Euston is gone to his father, who has written a letter with the highest approbation of Lady Euston.(566) You will be diverted, too, Madam, to hear that Hecate has told Mrs. Keppel, that she was sure that such virtue ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... M—-. "We are too apt to reject the whole, because we have found a part to be erroneous. That the moon is not the Hecate formerly supposed, I believe; but she seems to have more power than is usually ascribed to her. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... day. By night the silver rays from Diana's car smote her more gently, and the dew drenched her hair and her black garments and mingled with the saltness of her bitter tears. At the grey dawning of the tenth day her elder daughter, Hecate, stood beside her. Queen of ghosts and shades was she, and to her all dark places of ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... favorable climate these Indians had a large and steady supply of food close at hand. Most of their sustenance was obtained from the sea and from the rivers, in which the runs of salmon furnished abundant provisions, which rarely failed. In Hecate Strait, between the Queen Charlotte Islands and the mainland, there were wonderfully productive halibut fisheries, from which a supply of fish was dried and packed away for the winter, so that there was always a store of provisions on hand. ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... and nail, on the victuals, as they Had been guests at Guildhall upon Lord Mayor's day, All scrambling and scuffling for what was before 'em, No care for precedence or common decorum. Few ate more hearty Than Madame Astarte, And Hecate,—considered the Belles of the party. Between them was seated Leviathan, eager To "do the polite," and take wine with Belphegor; Here was Morbleu (a French devil), supping soup-meagre, And there, munching leeks, Davy Jones of Tredegar (A Welsh one), who'd left the domains ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... King Oberon, and of Titania, his queen, as making an irruption from their haunted hillocks, woods, meres, meadows, and fountains, in the North, into the olive-groves of Ilissus, and dancing their ringlets in the ray of the Grecian Selene, the chaste, cold huntress, and running by the triple Hecate's team, following the shadow of Night round the earth. Strangely must have sounded the horns of the Northern Elfland, "faintly blowing" in the woods of Hellas, as Oberon and his grotesque court glanced along, "with bit and bridle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... But if ill fortune that leaves me without resource force me, I myself having grasped the sword, although I should die, will kill them, and will rush to the extreme height of daring. For never, I swear by my mistress whom I revere most of all, and have chosen for my assistant, Hecate, who dwells in the inmost recesses of my house, shall any one of them wring my heart with grief with impunity. Bitter and mournful to them will I make these nuptials, and bitter this alliance, and my flight from ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... a figure, identified with death. Orpheus, in the Argonautika, speaks of "a terrible serpent whose yawning jaw is full of death." So Paul says he was "in deaths oft." Ovid says, "The priests poured out a dog's hot life on the altar of Hecate at the crossing of two roads." The Pythagoreans, when one of their number became impious and abandoned, were accustomed to consider him dead, and to erect a tomb to him, on which his name and his age at the time of his moral decease were engraved. The Roman law regarded an excommunicated citizen ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... superiority to point-blank guessing and the bewitching generalization conjured out of a couple or so of assumed facts, which, even if they turn out to be singly true, are no more nearly related than Hecate and green cheese. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Cowslip, Hecate, Caliban, Filibuster, Jonathan,— Name them all who may, who can; For the half has not been told Of the branches I behold On the honored parent-stem, And the later ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the work of an author of the fourth century, Critias is introduced pale and wild. His friend asks him if he has seen Cerberus or Hecate; and he answers that he has heard a rigmarole from certain "thrice-cursed sophists"; which he thinks would drive him mad if he heard it again, and was nearly sending him headlong over some cliff as it was. He retires for relief with his inquirer ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various |
