"Scythian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scythian irruption cannot but have greatly injured and weakened Assyria. The whole country had been ravaged and depopulated; the provinces had been plundered, many of the towns had been taken and sacked, the palaces of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... many a pilgrim he must have gossiped delightfully, alternating mundane memories with counsel good for the soul. Only one of his monastic brethren is known to us as a man of any distinction: this was Dionysius Exiguus, or the Little, by birth a Scythian, a man of much learning. He compiled the first history of the Councils, and, a matter more important, originated the computation of the Christian Era; for up to this time men had dated in the old way, by shadowy ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... The veteran bands of cavalry and infantry, of Romans and Barbarians, had been selected from the different provinces; and a just preeminence of loyalty and valor was claimed by the hardy Gauls, who guarded the throne and person of their beloved prince. A formidable body of Scythian auxiliaries had been transported from another climate, and almost from another world, to invade a distant country, of whose name and situation they were ignorant. The love of rapine and war allured to the Imperial standard several tribes of Saracens, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... to herself, in the Fifteenth Century, Russia constituted her own art from these various sources. But this variety of sources is more apparent than real. It is enough to examine Scythian ornamentation to recognize that it is of a pronounced Indo-Oriental character. Byzantine taste has exerted a preponderating influence upon Russia. But it has been recognized that this Byzantine style is itself composed of very varied elements among which figure most largely ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... appealing to them all as joint heirs with himself of heaven. He has risen into universality, and is accessible to the soul of every one that believeth. "In him there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." The experience resulting in a heart raised into fellowship with him in heaven is the inward seal assuring us that our faith is not vain. "Ye Gentiles, who formerly were afar off, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ; for he hath broken down the middle wall of partition ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... end to end. The form under which it appears in China is to some extent of local growth; that is to say, the Chinese have added and subtracted not a little to and from the parent stock. The cleavage which took place under Kanishka, ruler of the Indo-Scythian empire, about the 1st century A.D., divided Buddhism into the Mah[a]y[a]na, or Greater Vehicle, and the Hin[a]y[a]na, as it is somewhat contemptuously styled, or Lesser Vehicle. The latter was the nearer of the two to the Buddhism of Sh[a]kyamuni, and exhibits ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... course the Scythian police archers to send into any battle near Athens; they can also hire mercenary archers from Crete, but the Greek bows are relatively feeble, only three or four feet long—by no means equal to the terrible yew bows which will win glory for England in the Middle Ages. There has also come into vogue, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... thrice the word: "Marha, Marha, Marha!" swept the Roman legions from the face of Pannonia; he had learnt from the Spanish historian all about Ferdinand VII., who chased the Moors from the Alhambra where they had held sway for hundreds of years; he had read of the Scythian Bertezena, who, starting in life as a simple smith had delivered his race from the grinding yoke of the Geougs;—and finally he had not only read but learnt by heart all the great works of our savants in which it is demonstrated with the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... to believe positively the story how Cyrus made one war too many, and was cut off in the Scythian deserts, falling before the arrows of mere savages; and how their queen, Tomyris, poured blood down the throat of the dead corpse, with the words, 'Glut thyself with the gore for which thou hast thirsted.' But it may be ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... Their clothes not rich, their garments were not gay, But weapons like the Egyptian troops they had, The Arabians next that have no certain stay, No house, no home, no mansion good or bad, But ever, as the Scythian hordes stray, From place to place their wandering cities gad: These have both voice and stature feminine, Hair long and black, black ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... head of a woman, while the body was that of a reptile." This figure represented Wisdom and Passion, or the spiritual and material planes of human existence. The mythical woman whom Hercules met in Scythia, and who was doubtless the original eponymous leader of the Scythian people, had the head of a woman and the body of a serpent.(73) Even the Mexicans declare that "he, the serpent, is the sun, Tonakatl-Koatl, who ever accompanies their first woman." Their primitive mother, they ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... missionary), and catholic, that is, universal. Death is no interruption in that Society, race is no barrier, and rank conveys no privilege. "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all": over the Church the gates of Death prevail not: and "ye are all ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... some necessary occasion, his guards preserved a respectful distance, and Martialis, approaching his person under a presence of duty, stabbed him with a dagger. The bold assassin was instantly killed by a Scythian archer of the Imperial guard. Such was the end of a monster whose life disgraced human nature, and whose reign accused the patience of the Romans. [39] The grateful soldiers forgot his vices, remembered only his partial ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... said Logomacos, "seeing that you are not Greek. Tell me, what was that you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?" ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... wretches who pursue us to the death and crush us! What would Marpsias reply to this?(5) What an injustice that a man, bent with age like Thucydides, should be brow-beaten by this braggart advocate, Cephisodemus,(6) who is as savage as the Scythian desert he was born in! Is it not to convict him from the outset? I wept tears of pity when I saw an Archer(7) maltreat this old man, who, by Ceres, when he was young and the true Thucydides, would not have permitted an insult from Ceres herself! At that date he would have floored ten ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... ceremonies matches them against each other. Sometimes there may be ten couples, sometimes forty or fifty, it depends whether it is a great occasion or not; and of course each school hopes to see its champions win. That fellow you saw running with a net, he is a Scythian, and so quick and nimble that he always gets away, and is ready for a throw again before his opponent can overtake him. He is a great favourite of the public, for he has been in the arena twelve times and ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... of Lives says, that a wise man willingly takes upon him a kingdom, making his profit by it; and if he cannot reign himself, will dwell with a king, and go to the wars with a king like Hydanthyrsus the Scythian or Leucon the Pontic. But I will here also set down his very discourse, that we may see whether, as from the treble and the base strings there arises a symphony in music, so the life of a man who chooses quietness ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... history treats, the aboriginal Indians had long been pushed out from Hindustan into the mountainous forests that border the Deccan; which country has been largely peopled, in its more accessible regions, by the Sudras, who were probably the first of the Scythian invaders. After them had come the Sanskrit-speaking race, a congener of the ancient Persians, who brought a form of fire-worshipping, perhaps once monotheistic, of which traces are still extant in the Vedas, their early ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... forts, and carrying their dwellings with them wherever they go; accustomed, moreover, one and all, to shoot from horseback; and living not by husbandry but on their cattle, their waggons the only houses that they possess, how can they fail of being unconquerable?" (Bk. IV. ch. 46, p. 41, Rawlins.) Scythian prisoners in their waggons are represented on the Column of Theodosius at Constantinople; but it is difficult to believe that these waggons, at least as figured in Banduri, have ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the heads of the poppies, Alexander placing his seal on the lips of his favourite, Diogenes marching before Zeno, do not these speak more plainly than if they had uttered long orations? What flow of words could have expressed the ideas as clearly? Darius, in the course of the Scythian war, received from the king of the Scythians a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows. The ambassador deposited this gift and retired without a word. In our days he would have been taken for a madman. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... veins of rhyming mother wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with high astounding terms, And scourging kingdoms with ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... charters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, under the appellation of Alamannia, or Alemannia; and the older historians contend that it derived this name from having been the site of a colony of the Alani, a Scythian tribe, who ravaged a portion of Gaul in the early years of the fifth century, and afterwards, with the consent of the Roman emperors, established themselves in various parts of the country. This opinion, in the judgment of ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and Kalidasa its poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we had taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. The Chinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and the Roman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp and prosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of India; what was the one current of memory ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... Numicus, and which those of Anio, and Almo but very short[29] in its course, and the rapid Nar,[30] and Farfarus,[31] with its delightful shades, produced, and those which haunt the forest realms of the Scythian[32] ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... facts and from the similarity of several kinds of wild beasts which are found in America, with those of Hyrcania and Tartary, he arrives at what he deems, a [16] rational conclusion, that more than one nation in America had Scythian or Tartarian extraction. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... purpose, associated with them largely, and that thus associating more than was fit, he learnt the practice of drinking wine unmixed with water; and for this cause (as the Spartans think) he went mad. Thenceforth, as they say themselves, when they desire to drink stronger wine, they say "Fill up in Scythian fashion." 73 Thus the Spartans report about Cleomenes; but to me it seems that this was a retribution which Cleomenes paid ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... the 6th century B.C., who, in his roamings in quest of wisdom, arrived at Athens, and became the friend and disciple of Solon, but was put to death on his return home by his brother; he stands for a Scythian savant living among a civilised people, as well as for a wise man ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... observ'd of old, Which Latium held, and now the Romans hold, Their standard when in fighting fields they rear Against the fierce Hyrcanians, or declare The Scythian, Indian, or Arabian war; Or from the boasting Parthians would regain Their eagles, lost in Carrhae's bloody plain. Two gates of steel (the name of Mars they bear, And still are worship'd with religious fear) Before his temple stand: the dire abode, And the fear'd issues of the furious god, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... recognition of its source. So, then, the gospel rises above all the narrow distinctions which call themselves patriotism and are parochial, and it says that there is 'neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, Jew nor Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,' but all are one. Get high enough up upon the hill, and the hedges between the fields are barely perceptible. Live on the elevation to which the Gospel of Jesus Christ lifts men, and you look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Scythian philosopher of the 6th century B.C., who, in his roamings in quest of wisdom, arrived at Athens, and became the friend and disciple of Solon, but was put to death on his return home by his brother; he stands for a Scythian ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... stalks, snap them readily in your fingers. The ends stick out clean apart; and lo! hanging between them, there it is at last—a festoon of wet, coarse, dark gray riband, wealth of the hemp, sail of the wild Scythian centuries before Horace ever sang of him, sail of the Roman, dress of the Saxon and Celt, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... knowledge of French which served her well and amply in after years during her literary life; at any rate she seems early to have realized her dramatic genius and to have begun a play drawn from one of the most interesting episodes in Cleopatre, the love story of the Scythian King Alcamene, scenes which, when they had 'measured three thousand leagues of spacious ocean', were, nearly a quarter of a century later, to be taken out of her desk and worked up into a baroque and fanciful yet strangely pleasing tragi-comedy, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... to keep in check a whole army." Napoleon then crossed his arms with a look of consternation, hung his head, and remained as if overwhelmed with the deepest dejection. "His army was victorious and himself conquered. His route was intercepted, his manoeuvre, thwarted: Kutusoff, an old man, a Scythian, had been beforehand with him! And he could not accuse his star. Did not the sun of France seem to have followed him to Russia? Was not the road to Malo-Yaroslawetz open but the preceding day? It was not his fortune ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Scythian plains and the fens of the Tanais, in that land of the morning, to which neither Grecian letters nor Roman arms had ever penetrated, there was a great city called Asgaard. Of its founder, of its history, we know nothing; ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the Parthians, and out of it arose the great Parthian empire. The "Parthwa," or Parthians, who are early met with as one of the numerous peoples merged in the great Persian empire, at first in the modern Khorasan to the south-east of the Caspian sea, appear after 500 under the Scythian, i. e. Turanian, princely race of the Arsacids as an independent state; which, however, only emerged from its obscurity about a century afterwards. The sixth Arsaces, Mithradates I (579?-618?), was the real founder of the Parthian as a great power. To him succumbed the Bactrian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... long shadows of the fir and pine In the night sun are cast, And the deep heart of many a Norland mine Quakes at each riving blast; Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands, A baptized Scythian queen, With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands, The North ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a very remarkable gold comb of first-century workmanship was found near the village of Znamenka, in Southern Russia, where excavations in a burial mound had brought to light the tomb of a Scythian king, whose head was adorned with this beautiful comb. The upper portion represented a combat between three warriors, one mounted on a charger. That comb, however, should be classed among "dress" combs rather than ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... like a burden grieved the bed that moved not. Though both of us performed our true intent, Yet could I not cast anchor where I meant. She on my neck her ivory arms did throw, Her[381] arms far whiter than the Scythian snow. And eagerly she kissed me with her tongue, And under mine her wanton thigh she flung, 10 Yea, and she soothed me up, and called me "Sir,"[382] And used all speech that might provoke and stir. Yet like as if cold hemlock I had drunk, It mocked me, hung down the head and sunk. Like ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... political negotiation, but in reality, to induce the Duchesse de Mantua to espouse the old King Uladislas VI; and he displayed at the court of France all the luxury of his own, then called at Paris "barbarian and Scythian," and so far justified these names by strange eastern costumes. The Palatine of Posnania was very handsome, and wore, in common with the people of his suite, a long, thick beard. His head, shaved like that of a Turk, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... Scythian On the wide stepp, unharnessing His wheel'd house at noon. He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal— 165 Mares' milk, and bread Baked on the embers deg.;—all around deg.167 The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... praised the tragedy of Gorboduc, which he had seen acted by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, because it was "full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases." A few years later the young poet, Christopher Marlowe, promised the audience of his initial tragedy that they should "hear the Scythian Tamburlaine threatening the world with high astounding terms." These two statements are indicative of the tenor of Elizabethan plays. Gorboduc, to be sure, was a ponderous piece, made according to the pseudo-classical fashion that soon went out of favor; while Tamburlaine ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... pageant in Cheapside, which dignified Sir Thomas Davies' accession as Lord Mayor, was "a Scythian chariot of triumph," in which sat a fierce Tamburlain, of terrible aspect and morose disposition, who was, however, very civil and complimentary upon the present occasion. He was attended by Discipline, bearing the king's banner, Conduct that of the Mayor, Courage that of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... had mules for the same purpose. Some were on horseback, and formed an irregular and very Scythian-like looking cavalry. Several bands of those on foot were followed by their wives and children; showing that they felt confident of victory, and came prepared to take possession of the territories they hoped to conquer. At length, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... subject of the Greek empire was still called, was by far the weakest, the most ignorant, and most timid, who could be dragged into the field; and the Emperor was happy in his own good luck, when he found it possible to conduct a defensive war on a counterbalancing principle, making use of the Scythian to repel the Turk, or of both these savage people to drive back the fiery-footed Frank, whom Peter the Hermit had, in the time of Alexius, waked to double fury, by the powerful influence of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... European Russia. He found the barbarous custom of putting out the eyes of their prisoners was practised among them, and he notices that they only wandered from place to place without caring to cultivate their land. Herodotus relates many of the fables that make the origin of the Scythian nation so obscure, and in which Hercules plays a prominent part. He adds a list of the different tribes that composed the Scythian nation, but he does not seem to have visited the country lying to the north of the Euxine, or Black Sea. He gives a minute description ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... When the German and Scythian nations overran the western provinces of the Roman empire, the confusions which followed so great a revolution lasted for several centuries. The rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised against the ancient inhabitants, interrupted the commerce between the towns and the country. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... soon have to drop the name of barbarians altogether. The theory of M. Oppert, who ascribes the original invention of the cuneiform letters and a civilisation anterior to that of Babylon and Nineveh to a Turanian or Scythian race, will lose much of its apparent improbability; for no new wave of civilisation had reached these countries between the cuneiform period of their literature and history and the time of Hiouen-thsang's visit. In the kingdom of Okini, on the western frontier of China, Hiouen-thsang ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... at least three classes, Hellenistic, Persian or Parthian, and Scythian, if that word can be properly used to include the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... in the midst of fogs, do you perceive that giant with yellow beard who lets fall a sword red with blood? He is the Scythian Zalmoxis between two planets—Artimpasa, Venus; ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... nation will be found to have had a mythical being, whose strength or weakness, virtues or defects, more or less nearly describe the Sun's career through the seasons. There was a Celtic, a Teutonic, a Scythian, an Etruscan, a Lydian Hercules, all whose legends became tributary to those of the Greek hero. The name of Hercules was found by Herodotus to have been long familiar in Egypt and the East, and to have originally belonged to a much higher personage than the comparatively modern hero known in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... gathered, to be taught of God. The souls to whom He gave power to become the sons of God became the family of the Heavenly Father, in which there was "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ was all and in all." In this holy brotherhood of the children of the All-Father, we moderns take our places round our elder brother; feeling sure that we have found the spiritual band or religion ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... the last century it was commonly supposed that no close relation existed, and that the Alexandrian and Palestinian schools were independent and opposed; Scaliger, the greatest scholar of the seventeenth century, wrote[280] that "Philo was more ignorant of Hebraic and Aramaic lore than any Gaul or Scythian," and this was the opinion generally held. The researches of Freudenthal and Siegfried[281] have shown the falsity of these views; and, most important of all, Philo refutes them out of his own mouth. He refers ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich |
