"Bacchical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had placed her lantern to her satisfaction upon its Bacchic pedestal, she slipped from the room as quietly as she had entered it, answering as she went, with a glance of disdain, the passion of admiration that glowed in the eyes and twitched in the fingers of Norman ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the sunshine, where, as it grew warm, It crumbled all away, and on the ground Lay scattered, as when wood is being sawn We see the dust fall from the biting saw. So did it look; and after, from the earth Where it had lain, a clotted foam broke forth, As when in mellow Autumn the rich juice Of Bacchic vine is spilled upon the ground. My mind distraught knows not which way to turn, But something dreadful have I surely done. How should the Centaur, in his agony, Have sought to serve her that had caused his death? He could not. To avenge him on the hand That sped the ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... the walls is divided into larger compartments by candelabra supporting little globes. In each compartment are eight small pictures, representing the heads and busts of Bacchic personages, in a very good state of preservation. On the left is Bacchus, crowned with ivy, his head covered with the mitra, a sort of veil of fine texture which descends upon his left shoulder. This ornament, as well as the cast of his features, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... And warnings of the wise, Contemned foreclosures of surprise? The banners play, the bugles call, The air is blue and prodigal. No berrying party, pleasure-wooed, No picnic party in the May, Ever went less loth than they Into that leafy neighborhood. In Bacchic glee they file toward Fate, Moloch's uninitiate; Expectancy, and glad surmise Of battle's unknown mysteries. All they feel is this: 't is glory, A rapture sharp, though transitory, Yet lasting in belaureled ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... a little, not comprehending. "But you prefer," he continued, "like most ladies, the modern Bacchic dance, the whirl, the round, though what the old Puritans call promiscuous dancing of men and women together ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... happened to find herself, all she had to do was to imagine to herself lights, a ball-room, the swift whirling to the sounds of music—and her soul went fairly aflame, her eyes darkened strangely, a smile hovered over her lips, something gracefully-bacchic was disseminated all over her body. On arriving at home, Varvara Pavlovna sprang lightly from the carriage,—only fashionable lionesses know how to spring out in that way,—turned to Gedeonovsky, and suddenly burst into a ringing laugh, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... religions. The Mysteries of Egypt were the glory of that ancient land, and the noblest sons of Greece, such as Plato, went to Sais and to Thebes to be initiated by Egyptian Teachers of Wisdom. The Mithraic Mysteries of the Persians, the Orphic and Bacchic Mysteries and the later Eleusinian semi-Mysteries of the Greeks, the Mysteries of Samothrace, Scythia, Chaldea, are familiar in name, at least, as household words. Even in the extremely diluted form of the Eleusinian Mysteries, their ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... the morals of the French noblesse in the days of Louis Quinze. What could a corrupt tree bring forth, but corrupt fruit? If some of the early lodges, like those of "La Felicite" and "L'Ancre," to which women were admitted, resembled not a little the Bacchic mysteries of old Rome, and like them called for the interference of the police, still no great reform was to be expected, when those Sovereign Masonic Princes, the "Emperors of the East and West," quarrelled—knights of the East ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... the two principal colours may be employed effectively, I may cite the Bacchic air, "O vin, dissipe la tristesse," and the pensive monologue, "Etre, ou ne pas etre," both from the opera Hamlet, by Ambroise Thomas. The forced, unnatural quality of the first calls for the use of a clear, open, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... the Bacchic phraseology of the day, was "a Canary-bird." "He would (says Aubrey) many times exceed in drink; canary was his beloved liquor; then he would tumble home to bed; and when he had thoroughly ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin, too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most elaborate, often ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers, when they are under the influence of Dionysus, but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves tell us; ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... his treatment of his subjects, how intelligible to every one of his audience, may be judged from the emotion of the house whenever anything is represented that calls for sorrow or compassion. The Bacchic form of Pantomime, which is particularly popular in Ionia and Pontus, in spite of its being confined to satyric subjects has taken such possession of those peoples, that, when the Pantomime season comes round in each city, they leave all else and sit ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... spontaneous and fresh. Anacreon pales before the brilliancy of the Archipoeta when wine is in his veins, and the fountain of the Bacchic chant swells with gushes of strongly emphasised bold double rhymes, each throbbing like a man's firm stroke upon the strings of lyres. A fine audacity breathes through the praises of the wine-god, sometimes rising to lyric ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... to go to the outposts at Issy. The departure was what all departures of marching battalions must fatally be—copious and multiplied libations between parting friends, paternal handshakings in cabarets, patriotic and bacchic songs, loose and indecent choruses—in a word, the picturesque exhibition of all that arsenal of gaiety and courage which is the appanage of an ancient Gallic race. The old troopers, who pretend to govern us by the sword, do not approve of this joyous mode of regarding ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... urged to the utmost speed; the national predilection exhibiting itself crudely in this locality. Towards nightfall the pleasure-seekers returned, driving with the heightened energy attributable to Bacchic inspiration, singing, shouting, exchanging racy banter with pedestrians. So the hours dragged wearily on, wheezed out, one after one, by the clock on the stairs. Hood was at no time fertile in topics of conversation; ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... LIKENESS OF A WINGED CHILD.] This is my torch-bearer; Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing On eyes from which he kindled it anew 150 With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine, For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward, And guide this company beyond the peak Of Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted mountain, And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers, 155 Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying, And up the green ravine, across the vale, Beside the windless and crystalline pool, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... should certainly have used it if the earl had tried to treat me like the others, and as he had treated poor Poinsinet. I never understood how it was that he respected me, for he was quite drunk, and in a kind of Bacchic fury. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... running, the walking, the driving, the fasting, the shouting, the religious exaltation, the want of sleep, the eating and drinking, the fireworks and the jollity of the festa, many of them are drunk. Joe says the festa is a continuation of some Bacchic festival, and this is more than likely, just as it is more than likely that the Bacchic festival was a continuation of some earlier one. He wants S. Alfio to be a transformation of Bacchus, just as Bacchus was a transformation of Dionysus and Dionysus of some earlier ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... crazy prophetess. It is significant of the ossification of the Romano-Hellenic religion as well as of the increased craving of the multitude after stronger religious stimulants, that superstition no longer, as in the Bacchic mysteries, associates itself with the national religion; even the Etruscan mysticism is already left behind; the worships matured in the sultry regions of the east appear throughout in the foremost rank. The ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of comparing to those of a gazelle? They were sunk, and the dark shadows that encircled them were a shock to his artistic eye. These were the eyes of a girl who had raved like a maenad the night through. Had she not slept in her quiet little room; had she been rushing with Alexander in the wild Bacchic rout; or had something dreadful happened ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with wine before he leaves the Valtelline, to cheer him on the homeward journey. You raise it in both hands, and when the bung has been removed, allow the liquor to flow stream-wise down your throat. It was a most extraordinary Bacchic procession—a pomp which, though undreamed of on the banks of the Ilissus, proclaimed the deity of Dionysos in authentic fashion. Struggling horses, grappling at the ice-bound floor with sharp-spiked shoes; huge, hoarse drivers, some clad in sheepskins from Italian valleys, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... empnoos], and as one full of sense is called [Greek: emphron], so the name enthusiasm is given to the commotion of the soul caused by some Divine agency.[102] Thus there is the prophetic enthusiasm which proceeds from Apollo, and the Bacchic enthusiasm which comes from Dionysus, to which Sophocles alludes where he says, 'Dance with the Corybantes;' for the rites of Cybele and Pan have great affinities to the orgies of Bacchus. And the third madness proceeds from the Muses, and possesses an impressionable ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... after a fashion, the pictures, were equally perfect embroideries, portraying in silk and fine linen the stories of Thebes, the kingly house of Argos, and many another myth of fame. The pillars of the room represented palm trees and Bacchic thyrsi; skins of wild beasts were fastened high up to the walls; and everywhere was the sheen of silver and gold, the splendour of scarlet and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... were found, with ruined baths, and mosaics and frescoes, with various pieces of sculpture, some perfect and of most excellent style. There is also a sarcophagus with bas-relief of a Bacchic procession, remarkably fine. The government has bought all for the Museum, and intends spending a large sum in building a basilica over the remains of the old one, in honor of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the inaugurator, whereas Timaeus declared that the fashion of making favourites of boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii. 10), attributing it to Minos. Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c. 80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian. But the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather than an archaeologist and he tripped in the following passage (i. c. 135), "As soon as they (the Persians) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... business to stimulate these unthrifty instincts, and to fan the welcome sparks of natural idleness; and so successfully that at times there seemed to have entered with him into that gloomy place a certain Bacchic influence, which now and again would prompt his comrades to such daring clutches of animated release, that the spirit of it even pervaded the penetralia of the senior partner's office, with the result that some ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... let me see.... A temporary sedative you require To bridge the dangerous moment. I suggest A little course that old Saint Anthony, Epicure though he was, would grant as rare And finely chosen: careless days and nights— Delicious gayeties—the Bacchic bowl— Exquisite company from whom some two Or three, with golden or with auburn hair, A man of taste might choose to solace him In sunlight or in starlight—while the lure Of subtle secrets in those yielding breasts Spice the ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... the hill. And once the red-cheeked Italian lads who were carrying loaded baskets down toward the vineyard gates burst into responsive singing that made her think that she had found, on the Roman hills, some remnant of the old Bacchic music, of the alternate strains that marked the festival of the god of wine. It was something ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... queen that she is, and then running like mad for me to catch her, with laughter, abandon, carolling railleries, and the levity of the wild ass's colt on the hills, entangling her loose-flung hair with Bacchic tendril and blossom, and drinking, in the passage through Cully, more wine, I thought, than was good: and the flaming darts of lightning that shot and shocked me that day, and the inner secret gleams and revelations of Beauty which I had, and the pangs of white-hot honey ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... excitements of the brain show themselves in terrible pictures. Not unfrequently they were carried to the pitch of raving mania, reminding one of the worst forms of the Berserker fury of the Scandinavians, or the Bacchic rage of Greece. The enthusiast, maddened with the fancies of a disordered intellect, would start forth from his seclusion in an access of demoniac frenzy. Then woe to the dog, the child, the slave, or the woman who ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... a wider view of music than Plato and admitted a greater variety of uses for it. He was less anxious to exclude those uses which were not strictly ethical. He disapproved, indeed, of the Phrygian harmony as the expression of Bacchic excitement. He accepts, however, the function of music as a katharsis of emotion, a notion which is said to have originated with the Pythagoreans. (For a discussion of Aristotle's views on music, see W.L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, vol. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... have told, wrought on the pavement of the oecus a superb lion foreshortened—much worn away, indeed, but marvellous for vigor and boldness. In the triclinium another mosaic represented Acratus, the Bacchic genius, astride of a panther; lastly the piece in the exaedra, the finest that exists, is counted among the most precious specimens of ancient art. It is the famous battle of Arbelles or of Issus. A squadron of Greeks, already victorious, is rushing ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier |
