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Zeus   Listen
noun
Zeus  n.  (Gr. Myth.) The chief deity of the Greeks, and ruler of the upper world (cf. Hades). He was identified with Jupiter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zeus" Quotes from Famous Books



... to represent the facade of the Palace of Agamemnon, at Argos; the platform over the Central door appearing as a Watch-tower. At intervals along the front of the Palace, and especially by the three doors, are statues of Gods, amongst them Apollo, Zeus, and Hermes. The time is supposed to be night, verging on morning. Both Orchestra and Stage are vacant: only a Watchman is discovered on the Tower, leaning on his elbow, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... was believed in antiquity that the will of the gods and a knowledge of future events might be learned at certain shrines, of which the most famous were those of Apollo at Delphi, of Zeus or Jupiter at Dodona, and of Hammon in Egypt. Hammon was really an Egyptian god, represented as having the horns of a ram, but he was identified by the Greeks with Zeus and by the ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

... some forms of Astrolatry as too sacred to attach a name to the triune Deity, he was called "the One," and we find him thus designated in the 4th chapter of Revelation, where, like Zeus and Jupiter, of the Grecian and Roman mythologies, he is represented as seated above the firmament, upon a throne from which "proceeded lightnings and thunderings," and to whom all, the subordinate divinities were ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... must be done, now, do you understand that? And what are you doing now? You are living upon them. They borrow on their hundred roubles pension. They borrow from the Svidrigailovs. How are you going to save them from Svidrigailovs, from Afanasy Ivanovitch Vahrushin, oh, future millionaire Zeus who would arrange their lives for them? In another ten years? In another ten years, mother will be blind with knitting shawls, maybe with weeping too. She will be worn to a shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... philosophical dogmas of his tutor, and to have resumed the analogical system commenced by Thales—like that philosopher, he founded axioms upon observations, bold and acute, but partial and contracted. He maintained that air was the primitive element. In this theory he united the Zeus, or ether, of Pherecydes, and the Infinite of Anaximander, for he held the air to be God in itself, and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Hood, as it includes King Arthur; but it is better to face the truth, and to state boldly that Robin Hood the yeoman outlaw never existed in the flesh. As the goddess Athena sprang from the head of Zeus, Robin Hood sprang from the imagination ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... hard to believe that the Shakespearian characters were born, like Athene from the brain of Zeus, in panoplied perfection. They grew. The play of Troilus was a dozen years in growth. According to the best commentators, "Shakespeare, after having sketched out a play on the fashion of his youthful taste and skill, returned in after years to enlarge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... a trifling thing, a woman's useless toy But with its counterpart behold! the favorite bird of Zeus." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... origin of the Pythia, for example, contains points not without resemblance to certain passages in our own early sacred history. The Son of God is at enmity with the serpent; the serpent pursues a woman, and is trodden under foot by the Son. Zeus is the god of the Greeks; Apollo is his son; Leto—or Latona—is pursued by Python, the serpent, and is slain by Apollo. To commemorate this deed a temple was erected at Delhi to Apollo, and the priestess was called the Pythia. Regarded as the symbol of wisdom by the Egyptians, the serpent ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... go along in the sunlight, past the little homes where babies had been turned out into grassy yards, past the straggling stables and the smithy, and the fire-house, and the office of the weekly Zeus. There was more than one garage in Monroe now and the squared noses of Ford cars were at home everywhere. Mallon's Hardware Emporium, the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, still with its pillars of twisted handkerchiefs, Mason and White's—how familiar they were! And the old Bank, with its wide windows ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... wrath unblest of Peleian Achilleus, Whence the uncountable woes that were heapt on the host of Achaia; Whence many valorous spirits of heroes, untimely dissever'd, Down unto Hades were sent, and themselves to the dogs were a plunder And all fowls of the air; but the counsel of Zeus was accomplish'd: Even from the hour when at first were in fierceness of rivalry sunder'd Atreus' son, the Commander of Men, and the noble Achilleus. Who of the Godheads committed the twain in the strife of contention? Leto's offspring and Zeus'; who, in anger against Agamemnon, Issued ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... plated shields of the hardest metals, they flung back your gaze like blunted and broken arrows. With a simple inflexion of the brow, a mere flash of the pupil, more terrible than the thunder of Zeus, they precipitated you from the heights of your most ambitious escalades into depths of nothingness so profound that it was impossible to rise again. Typhon himself, who writhes under AEtna, could not have lifted the mountains of disdain with which they overwhelmed you. One ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... gods, and had even denied their existence. Zeus had a mind to destroy them, but at last resolved to inflict on them a punishment worse than death. He sent Hermes to one of the chief cities with a scroll on which a few magic letters were written, and the wise men declared they contained a riddle. Its solution ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... one day A deputation of tigers. "Mighty potentate," Thus spoke their Cicero before the monarch's throne, "The noble nation of tigers, Has long been wearied with the lion's choice as king. Does not Nature give us an equal claim with his? Therefore, O Zeus, declare my race To be a people of free citizens!" "No," said the god of gods, "it cannot be; You are deceivers, thieves, and murderers, Only a good people merits being free." [Footnote: "Marie Antoinette et sa Famine," par Lescure, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... the Lamb-Clouds," "The God of the Breezes," "The Golden King," "The Silvern Ruler of the Air," and "The Father of the Heavens." He wields the thunder-bolts, striking down the spirits of evil on the mountains, and is therefore termed, "The Thunderer," like the Greek Zeus, and his abode is called, "The Thunder-Home." Ukko is often represented as sitting upon a cloud in the vault of the sky, and bearing on his shoulders the firmament, and therefore he is termed, "The Pivot of the Heavens." He is armed as an omnipotent warrior; ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... accents of common talk and the musical accents that occur in poetry. It is the best monograph on the subject, of which we know. Another article, "On Prometheus," clears AEschylus from the charge of impiety, because he appears to make Zeus act tyrannically towards Prometheus in the "Prometheus Vinctus." He also gave the results of some of his classical studies, in lectures in Edinburgh and Glasgow on Roman history and Greek literature. The principal works on which he was engaged ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... processions of men that besought Apollo's care' at Cyrene (Pyth. v. 90). An inscription from the Piraeus, of 320 B.C., orders the Agoranomi (p. 37) to take care 'of the broad roads by which the processions move to the temple of Zeus the Saviour'. ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield

... also designed the Propylaea, a magnificent columned vestibule, fronting the broad flight of steps which led up to the western entrance of the Acropolis. But the most renowned of his works was the gigantic statue of the Olympian Zeus, wrought in gold and ivory, which was the chief glory of the temple at Olympia. Of this sublime creation, the highest expression of divinity achieved by the ancients, only the fame survives. These triumphs of art were not brought to completion until ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... pass by which the plain of Thessaly could be entered from the north. The district of Epirus stretched along the Ionian Sea on the west. In the gloomy recesses of its forests of oak was situated the renowned Dodonean oracle of Zeus. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... they sang were such as his. This garden of the Hesperides was sometimes thought to be the same as the fabled island of Atlantis of which we have already heard. And it was here that, guarded by a dreadful dragon, grew the golden apples which Earth gave to Hera on her marriage with Zeus. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... day, but for the time being he lay like a contorted Colossus on the fragile-looking cot that constituted his improvised bed of pain: "Like the great grandfather," to quote Michael again, "of all of them Zeus'es and gargoyles, and other cavortin' gentlemen in the ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... I have changed my mind is the nature of the great Aryan god whom the Romans called Jupiter and the Greeks Zeus. Whereas I formerly argued that he was primarily a personification of the sacred oak and only in the second place a personification of the thundering sky, I now invert the order of his divine functions and believe that he was a sky-god before he came to be associated with the oak. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... says that Phaedrus should have distinguished the heavenly love from the earthly, before he praised either. For there are two loves, as there are two Aphrodites—one the daughter of Uranus, who has no mother and is the elder and wiser goddess, and the other, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, who is popular and common. The first of the two loves has a noble purpose, and delights only in the intelligent nature of man, and is faithful to the end, and has no shadow of wantonness or lust. The second is ...
— Symposium • Plato

... What use is Zeus to our anatomy? Here is the gaping calamity I meant: I cannot shut their ravenous appetites A moment more now. They are all deserting. The first I caught was sidling through the postern Close by the Cave of Pan: the next hoisting herself With rope and pulley down: a third on the point ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... throwing their wimples off. White-armed Nausicaae led their sport; and as the huntress Artemis goes down a mountain, down long Taygetus or Erymanthus, exulting in the boars and the swift deer, while round her sport the woodland nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, and glad is Leto's heart, for all the rest her child o'ertops by head and brow, and easily marked is she, though all are fair; so did this virgin pure excel ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... feelings, all desires, To that which thinks and lives and loves, and teach The world the primal selfhood of its sires, Its heroes and its lovers and its gods. So shall Apollo flame in marble fires, The mien of Zeus suffice before he nods, So Gautama in ivory dream out The calm of Time's untrammelled periods, So Sigurd's lips be in ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... habits of the soul which similarly impress an outward stamp upon the face and form so certainly that expression, attitude, and shape authentically declare the presence of the soul that so reveals itself. In the Phidian Zeus was all awe; in the Praxitelean Hermes all grace, sweetness, tenderness; in the Pallas Athene of her people who carved or minted her image in statue, bas-relief, or coin, was all serene and grave wisdom; or, in the glowing and chastened colours of the later artistic time, the Virgin mother shines ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... of Christ" can be seen, for instance, upon a monument of Isis, the Virgin Mother of the Sun-God, which dates from the second century before our era.[51] Also upon the coins of Ptolemaeus; on one of which is a head of Zeus Ammon upon one side, and an eagle bearing the {image "monogram3.gif"} in its claws upon the other.[52] The symbol in question also appears upon Greek money struck long before the birth of Jesus; for instance upon certain ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... here, William, I don't know what's the matter with you, but I wish you wouldn't try to be so funny. You seem to think the whole affair's a sort of German joke. So it is, by Zeus—that's to say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various

... informed went so far as to say that Australian words have no derivation. That doctrine is hard to accept. A word of three syllables does not spring complete from the brain of an aboriginal as Athene rose fully armed from the head of Zeus. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... or more to the south-east, on the banks of the Ilissus, stood a magnificent structure dedicated to Olympian Zeus—one of the four largest temples of Greece, ranking with that of Demeter at Eleusis and that of Diana at Ephesus. Its foundations remain, and sixteen of the huge Corinthian columns belonging to its majestic triple colonnade. One of these is fallen. Breaking up into the numerous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... tourist scrawls Upon Minerva's temple walls, Where thundered once Olympian Zeus, And ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... for it illustrates the Egyptian myth of Creation by the divine Potter, who may take the form of either Khnum or Ptah. Monsieur Naville points out the extraordinary resemblance in detail which Hatshepsut's myth of divine paternity bears to the Greek legend of Zeus and Alkmene, where the god takes the form of Amphitryon, Alkmene's husband, exactly as Amen appears to the queen;(3) and it may be added that the Egyptian origin of the Greek story was traditionally recognized in the ancestry ascribed to the ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... AEschylus not the divinest of all the divine Greek souls? People say after Quintilian, that he is savage and rude; a sort of poetic Orson, with his locks all wild. But I will not hear it of my master! He is strong as Zeus is—and not as a boxer—and tender as Power ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... book of Job. "In him we live and move and are," said St. Paul to the Athenians; and to show his hearers that this was no new doctrine, he quoted the Greek poets. One of these poets was the Stoic Cleauthes, whose noble hymn to Zeus, or God, is an elevated expression of devotion and philosophy. It deprives Nature of her power, and puts her under the immediate ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... Religion—must be classed amongst the creeds of Hindostan; by the side of which there stand many kinds of simple philosophy; just as was the case in ancient Greece, where, in one and the same city, there were the philosophers of the Academy and the believers in Zeus. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... him?" she said, worshiping the portrait of Hitz. It was the portrait of a tanned, white-haired, omnipotent Zeus, two hundred and forty years old. "Who doesn't admire him?" she said again. "He was responsible for setting up the very first gas ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut

... the East. 35 The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the sun. For this, I promise on thy festival To pour libation, looking o'er the sea, Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak Thy great words, and describe thy royal face— 40 Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most, Within the eventual element ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Olympus, to the northward, lived the gods. There was Zeus, greatest of all, the god of thunder and the wide heavens; Hera, his wife; Apollo, the archer god; Athene, the wise and clever goddess; Poseidon, who ruled the sea; Aphrodite, the goddess of love; Hephaestus, the cunning workman; Ares, the god of war; Hermes, the ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... him pat. 'She is the most beautiful of the seven. She was the Mother, too, of Mercury, the Messenger of the gods. She gave birth to him in a cave on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. Zeus ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... because it is shaped like a dipper with a long, bent handle. Why it is called the Great Bear is not so easy to explain. The classical legend has it that the nymph Calisto, having violated her vow, was changed by Diana into a bear, which, after death, was immortalized in the sky by Zeus. Another suggestion is that the earliest astronomers, the Chaldeans, called these stars "the shining ones," and their word happened to be very like the Greek arktos (a bear). Another explanation (I do not know who is authority for either) is that vessels in olden days were named for animals, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... outside the village, at a field gate, Delia leant over it, gazing into the lowering sky, and piteously crying to some power beyond—some God, "if any Zeus there be," on whom the heart in its trouble might ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... speed—and she is led, not to marriage, but to chains on the captor's galley. Her grief is expressed in a long soliloquy somewhat too reminiscent of Ariadne's lament in Catullus. Finally, Amphitrite in pity transforms the captive girl into a bird, the Ciris, and Zeus as a reward for his devout life releases Nisus, also transforming him into a bird of prey, and henceforth there has been eternal warfare between the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... street will shake a dubious finger on his early pranks. Stolen apples or cigarettes behind the barn cram her recollection. But even a village reputation fades. In time the sonnets and glorious battle have the upper place. But things went the other way with Pepys. Rather, his fate is like that of Zeus, who—if legend is to be trusted—was in his life a person of some importance whose nod stirred society on Olympus, but who is now remembered largely for his flirtations and his braggart conduct. A not unlike evil has fallen on ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... apartment and to the foot of a kind of throne which stood directly under the great clock face. Then, for the first time, we recognized Ala, seated on the throne. Beside her was a person of majestic stature, with features like those of a statue of Zeus, and long curling hair of snowy whiteness. The severity of his aspect struck cold to my heart, but Ala's countenance was smiling and full of encouragement. As we were led to our places a hush fell upon the throng of attendants, and the colors ceased ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... And Croesus was very greatly disturbed by the death of his son, and was much the more moved to complaining by this, namely that his son was slain by the man whom he had himself cleansed of manslaughter. And being grievously troubled by the misfortune he called upon Zeus the Cleanser, protesting to him that which he had suffered from his guest, and he called moreover upon the Protector of Suppliants 37 and the Guardian of Friendship, 38 naming still the same god, and calling upon him as the Protector of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... a regal day, leisurely, immense, and majestic. The wind was steady and generous. The warm sunlight danced. I should not have been surprised to have seen Zeus throned on the splendid summit of the greatest of those rounded clouds, contemplative of us, finger on cheek, smiling with approval of the scene below—melancholy approval, for we would remind him of those halcyon days whose refulgence turned pale and sickly when Paul, that argumentative zealot, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same language, but that Zeus confounded their speech because men were proud and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Nausicaa: 'Be thou goddess or mortal, O queen, I bow myself before thee! If thou art one of the deities who dwell in boundless heaven, by thy loveliness and grace and height I guess thee to be Artemis, daughter of high Zeus. If thou art a mortal dwelling upon earth, thrice blessed thy father and thy queenly mother, thrice blessed thy dear brothers! Surely their souls ever swell with gladness because of thee, when they see a maiden so lovely step into the circle of the ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... the fourteenth Book, where Here visits the home of Sleep, the brother of Death, and offers him the bribe of a gold chain if he will shut the eyes of Zeus, Sleep does not think it can be done. Here then doubles her bribe, and offers Sleep a wife, the youngest of the Graces. Sleep makes her swear by Styx that she will hold to her word, and when she has done so flies off in her company, sits in the shape of a night-hawk in a pine ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... the same supreme Father of all. The unknown God at Athens he accepted as an adumbration of Him whom he proclaimed, and every candid reader must admit that in quoting the words of Aratus, which represent Zeus as the supreme creator whose offspring we are, he conveys the impression of a real resemblance, if not ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... Her then Zeus answered slow: "O daughter of song and sorrow, Hapless tender of sheep, arise from thy long lamentation! Since thou canst not trust fate, nor behave as becomes a Greek maiden, Look and behold thy sheep." And lo! they returned ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... days of the universe, there was a great struggle for empire between Zeus and the Titans. The Titans, giant powers of heaven and earth, were for seizing whatever they wanted, with no more ado than a whirlwind. Prometheus, the wisest of all their race, long tried to persuade them that good counsel would avail ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... Zeus," the Stoic says, {2} The Voice from Rome's imperial days, In Thee meet all things, and disperse, In Thee, for Thee, O Universe! To me all's fruit thy seasons bring, Alike thy summer and thy spring; The winds that wail, the suns that burn, From ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang

... last they came to Crete, and to Cnossus, beneath the peaks of Ida, and to the palace of Minos the great king, to whom Zeus himself taught laws. So he was the wisest of all mortal kings, and conquered all the AEgean isles; and his ships were as many as the sea-gulls, and his palace like a marble hill. And he sat among the pillars of the hall, upon his throne of beaten gold, and around him stood the speaking ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... new country with its waving cornfields. He enters the cottage and is welcomed by the poor old couple (to whom Goethe has given the names Philemon and Baucis, the old peasant and his wife who, according to the Greek legend, were the only Phrygians who offered hospitality to Zeus, the King of the Gods, as he was wandering about in disguise ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... after his defeat became ruler of a land of dead heroes, the analogy, like other analogies with Greek mythology, is misleading. He also equates Bres, as temporary king of the Tuatha De Danann, with Kronos, king of heaven in the age of gold. Kronos, again, slain by Zeus, is parallel to Balor slain by his grandson Lug. Tethra, Bres, and Balor are thus separate fragments of one god equivalent to Kronos.[193] Yet their personalities are quite distinct. Each race works out its mythology for itself, and, while parallels are inevitable, we should not allow these to ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... versions are given of their fate. By some writers it is said they died from grief in consequence of the death of their sisters, the Hyades, or on account of the fate of their father, who, for treason, was condemned by Zeus to bear on his head and hands the vault of heaven, on the mountains of north-west Africa which bear his name. According to others they were the companions of Diana, and, in order to escape from Orion, by whom they were pursued, the gods translated ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... rage. Here was this turtle-brained, ugly woman (so, in my presumption, I called her) daring to speak slightingly of my beloved master who had condescended to speak out of his Olympian wisdom, and no fire from Zeus shrivelled her up! She signified her disapproval with the air of a law-giver, and the other woman acquiesced. I longed to flame into defence of Paragot; but remembering how ill I fared on a similar occasion when a member of the Lotus ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... the philosopher Pherecides, of Syros, from the Phenician mysteries, was that of the winged-oak ([Greek: hupopteros drus]), over which Zeus had spread a magnificent veil representing the constellations, the earth and ocean. Here we manifestly have the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Can I be prevented from going with cheerfulness and contentment? But I will put you in prison. Man, what are you saying? You may put my body in prison, but my mind not even Zeus himself can overpower." ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on its knees if it was pulled from its pedestal—and, afterwards, slowly clearing manifestation; the exactly right expression is used in Lucian's dream,—[Greek: Pheidias edeixe ton Dia]; "Showed[12] Zeus;" manifested him; nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, or created, as you have it, in Anacreon's ode to the Rose, of ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... chosen to invest with form, and how he has conceived his subject. It is not necessary that the ideas embodied in a work of art should be the artist's own. They may be common to the race and age: as, for instance, the conception of sovereign deity expressed in the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, or the conception of divine maternity expressed in Raphael's 'Madonna di San Sisto.' Still the personality of the artist, his own intellectual and moral nature, his peculiar way of thinking and feeling, his individual attitude towards the material given ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... himself. (2) These are the names of Spanish tribes. The Celtiberi dwelt on the Ebro. (3) Lerida, on the river Segre, above its junction with the Ebro. Cinga is the modern Cinca, which falls into the Segre (Sicoris). (4) Phrixus and Helle, the children of Nephele, were to be sacrificed to Zeus: but Nephele rescued them, and they rode away through the air on the Ram with the golden fleece. But Helle fell into the sea, which from her was named the Hellespont. (See Book IX., 1126.) The sun enters Aries about March 20. The Ram is pictured among the constellations with ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... cosmos which is not alien to his spirit. The gods on high, conceived after the likeness of man, are the expression of a free people conscious of their freedom. And the divinities worshiped, under the form of Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite—what are they but idealized and glorified Greeks? Can a more complete antithesis be imagined? But Christianity becomes possible after this struggle only, for in Christianity ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... there recurred to his mind, as he drew near the waiting, sneering Kamrou, that brave old war-cry of the Greeks of Xenophon as they hurled themselves against the vastly greater army of the Persians—"Zeus Sotor kai ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... only morality the Greeks knew, and upon the memory of Greece we have been living ever since. In becoming hetairae, Aspasia, Lais, Phryne, and Sappho became the distributors of that desire of beauty necessary in a state which had already begun to dream the temples of Minerva and Zeus. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... Old High German Wodan), and this is thought by many to be of the same origin as our word god. The other Old Norse word for god, tivi, is identical in root with Lat. divus; Sansk. dwas; Gr. Dios (Zeus); and this is again connected with Tyr, the Tivisco in the Germania of Tacitus. (See Max Mller's Lectures on the Science of Language, 2d series, p. 425). Paulus Diakonus states that Wodan, or Gwodan, was worshiped by all branches of the Teutons. Odin has also been sought and ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... Grecian civilization was that it sprung, like Minerva, full armed from the brow of Zeus. It seemed to have no tangible beginning. The fabled kings and heroes of the Homeric Age, with their palaces and strongholds, were said to have been humanized sun-myths; their deeds but songs woven by wandering minstrels to win their ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... lament," Achilles to Priam, his suppliant for the body of Hecor. "For thus have the gods appointed for mortal men; that they should live in vexation, while the gods themselves are untroubled. Two vessels are set upon the threshold of Zeus, of the gifts that he dispenses; one of evil things, the other of good; he who receives from both at the hand of thundering Zeus, meets at one time with evil, and at another with good; he who receives from only one, is ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... but transparency to the sentiment; the image is not sought to be placed before the beholder's eyes, but painted as it were in his mind. Henceforth, suggestion only is aimed at, not representation; the cooeperation of the spectator is relied upon as the indispensable complement of the design. The Zeus of Phidias seemed to the Greeks, Plotinus says, Zeus himself, as he would be, if he chose to appear to human eyes. But a Crucifixion is of itself not at all what the artist meant. It is not the agony of the flesh, but the triumph of the spirit, that is intended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... as many gods could go as could be pasted in the book. Miss Stone had decreed it and what Miss Stone said must be done.... Betty Harris looked anxiously at Poseidon, and laid him down, in favour of Zeus. She took him up in her fingers again, with a little flourish of the paste-tube, and made him fast. Poseidon must go, too. The paste-tub wavered uncertainly over the maze of gods and found another and stuck it in place, and lifted itself in ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... indeed; I most solemnly declare to you by Zeus, who is the God of our common friendship, and whom I never will forswear, that I am not; tell me, then, who this instructor is, if ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... (Zeus [Footnote: The names included in parentheses are the Greek, the others being the Roman or Latin names] ), though called the father of gods and men, had himself a beginning. Saturn (Cronos) was his ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... of any civilized people, the evolution of psychotheism is approximately synchronous with the invention of an alphabet. In the earliest writings of the Egyptians, the Hindoos, and the Greeks, this stage is discovered, and Osiris, Indra, and Zeus are characteristic representatives. As psychotheism and written language appear together in the evolution of culture, this stage of theism is consciously or unconsciously a part of the ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... of Zeus and bright Eurynome, She whose blue waters pave the Aegaean plain, Children of all surrounding sky and sea, A larger ocean claims you, not in vain! Ye who to Helicon from Thessalia wide Wander'd when earth was young, Come from Libethrion, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... now to a picture which represents a scene in one of the most beautiful stories of ancient Greece. There was a king of Thessaly called Admetus, with whom the god Apollo served for a time as herdsman. Apollo had offended Zeus, the Father of the gods, by killing the forgers of the thunderbolts with which Zeus had ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick

... believed in many gods and spirits of greater and lesser power. These supernatural beings, each in its own sphere, immediately directed the processes of nature and controlled the lives of men. One of them, Zeus, was regarded as the supreme "father of gods and men," who delegated specific duties to others; Ares was the god of battles, Hermes was the messenger, Athena implanted wisdom in the minds of men, and Poseidon ruled the sea. The gods were ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... "Zeus, but the woman is beginning to measle out all over you! You know as well as any one that there's something wrong at her house. I don't know what it is; I can't even make a sensible guess as yet, but it's worse than the neighbours ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... an Arcadian festival in honour of Zeus {Arcaios}, akin to the Roman Lupercalia, which was originally a shepherd festival, the introduction of which the Romans ascribe to ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... DICAEOPOLIS Oh! Zeus, whose eye pierces everywhere and embraces all, permit me to assume the most wretched dress on earth. Euripides, cap your kindness by giving me the little Mysian hat, that goes so well with these tatters. I must to-day have the look of a beggar; "be what I am, ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes

... the Thracian worship of nine spread over the whole of Greece. The parentage of these divinities is given with as many variations as their number. Most commonly they were considered daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory), born in Pieria at the foot of Mount Olympus. Some call them daughters of Uranus and Gaea, others of Pierus and Antiope, still others of Apollo or of Jupiter and Minerva. The analogy between the Muses and the nine maidens ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... hearth-rug with ostentatious haste, a large claim he would repudiate quietly, and fight court by court. But his true fighting weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of the commercial Pantheon—all these were as uncertain to ordinary mortals as were the escapades of Zeus. While the gods are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only in the days of their decadence that a ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... particular, clarified that the chalazae, those twisted skeins of albumen at either end of the yolk, were not, as generally believed, the developing embryo, and he demonstrated that the cicatricula (blastoderm) was the point of origin of the embryo. The famous frontispiece of the treatise shows Zeus holding an egg, from which issue animals of various kinds. On the egg is written Ex ovo omnia, a legend since transmuted to the epigram Omne vivum ex ovo. The legend illustrates Harvey's principal theme, repeated constantly throughout the text, "that ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... one of the oldest on record (being attributed by Aristotle to Zeus Eleates, B.C. 500), is one of the most perplexing, upon first presentation to the mind, that can be selected {186} from the most ample list. Its professed object was to disprove the phenomenon of motion; ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various

... of polytheism being chiefly derived from Greece and Rome, we understand by it a certain more or less organized system of gods, different in power and rank, and all subordinate to a supreme God, a Zeus or Jupiter. The Vedic polytheism differs from the Greek and Roman polytheism, and, I may add, likewise from the polytheism of the Ural-Altaic, the Polynesian, the American, and most of the African races, in the same manner as a confederacy ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... its ruby and the images engraved on it AEson may know his son when they meet after many years and many changes. And another thing AEson bade me say to thee, O my lord Chiron: not presumptuous is he, but he knows that this child has the regard of the immortal Goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus." ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... name, continued his monologue, ignoring the presence of his attendant. "Not so bad with me after all. Six years ago to-day it was I came to Rome, with barely an obol of ready money, to make my fortune by my wits. Zeus! But I can't but say I've succeeded. A thousand sesterces here and five hundred there, and now and then a better stroke of fortune—politics, intrigues, gambling; all to the same end. And now?—oh, yes, my 'friends' would ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... Peloponnese under safe conduct, and should never set foot in it again: any one who might hereafter be found there was to be the slave of his captor. It must be known that the Lacedaemonians had an old oracle from Delphi, to the effect that they should let go the suppliant of Zeus at Ithome. So they went forth with their children and their wives, and being received by Athens from the hatred that she now felt for the Lacedaemonians, were located at Naupactus, which she had lately taken from the Ozolian Locrians. The Athenians received ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... purer, and the means by which this highest state for humanity may be reached, the ideal worship of the highest monotheism, is "in spirit and in truth." The steps are long from Cin-au-aev, the ancient of wolves, by Zeus, the ancient of skies, to Jehovah, the ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... counterfeits or myths and the "true God," save that remote power of God which is divided up and parceled out among them. Their morals were the worst. The whole mythical system is simply one grand demonstration of human apostacy from the "true God." Homer introduces Zeus in love, and bitterly complaining and bewailing himself, and plotted against by the other gods. He represents the gods as suffering at the hands of men. Mars and Venus were wounded by Di-o-me-de. He says, "Great Pluto's self the ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... peaks of which were covered with snow, and brilliant with a bright light. Around the table reclined, twelve persons, six male, six female, some of whom I recognised at once, the others afterwards. Those whom I recognised at once were Zeus, Hera, Pallas Athena, Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis. I knew them by the symbols they wore. The table was covered with all kinds of fruit, of great size, including nuts, almonds, and olives, with flat cakes of bread, and cups of gold into which, before drinking, each divinity ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... and daimons in images borrowed from the world of sense-reality. Would not one who had penetrated into the nature of the Eternal doubt about the eternal nature of such gods as these? How could the Zeus of popular imagination be eternal if he bore within him the qualities of a perishable being? One thing was clear to the Mystics, that man arrives at a conception of the gods in a different way from the conception of ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... country called E'lis and in the city of O-lym'pi-a, rose a beautiful temple for the worship of Ju'pi-ter (or Zeus), the principal god of the Greeks. This temple was said to have been built by Hercules, the great hero from whom, as you remember, all the Heraclidae claimed to ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... sprang full grown and panoplied from the brain of Zeus, so from Diva's brain there sprang her plan complete. She even resisted the temptation to go on admiring autumn tints, in order to see how the interesting trio "looked" when, as they must presently do, they passed close to where she stood, and ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... Of Amaltheia, nurse of Zeus in Crete, there were plenty of legends. Atticus is making in his house something like what Cicero had made in his, and called his academia or gymnasium. That of Atticus was probably also a summer house or study, with garden, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... were kindled. Altars so raised were, like most religious survivals, considered as endowed with particular sanctity; the most remarkable recorded instances of such are the altars of Hera at Samos, and of Pan at Olympia (Paus. v. 14. 6; v. 15. 5), of Heracles at Thebes (Paus. ix. 11. 7), and of Zeus at Olympia (Paus. v. 13. 5). The last-mentioned stood on a platform (prothusis) measuring 125 ft. in circumference, and led up to by steps, the altar itself being 22 ft. high. Women were excluded from the platform. Where hecatombs were sacrificed, the prothusis necessarily assumed colossal proportions, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... to utter "words of wind" and which would not, against his conscience, confess to wrong-doing merely to pacify the Lord who was stronger than himself. The Classics taught this noble lesson in the case of Prometheus versus Zeus. Many articles are called after Job e.g. Ra'ara' Ayyub or Ghubayra (inula Arabica and undulata), a creeper with which he rubbed himself and got well: the Copts do the same on "Job's Wednesday," i.e. that before Whit Sunday O.S. Job's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... needful for carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the religions with most dross in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled splendor. "Lead me, Zeus and Destiny!" says the prayer of Epictetus, "whithersoever I am appointed to go; I will follow without wavering; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow all the same."[187] The fortitude of that is for the strong, for the few; even for them ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... monuments The Temple of Karnak The pyramids Babylonian architecture Indian architecture Greek architecture The Doric order The Parthenon The Ionic order The Corinthian order Roman architecture The arch Vitruvius Greek sculpture Phidias Statue of Zeus Praxiteles Scopas Lysippus Roman sculpture Greek painters Polygnotus Apollodorus Zeuxis Parrhasius Apelles ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... the older man, and his very silence suggested his superior dignity. So he was taken for Jupiter (Zeus in the Greek), and the younger man for his inferior, Mercury (Hermes in the Greek), 'the messenger of the gods.' Clearly the two missionaries did not understand what the multitudes were shouting in their 'barbarous' language, or they would have intervened. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... and Gaea, Cronos, and the Titans represent the primal beings who have their counterpart in Maori and Wintu legend. But these, in the Greece of the Epics and Hesiod, have long been subordinated to Zeus and the Olympians, who are envisaged as triumphant gods of a younger generation. There is no Creator; but Zeus—how, we do not know—has come to be regarded as a Being relatively Supreme, and as, on occasion, the guardian of morality. Of course his conduct, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... amoroso, was produced between the Aminta and the Pastor fido. According to a note in the original edition, the piece was first represented at Adria in 1561, revived and rewritten in 1582, and first printed the following year.[407] It is founded on the well-known tale of the love of Zeus for Calisto, a nymph of Artemis, who by him became the mother of the Arcadians, as related by Ovid in the second book of the Metamorphoses (ll. 401, &c.). It may, therefore, so far as the subject is concerned, be ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... centuries before the Christian era, and was appealed to under the names of "Our Lady," "Queen of Heaven," "Star of Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Mother of God," and so forth. Hercules, Bacchus, and Perseus were gods born by mortal mothers. Zeus, father of the gods, visited Semele in the form of a thunderstorm and she gave birth, on the 25th of December, to the great savior ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... Miriam, he would be King of France. It is thus that history is made, for those who make it are only men. And Clio, that greatest of the daughters of Zeus, about whose feet cluster all the famous names of the makers of this world's story, has, after all, only had the reversion of the earth's great men. She has taken them after some forgotten woman of their own choosing has had the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... quite, a god. For we must remember that the gods of the Greek were not all-wise, all-powerful, and all-good, as we believe our God to be. If you read their mythology you will find that with the power of the god much imperfection and weakness were mingled. They did not believe that Zeus had been the greatest god from the beginning, but that there was a time when he had no power. He was not omniscient nor omnipresent, and was himself subject to the decrees of Fate, as when he could not save his loved Sarpedon from death. Not knowing all things, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... leading home, was preceded by offerings to Zeus Teleios, Hera Teleia, Artemis Eukleia and other deities protecting marriage. The bridal bath was the second ceremony, which both bride and bridegroom had to go through ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... gentleness and splendid skill, Innumerable gratitudes reply. His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties, And seems in all his patients to compel Such love and faith as failure cannot quell. We hold him for another Herakles, Battling with custom, prejudice, disease, As once the son of Zeus with Death ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... The reproductions, therefore, of those works not intended to be seen from close by must be judged with this reservation. The classical sculptors seem to have been oblivious of this sense of distance. Cases have been quoted to show that they did realise it, such as the protruding forehead of Zeus or the deep-set eyes of the Vatican Medusa. These are accidents, or at best coincidences, for the sense of distance is not shown by merely giving prominence to one portion or feature of a face. In Roman art the band of relief on the Column of Trajan certainly ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... sovereign lord and king, Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege Thy palace altars—fledglings hardly winged, and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth. Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs Crowd our two market-places, or before Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where Ismenus gives his oracles by fire. For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... too high To fear assault of envious Gods, His beloved Argive seer would Zeus retain From his ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... a slave Zeus took from him half his soul." So Homer. By making a man a politician, Demos takes from him his whole soul, and in omitting to make him a politician, it is foolish enough to ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... well, said in a loud voice, "Stand up on your feet." And the man sprang up and began to walk. When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in their language, "The gods have come down to us in the form of men!" Barnabas they called "Zeus," and Paul "Hermes," because he was the chief speaker. The priests of the temple of Zeus, which stood in front of the town, brought oxen and wreaths to the gates, so as to join the crowds ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... politics and social questions, Tennyson made us know what his general politics were, and he has always pleased or displeased men by his political position. The British Constitution appears throughout his work seated like Zeus on Olympus, with all the world awaiting its nod. Then, also, social problems raise their storm-awakening heads in his poetry: the Woman's Question; War; Competition; the State of the Poor; Education; a State without Religion; the Marriage Question; where Freedom lies; and others. These are ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... inscribed; the central seat is "of the priest of Dionysos Eleuthereus," the god of the precinct. Near him is the seat "of the priest of Apollo the Laurel-Bearer," and again "of the priest of Asklepios," and "of the priest of Olympian Zeus," and so on round the whole front semicircle. It is as though at His Majesty's the front row of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned in ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... of the most famous events in the ancient Mythology. As we have already remarked, it is supposed that there were several persons of the name of Zeus, or Jupiter; though there is great difficulty in assigning to each individual his own peculiar adventures. Vossius refers the adventure of Niobe, the daughter of Phoroneus, to Jupiter Apis, the king of Argos, who reigned about ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... finding no help in men, resolves to ascend to heaven to expostulate personally with Zeus for allowing this wretched state of things to continue. With this object he has fed and trained a gigantic dung-beetle, which he mounts, and is carried, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, on an aerial journey. Eventually he reaches Olympus, only to find that the gods have gone elsewhere, and ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... old Roman sculpture, and there are many delineations of the birth of Bacchus by Cesarean section from the corpse of Semele. Greek mythology tells us of the birth of Bacchus in the following manner: After Zeus burnt the house of Semele, daughter of Cadmus, he sent Hermes in great haste with directions to take from the burnt body of the mother the fruit of seven months. This child, as we know, was Bacchus. Aesculapius, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... variant of the legend told that a certain Pamylis of Thebes having gone to draw water had heard a voice proceeding from the temple of Zeus, which ordered him to proclaim aloud to the world the birth of the great king, the beneficent Osiris. He had received the child from the hands of Kronos, brought it up to youth, and to him the Egyptians had consecrated the feast of Pamylies, which resembled the Phallophoros ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... next would be, whither she would lead him, having herself instant access to all ranks and classes, to every abode of men. Sometimes at night he dreamt that she was 'the wile-weaving Daughter of high Zeus' in person, bent on tormenting him for his sins against her beauty in his art—the implacable Aphrodite herself indeed. He knew that he loved the masquerading creature wherever he found her, whether ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... of this sort used to be the phaeton, and this was not taken from any person, but from the sun-chariot in which, according to the old Greek story, the son of Helios rode to destruction when he had roused the anger of the great Greek god, Zeus. ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... divine machinery as it stood in his great Homeric model. His Jupiter is indeed, as has been lately said,[569] "a great and wise god, free from the tyrannical and sensuous characteristics of the Homeric Zeus," in other words, he is a Roman deity, and sometimes acts and speaks like a grave Roman consul of the olden time. But still he is an anthropomorphic deity, a purely human conception of a personal god-king; in these lines he smiles on his ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, Who: and what a track show'd the upturn'd sod! Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe Bent a burning eyebrow to brown ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... Zeus takes a prominent part. The father of the gods, the great thunderer, seldom appears alone, but is chiefly seen in scenes from the Heracleid and the Trojan war. On the black vases, and on those of the finest style with red figures, his amorous adventures ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy



Words linked to "Zeus" :   Zeus faber, genus Zeus, family Zeidae, Zeidae, fish genus, Olympian Zeus



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