"Marathon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as already mentioned; the death of the two brothers, the Cercopes, famous robbers; the defeat of the Bull of Marathon; the death of Lygis, who disputed the passage of the Alps with him; that of the giant Alcyaneus, who hurled at him a stone so vast that it crushed twenty-four men to death; that of Eryx, king of Sicily, whom he killed with a blow of the cestus, for refusing to deliver to him the oxen which ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Serampore, and hearing from Mr. Mack of the doings and achievements of the great men whose residence at Serampore has given it a sacredness it will ever retain in the annals of Indian Missions, I felt as a young Greek would feel on being taken to Marathon and Thermopylae. I felt I was entering on a war, where there had been heroes before me, which demanded courage and endurance of a far higher order than had ever been enlisted in the cause ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... stands the Temple of Athena Nike, and close at hand is the site of Phidias' colossal statue of Athena Promachos, the "fighter of the van," made of the spoils taken from the Persians at the battle of Marathon; sixty-six feet high, in full armor, her poised lance was always a landmark ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... some time in this prophetic strain, the bishop listening with considerable approbation though, at a certain point of the discourse, he would have liked to drop a word about Thermopylae and Marathon. He also knew something of the evils of Northern industrialism—how it stunts the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... knew it was going to be a tough job, so I took a good rest—an hour, I should think. And then I started to walk back. I found that I had come a devil of a way—I must have gone at Marathon pace. I walked and walked, and at last I got into Paris, and found myself with still a couple of miles to go. It was all right now; I should soon find a cab. But the luck was dead against me. I heard a man come round the corner of a side-street into a long street I was walking ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... extremity for lack of their aid, sometimes by the confused and excited remembrances of the survivors after the victory. The gods who led the Roman charge at Lake Regillus,[27:2] the gigantic figures that were seen fighting before the Greeks at Marathon,[27:3] even the celestial signs that promised Constantine victory for the cross:[27:4]—these are the effects of great emotion: we can all understand them. But even in daily life primitive men seem to have dealt more freely than we generally ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... wished for employment and also to make himself popular with the people, went to attack the bull of Marathon, who had caused no little trouble to the inhabitants of Tetrapolis. He overcame the beast, and drove it alive through the city for all men to see, and then sacrificed it to Apollo of Delphi. Hekale, too, and the legend of her having entertained Theseus, does not seem altogether without foundation ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... be assumed to begin with the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), and it certainly ended in 322 B.C., when Athens passed decisively under the power of Macedonia; although since the battle of Cheroneia (338 B.C.) she had done little more than keep her liberty ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... large as New-York, but whose inhabitants produced within the short space of two centuries, reckoning from the battle of Marathon, as Landor says, a larger number of exquisite models, in war, philosophy, patriotism, oratory and poetry—in the semi-mechanical arts which accompany or follow them, sculpture and painting—and in the first of the mechanical, architecture, than the remainder ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... sitting beside the lieutenant and speaking of Greece. "You see, Marathon, what did Marathon use to be to me? A date, 490, I believe, but on that evening, with the evening glow falling across the plain, it sounds improbable, but I said to—to Katakasianopulos, I said, 'Katakasianopulos, I feel ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a statement of Coleridge's respecting himself, recorded in his 'Table Talk,' namely, that a visit to the battle-field of Marathon would raise in him no kindling emotion, and asked Mr. Wordsworth whether this was true as a token of his mind. At first Mr. Wordsworth said, 'Oh! that was a mere bravado, for the sake of astonishing his hearers!' but ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... taking a post-graduate course at the school when the subject of Marathon running came up. A race is arranged, and Fred shows both his friends and his enemies what he can do. An athletic ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the tail, which is banded. Their nests are built in heavy woods, and preferably in trees along the bank of a stream. The nest is of the usual Hawk construction and the two to four eggs are white, faintly marked with pale chestnut. Data.—Marathon, Texas. Nest of sticks, lined with weeds and rabbit fur; on a horizontal branch of a cotton-wood tree, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Chaldean, Median, Persian, Bactrian, from the snows of Syria to the Gulf of Ormus, from the Halys to the Indus, poured like a deluge upon Greece and beat themselves to idle foam on the sea-girt rock of Salamis and the lowly plain of Marathon; when all the kingdoms of the earth went down with her own liberties in Rome's imperial maelstrom of blood and fire, and when the banded powers of the west, beneath the ensign of the cross, as the pendulum of conquest swung backward, marched in scarcely intermitted ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... in its place, by two German architects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again just as Pausanias described it on the spot where old AEgeus watched for the return of Theseus from Crete. In the distance are Salamis and AEgina, and beyond the purple hills lies Marathon. If the Melian statue be indeed the Victory Without Wings, she had no ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hill, river, or tree called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations, just as a bright pan of brass, when beaten, is said to attract the swarming bees; whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of similar features. Yet I receive as much pleasure in reading the account of the battle, in Herodotus, as anyone can. Charles Lamb wrote an essay on a man who lived in past time: I thought of adding another to it on one who lived not ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... kind, but innumerable delays occurred before the money I sent for arrived, and I am only now on my way to Greece—my native land, the mother of the arts and sciences, the country of Socrates and Plato, of Alexander and Aristides, the battle-fields of Thermopylae and Marathon. Ah, signora, Greece once contained all that is noble and great, and brave—what she once was, such she will be again—when we, her brave sons, have regenerated her, when we have driven forth the accursed Turk, never more to set his foot upon our sacred shore, except ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... meetings were held in 124 different cities, sixteen in New York, with U. S. Senators and Representatives and other prominent speakers. The week before election in New York, Buffalo, Rochester and other large cities Marathon speeches were made continuously throughout the twenty-four hours, with listening crowds even during the small hours of the night. Suffrage speeches were given in moving picture shows and vaudeville theaters and a suffrage ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Uncle Jim, taking his arm. "We ain't doing a (sanguinary) Marathon. It ain't a (decorated) cinder track. I want a word ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... was to doubt the moderns, we shall quote better evidence than any Greek. Our acquaintance of the Athenian inn, who had a very elegant appearance, appealed to us to confirm the Graecia mendax, saying, he had just returned from Marathon, and his guide had been telling him far greater lies than he ever heard from an Italian cicerone. "The fellow had the impudence to say, that his countrymen had defeated 500,000 Persians in the plain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Mt. Washington and the hotel on its top, he did know that Edith was a bright, observant girl who liked a touch of the ideal, so he asked, "Do you know about the Marathon runs of ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... take away the scepter from him. So he plotted against his life, and slew him basely, no man knows how or where. Some say that he waylaid him by OEnoe, on the road which goes to Thebes; and some that he sent him against the bull of Marathon, that the beast might kill him. But AEgeus says that the young men killed him from envy, because he had conquered them in the games. So Minos came hither and avenged him, and would not depart till this land had promised him ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... hidden war field, would it not be grand? What were the plains of Marathon, the pass of Thermopylae, or Cannae paved with golden ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... regiment of Green Mountain Boys who had gone down to the Battle of Bennington over the pass between Windward and Hemlock Mountain, and she was able to stir Page to enthusiasm by an appreciative comparison of their march with the splendid and affecting incident before Marathon, when the thousand hoplites from the little town of Plataea crossed the Cithaeron range and went down to the plain to join the Athenians in their ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... divided, so that no firm stand might be made, they withdrew. Nevertheless, the Eretrians fought valiantly behind their walls, till they were betrayed on the seventh day. But the Persians, counselled by Hippias, sailed to the bay of Marathon. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... said, recognising in the first one the detective-sergeant who had assisted in clearing up the Marathon mystery. And back of him was Coroner Goldberger, whom I had met in two previous cases; while the third countenance, looking at me with a quizzical smile, was that of Jim Godfrey, the Record's star reporter. The fourth man was a policeman in uniform, who, at a word ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Greek life and customs is woven interestingly into the fabric of this tale. The battles of Marathon and Salamis are fought anew for the children by old men who were participants therein, and the ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... be forgotten that many armies that have met with defeat at first, have gathered courage, and gained victories that have changed the whole course of events. With the memories of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis in their hearts, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Hop Scotch Hunkety Hunt the Sheep Intercollegiate Amateur Athletic Association of America I Spy Jack Fagots Jai-A-Li Japanese Fan Ball Kick the Stick King of the Castle Knuckle There Lacrosse Lawn Bowls Lawn Bowling Lawn Hockey Lawn Skittles Lawn Tennis Last Tag Luge-ing Marathon Race Marbles Mumblety Peg Names of Marbles Nigger Baby Olympic Games One Old Cat Over the Barn Pass It Pelota Plug in the Ring Polo Potato Race Prisoner's Base Push Ball Quoits Racquets or Rackets Red Line Red Lion Roley Boley Roque Rowing Record Rubicon ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... to deprecate hostility, but to set forth in evidence the character of the city with which, unless you are very careful, you will soon be involved in war. We tell you that we, first and alone, dared to engage with the barbarian at Marathon,[23] and that, when he came again, being too weak to defend ourselves by land, we and our whole people embarked on shipboard and shared with the other Hellenes in the victory of Salamis.[24] Thereby he was prevented from sailing to the Peloponnesus and ravaging city after ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... on Marathon— And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For, standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem myself ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... he immediately felt he had nothing to dread. He might have been a Marathon athlete, so far as any hint to the contrary went. Ted appeared never to notice his disability or to be conscious of any difference in their physical equipment; and when, as sometimes happened, he stooped to arrange a pillow, or lift the wheel-chair over ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... persecution of Eurystheus. They at first sought shelter with Ceyx, king of Trachis; he was too weak to protect them, and they then took refuge at Athens. The Athenians refused to deliver them up at the demand of Eurystheus; he invaded Attica, and a battle was fought near Marathon, in which, after Macaria, a daughter of Hercules, had devoted herself for the preservation of her house, Eurystheus fell, and the Heracleidae and their Athenian protectors were victorious. The memory of Macaria's ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... could send a couple of million of men into the field for the purpose of cutting one another's throats, except clearly as an act of self-defence. Man is the same war-making animal now that he was in the days of Marathon, but he readily admits the evils of war, and is peremptory in demanding that they shall not be incurred save for good and valid reasons. He is as ready to fight as ever he was, but he must fight for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Eurystheus was pleased, and after he had regarded the animal for a time with pleasure, set it free. No longer under Hercules' management, the ox became wild again, wandered through all Laconia and Arcadia, crossed over the isthmus to Marathon in Attica and devastated the country there as formerly on the island of Crete. Later it was given to the hero Theseus to become master ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... the man fades away again, without even looking startled, to mutter "Well, you needn' be so damn peeved about it—I'll say you needn' be so damn peeved—whatcha think you are, anyhow—Marathon Mike?" as Oliver's feet take ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... escapade. She will be sensible, I think, though she is still a little frightened. She will accept this god's suit, if only to pique Theseus—Theseus, who, for all his long, tedious anecdotes of how he slew Procrustes and the bull of Marathon and the sow of Cromyon, would even now lie slain or starving in her father's labyrinth, had she not taken pity on him. Yes, it was pity she felt for him. She never loved him. And then, to think that he, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the minstrels sang of the glorious deeds of Theseus the brave and fair. They told how at last at the bidding of his father he went forth from the gates of Athens and smote the bull which ravaged the broad plains of Marathon, and how in the secret maze of the labyrinth he smote the Minotauros. They sang of his exploits in the day when the Amazons did battle with the men of Athens—how he went with Meleagros and his chieftains to the chase of the boar in Kalydon—how with the heroes in the ship Argo he brought back ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary narrative ever been finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp. Laws), singing a hymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus where he contemplates the growth of the Athenian empire—'How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas ...
— The Republic • Plato
... ourselves the surging battle-tide. For war is not to this generation what it has been. The rust of long disuse has been rubbed off by the iron hand of fate,—shall we not say, rather, by the good hand of our God upon us?—and the awful word stands forth once more, red-lettered and real. Marathon, Waterloo, Lexington, are no longer the conflict of numbers against numbers, nor merely of principles against principles, but of men against men. And as we stand on this silent hill, the prize of so many struggles, our own hearts ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... 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
... 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 of Marathon without them, and they did so only because the Spartans did not come at their call. Sparta had not come to Thermopylae in force, it is true; but her king was there with three hundred of her best men. Only by staying and fighting could he show that Sparta held by ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... of his genius to be perverted by any provincial or pseudo-patriotic prepossessions; his patriotism was too national to be provincial. Assuredly no poet ever had more than he: not even the king of men and poets who fought at Marathon and sang of Salamis: much less had any or has any one of our own, from Milton on to Campbell and from Campbell even to Tennyson. In the mightiest chorus of King Henry V. we hear the pealing ring of the same great English ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... years back the former Great King had sent his best troops to be signally defeated upon the coast of Attica; but the losses at Marathon had but stimulated the Persian lust of conquest, and the new King Xerxes was gathering together such myriads of men as should crush down the Greeks and overrun their country by mere force ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... appearance as a tragic writer was in 499 B.C., and in 484 B.C. he won a prize in the tragic contests. He took part in the battle of Marathon, in 490 B.C., and also fought in the battle of Salamis, in 480 B.C. He visited Sicily twice, and probably spent some time in that country, as the use of many Sicilian words in his later plays ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... disturb you," said Miss Upton, still excited from her Marathon, "but you'd have had him if you hadn't ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... to change clothes and walk back after a mile or so," I said. "Suppose we don't make it a Marathon. Why walk ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... those mighty conflicts, in which, however slowly and reluctantly, error and prejudice have been compelled to relax their hold on the human mind? Dr. Johnson has spoken to us, in his usual stately phrase, of patriotism re-invigorated and of piety warmed amid the scenes of Marathon and Iona; but where is the Marathon which appeals to us so forcibly as the field consecrated by the blood of a Hamden or a Falkland? and where the Iona which is so eloquent with recollections as the walls which have echoed to the voices of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... mention also the excavations made on the slopes of Mount Hymettus, and in the ever-famous plains of Marathon. Finlay has brought together in Greece a very interesting collection of stone weapons and implements which he picked up in great numbers at the base of the Acropolis of Athens. All these discoveries prove the existence ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... a possible railroad in the Holy Land. Think of having Bannockburn shouted by the station master, as the train runs whistling up to a small station house. Nothing to be seen there but broad, silent meadows, through which the burn wimples its way. Here was the very Marathon of Scotland. I suppose we know more about it from the "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled," than we do from history; yet the real scene, as narrated by the historian, has ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... sounds which startle travellers in lonely spots, were attributed to Pan, who possessed a frightful and most discordant voice; hence the term panic terror, to indicate sudden fear. The Athenians ascribed their victory at Marathon to the alarm which he created among the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... that guy Llewellyn," he commented, as he strolled away; "that means lightning, according to some book or other. There was an old Marathon racer a couple of million years ago ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... half the world? How had the little semi-barbarous mountain tribe up there in Pella, risen under Philip to be the master-race of the globe? How, indeed, had Xenophon and his Ten Thousand, how had the handfuls of Salamis and Marathon, held out triumphantly century after century, against the vast weight of the barbarian? The simple answer was: Because the Greek has mind, the barbarian mere brute force. Because mind is the lord of matter; because the Greek being the cultivated man, is the only true man; the rest are [Greek ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... But as concerns Europe, it is plain to be seen, for reasons stated in my first chapter, that the decisive victory of Charles I. would have been a calamity of the first magnitude. It would have been like the Greeks losing Marathon or the Saracens winning Tours, supposing the worst consequences ever imagined in those hypothetical cases to have been realized. Or taking a more contracted view, we can see how England, robbed of her Puritan element, might ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... suns of Hellas have all shone, The first has fallen to the last: — Since Persia fell at Marathon, Long centuries have ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... troupe of terpsichorean marauders was to be dislodged she must have assistance. It was man's work. She made a brave dash through the hall mercifully unmolested; found the stairs; raced up them; and fell through the doorway of her son Eustace's bedroom like a spent Marathon ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to his chair by Clarissa's side—she listlessly turning over a folio volume of steel plates, he pointing out landscapes and scenes which had been familiar to him in his continental rambles, and remarking upon them in a somewhat disjointed fashion—"Marathon, yes—rather flat, isn't it? But the mountains make a fine background. We went there with guides one day, when I was a young man. The Acropolis—hum! ha!—very fine ruins, but a most inconvenient place to get at. Would you like to see Greece, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... He not only succeeded, but subsequently, by dint of following substantially all of the rules of hygiene here laid down, became an athlete and capable of running twenty-five miles for sheer love of sport and apparently without the overstrain experienced by "Marathon" runners. Kant and Humboldt are cases typical in different fields of achievement of many of the world's most vital men who have actually made over their constitutions from weakness to strength. Cornaro says that it was the neglect of hygienic laws which made him all but a dead man at thirty-seven, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... own) name was Tom Poppins; that the store had a slick new brand of Manila cigars, kept in a swell new humidor bought upon the advice of himself (Mr. Poppins); that one of the young clerks in the store had done fine in the Modified Marathon; that the Cubs had had a great team this year; that he'd be glad to give Mr.—Mr. Wrenn, eh?—one of those Manila cigars—great cigars they were, too; and that he hadn't "laughed so much for a month ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... men laughed at the constant employment she gave them among the Greek islands in furnishing her severely accurate accounts of sea-fights and land-fights: and the scenes being before them they could neither of them protest that their task-work was an idle labour. Dr. Shrapnel assisted in fighting Marathon and Salamis over again cordially—to shield Great Britain from the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sure that it wouldn't interfere with your work in the five mile run, I'd be tempted to let you go into it," the track captain declared; "but you know that short Marathon has been thought so important that it was given three points, to one for all other events. We've just got to win that, or we're gone. Do you really and truly think ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... in her army, lost his life, bravely supporting the cause which he had espoused. He deserved a better fate; and but for prejudice which is so apt to dim the eye and distort the object, Tecumseh would, most probably, be deemed a martyr for his country, and associated in the mind with the heroes of Marathon and Thermopylae. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... does Greek history offer little to allure us. The resistance to a foreign enemy is indeed glorious, but the constant civil wars of states against each other are intolerable. Besides, the history of our own time is overwhelmingly important. The battles of Leipzig and Waterloo eclipse Marathon, and such heroes as Bluecher and Wellington are rivals ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... she spake the trump was heard That echoed ominous o'er the streets of Rome, When the first Caesar totter'd o'er the grave By Freedom delv'd: the Trump, whose chilling blast 270 On Marathon and on Plataea's plain Scatter'd the Persian.—From his obscure ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... presented divinity stretching forth a helping hand to man. The noble "idyl" of Echetlos is thus a counterpart, in its brief way, to the great tragic tale of Herakles and Alkestis. Echetlos, the mysterious ploughman who shone amid the ranks at Marathon, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the contests were given the appeal and interest of popular sports was their conception as a baseball game, a football game, an automobile race, a Marathon ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... on Marathon—[cy] And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... it occur to me to laugh at the men who were quarreling about the boundaries of their land, and at those who were proud because they cultivated the Sikyonian plain, or owned that part of Marathon around Oenoe, or held possession of a thousand acres at Acharnae. Of the whole of Greece, as it then appeared to me from above, being about the size of four fingers, I think Attica was in proportion a mere speck. So that I wondered on what condition it was left to these rich ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... soundly. He was beginning to understand that life was now largely a matter of personal responsibility with him, and his ears had begun to attune themselves to sound. Whenever Thor moved or heaved a deep sigh, Muskwa knew it. After that day's Marathon with the grizzly he was filled with uneasiness—a fear that he might lose his big friend and food-killer, and he was determined that the parent he had adopted should have no opportunity of slipping away from him unheard and unseen. But Thor had no intention of deserting his little ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... is one that needs consideration; and to judge him fairly we must look at the problem from his side and postulate that Socialism (whether he interpreted its theories aright or not) did pursue practical ideals. If Aeschylus was more proud of fighting at Marathon than of writing tragedies—if Socrates claimed respect as much for his firmness as a juryman as for his philosophic method—surely Morris might believe that his duty to his countrymen called him to leave his study and his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... yards down the road was a stationary tram. In the ordinary course of things it would probably have moved on long before Psmith and Mike could have got to it; but the conductor, a man with sporting blood in him, seeing what appeared to be the finish of some Marathon Race, refrained from giving the signal, and moved out into the road to observe events more clearly, at the same time calling to the driver, who joined him. Passengers on the roof stood up to get a good ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... and by his own countrymen, but for this S. Paul cares not, he has kept the faith, he has run the race set before him, looking unto Jesus, and he knows that the crown of glory is laid up for him. A great preacher of our day tells us how they brought the news to Athens that the battle of Marathon was won. The swiftest runner had come panting and exhausted with the glad tidings of victory, and worn out with exertion, he dropped, and died on the threshold of the first house he reached, sobbing out with dying breath the words—"Farewell, and rejoice ye, we, too, rejoice." ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... are the period of Central Greek art; the fifth, or central, century producing the finest. That is easily recollected by the battle of Marathon. And the third, second, and first centuries are ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... these conceptions that Persia dreamed of conquering the West. At Marathon and at Salamis that illusion was looted. History tells of the cohorts that descended there. It relates further what they did. But of what they thought there is no record. It was, perhaps, too obvious. Ormuzd, god ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... anywhere near Greece at all! We had good reasons for this dislike. There were dad and Captain Buncombe—who was what people call an archaeologist, fond of grubbing up old stones and skeletons, and digging like an old mole amongst ruins—continually talking all day long about Marathon and Hymettus, the Parthenon and Chersonese, the Acropolis, and Theseus and Odysseus and all the rest of them, bothering our lives out with questions about Homer and the Iliad, and all such stuff; so, I put it to you candidly, whether it wasn't ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... prepare their citizens for what might come. Finally, in a series of memorable battles, the Greeks, led by Athens, broke the dread power of the Persian name and made the future of this new type of civilization secure. At Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea the fate of our western civilization trembled in the balance. Now followed the great creative period in Greek life, during which the Athenian Greeks matured and developed a literature, philosophy, and art which were to be ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the working of the Athenian government, we do not assent to the view presented to us by Mr Grote. His last published volume brings down the affairs of Greece to the battle of Marathon and the death of Miltiades. In the sentence passed on the hero of Marathon, the operation of a popular government has been often disadvantageously traced; the Athenians have been accused of fickleness and ingratitude. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... to be inserted after stanza 86th in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, instead of the song at present in manuscript."-[MS. note to "To Inez."] [The stanzas To Inez are dated January 25, 1810, on which day Byron and Hobhouse visited Marathon. Most likely they were addressed to Theresa Macri, the "Maid of Athens," or some favourite of the moment, and not to "Florence" (Mrs. Spencer Smith), whom he had recently (January 16) declared emerita to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... "thou know'st how Hercules Was not content to wait till folk asked aid, But sought the pests among their guarded trees; Thou know'st what name the Theban Cadmus made, And how the bull of Marathon was laid Dead on the fallows of the Athenian land, And how folk ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... the cause, not of the Constitution and the laws,—a superficial cause, the rebels have now the same,—but of civilization and law, and the self-restrained freedom which is their result. As the Greeks at Marathon and Salamis, Charles Martel and the Franks at Tours, and the Germans at the Danube, saved Europe from Asiatic barbarism, so we, at places to be famous in future times, shall have saved America from a similar tide of barbarism; and we may hope to be purified and ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... he exclaimed ruefully, 'do I have to marathon ten miles and back? They sure are generous with exercise in the army. Say, you guys—if you're on the level about being stragglers, and want a real honest-to-God showdown scrap, you hike over that bridge. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... he) teacheth a disputative virtue, but I do an active: his virtue is excellent in the dangerless academy of Plato, but mine showeth forth her honourable face in the battles of Marathon, Pharsalia, Poitiers, and Agincourt. He teacheth virtue by certain abstract considerations, but I only bid you follow the footing of them that have gone before you. Old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine- witted philosopher, but I give the experience of many ages. Lastly, if he make the songbook, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... raining when I left my apartment at the Marathon that night—a cold and disagreeable drizzle—and the thought occurred to me as I turned up my coat collar and stepped into the cab I had summoned, that it was a somewhat foolhardy thing to be driving about the streets of New York with fifty thousand dollars in my hand bag. I glanced at the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... said, said he, "to turn your Maxims on The race that fought at Salamis, that bled at Marathon! You can't propose with brutal force to drive from off your seas The men of Homer's gifted line—the ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... the few to rule the many and force them to support their masters was increased as certain peoples learned better than others how to make strong armor and effective weapons. Nearly five hundred years before the time of Christ, at the battle of Marathon (Mar'a thon), the Greeks discovered that one Greek, clad in metal armor and armed with a long spear, was worth ten Persians wearing leather and carrying a bow and arrows or a short sword. One hundred and sixty years later, a small army of well-equipped Macedonian Greeks, led by that wonderful general, ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... ii. p. 47) has produced a Greek epigram of six lines on this victory of Narses, which a favorably compared to the battles of Marathon and Plataea. The chief difference is indeed in their consequences—so trivial in the former instance—so permanent and glorious in the latter. Note: Not in the epigram, but in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... action, and desirous also to make himself popular, left Athens to fight with the bull of Marathon, which did no small mischief to the inhabitants of Tetrapolis. And having overcome it, he brought it alive in triumph through the city, and afterwards sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo. The story of Hecale, also, of her receiving and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... around, And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon: Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold, Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone: Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... 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 pithy sentences, his vivid images; and added, as Fox added when quoting Burke, "But you should have heard and seen ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could take inspiration from those of their brothers who had preceded them and achieved success, nationality asserted itself. Larger groups now talked about Venizelos and a greater Greece; their chests expanded at the thought of Marathon and Plato; and companies paraded amid applause as they went to fight in the Balkans. In every case, with increasing intelligence and wealth, race pride asserted itself. At the same time no one would think of denying to the Greek or the Irishman ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Doctor Ward, placing a gnarled hand on my shoulder, "you begin to talk like a Marylander. It's a race, my boy, a race across this continent. There are two trails—one north and one mid-continent. On these paths two nations contend in the greatest Marathon of all the world. England or the United States—monarchy or republic—aristocracy or humanity'? These are some of the things which hang on the issue of this contest. Take then your duty and your ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... doubt the battle is one too. I believe, in spite of the historian who is wise after the event, that the so-called decisive battles do not decide anything, and that it is the accidental events which have the permanent influence on the destiny of peoples. Neither Marathon nor Cannae kept the Greeks or Carthaginians from destruction; all the Roman conquests did not prevent the Teutonic race from overrunning the world; all the Crusader conquests of Jerusalem did not maintain Christianity, or Napoleon's ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... whin they lose, they lose,' I says. 'What ails thim?' I says. 'Is th' riferee again thim?' 'I can't make it out,' he says, while a tear sthud in his eye. 'Whin I think iv Leonidas at th' pass iv Thermometer,' he says, 'an' So-an'-so on th' field iv Marathon an' This-or-that th' Spartan hero,' he says, 'I cannot undherstand f'r th' life iv me why th' Greeks shud have been dhruv fr'm pillar to post be an ar-rmy iv slaves. Didn't Leonidas, with hardly as manny men as there are Raypublicans in this precint, hold ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... in Wine Creek," cried Joe Welling with the air of Pheidippides bringing news of the victory of the Greeks in the struggle at Marathon. His finger beat a tattoo upon Ed Thomas's broad chest. "By Trunion bridge it is within eleven and a half inches of the flooring," he went on, the words coming quickly and with a little whistling noise from between his teeth. ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... to appear less generous than he, also gave up their command to Miltiades, who thus found himself general in chief of the Athenian and Plataean armies. So he speedily made his preparations, and drew up his small force on the plain of Marathon, between ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... vitae, nuncia vetustatis." {30} The philosopher, saith he, teacheth a disputative virtue, but I do an active; his virtue is excellent in the dangerless academy of Plato, but mine showeth forth her honourable face in the battles of Marathon, Pharsalia, Poictiers, and Agincourt: he teacheth virtue by certain abstract considerations; but I only bid you follow the footing of them that have gone before you: old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine-witted philosopher; but I give the experience of many ages. Lastly, if he ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... revolt. The expedition of Mardonius, and still more that of Datis and Artaphernes, had indicated the danger threatening Greece when the master of a great army was likewise the master of a great navy. Their defeat at Marathon was not likely to, and as a matter of fact did not, discourage the Persians from further attempts at aggression. As the advance of Cambyses into Egypt had been flanked by a fleet, so also was that of Xerxes into Greece. By the good fortune sometimes vouch-safed to a people which, owing to ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... of them, and his owner, so much distinguished themselves at the battle of Marathon, that the effigy of the dog was placed on the same tablet with ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness, in the scenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if there were, and you wanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of Leonidas; one battle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and Bito; there need not therefore be more monotony in your art than there was in the repetition of a given cycle of subjects by the religious painters of Italy. But we ought ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... the "relay Marathon," which Frank and his chums had run against Blunt and his cowboy friends, to file in Gold Hill a location ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... harassed by increasing opposition, he was compelled to retreat also. In 490 Darius sent out another army under Mardonius, this time embarking it on a fleet of 600 triremes which succeeded in arriving safely at the coast of Attica in the bay of Marathon. While the army was disembarking it was attacked by Miltiades and utterly defeated. The second expedition, therefore, came to nothing. But Marathon can hardly be called a decisive battle because it merely postponed the invasion; it affected in no way ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... fences and haystacks became ready-made fortifications, and every rising spot was filled with irate hostile yeoman who harried them with aim true and deadly. They soon began to run and leave their wounded behind, and in place of a retreat their disorderly flight must have had the appearance of a Marathon race, the rattle of musketry acting or serving as signals for each to do his best on ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... And thou shalt see for husbands then no more The Persian matrons robed in mournful guise, And dyed with blood the seas of Salamis, Nor sole example this: (The ruin of that Eastern king's design), That tells of victory nigh: See Marathon, and stern Thermopylae, Closed by those few, and chieftain leonine, And thousand deeds that blaze in history. Then bow in thankfulness both heart and knee Before his holy shrine, Who such bright guerdon ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... hallowed spot in the Transatlantic pilgrimage of every true American? What is the true Mecca of his heart? Not the hoary tombs of the Pharaohs, and the one hundred gated cities of the Nile. Not the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the plains of Marathon, the Pass of Thermopylae, thrilling as they are with heroic and patriotic emotion; not the Forum and the Coliseum and the triumphal arches of Rome. No; the pious pilgrim from the Far West seeks a sequestered, old-fashioned ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, a patriotic team relay race was ordered for every station in the country by Commissioner Camp. In the First District the route lay over the historic Marathon course from Ashland into Boston, and most of the teams represented either the army cantonment at Camp Devens or the First Naval District. In most instances the races were run from an army to a navy camp, ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... do for Palestine!" "Plains of Marathon over beyond the stone wall!" "Turbans and lances!" "Horsetail helmets and ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... would spring with the activity of squirrels to the assistance of the regenerated Spaniards and perhaps there we might fight more effectually the battle for universal Freedom than either at Thermopylae or Marathon. There indeed we might strike a blow that would break up the deep foundations of despotic power so as that neither art or force could again collect and cement the scattered elements. We are too distant from Greece to make the Turks feel our physical strength ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... rapturous instant is gathered what I was soon to see of Greece, is focussed the meaning of history, poetry and art. I was to stand one evening in spring on the mound where heroes sleep and gaze upon the plain of Marathon between darkening mountains and the blue thread of the strait peaceful now, flushed with pink and white blossoms of fruit and almond trees; to sit on the cliff-throne whence a Persian King had looked down upon a Salamis fought and lost.... In that port-hole glimpse a Themistocles was revealed, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "This here Marathon race business through three-foot snow ain't for invalids like me and Husky," one of them said cheerfully, with his mouth full of sandwich. "We're also rans, and don't ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... were my demi-gods, and haunted me out of Pope's Homer, until I dreamt more of Agamemnon than of Moses the black pony. And thus my great "epic" of eleven or twelve years old, in four books, and called "The Battle of Marathon," and of which fifty copies were printed because papa was bent upon spoiling me—is Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone; for, although a curious production for a child, it gives evidence only of an imitative faculty ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon |
