"Delphi" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chief divinities of the Greeks; the god of music and song, of prophecy, of the flocks and herds, of the founding of towns, and of the sun. He was the son of Zeus and Leto, and was born on the island of Delos. His favorite oracle was at Delphi. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... of them. Man is an eternal mystery to himself; his own person is a house into which he never enters, and of which he studies the outside alone. Each of us need have continually before him the famous inscription which once instructed Socrates, and which was engraved on the walls of Delphi by ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... himself; and I am not ashamed to confess that I was in error. For self-knowledge would certainly be maintained by me to be the very essence of knowledge, and in this I agree with him who dedicated the inscription, 'Know thyself!' at Delphi. That word, if I am not mistaken, is put there as a sort of salutation which the god addresses to those who enter the temple; as much as to say that the ordinary salutation of 'Hail!' is not right, and that the exhortation 'Be temperate!' would be a far better way of saluting one another. The notion ...
— Charmides • Plato
... Such it may have been, and may still be, in London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was guilty of such improprieties had little right to blame the poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented Julio Romano as flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it was safe to banter and even to contradict him; but when the conversation drifted into the higher realms of thought, it was tacitly understood that the privileges of friendship were revoked. At such moments it was as though the oracle of Delphi spoke. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... of the gods am I, sent forth From the ancient council of the Amphictyons That speaks its judgments in that holy town Of freedom, Delphi. And I follow close, With cries of vengeance, on the guilty tracks Of those false kinsmen of King Pelias, Who ruled Iolcos, ere ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... feast that is dedicated to Theseus, sacrifice a ram, giving this honor to his memory upon much juster grounds than to Silanio and Parrhasius, for making pictures and statues of Theseus. There being then a custom for the Grecian youth, upon their first coming to a man's estate, to go to Delphi and offer firstfruits of their hair to the god, Theseus also went thither, and a place there to this day is yet named Thesea, as it is said, from him. He clipped only the fore part of his head, as Homer says ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... say), where they were living under Mount Hymettus; whereupon the Pelasgians of Lemnos, in revenge, carried off a number of Athenian women, and afterward murdered them; as an expiation of which crime they were finally commanded by the oracle at Delphi to surrender that island to Miltiades and the Athenians. Herodotus repeatedly informs us that nearly the whole Ionian race were ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... think of ourselves is truly ennobling. I do not mean as the egotist thinks. But to think of our individual capacity and obligations. The Greeks had a motto over their temple at Delphi, it was 'Know Thyself.' To know ourselves is the beginning of wisdom. Young men, learn to know yourselves and your responsibility; but none of these is the subject ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... to his teachings a practical character founded upon the knowledge of man. He took for his point of departure man himself, and established (according to this idea) a morality with the motto of the temple of Delphi,—"Know thyself." This doctrine related more especially to ethics than to aesthetics—as later did that of Pierre Leroux—and it was far from being able to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... holidays the two masters made an abortive attempt to visit Italy, and at Easter there was talk of a cruise in the Aegean. Herbert actually went, and enjoyed Athens and Delphi. The Elliots paid a few visits together in England. They returned to Sawston about ten days before school opened, to find that Widdrington was again stopping with the Jacksons. Intercourse was painful, for the two families were scarcely on speaking terms; nor did the triumphant ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... during a whole cloudless, moonless night, in profound silence; and, if they saw a shooting star, it was understood to indicate that the kings of Sparta had disobeyed the gods, and their authority was, in consequence, suspended till they had been purified by an oracle from Delphi or Olympia. [W. H. S.] This statement rests on the authority of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Epidamnians found that no help could be expected from Corcyra, they were in a strait what to do next. So they sent to Delphi and inquired of the God whether they should deliver their city to the Corinthians and endeavour to obtain some assistance from their founders. The answer he gave them was to deliver the city and place themselves under Corinthian ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... I very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because a woman sat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because a woman wore the helmet and carried the shield ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Belestiche a foreign woman off the streets, although at Alexandria she has shrines and temples, with an inscription as Aphrodite Belestiche, which she owes to the king's love? And she who has in this very town[75] a temple and rites in common with Eros, and at Delphi stands in gold among kings and queens, by what dowry got she her lovers? But just as the lovers of Semiramis, Belestiche, and Phryne, became their prey unconsciously through their weakness and effeminacy, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... time, processes are carried on which may rise into consciousness and startle with their beauty or shame with their ugliness—does no suggestion come from it concerning its origin and destiny? Until they pass mid-life few men realize the terrible significance of the command of the oracle at Delphi, "Know Thyself." Who is not surprised every day at what he finds within himself? It sometimes seems as if two beings dwelt in every body, one in the region of consciousness, and one down below consciousness ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... somewhat melancholy lack-a-daisical looking personage, with his shirt collar thrown open, and his long curls theatrically arranged. 'All about Greece interests me. I always consider Greece my peculiar property. My best poems were written at Delphi. I travelled in Greece when I was young. ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... thongs around their hands and wrists, and pummel one another brutally, often indeed (if in a set contest) to the very risk of life. These men are obviously professional athletes who, after appearing with some success at the "Nemea," are in training for the impending "Pythia" at Delphi. A large crowd of youths of the less select kind follows and cheers them; but the better public opinion frowns on them. They are denounced by the philosophers. Their lives no less than their bodies ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... harpy legends, though they are full of the most curious interest; but I may confirm for you my interpretation of this one, and prove its importance in the Greek mind, by noting that Polygnotus painted these maidens, in his great religious series of paintings at Delphi, crowned with flowers, and playing at dice; and that Penelope remembers them in her last fit of despair, just before the return of Ulysses, and prays bitterly that she may be snatched away at once into nothingness by the Harpies, like Pandareos' daughters, rather than be ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Delphi, another consecrated city, was enriched with the contributions of all Greece, and was the seat of the Dorian religion. So rich were the shrines of its oracle that Nero carried away from it five hundred statues of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... became an exceedingly beautiful city, more richly adorned by the statues of foreign artists than by those made by natives. It is known that in the little island city of Rhodes there were more than 30,000 statues, in bronze and marble, nor did the Athenians possess less, while those of Olympus and Delphi were more numerous still, and those of Corinth were without number, all being most beautiful and of great price. Does not every one know how Nicomedes, king of Lycia, expended almost all the wealth of his people owing to his passion for a Venus by the hand of Praxiteles? Did not Attalus do ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... inconstant; and, for the very reason that in this war she had been as a favourable gale in all my affairs, I still expected some change and reflux of things. In one day I passed the Ionian Sea, and reached Corcyra from Brundisium; thence in five more I sacrificed at Delphi, and in other five days came to my forces in Macedonia, where, after I had finished the usual sacrifices for the purifying of the army, I entered on my duties, and in the space of fifteen days put an honourable period to the war. Still retaining ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... soldier-statesman who saw the way to safety, and grasped the central fact of the situation. This was Themistocles the Athenian, the chief man of that city, against which the first fury of the attack would be directed. No doubt it was he who inspired the prophetess of Delphi with her mysterious message that "the Athenians must make for themselves wooden walls," and he supplied the explanation of ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the filt'ring recesses of thought and of lore: Thus gifted, thou never canst sleep in the shade; If the stirring of genius, the music of fame, And the charm of thy cause have not power to persuade, Yet think how to freedom thou'rt pledged by thy name. Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree, Set apart for the fame and its service divine, All the branches that spring from the old Russell tree Are by liberty claim'd for ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Nothing to excess)—Ver. 61. "Ne quid nimis." This was one of the three sentences which were inscribed in golden letters in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The two others were "Know thyself," and "Misery is the consequence of debt and discord." Sosia seems from the short glimpse we have of him to have been a retailer of old saws and proverbs. He is unfortunately only a Protatic or introductory character, as we lose sight of him ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... claim to know everything, in Boston—but we do know where to find it. We have an excellent newspaper press, daily and weekly, and should either or both ever, by any chance, fail to know anything—past, present, or to come—we have a Monday Lectureship, beside which the Oracle of Delphi was a last ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... of Hera still followed Hercules, and the goddess sent upon him a madness. In this craze the hero did many unhappy deeds. For punishment and in expiation he condemned himself to exile, and at last he went to the great shrine of the god Apollo at Delphi to ask whither he should go and where settle. The Pythia, or priestess in the temple, desired him to settle at Tiryns, to serve as bondman to Eurystheus, who ruled at Mycenae as King, and to perform the great labours which Eurystheus ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... etc., and nearly as many of demi-gods, heroes, giants, etc., such as Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Trophonius, Geryon, Ulysses, Calchas, AEsculapius, Hercules, Pasiphae, Phryxus, etc. The most celebrated and most patronized of them all was the great oracle of Apollo, at Delphi. The "little fee" appears to have been the only universal characteristic of the proceedings for obtaining an answer from the god. Whether you got your reply in words spoken by the rattling of an old pot, by observing an ox's appetite, throwing ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... in the face. Everywhere he saved the territory of his friends from devastation, and reaped the fruits of the enemy's soil to such good effect that within two years he was able to dedicate as a tithe to the god at Delphi more than one hundred ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... very singular fragment of antiquity—the bodies of three serpents twisted into one pillar of brass. Their triple heads had once supported the golden tripod which, after the defeat of Xerxes, was consecrated in the temple of Delphi by the victorious Greeks. The beauty of the Hippodrome has been long since defaced by the rude hands of the Turkish conquerors; but, under the similar appellation of Atmeidan, it still serves as a place of exercise for their horses. From the throne whence the emperor viewed the Circensian ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... collections. At the end of the room stood now a huge archaic Nike, with outstretched peplum and soaring wings. To her left was the small figure, archaic also, of a charioteer, from the excavations at Delphi, amazingly full of life in spite of hieratic and traditional execution. But the most conspicuous thing of all was a mutilated Eros, by a late Rhodian artist—subtle, thievish, lovely, breathing an evil and daemonic charm. It stood opposite the Nike, 'on tiptoe for a flight.' And there was ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from the flowers and their languages, a new revelation rises round her on every side, she is taken dizzy at the first. Her swelling bosom overflows. The Sibyl of science has her tortures, like her of Cumae or of Delphi. The schoolmen find their fun in saying, "It is the wind and nought else that blows her out. Her lover, the Prince of the Air, fills her with dreams and delusions, with wind, with smoke, with emptiness." Foolish irony! So far from this being ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... centres of Hellas, and it was recognised as legitimate by the Oracle. Above all, the honour shown by the Oracle to Pindar, one of the chief representatives of the earlier thought, testifies to this. Hence there is nothing incredible in the assumption that Socrates attracted notice at Delphi as a defender of the old-fashioned religious views approved by the Oracle, precisely in virtue of his opposition to the ideas then ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... was lying abed in the Crawford House when the voice of Zonotrichia albicollis sent my thoughts thus astray, from Moosilauke to Delphi. That day and the two following were passed in roaming about the woods near the hotel. The pretty painted trillium was in blossom, as was also the dark purple species, and the hobble-bush showed its broad white cymes in all directions. Here and there was the modest little spring ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... Plato's Apology, the occasion of that was the answer received from the Delphic oracle by Chaerephon, whom we know from Aristophanes as one of the leading disciples of Socrates in the earlier part of his life. Chaerephon asked the god of Delphi whether there was any one wiser than Socrates, and this of course implies that Socrates had a reputation for 'wisdom' before his mission began. The oracle declared that there was no one wiser, and Plato makes ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Ganymede—an oracle, my Judah. A few lessons from my teacher of rhetoric hard by the Forum—I will give you a letter to him when you become wise enough to accept a suggestion which I am reminded to make you—a little practise of the art of mystery, and Delphi will receive you as Apollo himself. At the sound of your solemn voice, the Pythia will come down to you with her crown. Seriously, O my friend, in what am I not the Messala I went away? I once heard the greatest logician in the world. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... states, and everywhere around the Mediterranean, antiquity knew the hypnotizing effect of staring on polished metals and crystals. So in Egypt, so in Greece and Rome; and it has often been claimed that the priestesses of Delphi and the sibyls of the Romans were in states of hystero-hypnotic character. As to the therapeutic use, especially the Greek physicians applied hypnotic means. Excited patients were brought to repose by methods of stroking. The efforts to explain scientifically the ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... evermore serene And smile upon us with unclouded blue. Then may all men lay down their arms, and peace Through all the nations reign, and shut the gates That close the temple of the God of War. Be thou my help, to me e'en now divine! Let Delphi's steep her own Apollo guard, And Nysa keep her Bacchus, uninvoked. Rome is my subject and my ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... grottoes under the little round Temple; a wonderful mixture of wildness and art, a place, with its high air, its leaping waters and glimpses of distant plain, such as one would really wish for a sibyl, and might imagine for Delphi. An enchanted place with its flight and twitter of birds above the water. I should like to follow the Anio into ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... as an oyster. Do you think I would betray my friend's confidence—for nothing? I'm as silent as the oracle of Delphi." ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... no idea they were so human. It carries me back to the temple of Delphi. It is worthy of Cassandra of Ilion. I supposed all Indians were just savage Indians that hunted till their bellies were full, and slept ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... ways pious thought feels called to justify; but he is also the Saviour, to whom every one may appeal. He is the source of all wisdom; all revelations come from him. The other god who occupies a marked position is Apollo, the god of light and the prophet of his father Zeus. His oracle at Delphi was the most important in Greece; it was held to be the centre of the earth, and was a meeting-place for Greeks from every quarter. His priests exercised through the oracle a great influence on Greek life, and as their god required ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... their piety, the greatest gift that a God could confer on man. And the young men, after having feasted with their mother, fell asleep; and in the morning they were found dead. Trophonius and Agamedes are said to have put up the same petition, for they, having built a temple to Apollo at Delphi, offered supplications to the God, and desired of him some extraordinary reward for their care and labor, particularizing nothing, but asking for whatever was best for men. Accordingly, Apollo signified to them that ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... thence conclude that Socrates did not himself attain any definite conclusions, or reach any specific and valuable results. When, in reply to his friends who reported the answer of the oracle of Delphi, that "Socrates was the wisest of men," he said, "he supposed the oracle declared him wise because he knew nothing," he did not mean that true knowledge was unattainable, for his whole life had been spent in efforts to attain it. He simply indicates the disposition ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... figures of gods and daemons and demoniacal men, of the "azonic" and the "aquatic gods," daemons with fulgid eyes, and all the rest of the Platonic rhetoric, exalted a little under the African sun, sail before his eyes. The acolyte has mounted the tripod over the cave at Delphi; his heart dances, his sight is quickened. These guides speak of the gods with such depth and with such pictorial details, as if they had been bodily present at the Olympian feasts. The reader of these books makes new acquaintance with his own mind; new regions of thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... bodings, I moved slowly out of the cloisters; and, gaining my gondola, arrived, I know not how, at the flights of steps which lead to the Redenptore, a structure so simple and elegant, that I thought myself entering an antique temple, and looked about for the statue of the God of Delphi, or some other graceful divinity. A huge crucifix of bronze soon brought me to ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... coetu 385 Caelicolae nondum spreta pietate solebant. Saepe pater divom templo in fulgente residens, Annua cum festis venissent sacra diebus, Conspexit terra centum procumbere tauros. Saepe vagus Liber Parnasi vertice summo 390 Thyiadas effusis euhantes crinibus egit. * * * * Cum Delphi tota certatim ex urbe ruentes Acciperent laeti divom fumantibus aris. Saepe in letifero belli certamine Mavors Aut rapidi Tritonis era aut Rhamnusia virgo 395 Armatas hominumst praesens hortata catervas. Sed ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... and disciples of the Lacedaemonian erudition. Their wisdom was a thing of this kind, viz. short sentences uttered by each, and worthy to be remembered. These men, assembling together, consecrated to Apollo the first fruits of their wisdom; writing in the Temple of Apollo, at Delphi, those sentences which are celebrated by all men, viz. Know thyself! and Nothing too much! But on what account do I mention these things? To show that the mode of philosophy among the ancients was a certain ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 3335:6:8. A thousand minae, accordingly, is said by Plutarch, in another place, to have been his didactron, or usual price of teaching. Many other eminent teachers in those times appear to have acquired great fortunes. Georgias made a present to the temple of Delphi of his own statue in solid gold. We must not, I presume, suppose that it was as large as the life. His way of living, as well as that of Hippias and Protagoras, two other eminent teachers of those times, is represented by Plato as splendid, even to ostentation. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... were so overjoyed at that victory and the end of the war that they made from the money paid to ransom captives, a golden statue, and sent it to Apollo at Delphi as a thank-offering, and gave a magnificent share of the booty to their allies, and even sent many presents to Hiero the king of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... the earth to be flat and circular, their own country occupying the middle of it, the central point being either Mount Olympus, the abode of the gods, or Delphi, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... had worshipped. Zeus, father of the Gods, the twin-brothers, Apollo in his glorious shrine at Delphi, Hermes who is the conductor of enterprises: the dear son of the house is harnessed to the car of calamity, moderate its pace—and may Murder cease to breed new Murder. But the Avenger, like Perseus, must not look on the deed as he does it; as she ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... devotion to one's profession. They will be able, they think, to discourse easily and, God help us, picturesquely about what they have seen, to intersperse a Thucydides lesson with local colour, and to describe the site of the temple of Delphi to boys beginning the Eumenides. It is very right and proper, no doubt, but it produces in me a species of mental nausea to think of the conditions under which these impressions will be absorbed. The arrangements ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Scythian herself,—butchering strangers and eating them! Apollo, too, who pretends to be so clever, with his bow and his lyre and his medicine and his prophecies; those oracle-shops that he has opened at Delphi, and Clarus, and Dindyma, are a cheat; he takes good care to be on the safe side by giving ambiguous answers that no one can understand, and makes money out of it, for there are plenty of fools who like being imposed upon,—but sensible people know well enough that ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of Zeus, but he was born into the family of a mortal king. When he was still a youth, being overwhelmed by a madness sent upon him by one of the goddesses, he slew the children of his brother Iphicles. Then, coming to know what he had done, sleep and rest went from him: he went to Delphi, to the shrine of Apollo, to ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Delphi, where the Amphictyonic Council met, became the most famous temple in Greece. Here the oracle of Apollo gave answers to those who came to consult that divinity. The priests who managed the temple kept themselves well informed in regard to occurrences ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 'twixt earth and heaven. When we want to go to Delphi, we ask the Boeotians(1) for leave of passage; in the same way, when men sacrifice to the gods, unless the latter pay you tribute, you exercise the right of every nation towards strangers and don't allow the smoke of the sacrifices to pass ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... that the scriptures were literal histories, and the incarnate Saviours real personages, the ancient Astrologers caused tombs to be erected in which it was claimed they were buried. Such sepulchres were erected to Hercules at Cadiz, to Apollo at Delphi, and to other Saviours at many other places, to which their respective votaries were induced to perform pilgrimages. In Egypt the pyramids were built, partly for astronomical purposes, and partly as tombs for Saviours, claimed to have been kings, who had once ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... it must be handled with a certain reverence. A thing or a thought becomes hallowed if it has been long and strongly believed in, for veneration, after a time, seems to get into the thing venerated. Look at Delphi—fraud of frauds, yet sanctified by centuries of hope and fear and faith. If greater knowledge shows Christianity to have been founded upon error, still greater knowledge shows that it ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... university, but its professors were for the most part sophists or rhetoricians, beating over again the old straws of philosophies which had once possessed a living meaning and exercised a living force. Athens herself had never properly recovered from the migration of learning to Alexandria. Delphi, the great oracular seat of the Greek world, had also declined in importance, although it could still boast of an imposing array of buildings and memorials. The centre of commerce and of official life, a Roman colony in the midst of Greece, a cosmopolitan ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... made known to men in different ways—by dreams, by the flight of birds, or by a direct message from Olympus. Very often it was learned by consulting seers, augurs or soothsayers. These were persons believed to have the power of prophecy. There was a famous temple of Apollo at Delphi, in Greece, where a priestess called Pyth'i-a gave answers, or oracles, to those who came to consult her. The name oracle was also applied to the place where such answers were received. There were a great many oracles in ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... the Middle Ages when witches were first heard of, it has nearly always been women who were accused. Women for the most part were the priests in the old days: it was a woman to whom Apollo at Delphi breathed his oracles. In all times it has been women who plucked herbs and concocted drinks of healing and refreshment. So it was very easy to imagine that they experimented with poisons and herbs of magic ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... thousands of years ago, and probably it was one of the weapons, if not the chief instrument of operation, of the magi mentioned in the Bible and of the "wise men" of Babylon and Egypt. "Laying on of hands" must have been a form of mesmerism, and Greek oracles of Delphi and other places seem to have been delivered by priests or priestesses who went into trances of self-induced hypnotism. It is suspected that the fakirs of India who make trees grow from dry twigs in a few minutes, or transform a rod into a serpent (as Aaron did in Bible history), operate ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... Tarquin's reign was disturbed by a dreadful plague, which suddenly broke out in Rome, and raged with great violence. It made such an impression upon his mind, that he resolved to send his sons, Titus and Arun, to consult the oracle of Delphi upon the cause of this contagion, and how they might effect its cure. The princes prepared magnificent presents for Apollo. Junius Brutus, the pretended idiot, was to accompany them for their amusement. He was the youngest ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... manner of death of the mainly pleasant old country poet, still more the supposed cause of it—but it may not be true. The Oracle at Delphi, which it seems he consulted after his triumph at Chalkis, warned him that he would come by his end in the grove of Nemean Zeus. He took pains, therefore, to avoid Nemea in his travels, and chose to stay for a while at OEnoe ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Macaria's self-sacrifices was perpetuated by the name of a spring of water on the plain of Marathon, the spring Macaria. The Heracleidae then endeavoured to effect their return to Peloponnesus. Hyllus, the eldest of them, inquired of the oracle at Delphi respecting their return; he was told to return by the narrow passage and in the third harvest. Accordingly, in the third year from that time Hyllus led an army to the Isthmus of Corinth; but there he was encountered by an army of Achaians and Arcadians, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... complied with the custom of his country by journeying to Delphi and offering the first-fruits of his hair, then cut for the first time. This first cutting of the hair was always an occasion of solemnity among the Greeks, the hair being dedicated to some god. It will be remembered that Homer speaks of this in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... also stories of deformity of feature and a ready ribaldry of tongue: stories which (as the celebrated Cardinal said) explain, though they do not excuse, his having been hurled over a high precipice at Delphi. It is for those who read the Fables to judge whether he was really thrown over the cliff for being ugly and offensive, or rather for being highly moral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the general legend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgotten in our ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Asia, and Africa: its name is inscribed with terror in the annals of almost every people. It burned Rome: it conquered Macedonia from the veteran phalanxes of Alexander, forced Thermopylae, and pillaged Delphi: afterwards it planted its tents on the ruins of ancient Troy, in the public places of Miletus, on the banks of the Sangarius, and on those of the Nile: it besieged Carthage, threatened Memphis, reckoned among its tributaries the most powerful monarchs of the East: on two occasions it founded in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... the Emperor of Russia, that her statue is represented as executed by Julio Romano, an Italian painter of the 16th century, that a puritan sings psalms to hornpipes, and, to crown all, that messengers are sent to consult the oracle of Apollo, at Delphi, which is represented as an island! All this jumble, this gallimaufry, I say, does not impair the spiritual worth of the play. As an Art-product, it invites a rectified attitude toward the True ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and commission, Delphi. E. J. Darby and W. H. Chase compose the firm; seem to be men of good character and business capacity. They are thought to be worth ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... the best works of art from Greece to Rome to adorn his villas; Nero went so far as to send his agents to bring even the images of the deities from the most sacred temples, together with the offerings made to them, for the decoration of his Golden House; it is said that from Delphi alone he received five hundred ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... inmost recess. Shakespeare (Cor. iii. l. 123) speaks of the 'navel of the state'; and in Greek Calypso's island was 'the navel of the sea,' while Apollo's temple at Delphi was 'the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... "mysteries." They respected the gods rather than feared them, and they felt that the gods would do them no harm unless they themselves first sinned against them or their own fellow-men, and the oracles of Delphi were no more terrifying to them than the coming of the word of God was to the prophets of Israel. They were accustomed to these messages, which were almost every-day affairs. It was all a part of that marvellous poise of nature which made the every-day mortal Greek almost as calm as ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... bribes, she might authorize and kindle the same aspiring views in other great officers. Thus, in the new condition of the Roman power, there was a perpetual peril, lest an oracle, so potent as that of Delphi, should absolutely create rebellions, by first suggesting hopes to men in high commands. Even as it was, all treasonable assumptions of the purple, for many generations, commenced in the hopes inspired by auguries, prophecies, or sortileges. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... pitched out of the window, declaring them fit only for a cemetery, and that had settled the matter for a generation: the evidence gathered by lesser workers could avail nothing against the decision rendered at the Delphi of Science. But no ban, scientific or canonical, can longer resist the germinative power of a fact, and so now, after three decades of suppression, the truth which Cuvier had buried beneath the weight of his ridicule burst its bonds, and fossil man stood revealed, if not as a flesh-and-blood, at ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... justified, perhaps, in becoming a physician; whether a woman physician can remain all that you say—ah! that is the question! Man alive, am I Phoebus Apollo, that I should know the answers to all the questions? I wish I could find the way to Delphi myself. ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... still evidently flow at the same places as in the times of Hellenic antiquity. The spring of Erasinos, two hours' journey to the south of Argos, on the declivity of Chaon, is mentioned by Herodotus. At Delphi we still see Cassotis (now the springs of St. Nicholas) rising south of the Lesche, and flowing beneath the Temple of Apollo; Castalia, at the foot of Phaedriadae; Pirene, near Acro-Corinth; and the hot baths ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... who, like the Pythia in Apollo's temple at Delphi, were possessed with a spirit of divination or prophecy. The barbarous Latin form of the word was "Pythonissa" or "Phitonissa." See note 9 to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... and prudently concealed the matter from Theseus. But Solon, in despair, having leaped into a river and drowned himself, Theseus, then sensible of the cause, and the young man's passion, lamented his fate, and in his sorrow recollected an order of the priestess, which he had formerly received at Delphi; that when, in some foreign country, he should labour under the greatest affliction, he should build a city there, and leave some of his followers to govern it. Hence, he called the city which he built Pythopolis, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... not make up his mind as to who was right. "This is a very important question," he said. "We must send to Delphi [Footnote: Delphi (pro. del'fi).] and ask the oracle whether the tripod shall be given to the fishermen or to the merchant. Leave the tripod in my care ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... viii, 2, 3, 6, ed. Frazer. Cp. also the animal names applied to priests and priestesses, e.g. the King-bees of Ephesus; the Bee-priestesses of Demeter, of Delphi, of Proserpine, and of the Great Mother; the Doves of Dodona; the Bears in the sacred dance of Artemis; the Bulls at the feast of Poseidon at Ephesus; the Wolves ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... sculptor, and many another immortal artist; and somewhere among the free citizens, perhaps beside his father Sophroniscus the sculptor, a short, square, pug- nosed boy of ten years old, looking at it all with strange eyes—"who will be one day," so said the Pythoness at Delphi, "the wisest man in Greece"—sage, metaphysician, humorist, warrior, patriot, martyr—for his ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... explaining to you the early thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be the tracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only, but in sculpture, and on the portal of the Temple of Delphi itself, you have the "[Greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisi giganton]," and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight from the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, "[Greek: leusso Pallad' eman theon]," my own goddess. All our work, I repeat, will be nothing ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Bruttium, together with the consul. The games of Scipio were then celebrated in the presence of a great number of persons, and with the approbation of the spectators. The deputies, Marcus Pomponius Matho and Quintus Catius, sent to Delphi to convey a present out of the spoils taken from Hasdrubal, carried with them a golden crown of two hundred pounds' weight, and representations of the spoils made out of a thousand pounds' weight of silver. Scipio, though he could ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... to the foregoing distinctions between the Satanic and the holy prophets, I may add the following—that almost all the diviners amongst the heathen were women. For instance, Cassandra, the Pythia in Delphi, Triton and Peristhaea in Dodona, the Sybils, the Velleda of Tacitus, the Mandragoras, and Druidesses, the witches of the Reformation age; and in fine, the modern somnambules are all women too. But throughout the whole Bible we find that the prophetic power was exclusively conferred ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... sort out the bleeding remnants of it from among the by-ways and back alleys of Jailpore. And the chaplain married him and Jane Emmett out of hand. He sent her off at once with her former mistress to the coast, and marched off with his regiment to Delphi. And at Delphi his name was ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... hast! It is owing to thy care, thou tenderest child, that my grave was not dug long years ago, in some valley, or on some hillside, that lies far, far behind us. It is enough. Thou shalt wander no more on this hopeless search. But when thou hast laid thy mother in the earth, then go, my son, to Delphi, and inquire of the oracle what thou shalt ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Square, around whose mane he had hung a votive wreath of water-lilies, across whose unresponsive neck the Lord Mayor had wound his arms in supplication, imploring it that it might speak, and give a sign like the Oracle in Delphi. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... emotion must have been felt, under this or that influence of external inhibition, by everyone who is alive enough to like swimming, and Dante, and Weber and Fields, and Filipino Lippi, and the view of the valley underneath the sacred stones of Delphi. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... traditions, proverbs,—all perished,—which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard speak with authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi[580] whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and rely on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Panathenaic ship came to rest.[124] In Ion, 285, Euripides makes it clear that, from the wall near the Pythium, the watchers looked toward Harma for that lightning which was the signal for the sending of the offering to Delphi. This passage would have no meaning if referred to lightning to be seen by Page 61 looking toward Harma from any position near the existing Olympieum; for the rocks referred to by Euripides are to the northwest, and so could not be visible ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... of whose garments (for they wore the costly dress of their native city Miletus), contrasted strongly with the plain and unadorned robe of Phryxus, the deputy commissioned to collect money for the temple of Apollo at Delphi, with whom they were in earnest conversation. Ten years before, the ancient temple had been consumed by fire; and at this time efforts were being made to build another, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when the gold and silver workers stirred up strife because the rag-pickers would come into the union, did not the kurios point out that, under an autocracy of masters they themselves might be picking rags on the morrow? But the actors and fun-makers have not yet wrangled. To-night a man from Delphi maketh a speech when this tablet is erected," and he turned out the face of a marble slab which leaned against the wall. "With great pride do these actors and musicians and dancers claim Delphi which they say still ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... that it extended to men usually supposed to be most pious and exemplary in their lives: Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals and the Pope himself, though celibats and holders of ecclesiastical dignities, did not arrive at Delphi without touching at Cythera: indirect evidence is afforded of this by the treatises which physicians, shortly after the commencement of the next century, wrote on the disease then called "Morbus Gallicus," when Gaspard ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the Greeks had the letters EI, thou art, engraven on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, which is the second person of Eimi, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... thee. Why should I leave the better, choose the worse? That were sheer madness, and I am not mad. No such ambition ever tempted me, Nor would I have a share in such intrigue. And if thou doubt me, first to Delphi go, There ascertain if my report was true Of the god's answer; next investigate If with the seer I plotted or conspired, And if it prove so, sentence me to death, Not by thy voice alone, but mine and thine. But O condemn me not, ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... she took possession of me, body and soul. I married her. I would just as willingly have jumped into the Seine with her if she had preferred it. For three months we lived together while I finished the picture which I called the Priestess of Delphi, painted from my drawings of her in her agony. The picture made a great noise in Paris, and brought me some new friends, among the rest one who, I think, really saved me from Charenton. Hazard called at my studio just as my troubles were beginning to tear me to pieces. ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... ascendency; and the oracles, delivered from its dark and mysterious shrine, were held in no less repute among the natives of Tavantinsuyu, (or "the four quarters of the world," as Peru under the Incas was called,) than the oracles of Delphi obtained among the Greeks. Pilgrimages were made to the hallowed spot from the most distant regions, and the city of Pachacamac became among the Peruvians what Mecca was among the Mahometans, or Cholula with the people of Anahuac. The shrine of the deity, enriched by the tributes of the pilgrims, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... to speak somewhat arrogantly. For the account which I am going to give you is not my own; but I shall refer to an authority whom you will deem worthy of credit. For I shall adduce to you the god at Delphi as a witness of my wisdom, if I have any, and of what it is. You doubtless know Chaerepho: he was my associate from youth, and the associate of most of you; he accompanied you in your late exile, and returned with ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... the art in Grecian mythology are the Muses. These were not always nine in number. Originally, at Mount Helicon, in B[oe]otia, three were worshipped,—Melete (meditation), Mneme (memory), and Aoide (song). Three Muses were also recognized at Delphi and Sicyon. Four are mentioned as daughters of Jupiter and Plusia, while some accounts speak of seven Muses, daughters of Pierus. Eight was the number known in Athens, until finally the Thracian worship of nine spread over ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson |
