"Leonidas" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Agyagfalva, and presently we found ourselves like an island in the midst of the sea. A Wallachian army ten thousand strong, under Moga's command, beset us on all sides, while we had but three hundred armed men all told,—just the number that Leonidas had at Thermopylae. Our eldest brother, Berthold, who, since he turned vegetarian, can't bear to see a chicken killed for dinner, and is dead set against all bloodshed, advised us to make peaceful terms with the enemy. So we drew lots to see who should go out and parley with them, and ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... in human conception, as brought into existence by the genius of Michael Angelo, and Raphael, this city affords rich and ample materials for study and description, though it is unable to excite that grandest feeling of the human breast, which is raised by the land of Leonidas and of Socrates. Greece fought for liberty! Rome for conquest! The philosophy of Rome is less original, less pure and disinterested, less practical than that ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... name to the three nations, AEolians, Dorians, and Ionians, Still further south, between the inaccessible cliffs of Mount OEta and the marshes which skirt the Maliaeus Bay, were the defiles of Thermopylae, where Leonidas and three hundred heroes died defending the pass, against the army of Xerxes, and which in one place was only twenty-five feet wide, so that, in so narrow a defile, the Spartans were able to withstand for three days the whole power of Persia. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... on Texas soil —that the second-term boom of "our heroic young Christian governor" would have lost no gas. One catfish does not make a creek nor one hero a nation. The waves do not make the sea, but the sea furnishes forth the waves. Leonidas were lost to history but for the three hundred nameless braves who backed his bluff. Had there been but one Cromwell Charles the First would have kept his head. In Washington's deathless splendor gleams the glory of forgotten millions, and the history of Bonaparte is written ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... surprised at the summit, left the path free while they sought a place of safety. The Greeks in the pass below, warned during the night of their danger, in part fled, in part resolved on death. When morning came, Leonidas, at the head of about half his original army, moved forward towards the Malian plain, and there met the advancing Persians. A bloody combat ensued, in which the Persians lost by far the greater number; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... heights Radiant of high deeds done And souls that matched the sun For splendour with the lightnings of their lights Whence even their uttered names Burn like the strong twin flames Of song that shakes a throne and steel that smites; As on Thermopylae when shone Leonidas, on ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... June, of the year 480 B.C., that the Grecian army, led by Leonidas, king of Sparta, marched to this defile. There were but three hundred Spartans[3] in his force, with small bodies of men from the other states of Greece. The fleet, less than three hundred ships in all, took post beside them in the strait. And here they ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Thermopylae the Peloponnesian Greeks commenced to fortify the isthmus of Corinth with the view of defending it with their small army against the invading host of Xerxes. The Spartan troops were under the command of Cleombrotus, the brother of Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae. He had been consulting the oracles at Sparta, and Herodotus states that "while he was offering sacrifice to know if he should march out against the Persian, the Sun was suddenly darkened in mid-sky." This occurrence so frightened Cleombrotus that he drew off his forces ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... locomotives of which the retreating Confederates were now so much in need. In addition, we burned twenty-six cars containing ten thousand stand of small arms, three pieces of artillery, a great quantity of clothing, a heavy supply of ammunition, and the personal baggage of General Leonidas Polk. A large number of prisoners, mostly sick and convalescent, also fell into our hands; but as we could not carry them with us—such a hurried departure was an immediate necessity, by reason of our critical situation—the process of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... ever a laudator temporis acti, and whatever the authors or the orators immediately before it, were those authors and orators Homers and Ciceros, would still shake a disparaging head, and talk of these degenerate days as Homer himself talked ages before Leonidas stood in the pass of Thermopylae, or Miltiades routed Asian armaments at Marathon. Guy Darrell belonged to a former race. The fathers of those young members rising now into fame had quoted to their sons his ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... resolution for consideration, which was the chairman's duty when there was a special order of business, he permitted a motion to postpone all constitutional amendments indefinitely! Ten of the members present were pledged to vote for a favorable report but Representative Leonidas C. Dyer of Missouri defaulted and voted with the nine opponents and no further action in 1916 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... to guard a mile and a half of ramparts! Three hundred to protect some sixty-five broad acres within the walls! But the place was a Thermopylae, and there was a fine old Leonidas at the head of its three hundred. He was enough to make Spartans of them. Colonel Dimmick was the man,—a quiet, modest, shrewd, faithful, Christian gentleman; and he held all Virginia at bay. The traitors knew, that, so long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... (Suas. 2) debated is whether the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, seeing themselves deserted by the army, shall remain or flee. The different rhetors declaim as follows, making Leonidas the speaker:— ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... with the loveliest tarsia work (this too from Vannucci's design), and above these panels the master's frescoes. The 'Nativity' and 'Transfiguration' at the end of the room are among his finest, ripest works, and on each side are the Prophets and Sibyls, or heroes, kings, and sages of antiquity—Leonidas the Spartan, Trajan the wise Roman emperor, Fabius 'Cunctator,' Socrates, Horatius, who kept the bridge, and ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... inexhaustible occupations of a library will only present to such a most dreary solitude. Such a lady declared of her learned husband, that she was more jealous of his books than his mistresses. It was probably while Glover was composing his "Leonidas," that his lady avenged herself for this Homeric inattention to her, and took her flight with a lover. It was peculiar to the learned Dacier to be united to woman, his equal in erudition and his superior in taste. When she wrote in the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 1787-'90, and '91. Soon thereafter he removed to Raleigh, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was the last surviving field officer of the North Carolina line. He died on the 14th of January, 1835, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. He was the father of Bishop Leonidas Polk, a brave and meritorious officer, killed in the late civil war, while holding the position of Major General; of the late Thomas G. Polk, of Tennessee, and of Mrs. Rayner, wife of the Hon. ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Thessaly. The king had intrenched himself in the passes of Thermopylae, that he might prevent the Romans from penetrating into Central Greece. But there was, as is well known, a difficult passage across Mount Oeta, by which the Persians had descended to fight with Leonidas. This passage was now forced by M. Cato, who was serving as one of the Consul's lieutenants, and as soon as he appeared in the rear of the Syrian army they fled in confusion, and the battle was won. Antiochus ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... plan, postponing Belgium, but not for long, and fell back on the passes of the forest that he was about to make so famous. "They are the Thermopylae of France," he said, "but I mean to do better than Leonidas." ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Athenians conspired against Diocles and Hippias, tyrants of Athens. Diocles they slew; but Hippias, making his escape, avenged him. Chion and Leonidas of Heraclea, disciples of Plato, conspired against the despots Clearchus and Satirus. Clearchus fell, but Satirus survived and avenged him. The Pazzi, of whom we have spoken so often, succeeded in murdering Giuliano only. From such conspiracies, therefore, as are ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... sword (for his warlike arm refused any other staff), stood up on their entrance. At sight of Lord Lennox, he uttered an exclamation of glad surprise. Lennox embraced him. "I, too, am come to enlist under the banners of this young Leonidas." ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... be put down as a piece of story-teller's fancy. In another text of the Ulster cycle, Cath ruis na Rig, Conchobor's warriors adorn and beautify themselves in this way before the battle. The Aryan Celt behaved as did the Aryan Hellene. All readers of Herodotus will recall how the comrades of Leonidas prepared for battle by engaging in games and combing out their hair, and how Demaretus, the counsellor of Xerxes, explained to the king "that it is a custom with these men that when they shall prepare to imperil their lives; that is the time when they adorn their heads" ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... of it in my books, Charles Henry; in one of them there is the history of a man whose name was Leonidas. He defended, with three hundred of his soldiers, against many thousands of his enemy, a narrow passway. He well knew that he could not conquer; his soldiers also knew it, but they preferred death rather than the humiliation of laying down their weapons and praying for mercy. And every ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... drink or e'er we die (The sunlight flushes on the sea). Three hundred soldiers feasted high An hour before Thermopylae; Leonidas pour'd out the wine, And shouted ere he drain'd the cup, "Ho! comrades, let us gaily dine— This night with Pluto we shall sup"; And if they leant upon a reed, And if their reed was slight and slim, There's something good in Spartan creed— The ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... it that Leonidas, their general, said to them? "March on with courage, my Lacedaemonians. To-night, perhaps, we shall sup in the regions below." This was a brave nation while the laws of Lycurgus were in force. One of them, when ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... covering their faces with their hands, as though this instinctive movement could save them from the lead. A whole people died, to be born again. And beside this picture of horror and heroism, in another close to it, he saw Palafox, the Leonidas of Saragossa, mounted on horseback, with his stylish whiskers and the arrogance of a blacksmith in a captain-general's uniform, having in his bearing something of the appearance of a popular chieftain, holding in one hand, gloved in buckskin, the curved saber, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... *eleupheria*]. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea is precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation therefore accurately translates the word of the other: [Greek: *eleupheria*]—libertas—franchise—reciprocally translate each other. Leonidas is characteristically [Greek: *eleupheros*] among Greeks; Publicola, characteristically liber, among Romans; Edward III. and the Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common idea, which the words express, as ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... of Agis that all debts should be cancelled and that Laconia should be divided into 19,500 lots, of which 4500 should be given to Spartiates, whose number was to be recruited from the best of the perioeci and foreigners, and the remaining 15,000 to perioeci who could bear arms. The Agiad king Leonidas having prevailed on the council to reject this measure, though by a majority of only one, was deposed in favour of his son-in-law Cleombrotus, who assisted Agis in bearing down opposition by the threat of force. The abolition ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... girl, hear me! Listen to reason! Leonidas Force has no claim to be remembered by you. You have never been engaged to him. You were but a little girl of thirteen when he went to sea on his first voyage, three years ago, and you have not seen him since. What possible claim can he have upon you, since no betrothal ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... resumed with a sneer. "He's got a fine look on him! He reminded me of Leonidas at Thermopylae. Is it you, mother, who have made ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... to the king, and director of the administration. There were not, however, wanting those that envied him, and opposed his advancement, as too high for so young a man; particularly the relations and friends of the queen-mother, who seemed to have been treated with contempt. Her brother Leonidas, one day boldly attacked him with virulent language, and scrupled not to tell him that he was well assured he would soon be king; thus preparing suspicions, and matter of accusation against Lycurgus, in case any accident should ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the ever sacred cause of the weak against the strong. You see, my Eva, that Djalma shows himself worthy of such a father. This young Indian is so proud, so heroic in his bravery, that, like a young Greek of Leonidas' age, he fights with his breast bare; while other warriors of his country (who, indeed, usually have arms, breast, and shoulders uncovered) wear, in time of battle, a thick, impenetrable vest. The rash daring ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... should imagine himself another Leonidas, and us his Spartan band, and want us to die around him, and start another Thermopylae down her in the mountains, some place," suggested Kent Edwards, "you would cheerfully pass in your checks along ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the centuries the great commanders have left us their stories of prowess, and we have kept their portraits to adorn our stately halls of fame; and in our historic shrines we have preserved their records—Cyrus, Alexander, Leonidas at Thermopylae, Hannibal crossing the Alps, Charles Martel at Tours, the white-plumed Henry of Navarre leading his soldiers in the battle of Ivry, Cromwell with his Ironsides—godly men who chanted hymns while they fought—Napoleon's grand finale at Waterloo, with his three thousand ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... and find Dumouriez and his sansculottes, there in the passes of Argonne, the "Thermopylae of France," an unexpectedly hard nut to crack. In fact, the nut is not to be cracked at all: Dumouriez, " more successful than Leonidas," flings back the invasion; compels the invaders to evacuate France; and in November, assuming the offensive, conquers the whole Austrian Netherlands. Meantime, in the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Mr. Julius Sneezer Disgustus Quackenboss, my name is Pawkins, great grandson of Hercules Leonidas Pawkins, as was briggidier ginral and aijicamp to George Washington, when he drummed the haousehold trooeps, and the hull o' the derned British army, out'n Noo Yohk to ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... myself ran hourly risk of breaking our legs and necks among the classic ruins of Athenian genius, where Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, Zeno, Solon, Themestocles, Leonidas, Philip and Alexander had lived and loved in their glorious, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... be of good cheer, for this night we shall sup with Pluto.—Leonidas, To the Three Hundred ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words had been Finis Poloniae;* Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the reincarnation of Sparta's King Leonidas; Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a believer in slavery; and finally, that martyr for the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... with a panel containing S. John the Baptist in the midst of certain other saints. The side-walls he painted in his own manner; one with figures of Fabius Maximus, Socrates, Numa Pompilius, F. Camillus, Pythagoras, Trajan, L. Sicinius, the Spartan Leonidas, Horatius Cocles, Fabius, Sempronius, the Athenian Pericles, and Cincinnatus. On the other wall he made the Prophets, Isaiah, Moses, Daniel, David, Jeremiah, and Solomon; and the Sibyls, the Erythraean, the Libyan, the Tiburtine, the Delphic, and the others. Below ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... a private school in Surrey, but being designed for trade, was never sent to a university, yet by his own exertions he became an excellent classical scholar. At sixteen he wrote a poem to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, and at twenty-five produced nine books of his 'Leonidas.' Partly through its own merits, partly through its liberal political sentiments, and partly through the influence of Lord Cobham, to whom it was inscribed, and the praise of Fielding and Chatham, it became very popular. In 1739, he produced a poem ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... State: the former shrug their shoulders and say, "Provided it does not last;" the latter do not mind how long it lasts. All are comparatively happy in the thought that the eyes of Europe are on them, and that they have already thrown Leonidas and his ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Khayyam" did some other desirable work; but Professor Moulton quotes this paragraph from a popular life of Fitzgerald, published in Dublin: "Not Greece of old in her palmiest days—the Greece of Homer and Demosthenes, of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, of Pericles, Leonidas, and Alcibiades, of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, of Solon and Lycurgus, of Apelles and Praxiteles—not even this Greece, prolific as she was in sages and heroes, can boast such a lengthy bead-roll as Ireland can of names immortal in history!" But "this was for Irish consumption." And popular opinion ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... believe me, the substance (as far as I can recollect) of the famous embassy of General Wilkinson to the viceroy of Mexico, Don Joseph de Yturrigaray, who certainly was not mistaken in the passage he mentioned to you of Leonidas, as I recollect well that General Wilkinson, after displaying in a pompous style the great difficulties he had to encounter to render Mr. Burr's plan fruitless, concluded by affirming—"I, like Leonidas, boldly threw myself ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... by a timely removal. In a few days after the commencement of the siege he was seized with the prevailing dysentery; meantime Captain Glover (son of the author of LEONIDAS) died, and Nelson was appointed to succeed him in the Janus, of forty-four guns; Collingwood being then made post into the HINCHINBROOK. He returned to the harbour the day before San Juan surrendered, and immediately sailed for Jamaica in the sloop ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... under Leonidas had been told to guard the narrow road between the high mountains and the sea which connected Thessaly with the southern provinces. Leonidas obeyed his orders. He fought and held the pass with unequalled bravery. But a traitor by the name of Ephialtes who knew the little byways ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... circumstances, the necessary agents of virtue, are too often themselves hailed as virtues by their own title. But courage and enthusiasm have equally characterized the best and the worst beings, a Satan, equally with an ABDIEL—a BONAPARTE equally with a LEONIDAS. They are indeed indispensible to the Spanish soldiery, in order that, man to man, they may not be inferior to their enemies in the field of battle. But inferior they are and long must be in warlike skill ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Clanworthys rose in his veins. The Pass lay before him—so did the Bridge. A full suit of dove-colored pajamas and a pair of turned-up Turkish slippers was not exactly the kind of uniform that either Leonidas or Horatius would have chosen to fight his way to glory, but there was no time to ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mind; because she is incapable of imparting those stern principles of exalted morality and fixity of purpose essential in forming the character of such men. The mother of Cincinnatus was a farmer's wife; of Leonidas, a shepherdess; and the mothers of Washington, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, William H, Crawford, and Andrew Jackson were all the wives of farmers—rural and simple in their pursuits, distinguished for energy and purity; constant in their principles, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... famous pass of Thermopylae; and here it was that a small army might block the way against any number of the enemy. Across this pass a wall was built, and behind it was posted the Greek army under the command of Leonidas, the Spartan king. His forces consisted of three hundred Spartans, seven hundred Thespians, and about four thousand more from the various Grecian cities. The Persians approached, and for four days waited, expecting to see the Greek army disperse at the very sight of their ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... had taught memory and number, for whom he had "brought the horse under the chariot, and invented the sea-beaten, flaxen-winged chariot of the sailor?" And now, how poorly showed the gods beside this once wretched brood! What Deity could die for Olympus, as Leonidas had for Greece? Which of them could, like Iphigenia, dwell for years beside the melancholy sea, keeping a true heart for an absent brother? Which of them could raise his fellows nearer to the source of all Deity, as Socrates and Plato had raised men? Who could portray ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... lead him; but the imagination of the Greek only to degrade and mislead him: if we can suppose that real angels were sent to minister to the Jews and to punish them; but no angels, or only mocking spectra of angels, or even devils in the shapes of angels, to lead Lycurgus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless grave:—and if we can think that it was only the influence of spectres, or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of mothers like Cornelia, and of sons ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was surprised at beholding the equality established between the men and women at Sparta; whereupon the wife of Leonidas, the King of Sparta, said to her:—'Do you not know that it is we who bring forth the men? It is not the fathers, but the mothers, that effectually ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and for the rest of the dinner, Oliver was entertained with the details in the life of the Rev. Leonidas Brown, including his manner of preaching; the crowds who would go to hear him; the number converted under the good man's ministrations; to all of which Oliver listened with a closeness of attention that would have surprised those who knew him unless they had discovered that ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... folks of passing their wedding-nights! The princess modestly asked, why their master loved such long stories? The captain of the guard replied, his majesty did not sleep well—Well! said she, and if he does not!—not but I believe I can tell as long stories as any princess in Asia. Nay, I can repeat Leonidas by heart, and your emperor must be wakeful indeed if he can ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... thus turned, a panic, it is said, spread among the young Guard of the French army, and a cry of "Sauve qui peut! nous sommes trahis!" spread like wildfire. The flight became universal; the old Guard alone remained, refused quarter and perished like Leonidas and his Spartans. The Prussian cavalry being fresh pursued the enemy all night, l'epee dans les reins, and it may be conceived from their previous disposition that they would not be very merciful ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... came to Fores last night; so we did not see what is called King Duncan's monument. I shall now mark some gleanings of Dr Johnson's conversation. I spoke of Leonidas, and said there were some good passages in it. JOHNSON. 'Why, you must SEEK for them.' He said, Paul Whitehead's Manners was a poor performance. Speaking of Derrick, he told me he had a kindness for him, and had often said, that if his letters ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... keels (Names attest what families be), The Kensington, and Richmond too, Leonidas, and Lee: But now they have their seat With the Old ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... separate luck were also not finished at Dragomestri; we were conveyed out by some Greek gun-boats, and found the Leonidas brig-of-war at sea to look after us. But blowing weather coming on, we were driven on the rocks twice in the passage of the Scrofes, and the dollars had another narrow escape. Two thirds of the crew got ashore over the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice; he had only to say what they had done, and reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas gave up his life for his country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he had even defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... things for which men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue;" said Sallust. "The winds and waves," said Gibbon, "are always on the side of the ablest navigators." So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. When a noble act is done,—perchance in a scene of great natural beauty; when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae; when Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of soldiers which makes the most headlong charge, but which can stand firm against the enemy. The Spartans of old were forbidden by their laws ever to flee from a foe. In the Pass of Thermopylae stands a monument to Leonidas and his followers, bearing this inscription—"Go, stranger, and tell at Lacedaemon that we died here in obedience to our laws." My brethren, what we want, as soldiers of Jesus Christ, is not so much zeal, or enthusiasm, or outward profession, as firmness to the end, steadfastness ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... and a half. His ships of war were twelve hundred and seven in number, and he had three thousand smaller vessels for carrying his land forces and supplies. At the narrow pass of Thermopylae, in the northeast of Greece, this immense army was checked for a while by the heroic Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, who, however, perished in their attempt to prevent the Persian's attack on Athens, which city was almost entirely destroyed by the invaders. The sea-fight of Salamis was won by the Greeks against enormous odds; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... following dispatches by telegraph from General Leonidas Polk, which I deem proper ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Democracy (ND; conservative), Constantine Mitsotakis; Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), Andreas Papandreou; Democratic Renewal (DR), Constantine Stefanopoulos; Communist Party (KKE), Grigorios Farakos; Greek Left Party (EAR), Leonidas Kyrkos; KKE and EAR have joined in the Left Alliance, ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... superstition and despotism, the Parthenon, the Attic Theatre, the Dialogues of Plato, would have been almost as impossible as if Phidias, Sophocles, and the philosophers had never lived. Because this contest and its heroes—Leonidas and Themistocles—cast their abiding shadows across our world of to-day, I have attempted this ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... from sweet- breathed Rhianus, and the delicious maiden-fleshed crocus of Erinna, and the hyacinth of Alcaeus, vocal among the poets, and the dark- leaved laurel-spray of Samius, and withal the rich ivy-clusters of Leonidas, and the tresses of Mnasalcas' sharp pine; and he plucked the spreading plane of the song of Pamphilus, woven together with the walnut shoots of Pancrates and the fair-foliaged white poplar of Tymnes, and the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... hope of reward on the other, the merest dastard will fight like a wild beast, when his blood is up. The extraordinary merit of his conduct is not so obvious to the peaceful thinker. I speak not of such heroism as that of the Japanese, - their deeds will henceforth be bracketed with those of Leonidas and his three hundred, who died for a like cause. With the Japanese, as it was with the Spartans, every man is a patriot; nor is the proportionate force of their barbaric invaders ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... that they would not do it willingly, but upon necessity, one city being taken after another. But he does not allow the Thebans the same plea of necessity, although they sent to Tempe five hundred men under the command of Mnamias, and to Thermopylae as many as Leonidas desired, who also alone with the Thespians stood by him, the rest leaving him after he was surrounded. But when the barbarian, having possessed himself of the avenues, was got into their confines, and Demaratus the Spartan, favoring in right of hospitality ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... adjacent nations of Greece renowned in antiquity. Athens. Socrates, Plato, Aristides, Solon. Corinth—its architecture. Sparta. Leonidas. Invasion by Xerxes. Lycurgus. Epaminondas. Present state of the Spartans. Arcadia. Former happiness, and fertility. Its present distress the effect of slavery. Ithaca. Ulysses and Penelope. Argos and Mycaene. Agamemnon. Macronisi. Lemnos. Vulcan. Delos. ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... chronologically, and historically) writer ever lived—form along with the Greek history of Arrian the most valuable source of information respecting the military career of Alexander the Great—then the only wonder is that the great conqueror was not made by his biographers to have—Leonidas-like—defended the Thermopylean passes in the Hindu Kush against the invasion of the first Vedic Brahmins "from the Oxus." Withal the Buddhist dates are either rejected or only accepted pro tempore. Well may the Hindu resent ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... circumstances that have made such an event possible. They forget that in their very nature they have been altogether exceptional and transitory; and that it is impossible to construct a Utopia in which they shall exist at all. We can, for instance, no doubt point to Leonidas and the three hundred as specimens of what human heroism can rise to; and we can point to the Stoics as specimens of human self-control. But to make a new Thermopylae we want a new Barbarian; and before we can recoil from temptation ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... when Confucius died. Themistocles was preparing the way for Pericles; for then was being collected the treasure of Delos, which made Phidias and the Parthenon possible. During the life of Confucius lived Leonidas, Miltiades, Cyrus the Great, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes. And then quite naturally occurred the battles of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae. Then lived Buddha-Gautama, Lao-tsze, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Pythagoras, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of a noble motherhood. It has often been remarked that great men have had great mothers. I think experience and observation will bear out this statement. Glance over the pages of history, and eminent examples will rise up before the view. Whence spring the Samuels and the Davids, whence a Leonidas and a Markos Bozzaris, whence the Scipios and the Gracchi, whence the Augustines and the Chrysostoms, whence the Alfreds and the Gladstones, whence the Washingtons and the Lincolns, whence the Seaburys and ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... to the hotel of the Administrative Council, where he was complimented by Porphyrios, Archbishop of Arta, Lepanto and Etolia, accompanied by all his clergy. The first words of Byron were, "Where is the brother of the modern Leonidas?" Constantine Botzaris, a young man, tall and well made, immediately stepped forward, and Byron thus accosted him:—"Happy mortal! Thou art the brother of a hero, whose name will never be effaced in the lapse of ages!" Then perceiving a great crowd assembled under the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... prominent officer with a high ecclesiastical title, the Rt. Rev. Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Louisiana, commanding a corps in Bragg's army. He was killed in battle at Pine Mountain, Ga., during Sherman's advance on Atlanta. Stonewall Jackson was so famed for his rather obtrusive though awfully real piety that men named him the Havelock of the army. But none ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Chene-Populeux were in like manner occupied and defended by some troops. It was here that he wrote to the minister of war, Servan:—"Verdun is taken; I await the Prussians. The camps of Grandpre and Les Islettes are the Thermopylae of France; but I shall be more fortunate than Leonidas." ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... great heroes, through her various gods, which were nothing but divinized heroes. Greece is for us Apollo, as a symbol of whatever is filled with light, high, beautiful and noble; Heracles for what is strength, energy, organization, life as it should be lived by human beings. Leonidas stands for us as a symbol of heroic deeds; Demosthenes as a symbol of the convincing powers of oratory and Pericles as the crystallization of Grecian life in its totality of beauty, learning and social and civic life. Greece is a type, is an attitude, is a protest against ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... wise one, but Athens, which was thereby sacrificed to the general good, refused to adopt it, and as she alone furnished almost half the total number of vessels, her decision had to be deferred to. A body of about 10,000 hoplites was therefore posted in the pass of Thermopylae under the command of Leonidas, while a squadron of 271 vessels disposed themselves near the promontory of Artemision, off the Euripus, and protected the right flank of the pass against a diversion from the fleet. Meanwhile Xerxes had been reinforced ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... hardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline; they become fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own army, and their king, or chief head of government, is always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandalo, or Frederick the Great,—Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, Venetian,—that is inviolable law for them all; their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... at first undertook to hold the position of armed neutrality in the civil war. On September 4, 1861, Gen. Leonidas Polk, moving up from Tennessee with a considerable force into Western Kentucky, seized Hickman and Columbus on the Mississippi, and threatened Paducah on the Ohio. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, appointed brigadier-general of volunteers on August 7, 1861, to date from May 17th, assumed command ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... subject is assault or adultery in Athens, cite the Indians and Medes. Always have your Marathon and your Cynaegirus handy; they are indispensable. Hardly less so are a fleet crossing Mount Athos, an army treading the Hellespont, a sun eclipsed by Persian arrows, a flying Xerxes, an admired Leonidas, an inscriptive Othryades. Salamis, Artemisium, and Plataea, should also be in constant use. All this dressed as usual with our seasoning-garnish aforesaid—that persuasive flavour of sundry and methinks; do not wait ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... admit that even Shakespeare worked on a higher plane, or was a greater power on earth, than King Alfred or George Washington, even if it be that he will survive them both in the memory of man. The name of every man but one who fought with Leonidas at Thermopylae is forgotten. But is AEschylus greater than Leonidas, or Miltiades, or Themistocles? The literature of Athens preserves to immortality the fame of its great authors. But it was Solon, and Pericles, and Miltiades that created ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... who gains victory after victory, and adds province to province, may deserve, not the admiration, but the abhorrence and contempt of mankind. These were the doctrines which Fenelon taught. Considered as an epic poem, Telemachus can scarcely be placed above Glover's Leonidas or Wilkie's Epigoniad. Considered as a treatise on politics and morals, it abounds with errors of detail; and the truths which it inculcates seem trite to a modern reader. But, if we compare the spirit in which it is written with the spirit which pervades the rest ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hopelessly. Time, which sets all things right, has placed David in his proper place; and while to-day we may admire the immense knowledge of the man as manifested in the great classical pictures, like the Horatii, the Sabines, or the Leonidas at Thermopylae, we remain cold before their array of painted statues. His portraits—Marat, the charming sketch of Madame Recamier, his own portrait as a young man, the group of Michel Gerard and his family, and the Pope ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... Greek who led the Persians across a pass in the mountains, whereby they were able to surround and overcome Leonidas and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... repeated it with all the pomp of declamation, and signified his hope, that the French would one day invade us with such an army as that which Xerxes led into Greece, that it might be in his power to devote himself, like Leonidas, to the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... been in secret session all day, considering the names of possible candidates to fill Professor Farrago's large, old-fashioned shoes. These preparations worried me, for I could scarcely expect another chief as kind and considerate as Professor Leonidas Farrago. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... point, in accordance with the decision of the Corinthian Congress, was offered the first resistance to the progress of the Persian army. Leonidas, king of Sparta, with three hundred Spartan soldiers and about six thousand allies from different states of Greece, held the pass. As the Greeks were about to celebrate the Olympian games, which their religious scruples ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the dining-room, with my feet upon the fender, and at my elbow a small table which I had rolled up to the fire, and upon which were some apologies for dessert, with some miscellaneous bottles of wine, spirit and liqueur. In the morning I had been reading Glover's "Leonidas," Wilkie's "Epigoniad," Lamartine's "Pilgrimage," Barlow's "Columbiad," Tuckermann's "Sicily," and Griswold's "Curiosities"; I am willing to confess, therefore, that I now felt a little stupid. I made effort to arouse myself ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... down to us it is easy to see that during his early married life he paid most attention to his horses. In 1760 he kept a stallion both for his own mares and for those of his neighbors, and we find many entries concerning the animal. Successors were "Leonidas," "Samson," "Steady," "Traveller" and "Magnolia," the last a full-blooded Arabian and probably the finest beast he ever owned. When away from home Washington now and then directed the manager to advertise the animal then reigning or to exhibit him ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... their strength in war was bound up in it. Similarly when the ancient Spartans were on a military expedition purple garments were worn and their hair was carefully decked with wreaths, a thing which was never done at home. [305] And when Leonidas and his three hundred were holding the pass of Thermopylae, and Xerxes sent scouts to ascertain what the Greeks were doing in their camp, the report was that some of them were engaged in gymnastics and warlike exercises, while others were merely sitting ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... an early time maintained, and the Virginia papers regularly advertised that the stud horse "Samson," "Magnolia," "Leonidas," "Traveller," or whatever the reigning stallion of the moment might be, would "cover" mares at Mount Vernon, with pasturage and a guarantee of foal, if their owners so elected. During the Revolution Washington bought twenty-seven ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... from out the teeming past, Uplifted once in such a cause as ours, Which does not smite our souls In long reverberating thunder-rolls, From the far mountain-steeps of ancient story. Above the shouting, furious Persian mass, Millions arrayed in pomp of Orient powers, Rings the wild war-cry of Leonidas Pent in his rugged fortress of the rock; And o'er the murmurous seas, Compact of hero-faith and patriot bliss, (For conquest crowns the Athenian's hope at last), Gome the clear accents of Miltiades, Mingled with cheers that drown the battle-shock ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... itself, the view that Leonidas threw away his own life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but not strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that Sparta had for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader of Greece. It was audacious in the Athenians to fight the battle ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... even in that dreadful crisis, he thought more of the little fellow than he did of himself. If he could have been assured of his safety, he would have been ready to wheel about and meet his score or more of foes, and fight them single-handed, as Leonidas and his band did at Thermopylae. But the fate of the two was linked together, and, sink or swim, it must ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... Major-general Leonidas Polk is a tall, well-built man, about fifty-five years of age; hair slightly gray; wears side whiskers, which are as white as snow; aquiline nose, and firm mouth. His voice is a good one for command, and having a West ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... had quite a vogue in her day, and whose poem "Try Again" deals with one of those incidents held in affectionate remembrance by youth. Bruce and the spider may be less historically true, but it seems destined to eternal life alongside Leonidas and his Spartans. Older readers may remember Miss Cook's "My Old Arm Chair," which is usually given the place of honor ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Ans. "Courage" enables us to meet danger; "fortitude" gives us strength to endure pain.—Would you say "the Indian shows courage when he endures torment without flinching"?—Would you say "The three hundred under Leonidas displayed fortitude in opposing the entire Persian army"?—What is the contrary of "courage"?—Combine and define courage ous; courage ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... great body of the people protested that this act was contrary to their wishes, their peaceful habits, and beyond their control. At the fort of Beau Sejour, the brave three hundred made a gallant stand, but were defeated. Would there had been a Leonidas among them! Would that the whole of their kinsmen had erected forts instead of dykes, and dropped the plough-handles to press the edge of the sabre against the grindstone! Sad indeed is the fate of that people who ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... three hundred men, seized upon an eminence occupied by the enemy, to our annoyance, and so kept them in play till the whole army escaped; thus, by eminent success, equalling the fame of Thermopylae and Leonidas, though our hero was indeed more illustrious, inasmuch as he escaped and outlived so great an effort, notwithstanding he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... enterprise; but here all thought of them had ended. Schiller had not taught us that the ancestors of the miners of Mons, the artisans of Brussels, the seamen of Antwerp, the professors of Leyden, were heroes, worthy to stand beside Leonidas and Bozzaris; Strada had failed to rouse us to enthusiasm at the thought of their long, noble battle for life. Grotius had indeed painted for us with a very Flemish nicety of detail their manners and customs, but had forgotten to round his skeleton of a nation with the passions that animated ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... me!" he continued; "by smoke! look on my brown skin and black eyes an' coal black hair. Whair did they come from? They come from Greece, whair Leonidas an' Marky Bozarris and all them fellers came from: that's what my daddy said. He know'd better than me. I'm nothin' but a pore Eastern Shore man sailing my little vessel, but I'm a free-born man, and I ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... periodicals lay on the table. Pictures illustrative of classical scenes hung round the walls, done in the old-fashioned style of line engraving, and representing such subjects as Mutius Scaevola before Porsenna; Belisarius begging for an obolus; Aeneas carrying his father from Troy; Leonidas at Thermopylae; Coriolanus quitting Rome; Hamilcar making the boy Hannibal swear his oath of hate against Home; and ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... man drove up to the door, than Judge——. When he drew up, his servant, who was sitting behind on a small projection of the ketureen, came round and took a parcel out of the gig, closely wrapped in a blanket—"Bring that carefully in, Leonidas," said the Judge, who now stumped up stairs with a small saw in his hand. He received the parcel, and, laying it down carefully in a corner, he placed the saw on it, and then came up and shook hands with Wagtail, and made his ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... had no tangible proof against him—neither his enemies nor the nation—of that indubitable kind required for the punishment of a member of the royal family, and at that moment in high office; he being regent for his first cousin King Pleistarchus, Leonidas's son, who was still a minor. But by his contempt of the laws and imitation of the barbarians, he gave grounds for much suspicion of his being discontented with things established; all the occasions on which ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... the road which his enemy had to traverse. One party characterized his conduct at the mill as that of the captain of a pirate ship, the other likened it to any of the great deeds of devotion told in history—the death of Leonidas and his three hundred, or the devotion ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... few seconds, the wild burst of untamed, savage human nature temporarily released from the restraint of reason! What cannot, what shall not man under such circumstances accomplish? Yes, we are not insensible to deeds of immortal daring, of courage, that must live for ever; nor to the memory of Leonidas and his Spartans, of the deathless glories of Thermopylae, of the unbroken chain of chivalric deeds from the days of ancient Greece to "the thin red line" that broke the fiercest charge, and the handful of Englishmen that shot away their last cartridge and then stood to die with their country's anthem ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... proved to be the Leonidas; she had been sent out with two large frigates on purpose to intercept the convoy, but she had parted with her consorts in a gale of wind. Her loss of men was very great; that on board of the Portsmouth was trifling. In ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat |
