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Theban

noun
1.
An Egyptian inhabitant of ancient Thebes.
2.
A Greek inhabitant of ancient Thebes.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Theban" Quotes from Famous Books



... Pisa only was this true: Venice and Genoa died in death-grapple; and eight cities of Lombardy divided between them the joy of leveling Milan to her lowest stone. Nay, not merely in city against city, but in street against street, and house against house, the fury of the Theban dragon flamed ceaselessly, and with the same excuse upon men's lips. The sign of the shield of Polynices, Justice bringing back the exile, was to them all, in turn, the portent of death: and their history, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... Mountains, although we have undoubted evidence that it was also practiced among the more eastern ones. This rite may be considered as peculiarly interesting from its great antiquity, for Tegg informs us that it reached as far back as the Theban war, in the account of which mention is made of the burning of Menoaeus and Archemorus, who were contemporary with Jair, eighth judge of Israel. It was common in the interior of Asia and among the ancient Greeks and Romans, and has also prevailed among the Hindoos ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er, Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. But ah! 'tis heard no more— O! Lyre divine, what daring Spirit Wakes thee now! Tho' he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion That the Theban Eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air: Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun: Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate: Beneath the Good how ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Arcite. To our Theban houndes, That shooke the aged Forrest with their ecchoes, No more now must we halloa, no more shake Our pointed Iavelyns, whilst the angry Swine Flyes like a parthian quiver from our rages, Strucke with our well-steeld Darts: All valiant ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]

... shapely-ankled Alcmene, slew; and delivered the son of Iapetus from the cruel plague, and released him from his affliction—not without the will of Olympian Zeus who reigns on high, that the glory of Heracles the Theban-born might be yet greater than it was before over the plenteous earth. This, then, he regarded, and honoured his famous son; though he was angry, he ceased from the wrath which he had before because Prometheus matched himself in wit with the almighty son of Cronos. For when ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... intrepid band, Who, greatly daring, forced Cape Breton's strand. For Wolfe, who following still where glory call'd, No dangers daunted, no distress appall'd; Whose eager zeal disasters could not check, Intent to strike the blow which gained Quebec. For Wolfe, who, like the gallant Theban, dy'd In th' ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... fight, not he himself but his friend was fined for the lapse of self-control. The custom of Sparta existed also in Crete. But the most remarkable instance of the deliberate dedication of this passion to political and military ends is that of the celebrated "Theban band," a troop consisting exclusively of pairs of lovers, who marched and fought in battle side by side, and by their presence and example inspired one another to a courage so constant and high that "it is stated that they were never beaten till the battle ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... chapter during many centuries. But other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church of St. Gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones distributed over the walls as the relics of St. Gereon and his Theban band of martyrs! Again, at the neighbouring church of St. Ursula, we have the later spoils of another cemetery, covering the interior walls of the church as the bones of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgin ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... beholds the Diviners doomed to pace with backward-twisted faces, and turn forever on the past the rainy eyes once bent too daringly on the future, the sweet guide of the Tuscan poet points out among the damned the daughter of a Theban king, and discourses ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... again. I am now at writing, as I used to be at riding, slow, heavy, and awkward at mounting, but when I did get fixed in my saddle, could screed away with any one. I have got six pages ready for my learned Theban[495] to-morrow morning. William Laidlaw and his brother George dined with me, but I wrote in the evening ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... these the harp stands pre-eminent. One of the most celebrated representations of an Egyptian harp was drawn from a painting discovered in one of the caverns in the mountains of Egyptian Thebes, by some travellers: it is called the Theban harp, and has thirteen strings; its form is extremely elegant. This harp is supposed to be one of the kind in use before and at the time of Sesostris. Remains of Egyptian harps of a more simple construction, with only four ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... have seen at least photographs of great accuracy, and pictures of it which, if less strict in detail, give it a more lifelike look and include some of its surroundings. The church of St. Gereon, a martyr of the Theban Legion massacred at Cologne to a man for refusing to worship the imperial ensigns, under which no one denied that they had fought like lions, is a massive Romanesque building older than the cathedral, dating from the days of Constantine and Saint Helena. The church of the Holy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... the old martyrs was in these friars. One of them, like the Theban sister, bore away the honoured relic and buried it; and all resolved to persist in their resigned opposition. Six weeks were allowed them to consider. At the end of that time three more were taken, tried, and hanged;[437] and ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... see the pyramids and obelisks. I look on chisell'd histories, records of conquering kings, dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks, I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm'd, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries, I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... the name of Thoyth. He represents the moon, which he wears upon his head, either as crescent or as full disk." [187] The same learned Egyptologist tells us that Khonsu or Chonsu was one of the triad of Theban gods, and was the moon one of his attributes being the reckoner of time. [188] Of the former divinity, Rawlinson relates an instructive myth. "According to one legend Thoth once wrote a wonderful book, full of wisdom and science, containing in it everything relating ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... as signally defeated at Mont Olmo the great general Francis Piccinino as the King of Sparta crushed at Plataea the brilliant chief, Mardonius; the Hungarian sovereigns, John Corvinus Hunniades and his son Matthias occupied the ground that was held by the Theban princes, Pelopidas and Epaminondas; for the two Woiwodes of Transylvania kept their country free from the enslavement of the Turk, as the two Boeotarchs preserved Thebes in independence from the rule of the Lacedaemonians. Never did Athens produce a general superior to our own gallant ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... "blessed one," is here applied to ideal womanhood and must not be confused with Makaria of p. 103, the mythical Theban princess. ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... the rays Round her soft Theban tissues! All will be as She says, When that dead past reissues. Matters not what nor where, Hark, to the moon's dim cluster! How was her heavy hair Lithe as a feather duster! Matters not when nor whence; Flittertigibbet! Sounds make the song, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... igitur sancte reginee religiosorumque ac virginum preces summus Altitonans." (Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 263.) The learned Theban borrows an epithet more familiar to Greek and Roman ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... for a victory in which the victor is slain; probably from the story of the Theban, or "Cadmean," heroes Eteocles ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... erected in memory of the massacre of the Theban legion, they hurriedly crossed themselves. Master Zacharius was ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... suggest the question whether the tamarisk did not originally come from Asia. In that case it must have been brought to Egypt from remote antiquity, for it figures in the Pyramid texts. Bricks of Nile mud, and Memphite and Theban tombs have yielded us leaves, twigs, and even whole ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... he found the art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke. He has added nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his book deserves to be read: perhaps ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... late-washed grass looks green. Shady trees form a delightful arbor. The setting sun makes a beautiful appearance; the variegated rainbow appears more beautiful. Epaminondas was the greatest of the Theban generals; Pelopidas ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... account. As this boldness of the women can be of no use in any common occurrences, if it was ever so, it must be in war; but even here we find that the Lacedaemonian women were of the greatest disservice, as was proved at the time of the Theban invasion, when they were of no use at all, as they are in other cities, but made more ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... names, gilt and coloured; that of Cheops, the builder of the great Pyramid, occurs on one. Another of these vessels, or the neck part of one, is covered with cement, and sealed with three cartouches, besides having four others painted on it. This, it is thought, may have contained the precious Theban wine, sealed with the royal signet. There are many other things taken from the tombs which our space forbids us to dwell upon; such as idols and figures, papyri and phylacteries, paint-pots and colours, workman's tools, stone and wooden pillows or head-rests, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... columns of the Ramesseum, the magnificent temple built by Ramses II, and those of Medinet Habu, the great temple built by Ramses III, were covered with pictures in relief, made in the golden days of Theban prosperity. ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... forty-eighth year of the priestess-ship of Chrysis at Argos, in the ephorate of Aenesias at Sparta, in the last month but two of the archonship of Pythodorus at Athens, and six months after the battle of Potidaea, just at the beginning of spring, a Theban force a little over three hundred strong, under the command of their Boeotarchs, Pythangelus, son of Phyleides, and Diemporus, son of Onetorides, about the first watch of the night, made an armed entry into Plataea, a town of Boeotia in alliance ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... was wroth because of Semele against the Theban blood, as she showed more than once, Athamas became so insane, that seeing his wife come laden on either hand with her two sons, cried out, "Spread we the nets, so that I may take the lioness and the young lions at the pass," and then he ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... resisting Spartan aggression led for the first time, in 371 B.C., to the formation of a commune Arcadum, a coalescence of all the fractional groups constituting the Arcadian folk;[1379] but even this union, effected only by the masterly manipulation of the Theban Epaminondas, proved short-lived and incomplete. What was true of the Arcadian villages was true of the city states of Greece. The geography of the land instilled into them the principle of political aloofness, except when ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... purpose in about twenty years: how he began by opening mines of precious metal on his south-eastern coast, and with the proceeds hired mercenaries: how he had Macedonian peasants drilled to fight in a phalanx formation more mobile than the Theban and with a longer spear, while the gentry were trained as heavy cavalry: how he made experiments with his new soldiers on the inland tribes, and so enlarged his effective dominions that he was able to marshal henceforward far more than his own Emathian clansmen: how for six years he perfected ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... antiquity, and of no slender extent. For (not to derive the same from Hercules) noble descriptions there are hereof in the Grecian funerals of Homer, in the formal obsequies of Patroclus and Achilles; and somewhat elder in the Theban war, and solemn combustion of Meneceus, and Archemorus, contemporary unto Jair the eighth judge of Israel. Confirmable also among the Trojans, from the funeral pyre of Hector, burnt before the gates of Troy: and the burning of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... sacred from the earliest times to the present day. It was never identified with any of the great deities, but three goddesses {26} appear in serpent form: Uazet, the Delta goddess of Buto; Mert-seger, 'the lover of silence,' the goddess of the Theban necropolis; and Rannut, the harvest goddess. The memory of great pythons of the prehistoric days appears in the serpent-necked monsters on the slate palettes at the beginning of the monarchy, and the immense serpent Apap of the underworld ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... Great had defeated the celebrated Theban band at the battle of Cheronea, and gained a military reputation at the age of eighteen. He ascended the throne of his father Philip before twenty, and at twenty-five had reached the zenith of his military glory, having already conquered the world. ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... even to an ignorant man, carry not an apparent shining; and, contrarily, the remorse of conscience in OEdipus; the soon-repenting pride in Agamemnon; the self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus; the violence of ambition in the two Theban brothers; the sour sweetness of revenge in Medea; and, to fall lower, the Terentian Gnatho, and our Chaucer's Pandar, so expressed, that we now use their names to signify their trades; and finally, all virtues, vices, and passions so in their own natural states laid to ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... royal nurselings, who hold dear The Minyae's city, once the Theban's fear: Unbidden I tarry, whither bidden I fare My Muse my comrade. And be ye too there, Sisters divine! Were ye and song forgot, What grace had earth? With you ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... mother, cruel dame, And Semele's Theban boy, and Licence bold, Bid me kindle into flame This heart, by waning passion now left cold. O, the charms of Glycera, That hue, more dazzling than the Parian stone! O, that sweet tormenting play, That too ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... English heroic (a balancing-pole which has enabled so many feebler men to walk the ticklish rope of momentary success) was uneasy to him, he essayed the Cowleian Pindarique, as the adjective was then rightly spelled with a hint of Parisian rather than Theban origin. If the master was but a fresh example of the disasters that wait upon every new trial of the flying-machine, what could be expected of the disciple who had not even the secret of the mechanic wings, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... before long, I shall be recalled, and then”—there would be an end of popes and cardinals, &c. He told us that many of Mazzini's partisans had taken refuge in Sardinia. We afterwards met with another of them under similar circumstances. Unwilling to wound the feelings of a Colonel who, like the Theban general, was also our Amphitryon, we did not inquire under what circumstances our host had acquired the arts which he practised so well; suspecting, however, that our Colonel's earliest experience was in handling ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... anthology from that poet and from the works of Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch verse. Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of antique, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... more colossal than the old Christendom of Europe, might, and undoubtedly would, form itself rapidly in America. Against the tens of millions in Europe would rise up, like the earth-born children of Deucalion and Pyrrha (or of the Theban Cadmus and Hermione) American millions counted by hundreds. But from what radix? Originally, it would have been regarded as madness to take Ireland, in her Celtic element, as counting for anything. But of late—whether rationally, however, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... at lunch-time had turned on recent publications. A learned Theban from Oxford inquired of the Skipper, if he had seen the "Rig-Veda." "What sort of Rig's that?" asked the Skipper, a bit puzzled. But the Oxonian wisely declined a rigmarole explanation, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various

... of the work was heedfully uncovered. All seemed right. Upon the third morning, with equal satisfaction, it was bared still lower. At length, like some old Theban king, the whole cooled casting was disinterred. All was fair except in one strange spot. But as he suffered no one to attend him in these inspections, he concealed the blemish by some preparation which none knew ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... Thus Sparta, formed deliberately on a barbarian pattern, remained faithful to it, without change, without decay, while its intellectual rival was the victim of successive revolutions. At length its power was broken externally by the Theban Epaminondas; and by the restoration of Messenia, the insurrection of the Laconians, and the emancipation of the Helots. Agesilaus, at the time of its fall, was as good a Spartan as any of his predecessors. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... explore! Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. But ah! 'tis heard no more—— O Lyre divine! what daring Spirit Wakes thee now? Tho' he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, That the Theban eagle bear Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air: Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray, With orient hues, unborrow'd of the Sun: Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... 317. This was Amphiaraues, who, having the gift of prophecy, foresaw that he would not live to return from the Theban war; and, therefore, hid himself, that he might not be obliged to join in the expedition. His wife, Eriphyle, being bribed by Adrastus with a gold necklace, betrayed his hiding-place; on which, proceeding to Thebes, he was swallowed up in the earth, together with his chariot. Ovid refers here ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... serve its mighty ends. The very implements of our warfare change less than we think. Our bullets and cannonballs have lengthened into bolts like those which whistled out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with weapons, such as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a newly invented head-gear as old as the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... ours the Theban's charmed life; We come not scathless from the strife! The Python's coil about us clings, The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... letters he was ignorant. The labour of the spade and of the loom, and the petty gains of trade, he contemptuously abandoned to men of a lower caste. His whole existence from childhood to old age was one long military training. Meanwhile the Athenian, the Corinthian, the Argive, the Theban, gave his chief attention to his oliveyard or his vineyard, his warehouse or his workshop, and took up his shield and spear only for short terms and at long intervals. The difference therefore between a Lacedaemonian phalanx and any other phalanx was long as great as the difference ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... more doubtful, and for us irrecoverable, than the path of some obscure trading ship in some past generation through the Atlantic Ocean. Generally, it will be quite near enough to the truth if she places upon the meridian of 1000 years B.C. the three Romances—Argonautic, Theban, Trojan; and she will then have the satisfaction of finding that, as at the opening of authentic history, she found the Roman, the Greek, and the Asiatic inaugural events coinciding in the same exact focus, so in these semi-fabulous or ante-Olympian events, she finds that one and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... in the very moment Darted it at the phantom; straight it left me; Then rose, and call'd for lights, when, O dire omen! I found my weapon had the arras pierc'd, Just where that famous tale was interwoven, How the unhappy Theban slew his father. ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway

... that sails in a balloon." Young as Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a psychological marvel in the work of one who did not lack the saving sense of humour. The poet, wafted on the wing and "pinion that the Theban eagle bear," cannot conceivably be likened to an aeronaut waving flags out of a balloon—except in a spirit of self-mockery which was not Tennyson's. His remarkable self-discipline in excising the fantastic and superfluous, and reducing his work to its classical perfection ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... like that Which made the world, another world begat Of unknown joy. Treason was in her thought, And cunningly to yield herself she sought. Seeming not won, yet won she was at length: In such wars women use but half their strength. Leander now, like Theban Hercules, Enter'd the orchard of th' Hesperides; Whose fruit none rightly can describe, but he That pulls or shakes it from the golden tree. 290 Wherein Leander, on her quivering breast, Breathless spoke something, and sigh'd ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... Greece with a new freedom graced, Above her antique heroes shall be placed. 70 What Theseus did, or Theban Hercules, Holds no compare with this victorious peace, Which on the Turks shall greater honour gain, Than all their giants and their monsters slain: Those are bold tales, in fabulous ages told; This glorious act ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... the routed foe, that the enemy surges forth into fresh slaughter and flings wide his gates. He breaks off unfinished, and, fired with immense anger, rushes towards the haughty brethren at the Dardanian gate. And on Antiphates first, for first he came, the bastard son of mighty Sarpedon by a Theban mother, he hurls his javelin and strikes him down; the Italian cornel flies through the yielding air, and, piercing the gullet, runs deep into his breast; a frothing tide pours from the dark yawning wound, and the steel ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... satisfy them. My means, which are certainly ample, are at your service, and if you have a scruple about spending all mine, here are strangers who will give you the use of theirs; and one of them, Simmias the Theban, has brought a large sum of money for this very purpose; and Cebes and many others are prepared to spend their money in helping you to escape. I say, therefore, do not hesitate on our account, and do not ...
— Crito • Plato

... with the fine part of Pythias absolutely transformed into a snivelling fellow, who bellows like a calf at the prospect of dying for his friend. 'Wallace' was purloined from me in like manner, and several other heroes: at length I fix upon 'Epaminondas', as a 'learned Theban' of so philosophical a cast of character, that even the French had not thought of him for the boards. I form my plot, and begin con amore, when I am told that Dr. Bird has written a 'Pelopidas' and an 'Epaminondas,' comprehending the whole life of ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... Theban, in his midnight tramp, A sleeping guard beside the postern saw, He slew him on the instant, that the camp Might read in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Now, Hephaestus, we must be going; see, here comes the eagle.—Bear a brave heart, Prometheus; and all speed to your Theban archer, who is to set a term ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... as quickly to return, As thou dost mine with longing her to see, Then know I well that she would not sojourn. 80 Now, blissful Lord, so cruel do not be Unto the blood of Troy, I pray of thee, As Juno was unto the Theban blood, From whence to Thebes ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... under it, ready for the course, steeds brighter than the sun and stronger than the storm; and beside them stand winged chariots, more in number than the Psalmist hath attributed to the Almighty. The mind, I tell thee again, hath its hundred gates, compared whereto the Theban are but willow wickets; and all those hundred gates can genius throw open. But there are some that groan heavily on their hinges, and the hand of God ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... monument of the oculist Andrea Vacca by Thorwaldsen. To the right commence frescoes illustrating incidents in the life of St. Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, by Andrea da Firenzi, 1377. Those beyond the second door illustrate the temptations and miracles of hermits in the Theban wilderness, by the Lorenzetti. Between Nos. 39 and 40, Hell. Above 38, the Day of Judgment. Then, by Orcagna, the Power of Death,—filling those living in pleasure with horror, but those in sorrow with joy. Now follow (in the eastern ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... sacred to the deified hero Hercules, and the town of Herculaneum, built at its base, was named after him. So also, it is said, was the mountain itself, though in a more round-about way. Hercules, as you will doubtless learn, was feigned to have been the son of the heathen god Zeus and Alcmena, a Theban lady. Now one of the appellations of Zeus was Ves, which was applied to him as being the god of rains and dews—the wet divinity. Thus Hercules was Vesouuios, the son of Ves. How this name should have become corrupted into "Vesuvius," ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... greybeard, and I warrant you you'll never eat garlic or black beans more. No, not a word! my anger is at boiling point, and I'll do with you what the beetle did with the eagle's eggs.[443] I laugh at your threats, so long as I have on my side Lampito here, and the noble Theban, my dear Ismenia.... Pass decree on decree, you can do us no hurt, you wretch abhorred of all your fellows. Why, only yesterday, on occasion of the feast of Hecat, I asked my neighbours of Boeotia for one of their daughters for whom ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... to me with milder lip He spake: "This of the seven kings was one, Who girt the Theban walls with siege, and held, As still he seems to hold, God in disdain, And sets his high omnipotence at nought. But, as I told him, his despiteful mood Is ornament well suits the breast that wears it. Follow me now; and look thou set not yet Thy foot in the hot sand, but to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... think it necessary to expound to this learned Theban whether he understood him or no; but, leaving that matter uncertain, he told him he came in quest of certain packages which should have arrived at Kinross, and been placed under the chamberlain's charge ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... attained a high state of excellence, for we hear that Lasus, the teacher of the poet Pindar (himself the son of a Theban flute player), introduced into lyre playing the runs and light passages which, until that time, it had been thought possible to produce only ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... my Theban palace, it seems more and more beautiful, and I am quite melancholy that you cannot be here to enjoy it. The house is very large and has good thick walls, the comfort of which we feel to-day for it blows a hurricane; ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... sitting by us Anytus, the very person of whom we should make enquiry; to him then let us repair. In the first place, he is the son of a wealthy and wise father, Anthemion, who acquired his wealth, not by accident or gift, like Ismenias the Theban (who has recently made himself as rich as Polycrates), but by his own skill and industry, and who is a well-conditioned, modest man, not insolent, or overbearing, or annoying; moreover, this son ...
— Meno • Plato

... water the Theban bard spoke, He of Teos sang sweetly of wine; Miss Flounce is a Pindar in cashmere and cloak, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... for both sexes. In all ages of the world there has been a search for some herb or flower that would stimulate lethargy and compose grief. Among the ancient Greeks and Egyptians they found something they called nepenthe, and the Theban women knew how to compound it. If a person should chew a few of those leaves his grief would be immediately whelmed with hilarity. Nepenthe passed out from the consideration of the world and then came hasheesh, which is from the Indian hemp. It is manufactured from the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... Sire," they said, "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

... distinction between "Pippa Passes" and "Sordello" that there is between the Venus of Milos and a gigantic Theban Sphinx. The latter is, it is true, proportionate in its vastness; but the symmetry of mere bulk is not the symmetria prisca of ideal sculpture. I have already alluded to "Sordello" as a derelict upon the ocean of poetry. This, indeed, it still seems ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... the rival swains compete in profanity and slang. In music, too, does this modern Dionysiac procession rejoice, and Kensington echoes like Cithaeron when Pan was keeping his orgies there—Pan and the Theban nymphs. The music and the song of the London street roamer is excessively harsh, crabbed, and tuneless. Almost as provoking it is, in a quiet way, when three or four quite harmless people meet under a bedroom window ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... boasted claim To nurse the precious juice 3. That maddened erst the Theban dame, With ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... very valuable documents supplementing those obtained by Cailliaud and Letorzec. They afterwards visited successively the oasis of Falafre, never before explored by a European, that of Dakel, and Khargh, the chief place of the Theban oasis. The documents collected on this journey were sent to France, to the care of M. Jomard, who founded on them his work called ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... This name is entirely a Greek invention, and is found on no Egyptian monuments. The splendid tomb, first opened by Belzoni, in the Valley of the Kings, is of the grandfather of this monarch—Rameses the First. It is evident from the Theban sculptures and inscriptions, that Rameses and his predecessors were engaged in a long war with a most powerful enemy,' and that that enemy was an Oriental people, a nation with fair countenances and flowing robes, dwelling in a hilly and well-wooded country. It is probable that this ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... Indians with dreadful shouts, and a horrid din of their brazen drums and bucklers; the air rung again all around, as the mosaic work well expressed it. And pray for the future don't so much admire Apelles, Aristides the Theban, and others who drew claps of thunder, lightnings, winds, words, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... if he trod some Theban street, And sought compassion on his aged woe, We know not if on Chian sand his feet Left footprints once; but only this we know, How the high ways of ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... said to a high-bred-looking young Englishman a much more humble personage who was wiping, with a big, blue-checked handkerchief, his bald head, on which stood drops of perspiration, just as if it had been made of porous clay and filled with water like a Theban water-jar. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... oppressed by the soundless sands, and surrounded by the Theban Hills, in whose bosoms lie the eternal remains of the world's first kings, drew him so strongly that, tired as he might be with his previous day's work, he seldom slept later than the hour which links us with the day that is ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... other. ("My dear, the moment I saw him, I knew I had once prayed to him!") and she always wore a scarab ring. She had bought both in an antique-shop just off Washington Street. I thought this rather a far cry from Thebes, myself, but The Author insisted that if a Theban vestal of the time of Sesostris had to reincarnate, she would naturally and inevitably come to ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... genius was partly owing to the humility of his condition. From his lingering so long about Edinburgh, the nobility began to dread a second volume by subscription, the learned to regard him as a fierce Theban, who resolved to carry all the outworks to the temple of Fame without the labour of making regular approaches; while a third party, and not the least numerous, looked on him with distrust, as one who hovered between Jacobite and Jacobin; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... in a bedroom of the master-millwright's house, engaged in the untutored reading of Greek and Latin. It was no tale of Homeric blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding away at the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and difficult Epistle ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... battle grew fierce about the wall, and the men of Thebes prevailed. For when Parthenopaeus, the Arcadian, fell like a whirlwind upon the gate that was over against him, Actor the Theban smote him on the head with a great stone, and brake his head, so that he fell dead upon the ground. And when Capaneus assaulted the city, crying that not even the Gods should stay him, there came upon him the wrath which ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... remarkable Theban tomb opened by Mr. Wilkinson, and in 1840 it was carefully examined by Harris and Gliddon. There is a most wonderful collection of Negro scenes in it. Of one of these ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... conquered in rough-and-tumble fight all antagonists in the Pancratium. Casting about for the best means of perpetuating his fame, he found the alternative to lie between a statuette to be erected in the temple of the hero-god, or one of the odes of the learned Theban. Choosing the latter, he proceeded to the poet's shop, cheapened the article, and would have secured it without hesitation, had not the extortionate bard demanded the sum of three drachmas,[3] nearly equal to half a dollar, for the poem, and refused to bate a fraction. The disappointed bargainer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... old Night, Cimmerian Muse, all hail! That wrapt in never-twinkling gloom canst write, And shadowest meaning with thy dusky veil! What Poet sings and strikes the strings? It was the mighty Theban spoke. He from the ever-living lyre With magic hand elicits fire. Heard ye the din of modern rhymers bray? It was cool M-n; or warm G-y, Involv'd ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... morning, and exhorts the citizens to be brave and be not over-dismayed at the rabble of alien besiegers. A messenger arrives and announces the rapid approach of the Argives. Eteocles goes to see that the battlements and the gates are properly manned, and during his absence the chorus of Theban maidens set up a great wail of distress and burst forth with violent lamentations. Eteocles, returning, upbraids them severely for their weakness and bids them begone and raise the sacred auspicious shout of the paean as an encouragement ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... first Theban war, previously alluded to, took place twenty-seven years before the war of Troy. Sthenelus here speaks of the second, which happened ten years after the first. For an account of these wars see Grecian and ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... A new Theban king, called Tethmosis, invaded Asia and never stopped until he reached the plains of Mesopotamia. He watered his oxen in the river Euphrates, and Babylon and Nineveh trembled at the mention of his name. Wherever ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon

... a Thracian; some an Arcadian: others a Theban. Pausanias mentions it as an opinion among the [1025]Egyptians, that both Orpheus, and Amphion, were from their country. There is great uncertainty about his parents. He is generally supposed to have been the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... away from me, and presently rose and went on by herself. There was something lonely and solitary about her great determined shape. She might have been Antigone alone on the Theban plain. It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and silence. An absolute, archaic grief possessed this countrywoman; she seemed like a renewal of some historic soul, with her sorrows and the remoteness of ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... that brickwork looks good. But what of it? So does a cheap cotton night-shirt—you know the gaudy things those Theban peddlers sell to my sand-hogs down on the river bank. But does it last? Of course it doesn't. Well, I am putting up this pyramid to stay put, and I don't give a damn for its looks. I hear all sorts of funny cracks about it. My barber is a sharp nigger and keeps his ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... theories, among which are those of Burnet, and Woodward, and Whitehurst; regretting extremely that my time will not suffer me to give them the notice they deserve; and shall conclude with that of the renowned Dr. Darwin. This learned Theban, who is as much distinguished for rhyme as reason, and for good-natured credulity as serious research, and who has recommended himself wonderfully to the good graces of the ladies, by letting them into ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... (2 syl.), two young Theban knights, who fell into the hands of Duke Theseus (2 syl.), and were by him confined in a dungeon at Athens. Here they saw the duke's sister-in-law, Emily, with whom both fell in love. When released from captivity, the two knights told to the duke their tale of love; and the duke promised that ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer



Words linked to "Theban" :   Thebes, Hellene, Egyptian, Greek



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