"Priestess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the sweat-shop seemed, at first, mere child's play. She arrived at eight o'clock, helped Susan in the basement kitchen, until Miss Bobinet awoke, then went aloft to officiate at the elaborate process of that lady's toilet. For twenty years Susan had been chief priestess at this ceremony, but her increasing deafness infuriated her mistress to such an extent that Nance was initiated into the mysteries. The temperature of the bath, the choice of underclothing, the ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... him like an outraged priestess. This time he did not shrink, but glared back at her balefully. "This is the end! We have come to the parting of the ways. I will never call you husband again. If you even speak to me, Thomas Braddock, I shall ask any one of a dozen men ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... an Andrea del Sarto over her drawing-room chimney-piece. Surrounded by these treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics, majolica dishes, and little worm-eaten diptychs covered with angular saints on gilded backgrounds, our hostess enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess of the arts. She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of the Madonna della Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I asked her whether she knew that ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... at last. Mrs. Castleton's rooms were lighted to perfection, and she herself dressed with exquisite taste, looking the fitting priestess of the elegant shrine over which she presided. Emma, with her brothers, came early—and one glance satisfied Mrs. Castleton. The simplicity and elegance of Emma's toilette were not to be out-done even by her own. Tom looked at them both with great pride; and, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... you," she merely repeated. Though she disclaimed the prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had ever met to the priestess of the oracle. The light was in her eyes. "You must ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... oak. At Delphi there was a deep fissure in the ground, which emitted stupefying vapors, that were thought to be the inspiring breath of Apollo. Over the spot was erected a splendid temple, in honor of the oracle. The revelation was generally received by the Pythia, or priestess, seated upon a tripod placed over the orifice. As she became overpowered by the influence of the prophetic exhalations, she uttered the message of the god. These mutterings of the Pythia were taken down by attendant ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... everyday life! When Poetry is hounded from every other nook of the earth which the Maker of it meant should be one vast, sublime epic, she will find an inviolable retreat under the Lares and Penates guarding the ingleside, and crown as priestess forever the wife and mother who makes ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... habit to walk in the cool of the day. Or, rather, there were two terraced temples, one dedicated to Fate like that in the underground city of Nyo, and the other to Love. Of the temple to Fate she told me her father had been the High Priest, and of the temple to Love she was the High Priestess. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... plural, just as e.g. in Euripides (Iph. Taur. 1359) Orestes and Pylades are upbraided for 'stealing from the land its images and priestesses' ([Greek: kleptontes ek ges xoana kai thuepolous]), though there was only one image and one priestess. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... that, naturally. But somehow it was a little difficult to get it through his own doubtless too-thick skull. He'd often dreamed of power. Being a priest or a priestess, for instance—now that meant something. At least people paid attention to you if you were a member of the hierarchy, favored of the Gods. But, Forrester knew, there was no chance of that any more. Either you were picked before you were ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... invaluable fossils for those who will stoop to pick them up and study them. Back in the far past we can build up the life of our ancestry—the little kingdom, the queen or her daughter as king maker, the simple life of the royal household, and the humble candidate for the kingship, the priestess with her control of the weather and her power over youth and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near foreground the beginnings of that fight with patriarchal institutions which led the priestess to be branded by the new Christian ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... forever," he cried, "my fair Priestess of Freedom! You, at least, have a free soul, and one that is certainly inspired by the great divinity of earth. You shall be mine ally, though I find none other in all Bogota sufficiently courageous. In you, my child, in you and yours, there is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... disinterred from the sand in front of the building. The soil at that place is profusely strewn with fragments of images wrought in clay, representing portions of the human body. I was myself so fortunate as to fall in with the head of a priestess, a beautiful piece of workmanship, moulded according to the most exact proportions of Grecian art. It had formed part of a brazier that had served to burn perfumes on the altar near which I found ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... temple and reposes on the bed, in like manner as at Thebes in Egypt, where also, in the temple of Jupiter, a woman passes the night. A similar custom is observed at Pataris, in Lycia, where there is at times an oracle, on which occasions the priestess is shut up by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... marge, From many a forest glen, With frantic gestures rude, The red Dahcotah men. But onward sped the bark Until it reached the height, Where mounts the angry spray And raves the water's might And whirling eddies swept Into the gulf below The smiles of infancy And youth's maturer glow; The priestess of the rock And white-robed surges bore The wronged and broken heart To the far off ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... Pythoness, saying, 'O King Apollo, reverence these boughs of supplication, and deliver a more comfortable answer concerning our dear country. Else we will not leave thy sanctuary, but stay here until we die.' Whereat the priestess gave us a second answer, gloomy and riddling, yet not so evil as ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... "Priestess of Set, great seeress and magician of the old world in whom once my spirit dwelt, send forth your Ka, your everlasting Emanation, to help me. Crush this black hound. Come forth, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... colonize Samos after its subjugation by Pericles. The father and mother of Epicurus were in very humble circumstances; his father was a schoolmaster, and his mother, Chaerestrata, acted as a kind of priestess, curing diseases, exorcising ghosts, and exercising other fabulous powers. Epicurus has been charged with sorcery, because he wrote several songs for his mother's solemn rites. Until eighteen, he remained at Samos and the neighboring isle ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... the great, born to restore The crown that once his injured grandsire wore. This prince a priestess of our blood shall bear; And like his sire in arms he ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Volumnia and those who had gone with her to the Volscian camp, built a temple to "Woman's Fortune" on the spot where Coriolanus had yielded to his mother's entreaties; and the first priestess of this temple was Valeria, who had been inspired in the temple of Jupiter with the thought ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... world. In the centre of the temple of Delphi there was a small opening in the ground, from which it was said that a certain gas or vapour ascended. Whenever the oracle was to be consulted, a virgin priestess called PYTHIA took her seat upon a tripod which was placed over the chasm. The ascending vapour affected her brain, and the words which she uttered in this excited condition were believed to be the answer ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... emotion in this opera are masterly indeed. The subject of 'La Vestale' (which resembles that of 'Norma,' but how differently treated!) is tragic and sublime as well as intensely emotional. Julia, the heroine, a prey to guilty passion; the severe but kindly high priestess; Licinius, the adventurous lover, and his faithful friend Cinna; pious vestals, cruel priests, bold warriors, and haughty Romans, are represented with statuesque relief and finish. Both these works, 'La Vestale' (1802) and 'Cortez' (1809), ire among the finest that have ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... islanders. The young Princess Kapiolani was converted to Christianity through the teaching of the missionaries. Grieving for the ignorance and misery of her people, she resolved to visit the burning mountain of Kilauea, and dare the dreaded Pele to do her worst. There a priestess met her, threatened her with the displeasure of the goddess if she persisted, and prophesied that she and her followers would miserably perish. In defiance of this threat, she and her Christian followers went down to the edge of the burning lake, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... yielding superciliously to their mood. Women were incurable. Namur had fallen, but the room was full of finery, and the finery claimed attention. And if Paris had fallen, it would have been the same. So he told himself. Nevertheless the spectacle of the heaped finery and its absorbed priestess was very agreeable. Lois rose. Laurencine and the priestess helped her to remove the white gown she wore, and to put on the blue one. The presence of the male somewhat disturbed the priestess, but the male had signified a wish and the wish ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... number of years thereafter Sikas/sig[)e] received continued instruction from his father Bai[-e]/dzh[)e]k, and although he never publicly received advancement beyond the second degree of the society, his wife became a fourth degree priestess, at whose initiation he was ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... absolute value, as if truth had for the first time found a perfectly translucent medium. It was not so much that she said rare things, but her very silence was eloquent, and there was a great deal of it. Her girlhood had in it a certain dignity as of a virgin priestess or sibyl. Yet her hearty sympathies and her healthy energy made her at home in daily life, and in a democratic society. To Kate, for instance, she was a necessity of existence, like light or air. Kate's nature was limited; ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... last and she took her place at the piano. Her hands fell softly on a group of dreamy ascending chords. Her face, then, in a long pause, took on a rapt expectancy and power. She was the priestess waiting before her altar for the descent of the god, glorious and dreadful. And it was as if with the chill and shudder of a possession that, breathing deeply, drawing her shoulders a little together, she lifted her hands and played. She became the possessed and articulate priestess, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... corn. So each in turn the Maidens gave up their trays of precious seed. The Maiden of the South, the red seed; the Maiden of the East, the white seed; then the Maiden with the black seed, and lastly, the tray of all-color seed which the Priestess ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... of women the world over are turned to this day and hour, that the colored women of the United States should join in the expressions of love and praise offered to Miss Anthony upon her eightieth birthday. ....She is to us not only the high priestess of woman's cause, but the courageous defender of rights ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and the nature of the disclosures were dream-like and unreal, and the image of Dorcas remained impressed upon her sight; not like Dorcas, though the same, but something ghastly, wan, glittering, and terrible, like a priestess at a solitary sacrifice. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... returned the same evening without entering another house), reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess. Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... the Ethiopics, which may be considered as an heroic romance, the scene lies 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... of a priestess on the left, Cairn, is of great interest. The brain had not been removed, and quite a colony of Dermestes Beetles had propagated in the cavity. Those creatures never saw the light, Cairn. Yet I assure you that they had eyes. I have nearly forty of them in the small glass case ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... concede Madame Blavatsky's soul, or any part of it, to Mrs. Athelstone. Promptly on hearing of her pretensions, so rumor had it, the Boston woman had announced the reincarnation of Theosophy's high priestess in herself. And Boston believers were inclined to accept her view, as it was difficult for them to understand how any soul with liberty of action could deliberately choose a New ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... virgin priestess, who fell to the lot of Achilles among the spoil of a victory, but whom Agamemnon carried off from him, whereupon he retired to his tent and sullenly refused to take any further part in the war, to its prolongation, in consequence, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for Christina Light a very regrettable affair, but he suspected that her manifest compassion had been all for Roderick, and not in the least for Mary Garland. She was fond of the young girl, but she had valued her primarily, during the last two years, as a kind of assistant priestess at Roderick's shrine. Roderick had honored her by asking her to become his wife, but that poor Mary had any rights in consequence Mrs. Hudson was quite incapable of perceiving. Her sentiment on the subject was of course not very vigorously formulated, but she was unprepared ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... fate to amuse the beings whom she has herself assembled within her halls. Nonchalance is the metier of your modern hostess; and so long as the house be not on fire, or the furniture not kicked, you may be even ignorant who is the priestess of the hospitable fane ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... not daughters"—we might wish to regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable; but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for the prototype of Cordelia: there was a Julia Alpinula, the young priestess of Aventicum,[65] who, unable to save her father's life by the sacrifice of her own, died with him—"infelix patris, infelix proles"—but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter, too. I remember seeing at Genoa, Guido's "Pieta Romana," in which the expression of the female bending ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... made by the god. The most famous oracles were that of Jupiter at Dodona and that of Apollo at Delphi, the latter holding chief place. At Delphi there was a temple to Apollo built over a chasm in the mountain side from which came sulphurous fumes. A priestess took her seat on a tripod over this chasm, and the answers she gave to inquiries were supposed to be dictated by the god. These answers were almost always unintelligible, and even when interpreted by the priests were ambiguous and of little use. Nevertheless, the Greeks ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Huber, who had secured a position in the diplomatic service. The time was now ripe for that jubilant song, more frequently set to music than any other of Schiller's poems, wherein we are introduced to a mystic brotherhood, worshiping in fiery intoxication at the shrine of the celestial priestess, Joy, whose other name is Sympathy. A mystic brotherhood; yet not an exclusive one, since the fraternal kiss is—freely offered to every mortal on the round earth who has found one soul to love. The lines glorify Joy, just as ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you." This proposal was accepted with thanks by Thaisa; and when she was perfectly recovered, Cerimon placed her in the temple of Diana, where she became a vestal or priestess of that goddess, and passed her days in sorrowing for her husband's supposed loss, and in the most ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... 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, but that at Delphi ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... department is equally faulty; for to first impressions everything on earth is chameleon-like. The Scandinavian Divinities, the Past, the Present, and the Future, could look upon each other, but neither of them upon herself. But in the journal the Present is trying to behold itself; the same priestess utters and explains the oracle. Thus the journal is the immortal reproduction of the jour des dupes. The editors are like the newsboys, shouting the news which they do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... and a nurse were there. And completing the group was Nea holding a round object in each hand—round things with unkempt, trailing hair. He was not completely conscious—and for a second she looked like a high priestess of the Amazon, holding ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... which the vengeful cries of the Furies seem to echo along this wild and desert shore? As soon as Madame de Hell could distinguish the line of rocks that traced the vague horizon, she began to look for Cape Parthenike, the traditional site of the altar of the goddess, to whom the young priestess Iphigenia was on the point of sacrificing her brother. Assisted by the captain, she at length descried on a rocky headland a solitary chapel, dedicated, she was told, to the Virgin Mother. "What a contrast," she naturally remarks, "between the gentle worship of Mary and that ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... am Sargon, the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited the mountain.... When my mother had conceived me, she bare me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped the door thereof with pitch, and cast me adrift on the river.... The river floated me ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... glow, among great fluted pillars and bowls of softly burning radiance swung (like censers) by long chains. Occasionally there is an airy flutter, a bell clangs, bronze doors slide apart, and an elevator appears, in charge of a chastely uniformed priestess. Lights flash up over this dark little cave which stands invitingly open: UP, they say, LOCAL 1-13. The door-sill of the cave shines with a row of golden beads (small lights, to guide the foot)—it is irresistible. There is an upward impulse about the whole place: the light blossoms ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... months that pass, And from the town Lavinium shifts the dwelling of his race, 270 And maketh Alba-town the Long a mighty fenced place. Here when for thrice an hundred years untouched the land hath been Beneath the rule of Hector's folk, lo Ilia, priestess-queen, Goes heavy with the love of Mars, and bringeth twins to birth. 'Neath yellow hide of foster-wolf thence, mighty in his mirth, Comes Romulus to bear the folk, and Mavors' walls to frame, And by the word himself was called the Roman folk to name. On them I lay no bonds ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... The oracle at Delphi was the most famous and authoritative among the Greeks. The priestess who voiced the answers of the god was seated in a ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... but a clerk at a commencing salary of fifteen shillings per week! Ah! but she was a priestess! She had a vocation which was unsoiled by the economic excuse. She was a pioneer. No young woman had ever done what she was doing. She was the only girl in the Five Towns who ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... occult, now recognized among the guiding principles from which scientific deductions are drawn. She believed in the power of magic, which she was universally understood to possess; but she was no vulgar witch: rather was she a worthy priestess of her not ignoble deities. The effect upon Hilda's mind of the teachings of such a woman is easy to conceive. She had been allowed to know little of the wild orgies of the barbaric feasts offered to the Gods by her countrymen, ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... a priestess, nor one so pure," he thought, and a strange feeling of sadness came over him, and he thanked her rather abruptly for showing him her treasure, and they went silently back through Sir Timothy's rooms, and down ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... does not claim to be giving his own thoughts when speaking of love. He says he is only relating what a woman once imparted to him as a revelation. It was through mantic art that he came to his conception of love. Diotima, the priestess, awakened in Socrates the daimonic force which was to lead him to ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... chance to shine," cried Burtis. "Hitherto, Amy, the oracle has usually been dumb, but you may become a priestess who will evoke untold stores ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... absolutely necessary to her existence. Her cheek is flushed, her eye wild and tremulous, the broad blue veins of her immaculate brow quivering and distended; her waving hair falls back over her forehead, and rustles like a wood before the storm. She seems a priestess in the convulsive throes of inspiration, and about to breathe the oracle. The picture, as we have mentioned, was hung in a broad and massy frame. In the centre of its base was worked an escutcheon, and beneath the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... that glowed with the fires of Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing motion, and saluted in her the priestess of sheer appetite, for whom the gods were dead, indeed, yet living in their material form—Dionysus as wine, Aphrodite as the act of love, Apollo ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... she claims the captive girl—the last of that devoted tribe—to be delivered over to her will. Her right to this remnant of her murdered husband's family is acknowledged. A knife is placed in her hand, while a deafening yell of triumph bursts from the excited squaws, as this their great high priestess, as they deem her, advances to the criminal. But it is not to shed the heart's blood of the Mohawk girl, but to sever the thong that bind her to the deadly stake, for which that glittering blade is drawn, and to bid her depart in peace whithersoever ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... nuptials be celebrated on these shores. Wouldst thou sigh for thy green island? No! for there the fairy altars are deserted, the faith is gone from the land; thou art among the last of an unhonoured and expiring race. Thy mortal poets are dumb, and Fancy, which was thy priestess, sleeps hushed in her last repose. New and hard creeds have succeeded to the fairy lore. Who steals through the starlit boughs on the nights of June to watch the roundels of thy tribe? The wheels of commerce, the din of trade, have silenced to mortal ear the music of thy subjects' harps! ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... magnificent repetition of which I saw a few months later, when all Paris rushed to the feet of the Emperor on his return from Elba. The sense of this dominion exercised over the masses, whose feelings and whose very life are thus merged into one soul, dedicated me then and thenceforth to glory, that priestess who slaughters the Frenchmen of to-day as the Druidess ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... exalted minister of Enzu, endowed with strength by the Sun-god, the worshipper of Ninni, the son who was conceived by Nidaba, who was nourished by Ninkharsag with the milk of life, the attendant of Umu, priestess of Erech, the servant who was trained by Ninagidkhadu, the mistress of Erech, the great minister of the gods." Lugalzaggisi then goes on to describe the extent of his dominion, and he says: "When the god Enlil, the lord of the countries, bestowed upon Lugalzaggisi the kingdom of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... reign. He thirty rolling years the crown shall wear, Then from Lavinium shall the seat transfer, And, with hard labor, Alba Longa build. The throne with his succession shall be fill'd Three hundred circuits more: then shall be seen Ilia the fair, a priestess and a queen, Who, full of Mars, in time, with kindly throes, Shall at a birth two goodly boys disclose. The royal babes a tawny wolf shall drain: Then Romulus his grandsire's throne shall gain, Of martial tow'rs the founder shall become, The people Romans call, the city Rome. To them no ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... us forbear to provoke the appetite of a hungry reader by setting in order before him the minced pies, the cranberry tarts, the pumpkin pies, the doughnuts, the cookies, and other sweet cakes of every description, that sprang into being at the magic touch of Black Dinah, the village priestess on all these solemnities. Suffice it to say that the day had arrived, and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he might come to this fair end, He found Apollo, and besought him lend His throne of divination for a while, Whereby he did the priestess there beguile, To give the cruel answer ye have heard Unto those lords, who wrote it word by word, And back unto the King its threatenings bore, Whereof there came that grief and mourning sore, Of which ye wot; ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... pretension, even, to a divine inspiration and guidance in the age in which he lived. "'The greatest blessings which men receive come through the operation of phrensy ([Greek: mania]—inspired exaltation), when phrensy is the gift of God. The prophetess of Delphi, and the priestess of Dodona, many are the benefits which in their phrensies (moments of inspiration) they have bestowed upon Greece; but in their hours of self-possession, few or none. And too long were it to speak ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... a little better at last. The mood of the town was reproducing itself in him. In proportion as his ordinary external self became muffled, that inner secret life, that was far more real and vital, asserted itself. And this girl was surely the high-priestess of it all, the chief instrument of its accomplishment. New thoughts, with new interpretations, flooded his mind as she walked beside him through the winding streets, while the picturesque old gabled town, softly coloured ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... may lose you altogether. Oh listen—listen, and let the woman defy the priestess. Give me your love, and, even with Death as its bridal gift I shall receive it as ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... away very slowly, but the time fixed, however, arrived at last. As punctual as the priestess Hero, Louise lifted up the trap-door at the last stroke of the hour of two, and found the king on the steps, waiting for her with the greatest respect, in order to give her his hand to descend. The delicacy ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their sex, but by fulfilling it; by becoming true women, and not bad imitations of men; by educating their heads for the sake of their hearts, not their hearts for the sake of their heads; by claiming woman's divine vocation as the priestess of purity, of beauty, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... gave it to Apollo—who is also called Phoebus—at his birth. Now Apollo had a great temple and famous upon the hill of Delphi, to which men were wont to resort from all the earth, seeking counsel and knowledge of the things that should come to pass hereafter. And it came to pass on a day that the priestess—for the temple was served by a woman, whom men called Pythia—when she went into the shrine, after her custom, in the morning, saw therein a dreadful sight. For by the very seat of the God there sat a man, a suppliant, whose hands were dripping with blood, ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... adulterous guest can charm The Spartan queen: the house forsworn No more repels by Hector's arm My warriors, baffled and outworn: Hush'd is the war our strife made long: I welcome now, my hatred o'er, A grandson in the child of wrong, Him whom the Trojan priestess bore. Receive him, Mars! the gates of flame May open: let him taste forgiven The nectar, and enrol his name Among the peaceful ranks of Heaven. Let the wide waters sever still Ilium and Rome, the exiled race May reign and prosper where they will: So but in Paris' burial-place The ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... battered Bastiles, and dismantled palaces of unhallowed power, stood forth now the Republic of republics, the Nation of nations, the Constitution of constitutions, to which all lands and times and tongues had contributed of their wisdom. And the priestess of Liberty was ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... family, and may be attached to a certain spot, where a regular oracle is open for consultation. At Dodona we read that the Selloi or Helloi, a band or family of priests of ascetic habits, interpret the rustling of the sacred oak, and Agamemnon consults the Pythia, the Delphic priestess, before the Trojan war. ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... fixed order of nature which sends social disorganization upon the track of immorality, as surely as it sends physical disease after physical trespasses. And of that firm and lively faith it is her high mission to be the priestess. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... streets with ghastly faces throng'd Do utter forth a subterranean voice, Among the inner columns far retir'd At midnight, in the lone Acropolis. Before the awful Genius of the place Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks Unto the fearful summoning without: Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees, Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on Those eyes which ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the possibilities of life. And a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple, or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine. There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any special ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... path where clove-pinks were at their sweetest, when he turned to speak again. Dorcas, forgetful of him, had stretched her arms upward in a yawn that seemed to envelop the whole of her. As she stood there in the moonlight, her tall figure loomed like that of a priestess offering worship. She might have been chanting an invocation to the night. The man, regarding her, was startled, he did not know why. In that instant she seemed to him something mysterious and grand, something belonging to the night itself, and he went away with his question ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... stolen a look into the workbasket or the secret bureau-drawer, you might have found a treasured note, a bit of ribbon, a rosebud, some token of tenderness or of friendship that was growing old with the priestess who cherished it. Did they not love flowers, and pets, and had they not a passion for children? Were there not moonlight evenings when they sat silent and musing on the stone steps, watching the shadows and the dancing gleams on the swift river, when the air was fragrant with the pink and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... continual inspiration of pure thoughts, and her protection of their chastity. Those of them, who distinguished themselves above the rest, by superior graces of performance, received rewards not only from the priestess of Diana, but from their own parents. Nor were the young men but curiously inquisitive, as to who particularly excelled on these occasions. Distinction in these dances was a great incentive to love, and produced ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... set the table," said Anne, in the tone of a priestess about to perform some sacred rite in honor of a divinity. "We'll have a big vaseful of wild roses in the center and one single rose in front of everybody's plate—and a special bouquet of rosebuds only by Mrs. Morgan's—an allusion to 'The Rosebud ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and the latter Madame de Gisors, exhausts Mr. Pitt's eloquence in defense of the Archbishop of Paris. Monsieur de Nivernois lives in a small circle of dependent admirers, and Madame de Rochfort is high-priestess for a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the broad hall, up the grand staircase, through the luxurious rooms goes the high Priestess of the Temple of Love. It is a lonely house. For it is still in a state of social siege. So far as Harvey is concerned, no one has entered it. So they live rather ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... according to the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety." The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles. What was the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates?—or whoever it was that was wise.—Enthusiasm is ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... laid. First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores, With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow'rs. A heav'nly image in the glass appears, 125 To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears; Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side, Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride. Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here The various off'rings of the world appear; 130 From each she nicely culls with curious toil, And decks the Goddess with the glitt'ring ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... is almost done, my children. The first sign has come from the gods. I have brought you in human form the ancient priestess!" And he really believed he had. "O my children, my little ones, my kids! I have brought her who will now attend to the sacred fires; for these alone will restore the city as of old, the fat corn, the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... street advanced a gaudy procession headed by a barbaric priestess. From her head protruded massive horns decorated with flaming red flowers. Around her loins was strapped a crimson sarong; her body swayed and twisted to the savage rhythm of the tom-toms. A tall, amazingly fat man stepped to the platform. His back seemed oddly familiar ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... relentless as a high priestess's. "I listen if you goin' tell him 'bout me," she said. "If you tell him, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... to his couchant posture when she spoke, and, excepting the red glare of his eyes, might have seemed a hieroglyphical emblem, lying at the feet of some ancient priestess of Woden or Freya; so strongly did the appearance of Ermengarde, with her rod and her chaplet, correspond with the ideas of the days of Paganism. Yet he who had thus deemed of her would have done therein much injustice to a venerable Christian matron, who had given many a hide of land to holy church, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... woman as it found them, so, through the dreary years of her disgrace, Alexandrine Nikitenko, buoyed up by her unbreakable pride, had gathered from her blackened fields no small harvest of broad-mindedness, philosophy, and courage. The Alexandrine of old, acknowledged priestess of frivolity, was not a tenth so well worth knowing as the faded, jaded woman, long since numbed to the pain of slights and insults, who had, through the long years, persistently made her dwelling-place in the city of her downfall. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... soprano of finest quality, brilliant and vibrating, spanned two octaves, from C to C. She possessed the gift of beauty, and was said to unite the tragic inspiration of Pasta with the fire and energy of Malibran. A favorite role with her was that of the Druid priestess in "Norma." Her delivery of "Casta Diva" was said to be a transcendant ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... extreme, for emphasis fell on the mystic and uncanny powers possessed by woman. Thus it was that in ancient nations there was a deification of woman which found expression in the belief in feminine deities and the establishment of priestess cults. Not until the dawn of the Christian era was the emphasis once more focussed on woman as a thing unclean. Then, her mystic power was ascribed to demon communication, and stripped of her divinity, she became the witch to be excommunicated ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... Heir heiress Hero heroine Host hostess Hunter huntress Inheritor inheritress or inheritrix Instructor instructress Jew Jewess Lion lioness Marquis marchioness Mayor mayoress Patron patroness Peer peeress Poet poetess Priest priestess Prince princess Prior prioress Prophet prophetess Proprietor proprietress Protector protectress Shepherd shepherdess Songster songstress Sorcerer sorceress Suiter suitress Sultan sultaness or sultana Tiger tigress Testator ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... been married to M. Brutus, a man of great wealth, who died, leaving two sons under age.[10] Of these the elder was killed by Tarquin, who coveted their possessions; the younger escaped his brother's fate only by feigning idiotcy. On arriving at Delphi, Brutus propitiated the priestess with the gift of a golden stick inclosed in a hollow staff. After executing the king's commission, Titus and Aruns asked the priestess who was to reign at Rome after their father. The priestess ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... in a life like that of man, not only in Egypt but in most ancient lands. Offerings of food and drink were constantly supplied to them, in Egypt laid upon the altars, in other lands burnt for a sweet savour. At Thebes the divine wife of the god, or high priestess, was the head of the harem of concubines of the god; and similarly in Babylonia the chamber of the god with the golden couch could only be visited by the priestess who slept there for oracular responses. The Egyptian ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Athenians about the gods, had been seized upon, and put to death, if he had not fled away immediately. Nor need we at all wonder that they thus treated such considerable men, when they did not spare even women also; for they very lately slew a certain priestess, because she was accused by somebody that she initiated people into the worship of strange gods, it having been forbidden so to do by one of their laws; and a capital punishment had been decreed to such as introduced a strange god; it being manifest, that ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... not divided into acts; it has merely four and twenty scenes—upon the battle-field of Troy. The characters are Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons; her chief leaders, Prothoe, Meroe and Asteria, and the high priestess of Diana. Of the Greeks there are Achilles, Odysseus, Diomede and Antilochus. Much of the fighting and other action is not seen, but is reported either by messengers or by present ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... is no longer 'Violet Banks' It is the Holy Hill. This house is the temple; that nursery is the sanctuary; that cradle is the altar; and that babe is the idol of the community. Now go along with Violet. Oh! she is high priestess to the idol. Go along. I'm going to wash my face and hands, and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to time rumours reach us concerning these Pongo—that it is an island where grows the Holy Flower, of which you know, for when last you were here you had one of its blooms. I heard, too, that this Holy Flower was tended by a priestess named Mother of the Flower, and her servants, all of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... of the black despots in the land, young Ralestone got de Roche and his daughter away on his ship. Her maid chose to remain among her people. Ralestone hints that she was a sort of priestess of Voodoo and that it had been her dark powers which had protected the lives of ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... inherited the most perfect feminist ideal that as yet the world has known; an ideal of service within the home of which full life she is the high-priestess; an ideal turning to foolishness the false values of this industrial age. And this ideal of service, shared by all, gives to the most unlearned Jewish woman the priceless knowledge of an eternal truth: a truth that has to be learnt by each one among us before we can find happiness—that only by ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... veiled gallery and the misty sky beyond. Men mounted on the tables and waved their hands frantically, and in the midst of this bewildering turbulence of sound and motion Clarence saw his wife mounted on a chair, with burning cheeks and flashing eyes, waving her handkerchief like an inspired priestess. Only the stranger, still standing beside Colonel Starbottle, remained unmoved and impassive. Then, with an imperative gesture, he demanded ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... them; for they are appointed to be ministers unto those who shall inherit eternal life." And Hyde listened silently, yet the words fell into his deepest consciousness, and after many years brought him strength and consolation when he needed it. Thus it is, that a good woman is a priestess standing by the altar of the heart, thus it is, that the very noblest education any man ever gets is what some woman—mother, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... stood by the side of the sacred lake, and the fountain which breathed out fire, in the darkness of the ancient oak wood, beneath the mountain of the hundred springs. And he led him to the holy oak, where the black dove settled in old times, and was changed into the priestess of Zeus, and gave oracles to all nations round. And he bade him cut down a bough, and sacrifice to Hera and to Zeus; and they took the bough and came to Iolcos, and nailed it to the beak head ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... country where birds congregate to such an extent, and birds of passage remain so long. Jutta is perhaps the same as Lindu (vol. ii. p. 147). Near Heidelberg is a spring called the "Wolfsbrunnen," where a beautiful enchantress named Jutta, the priestess of Hertha, is said to have had an assignation with her lover; but he found she had been killed by a wolf, the messenger of the offended goddess. Whether there is any connection between the German and Esthonian Jutta I ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... never reach them—fired upon them the reproach of Diogenes to an effeminate—"If he was offended with nature for making him a man, and not a woman;" and the affirmation of the Pedasians, from your friend Herodotus, that, whenever any calamity befell them, a prodigious beard grew on the chin of the priestess of Minerva. You ever thought a man in woman's disguise a profanation—a woman in man's a horror. The fair sex were never, in your eyes, the weaker and the worse; how oft have you delighted in their outward grace and moral purity, contrasting them with gross ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... peaceful spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, by day they follow their loves ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... your history," exclaimed Hardenberg. "Come, Frederica, sit down by my side here on the couch on which you have so often reposed as a modern Pythia, and proclaimed to me the oracles which your mysterious priest had whispered to you. Now you are no priestess uttering equivocal wisdom, but a young woman telling the truth, and making me listen to ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Phoebe herself, bright, yet touched with wholesome frost. All Elmerton went about the rest of the day with hushed voice and sober brow, looking up at the closed shutters of the Temple of Vesta, and wondering how it fared with the gentle priestess, now left alone. The shutters were white and fluted, and being closed, heightened the effect of clean linen which the house always presented—linen starched to the point of perfection, with a dignified frill, but no ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... coming from so white a priestess, and in words that lent so musical and sweet a sanction, removed the last mote of conjecture from the air. Mrs. Wright, as usual, was the first to take action. Every set of women, probably, has its recognized clown, she who is just too cute and killing. And those who do not like her say ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... leaning on the arm of her companion, her tall yet pliant and graceful figure enveloped in the airy drapery of her white dress, with her eyes turned in mute admiration towards the dawning day, it would have required but a slight stretch of the imagination to have beheld in her a priestess of the sun, awaiting in reverent adoration the appearance of her fire-god. Her complexion and features, too, would have helped to strengthen the fantasy, for the one was singularly fair, pale, and transparent, and the other characterized by delicacy, refinement, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... herself—the love of luxury, her vanity, her fierce competition for worldly position—if only for the disastrous effect of such evils upon men. They force him to lower his dreams of her, who should be high-priestess." ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... had she understood how one stone rashly loosened from the laboriously erected structure of human society may produce remote fissures in that clumsy fabric. She saw that, having hazarded the loosening of the stone, she should have held herself apart from ordinary human ties, like some priestess set apart for the service of the temple. And instead, she had seized happiness with both hands, taken it as the gift of the very fate she had herself precipitated! She remembered some old Greek saying to the effect that the gods never forgive the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... costly garment, which Berenike had had made for Korinna, and she had chosen it from among many instead of the plainer robe in which old Dido had dressed her young mistress. With admirable taste the matron had aimed at giving Melissa a simple, dignified aspect, unadorned and almost priestess-like in its severity. Nothing should suggest the desire to attract, and everything must exclude the idea of a petitioner of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... passion-charged strains of 'Armide.' The overture paints the gradual awakening of a tempest, and when the storm is at its height the curtain rises upon the temple of Diana at Tauris, where Iphigenia, snatched by the goddess from the knife of the executioner at Aulis, has been placed as high priestess. The priestesses in chorus beseech the gods to be propitious, and when the fury of the storm is allayed, Iphigenia recounts her dream of Agamemnon's death, and laments the woes of her house. She calls upon Diana to put an end ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... singing died away, and there began the second stage of this barbarous and bloody celebration. From different parts of the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the midst; ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the priestess and her snakes; and with various adjurations, uttered aloud the blackest wishes of the heart. Death and disease were the favours usually invoked: the death or the disease of enemies or rivals; some calling down these plagues upon the nearest of their own blood, and one, to whom I swear I had been ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... itself my mind travelled, not for the first time during the last few days, to the handsome girl who had seemed in my eyes the high-priestess of this temple of mystery in the quaint little court. What a strange figure she made against this strange background, with her quiet, chilly, self-contained manner, her pale face, so sad and worn, her black, straight ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... also a grand triumph for the young composer from the outset, especially as the lofty character of the Druid priestess was sung by that unapproachable lyric tragedienne, the Siddons of the opera, Madame Pasta. Bellini is said to have had this queen of dramatic song in his mind in writing the opera, and right nobly did she vindicate his judgment, for no European audience ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... are performed. Countless sabbaths have I attended within it; or upon Rumbles Moor, or on the summit of Pendle Hill, or within the ruins of Whalley Abbey. Many proselytes have I made; many unbaptised babes offered up in sacrifice. I am high-priestess to the Demon, and thy ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to the open window and stood, a fair priestess in her white morning dress, and looked out over a portion of her Father's wide domain. Oh, how warm and bright the sunlight that lit all things with glory! How fair were the distant hills beyond the city, with their varied dress of wood and meadow! In ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... without any invitation, the ballad-maker, like some Pythian priestess on her tripod, began to exhibit manifestations of the afflatus. The spirit of song seemed to be stealing upon him, and in a moment the listening auditory were still. In substance, he half recited, half sung, the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... done scrupulously," Alessandro said with fervour. "We shall crown her Queen of our College of the Muses; she shall be priestess, sacred image, and oracle; and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... perishing infant flung into his late Brother's hands at the Fall of Oczakow, [Supra, vii. 82.]—whom the Marischal has carefully brought up, and who refuses to marry away from him,—rather stupid, not very pretty by the Portraits; must now be two-and-thirty gone] is perfectly calculated to be the Priestess of it! Yet he dawdles away his day in a manner not unpleasant to him; and I really am persuaded he has a conscience that would gild the inside of a dungeon. The feats of our bare-legged warriors in the late War [BERG-SCHOTTEN, among whom I was a Colonel], accompanied by a PIBRACH ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... which afforded a retreat from Scepticism and intellectual anarchy. Cicero represents at once the doctrine of the later Academy and the general attitude of Roman society when he says, "My words do not proclaim the truth, like a Pythian priestess; but I conjecture what is probable, like a plain man; and where, I ask, am I to search for anything more than verisimilitude?'' And again: "The characteristic of the Academy is never to interpose one's judgment, to approve what seems ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... lay aside thy mantle! Clothe thee with nakedness, O Soul, that art its priestess! For lo, thy body is thy temple. Pass unto me a magnet's stream, O amber of the flesh, And let me drink of nectar drawn From ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... have been obliged to do!" she exclaimed, extending both her arms down toward the opening with a look of blended horror and inspiration, such as might have sat upon the countenance of some sacrificial priestess ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... garden. We looked on the beauty that generations of gardeners of a single vision had created. Our minds rested in the quiet as in the quaint phrase, we "tasted the sound of the kettle and listened to the incense." At length at a signal we rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony, our host's aunt, a slight figure in grey with snow-white tabi and new straw sandals, we passed by the dripping rocky fountain, with its lilies, and the azure hydrangea of the hills which, some say, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... shivered as with a sudden chill. "I feel as I think Vashti must have felt," she murmured aloud, "when, discrowned and unqueened, she crept out of the gates of Shushan to hide her broken heart. I wonder if Esther has already usurped my sceptre. Has that girl at the Cove, with her pale, priestess-like face and mysterious eyes, stolen his heart from me? Perhaps not, for it may never have been mine. I know that Esterbrook Elliott will be true to the letter of his vows to me, no matter what it may cost him. But I want ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as to these figures and what they are doing. They seem to be unconscious of the great gods who are near to them on either side. The greater number of critics consider that the two maidens, e and d, are of the number who have embroidered the peplos; the central figure, c, a priestess of Athena; a, the Archon Basileus; and b, a consecrated servant-boy, who is delivering up the peplos. Other critics believe, however, that these figures are all preparing for the sacred ceremonies ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... with red flannel and shell ornaments. The chief made no special display on the occasion. In addition to these four, who were officers of the assembly-chamber, there was an old man and a young woman, who seemed to be priest and priestess. The young woman was dressed differently from any other, the rest dressing in plain calico dresses. Her dress was white covered with spots of red flannel, cut in neat figures, ornamented with shells. It looked gorgeous and denoted some office, the name of ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... here that the Flaminica Dialis, who was not priestess of Juno as is commonly supposed, but assisted her husband in the cult of Jupiter, was also subject to certain taboos. On three occasions in the religious year she might not appear in public with her hair "done up," viz. the moving of the ancilia in ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler |
