"Achilles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scamander. The Grecian camp had stretched twelve miles along the shore from the Sigaean to the Rhaetean promontory; and the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of those promontories was occupied by Achilles with his invincible myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to his disappointed pride, and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepulchre was erected on the ground ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... press Homer into his service in answer to a remark of Mr. Campbell's, that "Homer was a great describer of works of art." Mr. Bowles contends that all his great power, even in this, depends upon their connection with nature. The "shield of Achilles derives its poetical interest from the subjects described on it." And from what does the spear of Achilles derive its interest? and the helmet and the mail worn by Patroclus, and the celestial armor, and the very brazen greaves of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... poets sang their own verses: "Homer literally sang the wrath of Achilles, and the woes of Greece;" would it were so in England. Then, my poetical public, we should have Anacreon Moore singing his "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," in some such place as the Quadrant, or Opera Colonnade; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... undeniably a great creation, or rather not so much a creation as a thing arrived at accidentally, but it lacks solidarity. It sprawls, a confused mass of races and creeds, around the world. Its very immensity lays it open to attack, it has a dozen Achilles heels from Ireland to Egypt and South ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... Achilles: This is not strange, Ulysses, The beauty that is borne here in the face The bearer knows not, but commends itself To other's eyes: nor doth the eye itself, That most pure spirit of sense behold itself, Not going from itself, but eye to ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... exact harmony between their operations, that one of them should play so exactly the game of the other? Suppose for a moment that the Armenian intended to heighten the effect of his deception, by introducing it after a less refined one—that he created a Hector to make himself his Achilles. Suppose that he has done all this to discover what degree of credulity he could expect to find in me, to examine the readiest way to gain my confidence, to familiarize himself with his subject by an attempt that might have miscarried ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... like Ulysses, before the war of Troy. But they found no Tacitus, Virgil, and Homer to record their adventurous and virtuous deeds. It is the prerogative of eminent writers to confer immortality; and though Alexander would prefer to be Achilles rather than Homer, we should have known little of his achievements, had he not encouraged scholars as well as warriors, and rewarded genius ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Jersey legislature made up its mind to retaliate. The city of New York had lately bought a small patch of ground on Sandy Hook, and had built a light-house there. This light-house was the one weak spot in the heel of Achilles where a hostile arrow could strike, and New Jersey gave vent to her indignation by laying a tax of $1,800 a year on it. Connecticut was equally prompt. At a great meeting of business men, held at New London, it was unanimously agreed ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... a mighty pewter dish, big as Achilles' shield, sustaining a pyramid of smoking sausages. This stood at one end; midway was a similar dish, heavily laden with farmers' slices of head-cheese; and at the opposite end, a congregation of beef-steaks, piled tier over tier. Scattered at intervals ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... of my mind which will not be happy unless I am doing something in which you are concerned. This may seem a very idle disposition in a philosopher and a soldier, but I can plead illustrious examples in my justification. Achilles liked to have sacrificed Greece and his glory to a female captive, and Anthony lost a world for a woman. I am very sorry times are so changed as to oblige me to go to antiquity for my apology, but I confess, to the disgrace of the present time, that I have not been ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Maeonian verse, as brave, and a subduer of your enemies, whatever achievements your fierce soldiery shall have accomplished, under your command; either on ship-board or on horseback. We humble writers, O Agrippa, neither undertake these high subjects, nor the destructive wrath of inexorable Achilles, nor the voyages of the crafty Ulysses, nor the cruel house of Pelops: while diffidence, and the Muse who presides over the peaceful lyre, forbid me to diminish the praise of illustrious Caesar, and yours, through defect of genius. Who ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... looking at a bronze statue of Achilles, at Hyde Park Corner, which had been erected in honour of the Duke of Wellington. The place, like every other fashionable haunt at that season, was comparatively deserted. Still, there might have been fifty persons in ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... rod was of a larger stride, And made a circle thrice as wide, Where spirits throng'd with hideous din, And he stood there to take them in; But when th'enchanted rod was broke, They vanish'd in a stinking smoke. Achilles' sceptre was of wood, Like Sid's, but nothing near so good; Though down from ancestors divine Transmitted to the heroes line; Thence, thro' a long descent of kings, Came an HEIRLOOM,[6] as Homer sings. Though this description looks so big, That sceptre was a sapless twig, Which, from ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... changed. The old hero was Ulysses, or Achilles, or Aeneas. The hero of Greek literature is Ulysses, as Aeneas is in Latin literature. But to our modern thought these heroes miss of being heroic. We have outgrown them as we have outgrown dolls and marbles. To be frank, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... holding his antagonist too cheap. Mr. Montague's vanity had been considerably wounded by that young lady's disbelief in his prowess. She had contrived, as she had most assuredly intended, to irritate him by her persistent scepticism as to his being the swift-footed Achilles he so loved to pose as. He determined to show her and all other unbelievers what he could really do. He would make a veritable exhibition of his antagonist. He would cut him down and run clean away from him. ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... When you produce the greatest effect upon the audience in the recitation of some striking passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus leaping forth on the floor, recognized by the suitors and casting his arrows at his feet, or the description of Achilles rushing at Hector, or the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam,—are you in your right mind? Are you not carried out of yourself, and does not your soul in an ecstasy seem to be among the persons ...
— Ion • Plato
... in his Troilus and Cressida, makes Hector, who, however, is not used to boast, say to Achilles in an interview between them; and which, applied to this watchful lady, and to the vexation she has given me, and to the certainty I now think I have of subduing her, will run thus: supposing the charmer before me; and I meditating her sweet person ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... most of its forms is the most dynamogenic of all the emotions. In paroxysms of rage with abandon we stop at nothing short of death and even mutilation. The Malay running amuck, Orlando Furioso, the epic of the wrath of Achilles, hell-fire, which is an expression of divine wrath, are some illustrations of its power. Savages work themselves into frenzied rage in order to fight their enemies. In many descriptions of its brutal aspects, which ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... that in their conception of life they started with different premises. They found themselves in life, their hope ending with life, and their object was to make the best and happiest of it. The hereafter was not pleasant to contemplate. Achilles, when he meets Odysseus in the netherworld, declares that he would rather be a poor labouring thrall on earth than a king among the dead. Had the Hellenes been shown the modern doctrine of evolution, it is easy to fancy how eagerly they would have sprung at it. To the Hebraic spirit it ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... intellect, inflamed with passion, and inspirited by that "ardour and impetuosity of mind" which Wordsworth is compelled to allow to him, rather than creative or original genius, is the differentia of Dryden. We have compared him to a courser, but he was not one of those coursers of Achilles, who fed on no earthly food, but on the golden barley of heaven, having ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... a mile in width, yet every word uttered by the chieftain was heard; this may be partly attributed to the distinct manner in which every syllable of the compound words in the Indian language is articulated and accented; but in truth, a savage warrior might often rival Achilles himself for force of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... is like a rhinoceros. Can't find a vulnerable spot anywhere. He seems morally calloused. I say seems because I can scarcely believe that a boy of sixteen can really be as absolutely unmoral as he appears. Perhaps, eventually, I will find an Achilles' heel. ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... still more like Proserpine, for she, too, goes down into the underworld, where she tarries for a while. Balder's golden hall of Breidablik is like Apollo's palace in the east; he, also, delights in flowers; all things smile at his approach, and willingly pledge themselves not to injure him. As Achilles was vulnerable only in the heel, so Balder could be slain only by the harmless mistletoe, and his death is occasioned by Loki's jealousy just as Hercules was slain by that of Deianeira. Balder's funeral ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Malmaison almost alone[73]; and there retired, as Achilles to his tent, he was cursing his state of idleness, when the minister of marine came to announce to him, in the name of the government, that the enemy was at Compiegne; that the committee, apprehensive for ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the element of unity in the whole poem. It is in itself a great honor to the race that they were able to conceive as their ideal a hero so superior in all that constitutes true nobility to the Greek ideal, Achilles. It is true that the poem consists of two parts, connected by little more than the fact that they have the same hero at different times of life; that episodes are introduced that do not blend perfectly into the unity of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... commonest of common weeds confronts us; the compact, dusty-looking clusters appearing not by waysides only, around the world, but in the mythology, folklore, medicine, and literature of many peoples. Chiron, the centaur, who taught its virtues to Achilles that he might make an ointment to heal his Myrmidons wounded in the siege of Troy, named the plant for this favorite pupil, giving his own to the beautiful blue corn-flower (Centaurea Cyanus). As a love-charm; as an herb-tea brewed by crones ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... manifest that, in his days, history had been employed, as it has in ours, for the purposes of slander and adulation. He selects particularly a writer who compared, in his account of the Persian wars, the Roman emperor to Achilles, his enemy to Thersites; and if Lucian had lived in the present day, he would have discovered that the race of such writers was not extinguished. He might have found ample proofs that the detestable habit still prevails of interweaving the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Greek, Achilles Metaxa by name, who had attached himself to Carl's fortunes. In person, he was the very model of an ancient hero. He had the capacious brow, the eye of fire, and the full black beard, descending in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... they embrace each other; they laugh; they weep in each other's arms; give each other sage counsels, with a truly Homeric simplicity. They are deep-versed in stratagems of love and war, these Poles of the seventeenth century! They have their Nestor, their Agamemnon, their great Achilles sulking in his tent. Oddly enough, at times they grow very familiar to us, and in spite of their Polish titles and faces, and a certain tenderness of nature that is almost feminine, they seem to have good, stout, Saxon stuff in them. Especially where the illustrious ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... "apple of discord" belonged, gave it to Aphrodite in preference to her two rivals Hera and Athena; was promised in return that he should receive the most beautiful woman in the world to wife, Helen of Sparta, whom he carried off to Greece, and which led to the TROJAN WAR (q. v.); slew Achilles, and was mortally wounded by the poisoned arrows ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... it, as it were, from himself as centre; ceased, indeed, to be a self; and became all that he contemplated—the victor and the vanquished, the hunter and the hunted, the house and its builder, Thersites and Achilles. He became the sun and the moon and the stars, the gods and the laughter of the gods. He took no sides, pronounced no judgment, espoused no cause. He became pure vision; but not passive vision. To see, he had to re-create; and the material his observation had ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented to get any currency which was not moral. Aurora[117] forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, he is old, Achilles[118] is not quite invulnerable; the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... dialogue between the inhabitants of the earth and the dweller in the regions of the dead—between Ulysses and Achilles—is remarkable for its horrible depiction of ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... Lemnos, the other taking the Palladium from Ilium. Among other paintings here is AEgisthus being slain by Orestes; and Pylades slaying the sons of Nauplius that came to AEgisthus's aid. And Polyxena about to have her throat cut near the tomb of Achilles. Homer did well not to mention this ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... subjected—all apparently introduced for no other purpose than to show the author's skill in declamation. The display of his own acquirements in various branches of art and science, and of his rhetorical powers of language in describing them, is indeed an object of which Achilles Tatius never loses sight; and continual digressions from the thread of the story for this purpose occur, often extremely mal-a-propos, and sometimes entirely without reference to the preceding narrative. Thus, when Clitophon is relating the terms of an oracle addressed to the Byzantines, previous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... girl of fifteen, lithe and lovely as a fawn, and with a fine freedom in her large blue eyes. She was a wonderful Amazon, and had once raced old Lord Bilton on her pony twice round the park, winning by a length and a half, just in front of the Achilles statue, to the huge delight of the young Duke of Cheshire, who proposed for her on the spot, and was sent back to Eton that very night by his guardians, in floods of tears. After Virginia came the twins, who were usually called "The Stars and Stripes," ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... sky and rolling billows could be seen from the uppermost benches of the triremes, he offered sacrifices to Poseidon, the god of the sea, to the Nereids, and to the silver-footed sea-goddess Thetis, the mother of Achilles, father of his race. And he besought the favour of all the gods in the great enterprise which had brought him to the mouth of the Indus, and their protection for his fleet on its dangerous voyage to the Euphrates; and when his prayer was ended he cast ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... will gaze on the finest and gayest equipages of England. A very pretty piece of water is in this park, which is called "the Serpentine River." The best skating of London is to be seen here, we are told, in hard winters. The entrance from Piccadilly is by a fine threefold arch. Here is the great Achilles of bronze, in honor of Wellington, made out of the cannon which the duke captured in Spain. St. James's and the Green Park: this is the oldest in London, and was made by Henry VIII. A fine arch affords ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... regaining his liberty. Without delay it made for the open gateway, ran between the feet of the advancing Fritz, upset him, causing him to measure his length with that of the hog's back, then after a few turns about the yard, upset the pursuing Achilles-Franz and ran to the top of a heap of sodden straw, where it shook off Odysseus-Fritz, then ran nimbly down and out the gateway to the road. To fill to overflowing the measure of their ill-luck, some of the Trojans who had safely passed the gate sometime before, heard ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... with some indifferent matter, a prodigious number of fine things in its way. Troilus himself is no character: he is merely a common lover; but Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth. By the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakespeare seems to have known them as well as if he had been a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp—to say nothing of their being very lofty examples of didactic eloquence. The following is a very stately and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... many there be of old that have thought the action of one man to be one, as of Hercules, Theseus, Achilles, Ulysses, and other heroes; which is both foolish and false, since by one and the same person many things may be severally done which cannot fitly be referred or joined to the same end: which not only the excellent tragic poets, but the best masters of the epic, Homer ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... greatest poets, such as Homer, Milton, and Scott, treat the subject of eating and drinking with much seriousness, minuteness of detail, and lusciousness of description. Homer's heroes are all good cooks,—swift-footed Achilles, much-enduring Ulysses, and the rest of them. Read Milton's appetizing description of the feast which the Tempter set ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... freemen, gentle and simple, have a right to speak in it. There is no voting, only a declaration, by shouts, of the general feeling. Though the head of the nation has been usually the person who convokes it, a magnate lower in rank might always, like Achilles in the Iliad, have it summoned when a fitting occasion arose. And it was generally preceded by a consultation among the leading men, though I could not discover that there was any regular council of chiefs.[68] In all these points the resemblance to the primary assemblies of the early peoples ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... shores of Attica lies the island of Aegina, famous in legend as the home of Aeacus, grandfather of Achilles, and distinguished for its school of sculpture, and for its mighty breed of athletes, whose feats are celebrated in the laureate strains of Pindar. The Aeginetans had obtained the first prize for valour displayed in the battle of Salamis, and for many years ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... a Venetian painter, went to England, in 1729, where he was first employed by Lord Tankerville to paint the staircase of his palace in St. James' Square. He there represented the stories of Achilles, Telemachus and Tiresias, which gained him great applause. When he was to be paid, he produced his bills of the workmen for scaffolding, materials, &c., amounting to L90, and asked no more, saying that he was content with the opportunity of showing what he could do. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... determined what kingdoms should rise, and what should fall; what heroes should conquer, and what should be conquered. This doctrine runs throughout the poem of Homer called the Iliad; so that he makes the fates determine the ends of his two chief heroes, Hector and Achilles. And though the former was knocked down several times in the different engagements and dangerously wounded, yet as the fates had decreed that he should fall by the hand of Achilles, he is rescued from destruction by a deity, because the time of his death was not yet arrived. So that whether ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... think vaguely of something brave, brilliant, splendid, something exciting and invigorating. A hero is to us a man of clear, vivid personality, valiant, generous, perhaps hot-tempered, a good friend and a good hater. The word "hero" calls up such figures as Achilles, Patroklos, Hector, figures of passion and adventure. Now such figures, with their special virtues, and perhaps their proper vices, are not confined to Homer. They occur in any and every heroic age. We are beginning now to see that heroic poetry, heroic ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the Greeks were so deeply moved by music that they could readily imagine it to have a similar effect on animals, and even on inanimate objects. Almost three thousand years ago, Homer represented Achilles as "comforting his heart with the sound of the lyre," after losing his sweet Briseis; "stimulating his courage and singing the deeds of the heroes." And, as Emil Naumann fancies, there is a moral underlying the myth of the siren; "for, as Homer elsewhere suggests, noble and manly music invigorates ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... books of the Iliad, besides being pretty familiar with passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book, the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the funeral games in the twenty-third. I have also done some Hesiod, a little scrap of Thucydides, and a lot of the Greek Testament... I wish there was only ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... strike with various force, Achilles, Hebe, and Sir Watkin's horse! Here summer scenes, there Pentland's stormy ridge, Lords, ladies, Noah's ark, and Cranford bridge! Some that display the elegant design, The lucid colours, and the flowing line; Some that might make, alas! Walsh Porter[95] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... his mind was only constituted for the regions of romance; and that his opinion on the affairs of Ireland, England, France, or Europe was worthless. A week or two before the same paper held him up as the very Achilles of freedom, and the hope of Ireland—for it was the habit of both the parties claiming nationality in Ireland, to hope for liberty from the courage and efforts of others rather than from their own. The reply ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the Iliad is not the war of Troy, but the wrath of Achilles exhibited during and in connection with the war ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... an admirable text-book and "second reader" the Homeric poems are! What characters to imitate: the high-minded, passionate, yet withal loyal and lovable Achilles who would rather fight gloriously before Troy (though death in the campaign is certain) than live a long life in ignoble ease at home at Phthia; or Oysseus, the "hero of many devices," who endures a thousand ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... uniform tinkle and unmitigated softness to excess, and transferred this kind of luscious verse from small poems, where it is often a merit, to large ones, where it is a mistake. In his "Iliad," for instance, the fierce ire of Achilles, the dignified resentment of Agamemnon, the dull courage of Ajax, the chivalrous sentiment of Hector, the glowing energy of Diomede, the veteran wisdom of Nestor, the grief of Andromache, the love of Helen, the jealousy ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... tightly around the body of Jenkins, he sagged down and pressed the tips of his forefingers into two vulnerable parts of the thick neck, where certain important nerves approach the surface—parts as vulnerable as the heel of Achilles. Still clinging, he mercilessly continued the pressure, while Jenkins swayed back and forth, and finally fell ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... Quia sola videris Quo niueae Charites, quo corpore Delia virgo Pingitur, et iusto si sit pro teste vetustas. Talibus audimus quondam de matribus ortos Semideos homines: tali est de sanguine magnus Siue Hector genitus, siue Hectore maior Achilles: Duntaxat sine fraude vlla, sine crimine possint Vila tibi veterum conferri nomina matrum, Quae sexum factis superas, quae patribus audes, Nympha, dijs dignas laudes aequare Latinis. Mentior infoelix, nisi sic in corpore ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... multitudes, Which dar'st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor. That head of thine doth not become a crown; Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer's staff, And not to grace an awful princely sceptre. That gold must round engirt these brows of mine, Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear, Is able with the change to kill and cure. Here is a hand to hold a sceptre up And with the same to act controlling laws. Give place; by heaven, thou shalt rule no more O'er him whom heaven created for ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... his Nous, the highest intellect, the mover, the disposer, the governor of all things, Metrodoros resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Here, and Athene, but likewise those of human kings and heroes—such as Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hektor—into various combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts hidden under a thin veil ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... a bust of Petrarch's Laura, and the famous Lions, copied by Benaglia from the colossal originals on the monument of Clement XIV., at Rome. Thorwaldsen is abundantly represented by his Night and Morning, and his bas-reliefs of Priam Petitioning for the Body of Hector, and Briseis, taken from Achilles by the Heralds. Schadow's Filatrice, or Spinning Girl, and his classic bas-reliefs are worthy of all admiration. The English school of sculpture appears to advantage in Gibson's fine group, Mars and Cupid, and his bas-relief of Hero and Leander—Chantry's busts of George IV. and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... jurisprudence among every free people, where the will of the sovereign is not implicitly obeyed. We find them among the ancient Greeks during the time of the Trojan war. Compositions for murder are mentioned in Nestor's speech to Achilles in the ninth Iliad and are called APOINAI. The Irish, who never had any connexions with the German nations, adopted the same practice till very lately; and the price of a man's head was called among them his ERIC; as we learn from Sir John Davis. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... impossible. He will drink the wine of the country, even when sour, without a grimace; pass without grumbling a sleepless night; plod through dust ankle deep, without a murmur; there is but one vulnerable feature in his armor, and with Achilles, it is his heel! And it is literally the heel that, is the sensitive spot. I will venture the assertion that the long-distance tramper—not even excepting Brother Weston—who has not at some time or another suffered from sore heels, does not exist. The tramp's ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Oh grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom, All I can ask of heaven, an early tomb! So shall my days in one sad tenor run, And end with sorrows as they first begun. No parent now remains, my griefs to share, No father's aid, no mother's tender care. The fierce Achilles wrapt our walls in fire, Laid Thebe waste, and slew my warlike sire! His fate compassion in the victor bred; Stern as he was, he yet revered the dead, His radiant arms preserved from hostile spoil, And laid him decent on the funeral pile; Then raised a mountain where his bones were ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... a eulogy on the rose; and again, in the fifty- fifth ode, we shall find our author rich in the praises of that flower. In a fragment of Sappho, in the romance of Achilles Tatius, to which Barnes refers us, the rose is fancifully styled "the eye of flowers;" and the same poetess, in another fragment, calls the favors of the Muse ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... portion of society, including among its members names and persons of illustrious and noble title, whose whole life and pleasure in life appears to "rest upon the hazard of a die." The modern Greek, though he cannot boast much resemblance to Achilles, Ajax, Patroclus, or Nestor, is, nevertheless, a close imitator of the equally renowned chief of Ithaca. To describe his person, habits, pursuits, and manners, would be to sketch the portrait of one or more finished roues, who are to be found ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... shoulder with Conde and Turenne. The stout Cavalier was second to no soldier in Louis' splendid army; was of the stamp of an earlier race even, better inured to hardship than any save that heroic Prince, the Achilles of his day, who to the graces of a modern courtier joined the temper of an ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... adventure with such dignity of deportment and with so exalted an air of generous rectitude that those present could not sufficiently admire at the continent discretion of one so young. The young lady whom he had married, if she had before regarded him as a Paris and an Achilles incorporated into one person, now added the wisdom of a Nestor to the ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... was at school I felt exceedingly obliged to Homer's messengers for the exact literal fidelity with which they delivered their messages. The seven or eight lines of good Homeric Greek in which they had received the commands of Agamemnon or Achilles they recited to whomsoever the message was to be carried; and as they repeated them verbatim, sometimes twice or thrice, it saved me the trouble of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... good to feel good! You have to live up to your feelings, if you feel like that. And I prayed in the Cathedral. I prayed to be happy. Is that a wrong note for a prayer? I don't believe it is, if it rings true. Anyway, it makes me feel young and strong to pray, like Achilles, after he'd rolled on the earth. And I do feel so young and strong just now, dear! I have to sing in my bath, and when I look out of the window—also sometimes when I look in the glass, for it seems to me that I am growing ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... civilization almost as great. Aye! more than this—he showed us that the ancient city of Troy was built upon the ruins of a city that throve and pulsed with life and pride, a thousand years or more before Thetis, the mother of Achilles, held her baby by the heel and dipped him in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Dalles in the morning, a splendid panorama begins to unfold on this lordly stream—"Achilles of rivers," as Winthrop called it. It is difficult to describe the charm of this trip. Residents of the East pronounce it superior to the Hudson, and travelers assert there is nothing like it in the Old World. It is simply delicious to those escaped ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... wonderful collection of these, the values attached to some of them being almost fabulous. One example from the work-shop of Vienna—long celebrated for this description of art,—represented the combat of Hector and Achilles, the cover of the pipe being a golden hemlet cristatus of the Grecian type." Swiss and Tyrolean artists also produce exquisite carving, but use wood as a material; and in the famous collection of Baron de Watteville will be found a marvelous piece of carving representing Bellerophon ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to assist him in his exile; but he forbore to speak on this subject until his own fate should be decided. They then talked of Glennaquoich, for whom the Baron expressed great anxiety, although, he observed, he was 'the very Achilles of Horatius Flaccus,— ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... suddenly appearing through the dust-clouds, unconscious of storm and stress. At last, however, a yank of the deer's head—Jimmy had him by the horns—caused the plug hat to snap off, and the next second the deer's sharp foot went through it. You will remember Achilles did not get excited until his helmet touched the dust. Well, from what the cold, pale light of fact shows of the size and prowess of those ancient swaggerers, Jimmy-hit-the-bottle could have picked Achilles up by his ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Dear, as the sage7 renown'd for moral truth To the prime spirit of the Attic youth! Dear, as the Stagyrite8 to Ammon's son,9 His pupil, who disdain'd the world he won! Nor so did Chiron, or so Phoenix shine10 In young Achilles' eyes, as He in mine. First led by him thro' sweet Aonian11 shade Each sacred haunt of Pindus I survey'd; 30 And favor'd by the muse, whom I implor'd, Thrice on my lip the hallow'd stream I pour'd. But thrice the Sun's resplendent chariot roll'd To Aries, has new ting'd his fleece with ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... is the most celebrated preacher of the day,—the great Massillon. It is said that that handsome person goes a great way towards winning converts among the court ladies; it is certain, at least, that when Massillon first entered the profession he was to the soul something like the spear of Achilles to the body; and, though very efficacious in healing the wounds of conscience, was equally ready in the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out like a serpent's; while his owner, who was probably not so unkind as we thought him, stood enjoying the fun of it all. Reckoning upon the big boy's assistance, I scrambled out of the water, and sped, like Achilles of the swift foot, for the boat. I jumped in and seized the oars, intending to row across, and get the big boy to throw the clothes of the party into the boat. But I had never handled an oar in my life, and in the middle passage—how ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... from the Love Stories of Parthenius, who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... and hung upon his rear. One aimed a blow full at his heart; but the protecting power which watches over the great and good turned aside the hostile blade and directed it to a side-pocket, where reposed an enormous iron tobacco-box, endowed, like the shield of Achilles, with supernatural powers, doubtless from bearing the portrait of the blessed St. Nicholas. Peter Stuyvesant turned like an angry bear upon the foe, and seizing him, as he fled, by an immeasurable queue, 'Ah, whoreson ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... weaknesses as one of the suits of armour hanging in the Tower of London; and during my extended and rather intimate acquaintance with her, I have never discovered but one foible incident to the flesh, love of her morning nap! You have adroitly struck Achilles in the heel. Sound the timbrel and sing like Miriam over your victory; for it were better to propitiate one of the house of Palma, than to strangle Pharaoh. You should apply for a position in some foreign legation, where your talents can be fitly trained for the tangles of diplomacy. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... abandon that is ignorant of sex. Yet even then the difference is apparent to the observing. Inspired by the divine instinct of motherhood, the girl that can only creep to her mother's knees will caress a doll, that her tottling brother looks coldly upon. The infant Achilles breaks the thin disguise of his gown and sleeves by dropping the distaff, and grasping the sword. As maturity approaches, the sexes diverge. An unmistakable difference marks the form and features of each, and reveals the demand for a special ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... of an eye-witness, cf. c. 29, 'nostri ad dimicandum procedunt, id quod adversarios existimabamus esse facturos.' He is apt to be bombastic (c. 5, 'hic alternis non solum morti mortem exaggerabant, sed tumulos tumulis exaequabant'), and makes a ridiculous show of learning (quoting the combat of Achilles and Memnon, c. 25, and Ennius, c. 23, 'nostri cessere parumper'; c. 31, 'pes pede premitur, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... do—not always very easy things,—much of my work in Algebra and Geometry is hard: but I love it all, especially Greek. Just think, I shall soon finish my grammar! Then comes the "Iliad." What an inexpressible joy it will be to read about Achilles, and Ulysses, and Andromache and Athene, and the rest of my old friends in their own glorious language! I think Greek is the loveliest language that I know anything about. If it is true that the violin is ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... stroke of his sword was indubitable, the rising and struggle of the people was beyond controversy, and the state of things at present is a fact. What if the father of poetry Homer (to go back to the oldest lights) made a mistake about the cause of Achilles' wrath. What if Achilles really wanted to get rid of Briseis and the war together, and sulked in his tent in a great sham? Should we conclude against the artistic propriety of the poet's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... your lordship to stir up that remembrance in his majesty, which his many avocations of business have caused him, I fear, to lay aside; and, as himself and his royal brother are the heroes of the poem, to represent to them the images of their warlike predecessors; as Achilles is said to be roused to glory, with the sight of the combat before the ships. For my own part, I am satisfied to have offered the design, and it may be to the advantage of my reputation ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... ass; yet I heartily wish that we had a good deal more of him. I have read Arrian's expedition of Alexander, together with Quintus Curtius. I have at stray hours read Longus's Romance and Xenophon's Ephesiaca; and I mean to go through Heliodorus, and Achilles Tatius, in the same way. Longus is prodigiously absurd; but there is often an exquisite prettiness in the style. Xenophon's Novel is the basest thing to be found in Greek. [Xenophon the Ephesian lived in the third or fourth century of the Christian era. At the end of his work ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... tortoise, each of his steps must be treated as indivisible, and so must each step of the tortoise. After a certain number of steps, Achilles will have overtaken the tortoise. There is nothing more simple. If you insist on dividing the two motions further, distinguish both on the one side and on the other, in the course of Achilles and in that of the tortoise, the sub-multiples ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... name, keep out of peril the honor, without which even your battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on half pay and a wooden leg, would not change with Achilles.—Bulwer-Lytton. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... throng Worthy of those even numbers which he sung, Appeared, and though those Ancient Laureates strive When dead themselves, whose raptures should survive, For his Temples all their owne bayes allowes, Not sham'd to see him crown'd with naked browes; Homer his beautifull Achilles nam'd, Urging his braine with Joves might well be fam'd, Since it brought forth one full of beauties charmes, As was his Pallas, and as bold in Armes; [-King and no King.-] But when he the brave Arbases saw, one That saved ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... converse, he transformed himself into any shape and adopted any fashion, that he observed to be most agreeable to them. So that to have seen him at Lacedaemon, a man, judging by the outward appearance, would have said, "'T is not Achilles' son, but he himself, the very man" that ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... according to Acron, [85] wrote twelve excellent books in epic metre on the legends of Diomed, a work obviously modelled on those of Euphorion, whose fourteen books of Heracleia were extremely popular; in a later age Statius attempted a similar task in essaying the history of Achilles. The ode addressed to him by Horace seems to hint at a foolish ambition to imitate Pindar. Besides these lesser known authors Horace knew, though he does not mention, the poets Ovid and Domitius Marsus; probably also Propertius. With Tibullus he ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... she might discover our vulnerable "heel of Achilles" we had to take all chances. We lashed down the safety valves, heaped quick-burning combustibles into the already raging fires, and brought the boilers to a pressure that would have been unsafe under ordinary circumstances. The propeller churned the mud and water ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... the occasion. He even indulged in a classical joke. "There is something in the name of Helen that attracts," he said. "Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... world were dismal to an extreme. The after-life in Hades was believed to be a shadowy, joyless copy of the earthly existence. In Hades the shade of great Achilles exclaims sorrowfully, "Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death. Rather would I live on earth as the hireling of another, even with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead." [13] It was not until several centuries ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... to their death. De Quincey tries to send them a warning shout, but finds himself unable to make a sound because his mind is hopelessly entangled in an endeavor to recall the exact lines from the Iliad which describe the great cry with which Achilles alarmed all Asia militant. Only after his memory responds is his will released from its momentary paralysis, and he rides on through the fragrant night with the horror of the escaped calamity thick upon him, but he also bears with him the consciousness that he had given himself over so many ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... dolis, lacrimisque coactis, Quos neque Tydides, nec Larrissaeus Achilles Non anni domuere decem, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... perhaps nearer still, especially in Apollonius. But the Greek romancers were the first who had really busied themselves with the heroine: they took her up seriously and gave her a considerable position. But they did not succeed in giving her much character. The naughty not-heroine of Achilles Tatius, though she has less than none in Mr. Pope's supposed innuendo sense, alone has an approach to some in the other. As for the accomplished Guinevere's probable contemporary, the Ismene or Hysmine of Eustathius Macrembolites (v. sup. p. 18), she is a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... tell you, and do you meditate well upon it, that) you yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you,—about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, the irreproachable ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... chants of their tragedy? I suppose, if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in after-life is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son of Oileus, and Helen; and in which the pavement of the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds with their wings, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... ships that went to the Trojan war, the great chiefs who commanded, especially Achilles, whose shield they have seen, with its Gorgons, and Sphinxes, and Hermes in flight, and other wondrous figures—suddenly at the end connects itself with the subject of the play by the thought: it was the Prince who commanded heroes ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Hawley, our Achilles, our Samson, our ideal of everything manly and courageous! Strong as an ox and brave as a lion! Our champion in every form of athletic sports! Who looked with contempt on girls and disdained their maidenly advances! Who thought only of deeds of muscular prowess, and who seemed ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... the Park was unusually bright and gay, Claire was seated near the Achilles statue, carelessly scanning the passers-by, when, with a sudden leap of the heart, she saw Erskine Fanshawe some twenty yards ahead, strolling towards her, accompanied by two ladies. He was talking to his companions with every appearance ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... extraordinary file, which is to be sent from Sheffield to the Great Exhibition. This remarkable file is adorned with designs as numerous as those on the original shield of ACHILLES, all cut and beaten out with hammer and chisel. How much more sensible and friendly to show distinguished foreigners files of this sort, than to exhibit to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... while narrating the many misdeeds of the Yanokie or Yankee race, it is ten chances to one but I offend the morbid sensibilities of certain of their unreasonable descendants, who may fly out and raise such a buzzing about this unlucky head of mine, that I shall need the tough hide of an Achilles, or an Orlando Furioso, to ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... time has produced an imperishable work, how short his own life seems compared with that of his child! He is like Semela or Maia—a mortal mother who gave birth to an immortal son; or, contrarily, he is like Achilles in regard to Thetis. What a contrast there is between what is fleeting and what is permanent! The short span of a man's life, his necessitous, afflicted, unstable existence, will seldom allow of his seeing even the beginning of his immortal child's brilliant ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to Georgie. She wanted to have a short private consultation with Peppino, and he waited rather hopefully for their return, for Peppino, he felt sure, was bored with this Achilles-attitude of sitting sulking in the tent. They came back wreathed in smiles, and instantly embarked on the question of what to do after dinner. No romps: certainly not, but why not the tableaux again? The question was still under debate ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... thought, the eagle and myself Did burn; and so intense th' imagin'd flames, That needs my sleep was broken off. As erst Achilles shook himself, and round him roll'd His waken'd eyeballs wond'ring where he was, Whenas his mother had from Chiron fled To Scyros, with him sleeping in her arms; E'en thus I shook me, soon as from my face The slumber parted, turning deadly pale, Like one ice-struck with dread. Solo at my side ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... 'Why can't we drop in among the tents, and see an Ursula or a Pakomovna, and have our fortunes told as of yore?' And we know that it cannot be, and that the Romany Rye is a being who lived and moved in a different age from ours, as different as the age of Hector and Achilles, when warriors fought in their chariots round the walls of Troy, and the long-haired Achaians hurled their spears and stole one another's horses in the darkness, and kings made long speeches armed to the teeth, and ran away with other kings' wives or multiplied ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... counsellor-chief for command of the galley appointed— Whether Idomeneus be it, or Aias, or noble Odysseus, Yea, or, Peleides, thyself, among terrible warriors foremost! So shall by thee be achiev'd the appeasing of Archer Apollo." Dark was the scowl of Achilles the rapid, as thus he made answer:— "Oh! thou in impudence clothed! O heart, that is ever on lucre! How can the words of thy mouth stir zeal in a single Achaian Either to march in thy train, or to stand in the fierceness of onset? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... said, "an Englishman to the backbone"; and he was, further, a fastidious, high-tempered English gentleman, in spite of his declaiming about "pampered aristocrats" and the "gentleman heresy." His friends thought of him as of the "young Achilles," with his high courage, and noble form, and "eagle eye," made for such great things, but appointed so soon to die. "Who can refrain from tears at the thought of that bright and beautiful Froude?" is the expression ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of Iphigenia is also extremely beautiful and interesting; but the other parts of the act have no dramatick merit. The circumstance so much insisted on of Clytemnestra's dressing (tho' I believe in Euripides) wd. appear ridiculous on our stage: and the scenes of Memnon and Achilles are weak & illwritten, tho' the entrance of Achilles at that juncture might afford a ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison |
