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Orestes   /ɔrˈɛstiz/   Listen
Orestes

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; his sister Electra persuaded him to avenge Agamemnon's death by killing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.






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"Orestes" Quotes from Famous Books



... the French poets have not found out. This play was acted first in the year 1711, with every advantage a play could have. Pyrrhus was performed by Mr. Booth, a part in which he acquired great reputation. Orestes was given to Mr. Powel, and Andromache was excellently personated by the inimitable Mrs. Oldfield. Nor was Mrs. Porter beheld in Hermione without admiration. The Distress'd Mother is so often acted, and so frequently read, we shall not trouble the reader with giving ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... receive his hecatomb of bulls and rams, there he made merry sitting at the feast, but the other gods were gathered in the halls of Olympian Zeus. Then among them the father of gods and men began to speak, for he bethought him in his heart of noble Aegisthus, whom the son of Agamemnon, far-famed Orestes, slew. Thinking upon him he spake out ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... The two had become close friends during the dull weeks after their first battle, and Bland, who had brought a taste for the classics from the lecture-room, had already referred to them in pointless jokes as "Pylades and Orestes." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... Orestes blest! My griefs are fled! Fled like a dream! Methinks I tread in air!— Surprising happiness! unlook'd for joy! Never let love despair! The prize is mine!— Be smooth, ye seas! and, ye propitious winds, Blow from Epirus to the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... attention is the only answer to the importunate frivolity of other people; an attention, and to an aim which makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, and leaves no appeal and no hard thoughts. In Flaxman's drawing of the Eumenides of Aeschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst the Furies sleep on the threshold. The face of the god expresses a shade of regret and compassion, but is calm with the conviction of the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. He is born ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... thou, who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! Here, where the ancients paid thee homage long - Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution—just, Had it but been from hands less near—in this Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust! Dost thou not hear my heart?—Awake! thou ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... a hundred feet above the ground, I was Fabrice of La Chartreuse de Parme beside his Italian dungeon. Now, here on my camel, I am Dick of The Light That Failed, crossing the desert to meet his companions in arms." I chuckled again; then shuddered. I thought of the preceding night, of the Orestes of Andromaque who agreed to sacrifice Pyrrhus. A ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... crowd, as by your door they go, Or at the slaves, your chattels, every lad And every girl will hoot yon down as mad: When with a rope you kill your wife, with bane Your aged mother, are you right in brain? Why not? Orestes did it with the blade, And 'twas in Argos that the scene was laid. Think you that madness only then begun To seize him, when the impious deed was done, And not that Furies spurred him on, before The sword grew purple with a parent's gore? Nay, from the time they ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... a herald to the king, saying, "Behold, your daughter Iphigenia has come as you directed, and with her mother and her little brother Orestes she rests by the spring close to the outer line of tents. The warriors have gathered around them, and are praising her loveliness, and asking many questions; and some say, 'The king is sick to see his daughter, whom he loves so deeply, and ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... vacant seats in the same row as the Royces'. Presently three ladies, silken hooded and cloaked—one in yellow, one in pink, and one in blue—made their way to the empty places, just as the chorus ceased, and sat down. Just then Orestes (Stockhausen) stood up and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... be so, nor indeed did I receive any strong impression of its excellence. I admired nothing so much, I think, as the face of Penelope (if it be her face) in the group supposed also to represent Electra and Orestes. The sitting statue of Mars is very fine; so is the Arria and Paetus; so are many ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... about the happy or unhappy ending. The Discovery, then, being of persons, it may be that of one party only to the other, the latter being already known; or both the parties may have to discover themselves. Iphigenia, for instance, was discovered to Orestes by sending the letter; and another Discovery was required ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle

... Pausanias that he should repay on the corpse of Mardonius the insults which Xerxes had practiced on the corpse of Leonidas at Thermopylae, but he indignantly refused.[148] In the Eumenides of AEschylus the story of Orestes is represented as a struggle between the mores of the father family and those of the mother family. In the Herakleidae there is a struggle between old and new mores as to the killing of captives. Many such contrasts are drawn ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... But the action is always larger than any single life. Each tragedy or trilogy resembles the fragment of a sublime Epic poem. Mighty issues revolve about the scene, whether this is laid on Earth or amongst the Gods, issues far transcending the fate of Orestes or even of Prometheus. In the perspective painting of Sophocles, these vast surroundings fall into the background, and the feelings of the spectator are absorbed in sympathy with the chief figure ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... day, for poor Bill, there came to Rockbottom a galvanized-looking individual, rejoicing in the euphonium of Dr. Hannibal Orestes Wangbanger. As a surgeon, he had—according to the album-full of certificates—operated in all the scientific branches of amputation, from the scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... heard Spirits invisible, who courteously Unto love's table bade the welcome guest. The voice, that first? flew by, call'd forth aloud, "They have no wine; " so on behind us past, Those sounds reiterating, nor yet lost In the faint distance, when another came Crying, "I am Orestes," and alike Wing'd its fleet way. "Oh father!" I exclaim'd, "What tongues are these?" and as I question'd, lo! A third exclaiming, "Love ye those have wrong'd you." "This circuit," said my teacher, "knots the scourge ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... admitted, his friend was the same old chum of Freiburg days—the friend to whom his parents had so much objected. The fortunes of war had thrown them together, Willard as impecunious as ever, and the Damon and Pythias, the Orestes and Pylades, the two Ajaxes of the old days were in close and intimate touch once more, Damon, as of old, the banker for the twain. The troop-ships were to proceed as soon as coaled. There were reasons now why Walter wished to stay in Honolulu, but Willard urged his moving at once on to ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... Greek criminal law, as far as it effected murder, sprang directly from the old savage blood-feud.(1) The Athenian law was a civilised modification of the savage rule that the kindred of a slain man take up his blood-feud. Where homicide was committed WITHIN the circle of blood relationship, as by Orestes, Greek religion provided the Erinnyes to punish an offence which had, as it were, no human avenger. The precautions taken by murderers to lay the ghost of the slain man were much like those in favour among the Australians. The Greek cut off the extremities of his victim, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... The faithful spouse rejoin'd remember'd love, And rush'd along the meads the charioteer; There Linus pour'd the old accustom'd strain; Admetus there Alcestes still could greet; his Friend there once more Orestes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... necessary classes of people. Take him for all in all, he may be described as a new Chevalier Bayard, baptized in the spirit of fun, and with a steel pen in lieu of a blade of Damascus. He is a Vermonter—of the state which has sent out Orestes Brownson, Herman Hooker, the Coltons, Hiram Powers, Hannah Gould, and a crowd of other men and women with the sharpest intellects, and for the most part the genialist tempers too, that can be found in all the country. His boyhood was passed in the delightful village of Burlington, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various



Words linked to "Orestes" :   Greek mythology, mythical being



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