"Medea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "The ballet of Medea and Jason. It's a very fine thing, certainly; but one has seen it so often. Read ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... again to the intricate harmonies of Calderon, Goethe, and Shelley; with its use of all voices, from vociferous mob to melodious daughters of Ocean, and its command of all colour, from the gloom of Medea to the splendour of Marlowe's Helen,—it is a small matter to remember the connection of work or author with the stage—how long they held it, how soon they were dispossessed, how and at what intervals and with what uncertain footing they returned. We do not accept them because ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... precipice. Perhaps it would have been as well; but it was not to be. The headlong rush was to be checked. The descent was to be eased by a strange detour, by a fantastic adventure, a revival that was no re-birth, a Medea's cauldron rather, an extravagant disease full of lust and laughter; the life of the old world was to be prolonged by four hundred years or so, by the galvanising power of the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... attempted to yoke The fire-breathing bulls to the plow He smeared his whole body with garlic,—a joke Which I fully appreciate now. When Medea gave Glauce her beautiful dress, In which garlic was scattered about, It was cruel and rather low-down, I confess, But it settled ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... poor captain would have been a marquis," he exclaimed to himself, "the Marquis de Medea, and owner of those magnificent estates. Well, truly he had something to live for, and yet he was cut off—while I who have not a peco beyond my pay, and little enough of that, have been allowed to remain in existence. I cannot understand these matters—it ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... was) when Mrs. Frere sang. She was somewhile past her prime then (1831), but could sing the Classical Song, or Ballad, till much later in Life. Pasta too, whom you then saw and heard! I still love the pillars of the old Haymarket Opera House, where I used to see placarded MEDEA ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... St. John's College, Cambridge, a student one morning, construing the Medea of Euripides came to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... vigour. Apollonius Rhodius is, no doubt, much of a pedant, a literary writer of epic, in an age of Criticism. He dealt with the tale of "Jason," and conceivably he may have borrowed from older minstrels. But the Medea of Apollonius Rhodius, in her love, her tenderness, her regret for home, in all her maiden words and ways, is undeniably a character more living, more human, more passionate, and more sympathetic, than the Medea of Mr. Morris. I could almost wish that he had closely followed that classical original, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... beauty that beamed on her face. She looked like an inspired priestess before the altar,—then like Norma in her despair,—then like the maddened Medea in Rachel's thrilling impersonation. Then disgust and fright overcame her, and her sensitive womanly nature bore sway. It was more than she could bear, this accumulation of misfortune, disgrace, and insult. Her soul rebelled, contended desperately with fate, till, overcome, she sank ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... insults her guests, and contrives the horrid murder of the boy Thorolf before their eyes, we have a stage-dilemma presented to us-either the actress must treat the scene inadequately, or else intolerably. Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet, and we shrink from Hioerdis with a physical disgust. Her great hands and shrieking mouth are like Bellona's, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... "Look here," he said presently; "why shouldn't we get hold of Farmer Larkin's boat, and go right away up the river in a real Argo, and look for Medea, and the Golden Fleece, and everything? And I'll tell you what, I don't mind your being Jason, as you thought of ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... books; for the afternoon was waning, and there was yet much to see. The bare mention of a few more curiosities must suffice. The immense skull of Polyphemus was recognizable by the cavernous hollow in the centre of the forehead where once had blazed the giant's single eye. The tub of Diogenes, Medea's caldron, and Psyche's vase of beauty were placed one within another. Pandora's box, without the lid, stood next, containing nothing but the girdle of Venus, which had been carelessly flung into it. A bundle of birch-rods ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the possibility of the discovery of new lands beyond the ocean in a passage in his Medea (374 sqq.) which has been ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the while America is sublimely unconscious that the joys of childhood are not hers. Though with the hypochondria of advancing years she demands a doctor for her soul, she knows not from what disease she suffers. She does not pray for a Medea to thrust her into a cauldron of rejuvenescence. With a bluff optimism she declares that she is still the youngest of the nations, and boasts that when she has grown up to the height of her courage and activity she will make ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... from her arm-chair with difficulty, but with a sunny smile and a charming manner bade me welcome. My father had been an old friend of hers, and she spoke of my home and belongings as only a woman can speak of such things, then we plunged into medea res, into men and books. She seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing from the Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker. And she talked like an angel, but her views upon poetry as a calling in life, shocked me not a little. She said she preferred a mariage de convenance to a ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... free I within, trample on their own passions, defy their own circumstances, even to the death; fall back, in utter need, on the absolute instinct of self; and even though all seem lost, say with Medea in the tragedy— ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... An Hecatean Herb.—Ver. 139. This was aconite, or wolfsbane, said to have been discovered by Hecate, the mother of Medea. She was the first who sought after, and taught the properties of poisonous herbs. Some accounts say, that the aconite was produced from the foam of Cerberus, when dragged by ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... always butting about. Finally, however, public indignation was aroused by so many people coming to harm through her arts; and the very next day had been fixed upon to wreak a fearful vengeance on her, by stoning her to death. She frustrated the design by her enchantments. You remember how Medea, having got Creon to allow her just one day before her departure, burned his whole palace, with himself and his daughter in it, by means of flames issuing from a garland? Well, this sorceress, having performed certain deadly incantations in a ditch (she told me so herself in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Then Medea said, "If you want the golden fleece, you must help yourself. My father will not give it to you. A dragon is by the tree where the golden fleece is, and he never sleeps. He is always hungry and eats ...
— A Primary Reader - Old-time Stories, Fairy Tales and Myths Retold by Children • E. Louise Smythe
... "'In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs,'—and in such a night your friend, who may never see another—takes occasion to ask ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... on Kedzie's mantle; it blistered her like the mantle Medea sent to her successor in her husband's love. She sat in the office and some of the guests passed through. She could see that they took her to be one of their sort, and shocks of red and white ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... remembered out of the far-away past; if, in fact, this be veritably nightfall, he will not wish greatly for the continuance of a twilight that only strains and disappoints the eyes, but steadfastly await the perfect darkness. He will pray for Medea: when she comes, let her either ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been at all times extravagance and credulity itself. They looked upon this young villain as a martyr, and at once dedicated an elegy to him, in which I was compared with Medea, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... by internal marks, to about the same period as the preceding, but is not known to have been printed till 1597. Each Act opens with a chorus by Venus. Medea, also, is employed to work enchantments, and raises Homer's Calchas, who comes forth "clad in a white surplice and a cardinal's mitre." This play, too, is crammed from first to last brimful of tumult and battle; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Caesar had shown towards his ancestral goddess, Venus Genetrix. We know from Pliny, xxxv. 9, that Caesar was the first to give due honor to paintings, by exhibiting them in his Forum Julium. He gave about $72,000 (eighty talents), for two works of Timomachos, representing Medea and Ajax. At the base of the Temple of Venus Genetrix he placed his own equestrian statue, the horse of which, modelled by Lysippos, had once supported the figure of Alexander the Great. The statue of Venus was the work ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Poor Litton had not known that the human heart could suffer such agony. He was fairly burned alive with loneliness and resentment—like another Hercules blistering in the shirt of Nessus. And Martha was suffering likewise as Jason's second wife was consumed in the terrible poisoned robe that Medea sent her. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... ones. What is said here of Louis Philippe was verified in some of its minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough to have made the fortune of Delphi or Ammon, and no thanks to Beelzebub neither! That of Seneca in Medea ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... fancy of his for Latin poetry which seems to us now-a-days a childish pedantry; which was then—when Latin was the vernacular tongue of all scholars—a serious, if not altogether a useful, pursuit. Of his tragedies, so famous in their day—the 'Baptist,' the 'Medea,' the 'Jephtha,' and the 'Alcestis'—there is neither space nor need to speak here, save to notice the bold declamations in the 'Baptist' against tyranny and priestcraft; and to notice also that these tragedies gained ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... months, Vivian, like many other young enthusiasts, had discovered that all the wit and wisdom of the world were concentrated in some fifty antique volumes, and he treated the unlucky moderns with the most sublime spirit of hauteur imaginable. A chorus in the Medea, that painted the radiant sky of Attica, disgusted him with the foggy atmosphere of Great Britain; and while Mrs. Grey was meditating a visit to Brighton, her son was dreaming of the gulf of Salamis. The spectre in the Persae was his only model for ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... ladies to town, should the evening prove cold; that, for the water-music, the following programme be adopted: 1. On reaching Vauxhall Bridge, the concert to commence with Madame Pasta's grand scena in "Medea," previous to the murder of the children, by Miss Corinna Grouts. 2. Nicholson's grand flute concerto in five sharps, by Mr. Frederick Snodgrass. 3. Grand aria, with variations, guitar, by Miss Euphemia Grouts. ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... would be a mother!... And yet, can you fancy me torn in two between you and the infant? To begin with, if I saw any creature—were it even my own son—taking my place in your heart, I couldn't answer for the consequences. Medea may have been right after all. The Greeks had ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Julia. Now we 'll turn to Juan. Poor little fellow! he had no idea Of his own case, and never hit the true one; In feelings quick as Ovid's Miss Medea, He puzzled over what he found a new one, But not as yet imagined it could be Thing quite in course, and not at all alarming, Which, with a little patience, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... pieces of Euripides like flowers in a pleasure-garden; hence above all the psychology of Euripides, which rests by no means on direct reproduction of human experience, but on rational reflection. His Medea is certainly in so far painted from life, that she is before departure properly provided with money for her voyage; but of the struggle in the soul between maternal love and jealousy the unbiassed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Seneca's well-known prediction, in his Medea, is, perhaps, the most remarkable random prophecy on record. For it is not a simple extension of the boundaries of the known parts of the globe that is so confidently announced, but the existence of a New World across the waters, to be revealed ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... no woman's character in the range of Greek tragedy so profoundly studied. Not Aeschylus' Clytemnestra, not Phaedra nor Medea. One's thoughts can only wander towards two great heroines of "lost" plays, Althaea in the Meleager, and Stheneboea ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... to the land of Colchis, King AEetes summoned them to his palace. Beside him was seated his daughter, the beautiful witch maiden, Medea. She looked upon the Greeks and upon Jason, fairest and noblest of them all, and her spirit leaped forth to meet his. And knowing what lay before them, "surely," she thought, "it were an evil thing that men so bold and ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... sweetens the winds and sets them blowing Over the delicate land; And ever with joyous hand Braiding her fragrant hair with the blossom of roses, She sendeth the Love that dwelleth in Wisdom's place That every virtue may quicken and every grace In the hearts where she reposes." [Footnote: Eurip. Medea, 825.] ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the life, is commanded; and on the contrary, if the imitation make a foul thing to appear fair, it is dispraised because it observes not decency and likeness. Now some painters there are that paint uncomely actions; as Timotheus drew Medea killing her children; Theon, Orestes murdering his mother; and Parrhasius, Ulysses counterfeiting madness; yea, Chaerephanes expressed in picture the unchaste converse of women with men. Now in such cases a young man is to be familiarly acquainted with ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... nailed, of the avenging eagle for ever hovering and for ever devouring; of the land of Aeetes, and of the bulls with brazen feet and flaming breath, and how Jason yoked and made them plough, of the enchantress Medea, and the unguent she concocted from herbs that grew where the blood of Prometheus had dripped; of the field sown with dragons' teeth, and the mail-clad men that leaped out of the furrows; of the magical stone that divided them into two parties, and impelled them to fight each ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... sister was moaning in bed; I was beginning to be restless with fears not intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse, but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as upon some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and, like the superb Medea towering amongst her children in the nursery at Corinth, smote me senseless to the ground. Again I am in the chamber with my sister's corpse, again the pomps of life rise up in silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, the frost of death. Dream forms itself mysteriously within dream; ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... proof that the New World was not unknown to the ancients, many have cited the singular passage in the Medea of Seneca, which is wonderfully apposite, and shows, at least, how nearly the warm imagination of a poet may approach to prophecy. The predictions of the ancient oracles were ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... this is the husband of whom she had dreamed? Ah, well! God grant that she may be happy; for we were very fond of her, very—were we not, Aunt Medea?" ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... she, "the goblet that is set apart for kings to drink out of. And fill it with the same delicious wine which my royal brother, King AEetes, praised so highly, when he visited me with my fair daughter Medea. That good and amiable child! Were she now here, it would delight her to see me offering this wine to ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... boys to be wasting their faculties in representing such inferior performances, but humoured the prevailing taste so much as to choose two Scriptural subjects, Jephthah and John the Baptist, alternately with the Medea and Alcestis. He "was successful beyond his hopes," he says, in these efforts. In all of the plays the little Montaigne was one of the chief performers. "Before a fit age, Alter ab undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus," says that great writer, "I sustained the first ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... your own lips," said the Prince, "you have yourselves judged the cause, you have yourselves signed the decree. It remains for me to cause your order to be executed, since it is you who with the heart of a negro, with the cruelty of Medea, made a fritter of this beautiful head, and chopped up these lovely limbs like sausage-meat. So quick, make haste, lose not a moment! throw them this very instant into a large dungeon, where they shall ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... to influence the course of nature by conjectural means, the choice of which was not directed by previous observation and experiment. The guess almost always fixed upon some means which possessed features of real or apparent resemblance to the end in view. If a charm was wanted, as by Ovid's Medea, to prolong life, all long-lived animals, or what were esteemed such, were collected ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... say, 'He faltered!' I will not endanger the noble barons who have devoted themselves to my advancement. If I have sinned in alluring them thus far, I will not deepen my guilt by betraying them. Though I knew that the crown which I am about to assume were like the gift of Medea, I would still set it on my temples: better pay the penalty of ambition by advancing than by timidly retreating, when boldness may remedy, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... great wars it led to, to the rape of Helen; "The Fate of the Children of Lir," a story that has as its base the folk-tale that underlies "Lohengrin," but which takes us back farther into the past in its kinship to "Medea"; and "The Sons of Tuireann," which has been called the Irish Odyssey. Of these the first is incomparably the finest story, and Lady Gregory has told it nobly in "Cuchulain of Muirthemne," but it alone of all the stories in her three books of translations ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... heart; my trust is entire on this head: but explain yourself, I entreat you, and open your soul to me; otherwise, I shall fear lest, by the fatality of my star, and by the too fortunate influence of the stars on women less tender and less faithful than I, I may be supplanted in your heart as Medea was in Jason's; not that I wish to compare you to a lover as unfortunate as Jason, and to parallel myself with a monster like Medea, although you have enough influence over me to force me to resemble her each time our love exacts it, and that it concerns me to keep your ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of P. Clodius. Of this famous woman we shall hear often again. She is believed to be the Lesbia of Catullus, and she is the "Palatine Medea" of the speech pro Caelio. Yet, in spite of Cicero's denunciations of her, he seems at one time to have been so fond of her society as ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... its venture and service—as its loss but gave new foil to the hardihood of La Salle and Tonty. We can imagine the golden-brown skins scattered over the blue waters as the bits of the body of the son of the king of Colchis strewn by Medea to detain the pursuers of the Argonauts. It was the first sacrifice to the valley for the fleece. In the depths of these Lakes or on their shores were buried the bones of these French mariners who, first of Europeans, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... grades—the school "of Storm and Pressure"—(Stuerm und Draeng—as the Germans have expressively described it.) If the reader will compare Schiller's poem of the 'Infanticide,' with the passages which represent a similar crime in the Medea, (and the author of 'Wallenstein' deserves comparison even with Euripides,) he will see the distinction between the art that seeks an elevated emotion, and the art which is satisfied with creating an intense one. In Euripides, the detail—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... class were in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles and the Medea of Euripides, I was suffering from weak eyes, and went to the recitation-room with no other preparation than that of hearing each lesson twice read to me by two different students, who did me the kindness to perform that ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... evidently counterfeited, are preserved in several museums. Of larger representations we mention the marble statue of a girl playing with astragaloi in the Berlin Museum, and a Pompeian wall-painting in which the children of Jason play the same game, while Medea threatens their lives with a drawn sword. The celebrated masterpiece of Polykletes, representing two boys playing with astragaloi, formerly in the palace of Titus in Rome, has unfortunately been lost. Another wall-painting shows in the foreground Aglaia and Hileaira, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... poor scholar, no soldier, but a soldier's lover, In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover, That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four million times over; And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden pieces As ever were hairs in Jason's and Medea's golden fleeces." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... life. But most of all there is revealed in the Ciris an epic poet's first timid probing into the depths of human emotions, a striving to understand the riddles behind the impulsive body. One sees why Dido is not, like Apollonius' Medea, simply driven to passion by. Cupid's arrow—the naive Greek equivalent of the medieval love-philter—why Pallas' body is not merely laid on the funeral pyre with the traditional wailing, why Turnus does not meet his foe with an Homeric boast. That Vergil has penetrated a richer vein ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... supernatural arts, and through the favor of Me-de'a, daughter of the King of Colchis, he succeeded in capturing the fleece. After four months of continued danger and innumerable hardships, Jason returned to Iolcus with the prize, accompanied by Medea, whom he afterward deserted, and whose subsequent history is told by the poet Euripides in his celebrated ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... things as Stewart, Wells, and that pitiful strolling actress,—[Probably Nell Gwyn.]—whom he had lately introduced into their society." Floods of tears from rage, generally attended these storms; after which, resuming the part of Medea, the scene closed with menaces of tearing her children in pieces, and setting his palace on fire. What course could he pursue with such an outrageous fury, who, beautiful as she was, resembled Medea less than her dragons, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... earliest independent work is said to have been a group of angels on the marble doorway leading from the church into the cloisters. He had afterwards been employed at Bergamo, where the Colleoni Chapel and the effigy of the great Condottiere's young daughter, the sleeping virgin Medea, still bear witness to his poetic invention and rare decorative skill. One of Lodovico's first acts after his return to Milan had been to recall Amadeo to Pavia, and in 1490, this gifted artist was appointed Capo maestro of the Certosa works. To his delicate fancy and exquisite refinement ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... beset with omens, the celebrated German writer, Goethe, who was at that time pursuing his studies at Strasburg, perceived one which he regarded as of most inauspicious significance in the tapestry which decorated the walls of the chief saloon. It represented the history of Jason and Medea. On one side was portrayed the king's bride in the agonies of death; on the other, the royal father was bewailing his murdered children. Above them both, Medea was fleeing away in a car drawn by fire-breathing dragons, and driven by the Furies; and the youthful poet could ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... my letter, with Dr. Shaw's opinion, has lessened your bathing; for since I was born, I never heard of bathing four hours a-day; which would surely be too much, even in Medea's kettle, if you wanted (as you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... belongs to his own locality, and not to that of the heroes whose adventures he purports to relate. In his work the old classical heroes are transformed into typical mediaeval knights, and heroines such as Helen and Medea, for instance, are ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... placed upon them. Now-a-days in high life men demand instead of give. The degradation of woman involved in being sold to a husband, to put it in the most humiliating way, is not comparable to the degradation of having to buy a husband. Euripides made Medea say: "We women are the most unfortunate of all creatures since we have to buy our masters at so dear a price," and the degradation of Grecian women is repeated—all flower-garlanded and disguised by show—in the marriage sentiments of our own civilization. Jacob was dominated by his wives as Abraham ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... before Christ King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) reigned over Persia. In the third year of his reign he gave a royal feast to all the princes and nobles of Persia and Medea, in Shushan, the royal city. It lasted one hundred and eighty days, and was very costly, for the king wished to show the great men from all his provinces the riches and glory of his kingdom and of ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... much for Julia! Now we'll turn to Juan. Poor little fellow! he had no idea Of his own case, and never hit the true one; In feelings quick as Ovid's Miss Medea,[52] He puzzled over what he found a new one, But not as yet imagined it could be a Thing quite in course, and not at all alarming, Which, with a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Medea and companion of her flight from Colchis. To elude or delay her pursuers, she cut him into pieces and strewed the fragments in the road, that her father might be detained by gathering up the remains of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... parallels attached to Mr. Lang's variant in Revue Celtique, iii. 374; and Mr. Lang, in his Custom and Myth ("A far travelled Tale"), has given a number of parallels from savage sources. And strangest of all, the story is practically the same as the classical myth of Jason and Medea. ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Epicurus, were in this of two quite contrary humours: the first not only in his books mixed passages and sayings of other authors, but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole Medea of Euripides; which gave Apollodorus occasion to say, that should a man pick out of his writings all that was none of his, he would leave him nothing but blank paper: whereas the latter, quite on the contrary, in three hundred volumes that he left behind him, has not so much ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... guarded; 'tis a certain rule, Wits are false things, there's danger in a fool. Let them, tho' modest, Gray more modest woo; Let them with Mason bleat, and bray, and coo; Let them with Franklin, proud of some small Greek, Make Sophocles disguis'd, in English speak; Let them with Glover o'er Medea doze; Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes, Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears, Melts, as they melt, and weeps with weeping peers; Let them with simple Whitehead, taught to creep Silent ...
— English Satires • Various
... calculated for an audience in the university. The subject is the Music of the Grecian Theatre; in which I have, I hope naturally, introduced the various characters with which the chorus was concerned, as OEdipus, Medea, Electra, Orestes, etc. etc. The composition too is probably more correct, as I have chosen the ancient tragedies for my models, and only copied the most affecting passages ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... never have been painted with more consummate ability, or more thorough knowledge of human nature. Euripides, in particular, has delineated the terrible effects of that passion with a master's hand; witness the raving of Medea at the desertion of Jason; the fury of Hermione at the captive Andromache. Love also, as it arises now in an Eastern seraglio, was not unknown to them; the passion of Phaedra for Hippolytus, as painted by Euripides, is a proof of it. But the love they thus conceived, had scarce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... a future life, says that a ship may sail in a few days with a fair wind from Spain to India. And if, as some suppose, the same Seneca were the author of the tragedies, he expresses himself to the same purpose in the following chorus of the Medea: ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the genius of the place. Her hair shone duskily as she bent beside the candle, and with steady fingers tilted a vial, from which amber drops fell slowly into a glass. With dark eyes watching closely, she had the air of a young, beneficent Medea, intent ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... would I could. If I knew Medea's secret, I would have myself chopped and boiled that I might come out young on her behalf; but, George, I can tell you ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... gravel-walks from the esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora. The vicar is seated in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits into the garden. The door is now open, and the good man has paused from his work (he had just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of the "Medea") to look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across the scene. His wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the door, but a little aside, not to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tedious, and he has little skill in selection; moreover, he is deliberately antiquarian, if not pedantic. His true merit is in his original and, as we think, modern telling of a love tale—pure, passionate, and tender, the first in known literature. Medea is often sublime, and always touching. But it is not on these merits that our author lingers; he loves only the highest literature, and, though he finds spots on the sun and faults in Homer, he condones ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... both saying the same thing. I honor and admire the great singers, but I myself have always felt a barrier when I wished to metamorphose my personal and intimate emotions into separate entities and into public property. I felt as though I must kill them first, before administering this cure, as Medea did with her father-in-law son, - and that ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... error with regard to cause and effect lies in the general and profound supposition that the cause must have a certain similarity to the effect. So Ovid, according to J. S. Mill, has Medea brew a broth of long-lived animals; and popular superstitions are full of such doctrine. The lung of a long-winded fox is used as a cure for asthma, the yarrow is used to cure jaundice, agaricos is used for blisters, aristolochia (the fruit of which has the form of a uterus) is used for the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... will or deed; but considering that gold, like feathers, is equally useful to those who have and those who have not, why, it is worth while for the goose to remember that he may possibly one day be plucked. And what remains? "Io," as Medea says. . . . But Argemone?' . . . And Lancelot felt, for the moment, as conservative as the tutelary genius of all ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... But there arose at Bologna a school, bent on resuscitating the traditions of an art which had already done its utmost to interpret mind to mind through mediums of lovely form and color. The founders of the Bolognese Academy, like Medea operating on decrepit Aeson, chopped up the limbs of painting which had ceased to throb with organic life, recombined them by an act of intellect and will, and having pieced them together, set the composite machine in motion on the path of studied ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "turns peace to war? What evil deed Was by these hands committed? Trojan hero there is none Absconding in this ship with bride of Atreus' cuckold seed Nor crazed Medea, stained by life's blood of her father's son! But passion scorned, becomes a power: alas! who courts his end By drawing sword amidst these waves? Why die before our time? Strive not with angry seas to vie and to their ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... istud facinus, ac dirum nefas A me quoque absit. Quod scelus miseri luent? Scelus est Iason genitor, et maius scelus Medea mater. Occidant: non sunt mei. Pereant? mei sunt. Crimine et culpa carent. Sunt innocentes, fateor: et frater fuit. Quid, anime, titubas? ora quid lacrimae rigant? Variamque nunc huc ira nunc illuc amor Diducit? ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... conscience in OEdipus; the soon-repenting pride in Agamemnon; the self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus; the violence of ambition in the two Theban brothers; the sour sweetness of revenge in Medea; and, to fall lower, the Terentian Gnatho, and our Chaucer's Pandar, so expressed, that we now use their names to signify their trades; and finally, all virtues, vices, and passions so in their own natural states laid to the view, that we seem not to ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... distinction, was the woman of the Greek tragedy. [Endnote: 23] And hence generally arose for Shakspeare the wider field, and the more astonishing by its perfect novelty, when he first introduced female characters, not as mere varieties or echoes of masculine characters, a Medea or Clytemnestra, or a vindictive Hecuba, the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, but female characters that had the appropriate beauty of female nature; woman no longer grand, terrific, and repulsive, but woman "after her kind"—the other hemisphere of the dramatic world; woman, running ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... delay— And the Gods grant that nothing thwart thy way! I will myself invoke the King2 who binds In his Sicanian ecchoing vault the winds, With Doris3 and her Nymphs, and all the throng Of azure Gods, to speed thee safe along. But rather, to insure thy happier haste, Ascend Medea's chariot,4 if thou may'st, 10 Or that whence young Triptolemus5 of yore Descended welcome on the Scythian shore. The sands that line the German coast descried, To opulent Hamburg turn aside, So call'd, if legendary fame be true, From Hama,6 whom a club-arm'd Cimbrian slew. There lives, deep-learn'd ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... Circe was the daughter of the Sun and of the Nymph Perse, and the sister of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos. Homer makes her the sister of AEetes, the king of Colchis, while other authors represent her as the daughter of that monarch, and the sister of Medea. Being acquainted with the properties of simples, and having used her art in mixing poisonous draughts, she was generally looked upon as a sorceress. Apollonius Rhodius says that she poisoned her husband, the king of the Sarmatians, and that her father Apollo ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... perverted, so distempered both in body and soul, society throws the yoke of marriage: that yoke which, once rivetted on the necks of its victims, clings to them like the poisoned garments of Nessus or Medea. What can be expected from these ill-assorted yoke-fellows, but that, like two ill-tempered hounds, coupled by a tyrannical sportsman, they should drag on their indissoluble fetter, snarling and growling, and pulling in different directions? What can be expected for their wretched offspring, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... in the mind of every one, stood that invisible unknown woman, her feet in blood, raised aloft by the trial as it were on a pedestal,—torn, no doubt, by horrible inward anguish and condemned to absolute silence within her home. Who was this Medea whom the public well-nigh admired,—the woman with that impenetrable brow, that white breast covering a heart of steel? Perhaps she was the sister or the cousin or the daughter or the wife of this one or of that one among them! Alarm seemed to creep into ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... painted during these years for the Borghese, there are summed up all those artistic aims towards which the Venetian painters had been tending. The picture is still Giorgionesque in mood. It may represent, as Dr. Wickhoff suggests, Venus exhorting Medea to listen to the love-suit of Jason; but the subject is not forced upon us, and we are more occupied with the contrast between the two beautiful personalities, so harmoniously related to each other, yet so opposed in type. The gracious, self-absorbed lady, with her ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... that it would be all well when they should be married;—but how if, even now, there should be no marriage for her? Camilla French had never heard of Creusa and of Jason, but as she paced her mother's drawing-room that morning she was a Medea in spirit. If any plot of that kind should be in the wind, she would do such things that all Devonshire should hear of her wrongs and of ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... to a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great head-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing the fates of those great crowned ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... selfish, as that of Macbeth, to call up the apparitions of future kings from the strange ingredients of the witch's caldron. Thus I will not grieve that all the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron, but believe it will have Medea's virtue, and reproduce them in the form of new intellectual growths, since centuries cannot again adorn the land with such as have ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mistake! Is he blind? The mansion, which was a moment before ablaze, is now all dark! But the bride still stands under the lamp on the portico, statuesque as Zenobia or Medea. The statue grasps a paper. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... real hero of the enterprise. Upon arriving at AEa, after many adventures, king AEtes promised to deliver to Jason the golden fleece, provided he yoked two fire-breathing oxen with brazen feet, and performed other wonderful deeds. Here, also, as in the legend of Theseus, love played a prominent part. Medea, the daughter of AEtes, who was skilled in magic and supernatural arts, furnished Jason with the means of accomplishing the labours imposed upon him; and as her father still delayed to surrender the fleece, she ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... thereby. These were two contrarie humours: The Philosopher Chrisippus was wont to foist-in amongst his bookes, not only whole sentences and other long-long discourses, but whole bookes of other Authors, as in one, he brought in Euripides his Medea. And Apollodorus was wont to say of him, that if one should draw from out his bookes what he had stolne from others, his paper would remaine blanke. Whereas Epicurus cleane contrarie to him in three hundred volumes he left behind him, had not made use of one allegation. [Footnote: Citation.] ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... been on the eighth day of the month Cronion, which is now called Hecatombaion, that he came to his own city. On entering it he found public affairs disturbed by factions, and the house of AEgeus in great disorder; for Medea, who had been banished from Corinth, was living with AEgeus, and had engaged by her drugs to enable AEgeus to have children. She was the first to discover who Theseus was, while AEgeus, who was an old man, and feared every one because of the disturbed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Steinau was a Schloss, which also went up in fire; disclosing certain mysteries of an almost mythical nature to the German Public. It was the Schloss of a Grafin von Callenberg, a dreadful old Dowager of Medea-Messalina type, who "always wore pistols about her;" pistols, and latterly, with more and more constancy, a brandy-bottle;—who has been much on the tongues of men for a generation back. Herr Nussler (readers recollect shifty Nussler) knew her, in the way ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... vergessen. Und das erste, was ich in dieser Absicht tun werde, soll dieses sein— Du wirst mich verstehen! Zittre fr deine Bella! Ihr Leben soll das Andenken meiner verachteten Liebe auf die Nachwelt nicht bringen; meine Grausamkeit soll es tun. Sieh in mir eine neue Medea! ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... her own feelings must have been scarcely enviable. They say that great enchantresses, from Medea and Circe downward, have generally been unhappy in their loves. Either they could not raise the spirit, or it proved unmanageable; either their affection was not returned, or its object was unfaithful at last. In the single case where they put their science ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... expectant in spite of his melancholy circumstances, and was not being overtaken by retribution. The brother and sister seemed to be on delightful terms with each other for once, and there was something of cheerful anticipation in their morning talk. I was reminded of Medea's anointing Jason before the great episode of the iron bulls, but to-day William really could not be going up country to see a railroad for the first time. I knew this to be one of his great schemes, ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Socrates inciting his friends to good courage as he drinks the hemlock. It takes cognizance of the slave in his cabin no less than of Lincoln in his act of setting the slaves free. It touches the extremes in Mrs. Grundy and Clara Barton. It concerns itself with Medea scattering the limbs of her murdered brother along the way to delay her pursuers and with Antigone performing the rites of burial over the body of her brother that his soul might live forever. It has to do with Circe, who transformed ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... was beautiful, and of a sweetness most alluring and fatal! Had Medea worn such a look, sure Jason had quite forgot the fleece, and with those eyes Circe had needed no other charm to make men what she would. Her voice, when she spoke, was no longer imperious; it was low pleading music. And ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... aldermen, On whom three hundred gold-capt youths await, To lug the pond'rous volume off in state. "When Dulness, smiling—'Thus revive the wits! But murder first, and mince them all to bits! As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!) A new edition of old AEson gave; Let standard authors thus, like trophies borne, Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn. And you my Critics! in the chequer'd shade, Admire new light through holes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... and though each passion was, by turns, developed, it was evident that all were subordinate to the sin by which the angels fell. The contour of her face was formed in the purest Grecian mould, and might have been a model for Medea; so well did the gloomy grandeur of the brow, the severe chiselling of the lip, the rounded beauty of the throat, and the faultless symmetry of her full form, accord with the beau ideal of antique perfection. Shaded by smooth folds of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... how old I felt! I am sure this is what age brings with it - this carelessness, this disenchantment, this continual bodily weariness. I am a man of seventy: O Medea, kill me, or ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confronted on the historic page, and still their battle continues year after year. All readers know the sleepy voice and horrid sigh of Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth's awful scene of haunted somnambulism; the unexampled and unexcelled grandeur of Mrs. Yates in Medea; the infinite pathos of Mrs. Dancer (she that became in succession Mrs. Spranger Barry and Mrs. Crawford) and her memorable scream, as Lady Randolph, at "Was he alive?"; the comparative discomfiture of ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... huge Alcides'[31] strength? Great Macedon[32] what force might have subdu'd? Wise Scipio who overcame at length, But we, that are with greater force endu'd? Who could have conquered the golden fleece[33] But Jason, aided by Medea's art? Who durst have stol'n fair Helen out of Greece But I, with love that bold'ned Paris' heart? What bond of nature, what restraint avails[34] Against our power? I vouch to witness truth. The myrrh tree,[35] that with shamefast ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... one of the amusements of a New England population. Must we call it an amusement to go and see the acted despair of Medea? or the dying agonies of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur? It is something of the same awful interest in life's tragedy, which makes an untaught and primitive people gather to a funeral,—a tragedy where there is no ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a childish pedantry, which was then—when Latin was the vernacular tongue of all scholars—a serious, if not altogether a useful, pursuit. Of his tragedies, so famous in their day—the "Baptist," the "Medea," the "Jephtha," and the "Alcestis"—there is neither space nor need to speak here, save to notice the bold declamations in the "Baptist" against tyranny and priestcraft; and to notice also that these tragedies gained for the poor ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... shining: and contrarily, the remorse of conscience in Odipus, the soon repenting pride of Agamemnon, the self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus, the violence of ambition in the two Theban brothers, the sour-sweetness of revenge in Medea, and to fall lower, the Terentian Gnatho and our Chaucer's Pandar, so expressed, that we now use their names to signify their trades. And finally, all virtues, vices, and passions so in their own natural seats ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... reproduced my hideous nose and my dreadful mouth with a masterly exactness. No—my dear Monsieur Gouache—it is a compliment I pay you. I am in earnest. I do not want a portrait of the Venus of Milo with red hair, nor of the Minerva Medica with yellow eyes, nor of an imaginary Medea in a fur cloak. I want myself, just as I am. That is exactly what you are doing for me. Myself and I have lived so long together that I desire a little memento of ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... through his frame, he tasted again of health and strength and manhood, he saw before him years of success and power and triumph! In comparison to it the bath of Pelias, though endowed with the virtues which lying Medea attributed to it, had not seemed more desirable, nor the elixir of life, nor the herb of Anticyra. Nor was it until he had taken the magic draught once and twice and thrice in fancy, and as often hugged himself on health renewed and life restored ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... tell riht as it is. Min holi fader, nay ywiss, Condicion such have I non. For trewli, fader, I love oon So wel with al myn hertes thoght, That certes, thogh sche hadde noght, And were as povere as Medea, Which was exiled for Creusa, 2540 I wolde hir noght the lasse love; Ne thogh sche were at hire above, As was the riche qwen Candace, Which to deserve love and grace To Alisandre, that was king, Yaf many a worthi riche thing, Or elles as Pantasilee, Which ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... of Medea in the tragedy recommends caution and submission; and enumerating all the distresses of that unfortunate heroine, asks her, what she has to support her against her numerous and implacable enemies. MYSELF, replies she; MYSELF I SAY, AND IT IS ENOUGH. Boileau justly recommends this passage as an ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... since, to have the better of materialism, it is sufficient to understand well what is one thought of the mind, one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance of the conscience,—add boldly with Corneille's Medea: ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... As his good sire's, nor is his valour less; Since here usurping Venice arms for fight, And her full troops his scanty numbers press, There she (I know not if more justly hight Mother or stepmother) brings new distress; But, if a mother, scarce to him more mild Than Progue or Medea ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... they abound. Think of the cavalier fashion in which Ulysses treated Calypso, Diomedes Callirhoe. What should I say of Theseus and Ariadne? Jason treated Medea with inconceivable lightness. The Romans continued the tradition with still greater brutality. Aenaeus, who has many characteristics in common with the Reverend Spardek, treated Dido in a most undeserved fashion. Caesar was a laurel-crowned blackguard in his relations ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... than Colleoni's own monument is that of his daughter Medea. She died young in 1470, and her father caused her tomb, carved of Carrara marble, to be placed in the Dominican Church of Basella, which he had previously founded. It was not until 1842 that this most precious masterpiece of Antonio Amadeo's skill was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was come for him. How he must have listened to the musical and melancholy counsellor who told his pain to the leaves of the book! What stimulant and what food for his boyish longings and dreams! And what a divine chorus of beauties the great love-heroines of ancient epic and elegy, Helen, Medea, Ariadne, Phaedra, formed and re-formed continually in his dazzled memory! When we of to-day read such verses at Augustin's age, some bitterness is mixed with our delight. These heroes and heroines are too far from us. These almost chimerical beings withdraw ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... should like her to have, if possible, good verse drawn up in order of battle; but, like Napoleon, she must face the fire herself, and, like Alexander, march in the front ranks of the phalanx. She is so powerful that in some cases she would conquer unaided; for she has the right to say with Medea: 'I, myself, am enough.'" ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... glories of Islam. The great Sultan, in order to consolidate his power both against the French and over the Arabs, constructed a number of forts on the limits of the Tell at Sebdou, on the west; at Saida, south of Tlemsen; at Tekedemt, south of Mascara; at Boghar, south of Miliana; to the south of Medea, and to the southeast of Algiers. Tekedemt, an old Roman town about sixty miles southeast of Oran, was designed to be the capital, as a great centre of commerce between the Tell and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... customs, as of neighbourhood, my friends the Hollanders: mine I may well call them, for they stick so close and lovingly to me, that they are styled fools to a proverb, and yet scorn to be ashamed of their name. Well, let fond mortals go now in a needless quest of some Medea, Circe, Venus, or some enchanted fountain, for a restorative of age, whereas the accurate performance of this feat lies only within the ability of ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... peoples, for several thousand years. Egypt, the home of the Pyramids and the Sphinx, was the birthplace of the Hidden Wisdom and Mystic Teachings. From her Secret Doctrine all nations have borrowed. India, Persia, Chaldea, Medea, China, Japan, Assyria, ancient Greece and Rome, and other ancient countries partook liberally at the feast of knowledge which the Hierophants and Masters of the Land of Isis so freely provided for those who came prepared to partake of the great store of Mystic and Occult Lore ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... which ought to be his own by right of inheritance. Thus these bad-hearted nephews of King Aegeus, who were the own cousins of Theseus, at once became his enemies. A still more dangerous enemy was Medea, the wicked enchantress; for she was now the king's wife, and wanted to give the kingdom to her son Medus, instead of letting it be given to the son of ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had told his tale and gone, young Melicent arose and went into a chamber painted with the histories of Jason and Medea, where her brother Count Emmerick hid such jewels as had not many ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchemy, Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God, 675 Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... not fair to call men wicked when they imitate the gods. Let the evil examples be blamed. In the Andromache horror is expressed of the folkways of the barbarians, in which incest is not prevented. In the Medea Jason, who is a scoundrel and a cur, prates to Medea about her gain in coming to Greece: "Thou hast learned what justice means, and how to live by law, not by the dictates of brute force." She had not learned it at all—quite the contrary. In the Hekuba it is said to be a disgrace ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... dedicated to the Goddess of Good; the celebrated Mithras with a serpent coiled round him, between the folds of which are sculptured the signs of the zodiac; Medea and her children; a mile-stone, bearing the names of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian; a basso-relievo of the Muses; several sarcophagi, votive altars, cornices, pillars, mutilated statues, and inscriptions, are here carefully preserved: but ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... in their serious Plays were after this manner? And it will be found, that the subjects they commonly chose, drave them upon the necessity; which were usually the most known stories and Fables [p. 522]. Accordingly, SENECA, making choice of MEDEA, HYPPOLITUS, and HERCULES OEtaeus, it was impossible to show MEDEA throwing old mangled AESON into her age-renewing caldron, or to present the scattered limbs of HYPPOLITUS upon the Stage, and show HERCULES burning upon ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... of Horace,' Gibbon pronounces, 'is a vulgar witch. The Erichtho of Lucan is tedious, disgusting, but sometimes sublime.' The love-charms of Canidia and Medea are chiefly indebted to the Pharmakeutria ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Euripides: "Medea", "Hecabe", "Electra", and "Heracles", translated by Philip Vellacott (Penguin Classics, London, 1963). Contains four plays by Euripides, two of which concern characters ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the Drama, he pronounces, with great confidence, that the Latin tragedy of Medea is not Ovid's, because it is not sufficiently interesting and pathetick. He might have determined the question upon surer evidence; for it is quoted by Quintilian as the work of Seneca; and the only line which remains of Ovid's play, for one line is left us, is not there to be ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... at Almeida, I learned that the "Medea" sloop-of-war was lying off Oporto, and expected to sail for England in a few days. The opportunity was not to be neglected. The official despatches, I was aware, would be sent through Lisbon, where the "Gorgon" frigate was in waiting to convey them; but should I be fortunate ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Protestant republic; a republic to be perpetuated, if not in England herself, yet among her great children beyond the sea. France was to go her way through Bartholomew massacres and the dragonnades to a polished Louis the Magnificent, and thence to the bloody Medea's cauldron of Revolution, out of which she was to rise as now we know her. No common road could have been found for such destinies as these; and the French prince followed the direction of his wiser instincts when he preferred ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... seemed, each of the heroes was eager to undertake it, but Jason, as the leader of the expedition, took it upon himself. Fortune favored him in the desperate undertaking. Medea, the daughter of AEetes, who knew all the arts of magic, had seen the handsome youth and fallen in love with him at sight. She now came to his aid with all her magic. Gathering an herb which had grown where the blood of Prometheus had fallen, she prepared from it a magical ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... had been a place of interest time out of mind. From its woody cover, the first inhabitants beheld the Argonauts anchor off the town of Amycus, king of the Bebryces; there the vengeful Medea practised her incantations; and descending to acknowledged history, it were long telling the notable events of the ages landmarked by the hoary height. When the builder of the palace below threw his scheme ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... argue with you, Medea," replied Mr Culpepper; "I take the world as I find it, and make the best of it. I must go now,— my steward is waiting for me at the victualling office. Just brush my hat a little, Medea, the wind has raised the nap, and then ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the persistence of the Comedie Francais in exhibiting that to us as "a masterpiece" had so exasperated me that, having gone home in order to get rid of the taste of this milk-food, I read before going to bed the Medea of Euripides, as I had no other classic handy, and Aurora surprised ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... biblical commentators. It is to be presumed that the reference to a source so well known as the Bible would have occurred at once to the Querist, had not the allusions, in the preceding stanza, to the heathen fable of Medea, diverted his thoughts from that more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... to him? In truth, it was all over,—such love at least as that of which his old heart was dreaming in its dotage. There is no Medea's caldron from which our limbs can come out young and fresh; and it were well that the heart should grow old as does ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... STORY OF THESEUS. From Kingsley's "Heroes." How Theseus lifted the stone. How Theseus slew the Corynetes. How Theseus slew Sinis. How Theseus slew Kerkyon and Procrustes. How Theseus slew the Medea and was acknowledged the son of Aegeus. How Theseus slew the Minotaur. To be told in six ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... hampers us in life as the failure to accept our fate with courage," my guardian said to me once. "Be as brave as you can. Do you remember what Medea says in reply to that cruel reminder of her losses?—'Husband, countrymen, riches, all gone from you: what remains?' She ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Fiesole, Throw no such blossoms on the lap of spring, Or if they do their blossoms droop and die. Such is the fate of all the dainty things That dance in wind and water. Nature herself Makes war on her own loveliness and slays Her children like Medea. Nay but, my Lord, Look closer still. Why in this damask here It is summer always, and no winter's tooth Will ever blight these blossoms. For every ell I paid a piece of gold. Red gold, and good, The fruit of ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... to the end be thou my assistant, Making my medicines work no less than the philtre of Circe, Or Medea's charms, or yellow-haired Perimede's. Wheel of the magic spells, draw thou that man ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... poetical. That first pose of the bull is superb! Pasta, in her Medea, did not surpass it. Meanwhile the matadors and the banderilleros shook their coloured scarfs at him—the picadors poked at him with their lances. He rushed at the first, and tossed up the scarfs which they threw at him, while they sprung over the arena; galloped after the others, striking the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... as before. Jason, leading Creon's daughter. Medea, following, hath a garland in her hand, and putting it on Creon's daughter's head, setteth it on fire, and then, killing ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder at my speaking thus (making allusion to Lady Byron).... I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing but the deliberate desolation piled upon me when I stood alone upon my hearth with my household gods shivered around me.... ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... me even as the dew to fire, And beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. Henceforth I will not have to do with pity; Meet I an infant of the house of York, Into as many gobbets will I cut it As wild Medea young Absyrtus did. In cruelty will I seek out my fame.— Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford's house: As did Aeneas old Anchises bear, So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders; But then Aeneas bare a living load, Nothing so heavy as these ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... teichous].] As many of the best manuscripts have [Greek: Medeias], in this passage as well as in ii. 4. 12, ii. 4. 27, and vii. 8. 25, Kuehner adopts that reading, under the notion that the wall was named from Medea, the wife of the last king of the Medes, whom the Persians conquered and despoiled of his dominions. "Those who defend the reading [Greek: Medias]," continues Kuehner, "suppose the name to be derived from the country of Media, and believe, with Mannert, (Geog. i. p. 330,) that it is the same wall ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... schools, which were erected at the public cost. In that time he composed four tragedies, which were afterwards occasionally published. But that which he wrote first, called The Baptist, was printed last, and next the Medea of Euripides. He wrote them in compliance with the custom of the school, which was to have a play written once a-year, that the acting of them might wean the French youth from allegories, to which they had taken a false taste, and ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... postquam ratione furorem, Vincere non poterat. Frustra, Medea, repugnas. —— Excute virgineo conceptas pectore flammas, Si potes, infelix. Si possem sanior essem: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... intellectual all of our ancestors. They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without Oedipus and Medea, while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and Bessus, and Pistol, and Parolles. If he cannot enjoy the delicious irony of Plato, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... purple, gold, and the heavens aflame with a mystic message. He never translated that message, for his was an art of silence; but the painter of The Maiden with the Head of Orpheus, of Salome, of Jason and Medea, of Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win the admiration and homage of those art lovers who yearn for dreams of vanished ages, who long to escape the commonplaces of the present. Gustave Moreau will be ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... my pen strives to eternise thee, Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face, Where in the map of all my misery Is modelled out the world of my disgrace; Whilst in despite of tyrannising times, Medea-like, I make thee young again, Proudly thou scorn'st my world-outwearing rhymes, And murther'st virtue with thy coy disdain; And though in youth my youth untimely perish, To keep thee from oblivion and ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... like your Irish wood, 'Gainst cob-webs. I have a piece of Jason's fleece, too, Which was no other than a book of alchemy, Writ in large sheep-skin, a good fat ram-vellum. Such was Pythagoras' thigh, Pandora's tub, And, all that fable of Medea's charms, The manner of our work; the bulls, our furnace, Still breathing fire; our argent-vive, the dragon: The dragon's teeth, mercury sublimate, That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting; And they are gathered into Jason's helm, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... to the world in an English dress and arrangement, by Sir Roger Lestrange. There have not been wanting critics of considerable eminence to maintain that the name of Seneca was assumed in order to conceal that of the real author. Quintilian ascribes to him the tragedy of Medea. The Troas and the Hippolytus are also said to be of his composition, while the Agamemnon, the Hercules Fureus, and the Thyestes and Hercules in Oeta, are supposed to have been written by his father Marcus Annoeus Seneca, the declaimer. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... handed to Germany a note of protest on the sinking in March of the Dutch steamship Medea by a German submarine. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... difficulty, and, as Baron, in his Lettres sur la Danse, observes that when the word Dancing occurs in an old author, that it should always be translated by "gesticulation," "declamation," or "Pantomime." When we read that an actress "danced" her part well in the tragedy of Medea, that a carver cut up food dancing, that Heligobalus and Caligula "danced" a discourse for an audience of state, we are to understand that they—actress, carver, and emperor—declaimed, gesticulated, made themselves ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... colours drawn; Before the palace gate, in careless dress And loose array, sat portress Idleness; There by the fount Narcissus pined alone; There Samson was; with wiser Solomon, And all the mighty names by love undone. Medea's charms were there; Circean feasts, With bowls that turned enamoured youths to beasts. Here might be seen, that beauty, wealth, and wit, And prowess to the power of love submit; The spreading snare for all mankind is laid, And lovers all betray, and are betrayed. The Goddess' self some noble ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... down to a common level, and introduces characters which are unheroic. He gives the people plenty of passion, especially of feminine passion, without being nice as to its sources, or rejecting such stories as those of Phaedra and Medea, which would have been alien to the taste, not only of Aeschylus, but of Sophocles. He gives them plenty of politics, plenty of rhetoric, plenty of discussion, political and moral, plenty of speculation, which in those days was novel, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... combined with her unbounded ambition and her ability for hard work, soon brought her public recognition. Her simple but effective manner of singing and her wonderful histrionic ability made all her work dignified and impressive; her representation of the character of Medea, in Simon Mayer's opera by that name, has been called the "grandest lyric impersonation in the records of art." When the great actor Talma heard her in the days of her early success in Paris, he said: "Here is a woman of whom I can still learn. One turn of her beautiful head, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... some Hebe or young Aurora of the dawn. When you saw only her superb figure, and its promise of womanly development, with the measured dignity of her step, you might for a moment have fancied her some imperial Medea of the Athenian ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of asthma; I know so much about the water and so much about the pulse that evil would be the hour in which you would take another leech. And I know, if I dared say it, of enchantments and of charms, well proven and true, more than ever Medea knew. Never spake I a word of it to you; and yet I have brought you up till now; but never reproach yourself at all for it, for never would I have said aught to you if I had not seen for a surety that such a malady ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... she had certainly never loved him. Nor did she love Lord Rufford. As far as she knew how to define her feelings, she thought that she hated him. But she told herself hourly that she had not done with him. She was instigated by the true feminine Medea feeling that she would find some way to wring his heart,— even though in the process she might suffer twice as much as he did. She had convinced herself that in this instance he was the offender. "Painful to both of us!" No doubt! But because it would be painful to him, it should ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... This Iphigenia and the Medea in the house of Castor and Pollux, recalling the masterpiece of Timomachos the Byzantine are the only two Pompeian pictures which reproduce well-known paintings; but let us not, for that reason, conclude that the others are original. The painters of the little city ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... Spain, and to drive the newly-arrived Vandals across the Straits of Gibraltar into the then blooming coast-land of Northern Africa. Everywhere the mangled limbs of the Old World were seething in the Medea's caldron, to come forth whole, and young, and strong. The Longbeards, noblest of their race, had found a temporary resting-place upon the Austrian frontier, after long southward wanderings from the Swedish mountains, soon to be dispossessed again by the advancing Huns, and, crossing ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... The succeeding word comes from Richard Mansfield, whose untimely death is mourned by every lover of the drama. The next pages are from the hand of Tommaso Salvini, admittedly the greatest Othello and Samson that ever trod the boards. A few words, in closing, are from Adelaide Ristori, whose Medea, Myrrha and Phaedra are among the great traditions of the modern stage. From first to last this little book sheds light on the severe toil demanded for excellence on the stage, and reveals that for the highest success of a drama, author and artist ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles |
