The Mythology of Greece and Rome: With Special Reference to Its Use in Art from the German

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Harper & brothers, 1890 - Art, Greek - 311 pages
 

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Page 86 - Home, has come down to us. It is supposed to be an original work -of the best period of Greek art. The goddess is represented as standing in a calm posture, her right hand pressed against her side, while with the left she points significantly towards heaven, as though wishing to impress on mankind where to direct their prayers and thoughts (Fig. 22). 1 1 . Janus. — Among the most important gods of the Romans was the celebrated Janus, a deity quite unknown to the Greeks. In his original character...
Page 236 - Antseus, a powerful son of Earth, who was, according to Libyan tradition, of a monstrous height (some say sixty cubits). He was attacked by Heracles, but, as he received new strength from his mother Earth as often as he touched the ground, the hero lifted him up in the air and squeezed him to death in his arms. From Libya Heracles passed into Egypt, where the cruel King Busiris was in the habit of seizing all strangers who entered the country and sacrificing them to Zeus. Heracles would have suffered...
Page 160 - O daughter of the skies. Hail, holy ORDER, whose employ Blends like to like in light and joy — Builder of cities, who of old Called the wild man from waste and wold, And, in his hut thy presence stealing, Roused each familiar household feeling, And, best of all, the happy ties, The centre of the social band — The Instinct of the Fatherland!
Page 230 - The following is an account of the labors of Heracles : 1. The Fight with the Nemean Lion. — The district of Nemea and Cleonse was inhabited by a monstrous lion, the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, whose skin bade defiance to every weapon. Heracles, after using his arrows and club against the animal in vain, at last drove it into a cave, and there strangled it with his hands. He afterward used the head of the lion as a helmet, and the impenetra ble skin as a defence.
Page 282 - Achilleus (Achilles), the greatest and bravest hero of the Trojan war. A later tradition asserts that Thetis left her husband soon after the birth of Achilles, because he had disturbed her when she was about to render her child immortal in the fire, just as Demeter intended to do to the child of Celeiis ; but this story is unknown to Homer. According to a still later legend, she plunged her son into the Styx, and thereby rendered him invulnerable in every part except the heel by which she held him....
Page 107 - It was the work of Chares of Lindus, and was 105 feet in height. 2. Selene (Luna). — As Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo, so is Selene the twin sister of Helios ; he representing the sun, she the moon. Selene, however, never really enjoyed divine honors in Greece.
Page 171 - Pluto, the infernal monarch, heard alarmed, And, springing from his throne, cried out in fear, Lest Neptune, breaking through the solid earth, To mortals and immortals should lay bare His dark and drear abode of gods abhorred.
Page 161 - The latter was once playing with the daughters of Oceanus in a flowery meadow, where they were picking flowers and making garlands. Persephone happened to quit her companions for a moment to pluck a narcissus...
Page 57 - ... sacrifices were offered in Laconia. Lycurgus abolished this barbarous custom, but caused instead a number of boys to be cruelly whipped before the image of the goddess on the occasion of her annual festival. This is the same Artemis to whom Agamemnon was about to offer, in Aulis, his daughter Iphigenia, previous to the departure of the Greeks for Troy. The Scythians in Tauris likewise had a goddess whom they propitiated with human sacrifices. This caused her to be confounded with Artemis Orthia,...

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