PROCRUSTES • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Procrustes

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Procrustes

noun

(Greek mythology) a mythical giant who was a thief and murderer; he would capture people and tie them to an iron bed, stretching them or hacking off their legs to make them fit; was killed by Theseus.

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Etymology of 'Procrustes'

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"Procrustes" Quotes from Famous Books

... 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 parts as ...

— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... the ground with two vultures plucking at his vitals. Typhoeus, a hundred-headed giant, was slain by Zeus' thunderbolt, and buried under Aetna. The gin on which he was tortured was probably the rack of the Middle Ages. Cf. the bed of Procrustes. Theseus, for attempting to carry off Persephone, was fixed to a rock in Tartarus. The "fifty sisters" are the fifty Danaides, who, for slaying their husbands, were condemned to pour water forever into a ...

— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... another was Theseus, the great hero of the Ionian city of Athens, whose prowess was almost equal to that of Hercules. He had caught and killed the great white bull which Hercules had brought from Crete and let loose, and he had also destroyed the horrid robber Procrustes (the Stretcher), who had kept two iron bedsteads, one long and one short. He put tall men into the short bed, and cut them down to fit it, and short men into the long bed, pulling them out till they died, until Theseus ...

— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "The bed of Procrustes, madam, was a bed to which all who lay upon it had to be conformed. Those that were too long were made short; and those that were too short were made long. It is a pleasant ...

— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

Words linked to "Procrustes" : mythical being, Greek mythology