The Mythology of Greece and Rome: With Special Reference to Its Use in Art. From the German of O. Seemann

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Chapman and Hall limited, 1887 - Art, Greek - 275 pages
 

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Page 205 - He was so strong in wrestling, that he boasted that he would erect a temple to his father with the skulls of his conquered antagonists. Hercules attacked him, and as he received new strength from his mother as often as he touched the ground, the hero lifted him up in the air, and squeezed him to death in his arms.
Page 199 - Phoenician sun-god, Baal ; probably from the analogy afforded in the course of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac. The subjection of Heracles to his unmanly cousin Eurystheus is generally represented as a consequence of the stratagem by which Hera obtained for the latter the sovereignty over all the descendants of Perseus. At a later period Heracles was said to have become insane, in consequence of the summons of Eurystheus to do his bidding. The following is an account of the labors...
Page 91 - 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 honours in Greece.
Page 138 - 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 148 - According to another view, which prevails in the "Odyssey," the world of shadows was not situated beneath the earth, but lay far to the westward, on the other side of Oceanus, or on an island in the same; so indefinite and vague were men's ideas as to the locality of the kingdom of death in the time of Homer, and so undeveloped were their conceptions as to the lives of departed souls.
Page 136 - There is a fine marble statue of this kind, larger than life, in the museum at Naples, called the Farnese Flora. 12. Pales. — Pales was the ancient pastoral goddess of the Italian tribes, from whom the name Palatine, which originally meant nothing but a pastoral colony, was derived. She was especially venerated by the shepherds, who besought her to send fruitfulness and health to their flocks. A festival in her honour was celebrated on the 21st of April, the anniversary of the foundation of the...
Page 200 - 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 impenetrable skin as a defence.
Page 246 - 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. Like all noble heroes, Achilles was instructed by Chiron, under whom he acquired such wonderful skill in all feats of strength and agility that he soon surpassed all his contemporaries. In addition to Chiron, Homer names Phoenix, the son of Amyntor, as the instructor of the youthful hero.
Page 138 - 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 49 - Phoebe (Luna). The national Artemis of the Greeks was originally quite distinct from the Artemis Orthia, a dark and cruel deity, to whom human 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...

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