"Cerberus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... triumphantly past the silenced Cerberus of the Sound with flashing searchlights, blazing rockets, and jubilant salvos of blank cartridge in honour of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... at the Northampton Sessions, for keeping dogs unconfined; where said farmer was not only fined five pounds and reprimanded by the magistrates, but sentenced to three months' imprisonment. The effect was wonderful, and the reign of Cerberus ceased in the land.'—'That accounts,' said Lord Spencer, 'for what has puzzled me and Althorp for many years. We never failed to attend the sessions at Northampton, and we never could find out how we had ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... genial artist to return to the bosom of his wife and family—not, however, without leaving a hostage behind him. The sketch—the guilty sketch—the cause of all his troubles, was detained. In vain the harassed artist explained to his grim Cerberus that the work was wanted for the next week's issue of Punch, and although as a matter of fact it duly appeared at the appointed time, Mr. Sambourne had to trust to his memory instead of to the courtesy and common sense of Burlington House for the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... vienent de la tiere des Turs Et. cccc. m. hommes amenerent u plus, Il en jurent la mer dont sire est Neptunus Et le porte d'infier que garde Cerberus Que l'orguel d'Alixandre torneront a reues Por cou les enclot puis es estres desus. Dusc' al tans Antecrist n'en istera ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... old woman. I wondered what his first look would say to me, what the first word from his lips would portend? It seemed as if I were going in there like one who sought some hidden treasure, knowing which door it lay behind but stricken with fear lest some unseen Cerberus might be crouching in wait for the rash seeker after happiness. Oh! Aunt Jennie! The tenseness of that moment! The feeling that, like the Snowbird a few days ago, I was moving through a ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... blankets. It seemed to me we should never pass them, but we walked fast, and reached our door in safety. Here we thundered in vain. The porter was asleep, and for nearly ten minutes we heard voices within, male and female, ineffectually endeavouring to persuade the heavy-headed Cerberus to relinquish his keys. It would have been a choice moment for our friends, had any of them wished to accost us; but either they had not observed us, or perhaps they thought that C—-n walking so late must have ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... resembling much Their former daily actions; numbers groan In punishments severe. Here Juno came, Braving the region's horrors, from her throne Celestial,—so did ire and hatred goad Her bosom with their stings! Sacred she press'd The groaning threshold,—instant as she stepp'd, Fierce Cerberus his triple head uprais'd, And howl'd with triple throat. The goddess calls The night-born sisters, fierce, implacable: Before the close-barr'd adamantine gates They sit; their tresses twisting round with snakes. The queen through clouds of midnight gloom they see, And ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... "let us see what they are made of; are either of you known? for Cerberus, who keeps the door, is d——d particular, in consequence of some rows they have recently had, and the devil is careful to pick ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... stretch forth their nails to detain the souls; the Furies in despair twist the serpents in their locks; and Cerberus, fastened by thee with a chain, has a rattling in the throat, while he ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... by Bushnell to destroy the British frigate "Cerberus," lying at anchor off the Connecticut coast. A torpedo, with the usual percussion apparatus, was drawn along the side of the frigate by a long line, but fouled with a schooner lying astern. The explosion occurred ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the damnation of the world. At each side of her an adamant parent held her rigidly to the bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her neck, but she dared not move. She lowered her eyes before the congregation—a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through which her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned her with beneficent cruelty, as steel ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Styx, past the dread Cerberus, Aeneas and the Sibyl went, through the abode of babes and those who died for deeds they did not do, and into the mourning fields, where the disappointed in love were hedged in with myrtle sprays. Here Aeneas descried Dido dimly through the clouds, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... knows where, over the country,—and then wrote to Lady Ellinor to come to her. It is but a hearty laugh at our expense, and Mrs. Grundy is content. If you don't want her to pity or backbite, let her laugh. She is a she-Cerberus,—she wants to eat you; well stop ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... legal Cerberus exhibited all three of his heads at once. One could keep faith with Miss Mayfield, one could see her "onct in a wile," and one could drink at Jeff's expense. Innocent Jeff saw only generosity and kindness in the man ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... messages to Annie, but brought sometimes little ones from her to me, and he would tell me little secret things that he had overheard her say that made me throb with joy and swear at him for repeating his mistress' conversation. But best of all, Jube was a perfect Cerberus, and no one on earth could have been more effective in keeping away or deluding the other young fellows who visited the Dalys. He would tell me of it afterwards, chuckling softly to himself. 'An,' ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... tis calmest, is most dangerous! Not any wrinkle creaming in their faces, 315 When in their hearts are Scylla and Caribdis, Which still are hid in dark and standing foggs, Where never day shines, nothing ever growes But weeds and poysons that no states-man knowes; Nor Cerberus ever saw the damned nookes 320 Hid with the veiles of womens vertuous lookes. But what a cloud of sulphur have I drawne Up to my bosome in this dangerous secret! Which if my hast with any spark should light Ere D'Ambois ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... said, "that when I embarked at the time of the heavy rains that did so much damage in the old days, there weren't any dogs like that fellow Cerberus about. If I'd had to feed a lot of three-headed beasts like him the Ark would have run short of provisions ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... Cerberus three-bodied! and That Cerberus of music! Such rattle with their nine-in-hand! O, Cerbere, an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... so designated from not speaking. It consists of three bodies, carries eighteen inside, and is not unfrequently drawn by nine horses. A cavalry charge, therefore, could scarcely make more noise. Hence, and from the other circumstance, its association in the second stanza with the triune sonorous Cerberus. A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... exquisite wardrobe and jewellery, a service of gold plate, and a number of unpaid bills, which Madam flatly refused to take upon herself, and defied the unhappy tradesmen to impose upon Rhoda. She did, however, keep the plate and jewels; and by way of a sop to Cerberus, allowed the "beggarly craftsmen," whom she so heartily despised, to sell and divide the ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... one. I hope to goodness she won't be gone from Wenham before it's finished and I can send her a presentation copy! Everything was green and white in the tea-house, except the dear little things to be sold there: weather-cocks, and door-stops, and old china. We bought specimens of these as sops to Cerberus—I mean, as presents for Aunt Mary—and when there was no longer a pretext for lingering we crept reluctantly ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... "And Cerberus, whose many mouthes doo bay, 345 And barke out flames, as if on fire he fed, Adowne whose necke, in terrible array, Ten thousand snakes, cralling about his hed, Doo hang in heapes, that horribly affray, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... recommendation. It is probable, that the most malignant of these persecutors might be somewhat softened, and prevailed on, for a short time, to remit their fury. Having for this purpose considered many expedients, I find in the records of ancient times, that Argus was lulled by music, and Cerberus quieted with a sop; and am, therefore, inclined to believe that modern critics, who, if they have not the eyes, have the watchfulness of Argus, and can bark as loud as Cerberus, though, perhaps, they cannot bite with equal force, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the first sop to Cerberus after the directors had concluded a contract with Mr. Abbey, leasing the house to him a second time and substituting opera in Italian and French for opera in German. The public had begun to speak its mind, not ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... been contented in her underground kingdom, where she ruled with Pluto. It was supposed to be below the volcanic grounds in southern Italy, near Lake Avernus. The entrance to it was guarded by a three-headed dog, named Cerberus, and the way to it was barred by the River Styx. Every evening Mercury brought all the spirits of the people who had died during the day to the shore of the Styx, and if their funeral rites had been properly performed, and ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... world. For instance, at Heraclea in Pontus there was a famous [Greek: psychomanteion], or place where the souls of the dead could be conjured up and consulted, as Hercules was believed to have dragged Cerberus up to earth here. Other places supposed to be connected with this myth had a similar legend attached to them, as also did all places where Pluto was thought to have carried off Persephone. Thus we hear of entrances to ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... author of this character, which was printed again in 1681, and in 1704 with the following title, "The Assembly-man. Written in the Year 1647; but proves the true character of (Cerberus) the observator, MDCCIV." It was also reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, v. 93. For an account of the author, see the Biographia ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... swan is singing. This plate succeeded so well, that the same Rosso afterwards caused engravings to be made, on plates of considerable size, of some of the Labours of Hercules: the Slaying of the Hydra, the Combat with Cerberus, the Killing of Cacus, the Breaking of the Bull's Horns, the Battle with the Centaurs, and the Centaur Nessus carrying off Deianira. And these plates proved to be so beautiful and so well engraved, that the same Jacopo executed, likewise after the design of Rosso, the story of the daughters of Pierus, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... lull in the activities of this minor Cerberus when the light and swinging footfall of one coming up the dim stairway several steps at a time aroused his ready suspicions. He bristled forth to the rail to meet a tall and rather elegant young man whom he greeted with a growl ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Charon's fare for wafting the departed soul over the Infernal River. Besides this, the corpse's mouth was furnished with a certain cake, composed of flour, honey, &c. This was designed to appease the fury of Cerberus, the infernal doorkeeper, and to procure a safe and quiet entrance. These examples are ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... Revenue Department requires every newspaper to produce with each issue. This ill-favored individual, owner of a yellow countenance covered with red excrescences, to which he owed his nickname of "Coloquinte," indicated a personage behind the lattice as the Cerberus of the paper. This was an elderly officer with a medal on his chest and a silk skull-cap on his head; his nose was almost hidden by a pair of grizzled moustaches, and his person was hidden as completely in an ample blue overcoat ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... on the door of No. 6, the entire studio, and No. 5 also, vibrated. As a rule Agg, the female Cerberus of the shanty, answered any summons from outside; but George hoped that to-night she would be absent; he knew by experience that on Sunday nights she usually paid a visit to her obstreperous family in ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... order the Tailless Tyke shot gladly forward, and the leaders on the bridge as hastily back. The dog galloped on to the rattling plank, took his post fair and square in the centre of the narrow way, and stood facing the hostile crew like Cerberus guarding the gates of hell: his bull-head was thrust forward, hackles up, teeth glinting, and a distant rumbling in his throat, as though daring them to ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... next morning at breakfast, startled them all with a sweet surprise. Every time she left the room the talk about her broke out afresh, and Hester's information concerning her was a welcome sop to the Cerberus of their astonishment. A more striking contrast than that between her and her two aunts could hardly have been found in the whole island. She was like a star between two gray clouds of twilight. But she had not so much share in her own cheerfulness as her poor aunts had in their ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the priests called Sa'li-i, sang songs about the great deeds of Hercules; how when a child in his cradle he had strangled the two serpents sent by Juno to destroy him, how he had slain the furious lion of Nemea, dragged from Pluto's realms the three-headed dog Cerberus, and performed numerous ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... before whom all shades had to appear, and who, after hearing full confession of their actions whilst on earth, pronounced the sentence of happiness or misery to which their deeds had entitled them. This tribunal was guarded by the terrible triple-headed dog Cerberus, who, with his three necks bristling with snakes, lay at full length on the ground;—a formidable sentinel, who permitted all shades to enter, but none ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... showed me that the inclosed sheets belonged to the number just received, not to the preceding number. I drove immediately to the Moscow office and demanded the censor. "You can tell me what you want with him," said the ante-room Cerberus. "Send me the censor," said I. After further repetition, he retired and sent in a man who requested me to state my business. "You are not the censor," I said, after a glance at him. "Send him out, or ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... a window, of "How now, Tearum, what's the matter, sir?—down, d-n ye, down!" produced no abatement of Tearum's vociferation, which in part prevented his master from bearing the sounds of alarm which his ferocious vigilance was in the act of challenging. But the mate of the two-legged Cerberus was gifted with sharper ears than her husband. She also was now at the window; "B-t ye, gae down and let loose the dog," she said, "they're sporting the door of the Custom-house, and the auld sap at Hazlewood House has ordered off the guard. But ye hae nae mair heart, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... you," said the white domino, "from any other assailant: no three-headed Cerberus could protect you more effectually: but you will not, therefore, fancy yourself in the lower regions, for, if I mistake not, the torment of three guardians is ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... rest of the day thus cleared for inaction, he sat down and wrote a letter. Ever since his fall he had been successfully practising the art of throwing a morsel straight into one or other of the throats of the triple-headed Cerberus, his conscience—which was more clever in catching such sops, than they were in choking the said howler; and one of them, the letter mentioned, was the sole wretched result of his talk with the soutar. Addressed to a late divinity-classmate, he asked in it incidentally whether ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... being tied round the end of the mast) and sunk down upon one knee, about four yards from the water's edge, determining to thrust it down his throat in case he gave me an opportunity. I certainly felt somewhat uncomfortable in this situation, and I thought of Cerberus on the other side of the Styx ferry. The people pulled the cayman to the surface; he plunged furiously as soon as he arrived in these upper regions, and immediately went below again on their slackening the rope. I saw ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... gaol Mr Cargrim was admitted with certain solemnity by a sour-faced footman whose milk of human kindness had turned acid in the thunderstorms of Mrs Pansey's spite. This engaging Cerberus conducted the chaplain into a large and sepulchral drawing-room in which the good lady and Miss Norsham were partaking of afternoon tea. Mrs Pansey wore her customary skirts of solemn black, and looked more gloomy than ever; but Daisy, the elderly sylph, brightened the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... system, and called the people to repentance. In vain did they point to the progress of the slave power, and warn the people that their own liberties were being cloven down. The North still went on, throwing sop after sop to the Cerberus of slavery that hounded her through the wilderness of concession and compromise, until the crash of Sumter taught her that with the slaveocracy no rights are sacred. The Government, attacked by assassins, was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... cottage was visited next day by eleven gods and demigods, mostly Titans. Elenko found it trying, and was really alarmed when by and by the Furies, having made over their functions to the Devil, strolled up to take the air, and dropped in for a chat, bringing Cerberus. But they behaved exceedingly well, and took back a message from Elenko to Eurydice. Ere long she was on most intimate terms with all the dethroned ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his chin; ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... disparts. Howling there spread, as curs, Under the rainy deluge, with one side The other screening, oft they roll them round, A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op'd His jaws, and the fangs show'd us; not a limb Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth Rais'd them, and cast it in his ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... mystery. As I looked down the long slope to where the river appeared to lose itself into the side of the mountain it seemed to me that there, if anywhere, the prophecy of Job's dream must be fulfilled. Cerberus might easily be waiting for us there. He would have scarcely time to fawn upon us till we should go shooting past him into ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... Universe; but they do not enter into the soul of their creation any more than the limitations of counterpoint and rhythm laid their incubus on the lyre of Apollo. The porches where Callicrates, Hermogenes, and Callimachus walked were guarded by no such Cerberus as the disciples of Plato encountered at the entrance of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... one of the monsters who are said to be growing up in Rome—Apollos ravenous as Cerberus. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Semitic face of the second Jewish secretary, on the farther side of the torrent of boiling amber sunshine pouring through a central opening in the roof of the inner hall that succeeded the vestibule of the mosaic Cerberus. An atrium some forty feet in length, paved with squares of black and yellow marble with an oblong pool in the midst of it, upon whose still crystal surface pink and crimson petals of roses had been strewn in patterns, and in the centre of which ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... uncertain Whether a petticoat or shirt on, From vulgar ken their charms do cover, From every eye but Muses' lover; In name of every ugly GOD; Whose beauty scarce outshines a toad; In name of PROSERPINE and PLUTO, Who board in hell's sublimest grotto; In name of CERBERUS and FURIES, Those damned aristocrats and tories; In presence of two witnesses, Who are as homely as you please, Who are in truth, I'd not belie 'em, Ten times as ugly, faith, as I am; But being, as most people tell us, A pair of jolly clever ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... dress up these materials in a Sing-Song jingle; and to offer them for sale as a Poem. According to the most approved recipes, something about the heathen gods and goddesses; and the schoolboy topics of Styx and Cerberus, and Elysium; are occasionally thrown in, and the composition is complete. The stock in trade of these Adventurers is in general scanty enough; and their Art therefore consists in disposing it to the best advantage. But if such be the aim of the Writer, it is the Critic's business to ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... this was a magnificent topaz; and here art equalled nature; it was as large as a big hazel-nut, with the head of Minerva in a style of inconceivable beauty. I remember yet another precious stone, different from these; it was a cameo, engraved with Hercules binding Cerberus of the triple throat; such was its beauty and the skill of its workmanship, that our great Michel Agnolo protested he had never seen anything so wonderful. Among many bronze medals, I obtained one upon which was a head of Jupiter. It ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... pacified, silenced, and put to rest; whereupon a host of honest, good-fellow qualities and kind-hearted affections, which had lain perdue, slily peeping out of the loopholes of the heart, finding this Cerberus asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all in their holiday suits, and gambol up and down the diaphragm—disposing their possessor to laughter, good humor, and a thousand ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... does he commonly rise?" said I. "Sometimes sooner, sometimes later," said he, closing the door upon me by degrees. I then told him I was come by his lordship's own appointment, to which intimation this Cerberus replied, "I have received no orders about the matter," and was upon the point of shutting me out, when I recollected myself all of a sudden, and slipping a crown into his hand, begged as a favour ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... rescue in a recitative of great intrinsic power, which shows at a glance how far Gluck had already distanced his predecessors in variety and dramatic strength. The second act takes place in the underworld. The chorus of Furies is both picturesque and effective, and the barking of Cerberus which sounds through it is a touch, which though its naivete may provoke a smile, is characteristic of Gluck's strenuous struggle for realism. Orpheus appears and pleads his cause in accents of touching entreaty. Time after time his pathetic song ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... this, but I considered myself practically engaged, with the personal meeting merely to be regarded as a sop to the Cerberus of conventionality. I permitted myself to use a decidedly lover-like tone in my letters henceforth, and I hailed it as a favourable omen that I was not rebuked for this, although Marian's own letters still ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was too perfect to know any fear; thankfully he hastened to the dark cave on the side of the promontory of Taenarus, and soon arrived at the entrance of Hades. Stark and grim was the three-headed watchdog, Cerberus, which guarded the door, and with the growls and the furious roaring of a wild beast athirst for its prey it greeted Orpheus. But Orpheus touched his lute, and the brute, amazed, sank into silence. And still he played, and the dog would gently have ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... release from the grip of the pack. At the head of an ice-tongue that nearly closed the gap through which we might enter the open space was a wave-worn berg shaped like some curious antediluvian monster, an icy Cerberus guarding the way. It had head and eyes and rolled so heavily that it almost overturned. Its sides dipped deep in the sea, and as it rose again the water seemed to be streaming from its eyes, as though it were weeping at our escape from the clutch of the floes. This may seem fanciful to ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... This is the region of ghosts and death; to waft over the bodies of the living in my boat is not permitted. Nor was it joyful to me to receive Hercules when he came, nor Theseus and Pirithous, though they were descendants of the Gods and unconquerable in war. Hercules dared to bind in chains Cerberus himself, the keeper of the gate of Tartarus, and dragged him trembling from the very throne of Pluto. The others attempted a feat scarcely less perilous, for they sought to carry off ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the same acceptation here, as in the instances above, the Deity was changed to a dog, and said to reside in the infernal regions. From hence he was supposed to have been dragged to light by Hercules of Thebes. The notion both of Cerberus and Hades being subterraneous Deities took its rise from the temples of old being situated near vast caverns, which were esteemed passages to the realms below. Such were in Messenia, in Argolis, in Bithynia, and at Enna in Sicily; not to mention divers other places. These ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... been a buckra or not," responded, doggedly, my Cerberus in uniform; "but I's bound to keep him here till de corporal ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the whole Indian Empire might to-day have been pleased as Punch by the selection of a Hindoo gentleman to do the job—for I should infallibly have entered myself for the running. Unfortunately such unparalleled opportunity of throwing soup to Cerberus, and exhibiting colour-blindness, has been given the slip, though the door is perhaps still open (even at past eleven o'clock P.M.) for retracing the false step ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... power over death, as the child of the Sun; and the latter, who by his saving strength delivered the earth from its Augean impurities, and, arrayed in celestial panoply, subdued the monsters of the earth, and at last, descending to Hades, slew the three-headed Cerberus and took away from men much of the fear of death. Such was the train of the Eleusinian Dionysus. If Demeter was the wanderer, he was the conqueror and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night-raven sings; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... a monument of the City's shame and dishonour, instead of its glory; come, let us take a walk in, and view its inside. Accordingly we were admitted in thro' an iron gate, within which sat a brawny Cerberus, of an Indico-colour, leaning upon a money-box; we turned in through another Iron-Barricado, where we heard such a rattling of chains, drumming of doors, ranting, hollowing, singing, and running, that I could think of nothing but Don Quevedo's Vision, where the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... to Cerberus, and in order to try and maintain my position of independence a few moments longer, I drew out the odd sixpence which Uncle George had put into my hand along with the two shillings of my tip, giving it to the old porter with the air of one with whom such trifling coins were ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the enchanted realm within. Poor Annunciata's countenance fell; she pulled her seven soldi from her pocket, counted them three or four times deliberately in her hand, and cast appealing glances at the stony-hearted Cerberus. At this moment she discovered a handsome young gentleman who, with his eyes fixed on her face, was elbowing his way through ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... President Lincoln's Cerberus, his watch dog, guardian, friend, companion and confidant. Some days before Lincoln's departure for Washington to be inaugurated, he wrote to Lamon at Bloomington, that he desired to see him at once. He went to ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... office and sent in his card by the youthful Cerberus who kept watch at the gate. The card got no farther than the great ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... aged,—for its face and ears were gray, the rest of it a rusty reddish black; it had immensely long ears, pricked up like horns; it was a dog that must have been brought from foreign parts; it might have come from Acheron, sire by Cerberus, so portentous, and (if not irreverent the epithet) so infernal was its aspect, with that gray face, those antlered ears, and its ineffably weird demeanour altogether. A big dog, too, and evidently a strong one. All prudent folks ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had been the entrance to Hades, to which it had been likened by a learned visitor, we might have been confronted by Cerberus instead of our guide, whom our friends had warned overnight that his attendance would be required early this morning by distinguished visitors, who would expect the cave to be lit up with coloured lights in honour of their visit. The guide as he handed a light to each of us explained ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... of Hercules when he set about bringing up Cerberus from below, and all the work done by Apollo in the years when he ground corn, are but a little matter compared with the attempt to master botany. Great minds have been at it these two thousand years, and yet we are still only nibbling ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... an ordinary heretic; he was a bold pantheist, and outraged the dogma of all Christian communions by saying that God, in three persons, was a Cerberus, a monster with three heads. 2. He had already been condemned to death by the Catholic doctors at Vienne in Dauphiny. 3. The affair was judged, not by Calvin, but by the magistrates of Geneva; ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... woof of the city's haste. From these feet let the witness infer our whole massive Hercules, a bulk that sprawls and stretches beyond the rivers through the tunnels piercing their beds and that towers into the skies with innumerable tops—a Hercules blent of Briareus and Cerberus, but not so bad a monster as it seemed then to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Eurystheus autem cum Herculem magnopere timeret, eum in aliquem locum mittere volebat unde numquam redire posset. Negotium igitur ei dedit ut canem Cerberum ex Orco in lucem traheret. Hoc opus omnium difficillimum erat, nemo enim umquam ex Orco redierat. Praeterea Cerberus iste monstrum erat horribili specie, cui tria erant capita serpentibus saevis cincta. Antequam tamen de hoc labore narramus, non alienum videtur, quoniam de Orco mentionem fecimus, pauca ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... content with this, he preached in the church at Kilmainham where "the stations and pardons" were used as freely as ever, and attacked the archbishop before his face with "such a stomach as I think the three- mouthed Cerberus of hell could not have uttered it more viperously." He glossed every sentence (of the archbishops sermons) after such opprobrious fashion that every honest ear glowed to hear it, and "he exhorted them all, yea, and so much as in him lay he adjured them, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... remain my great secret that the Law is the Cerberus that guards the portals of our earthly paradise against the common herd—we must not be ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... in every sense of the word. It had represented a lovely girl, with hair unbound, saving from destruction the automobile in which she sat with several companions, by shooting a fierce blast of water into the face of a huge beast well-nigh as terrible as Cerberus. I determined to surprise Jack and Molly, when the right time should come; accordingly, the moment I reached our hotel, I filled the pistol with water, and placed it, thus loaded, in the pocket of my motoring coat ready for ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... about a fellow named Orpheus getting over to fetch his girl"—"gail" Lord Freynault pronounced it—"since old John will use Eton cribs in describing the horrid chasm. Can't we sop old Cerberus and somehow manage to swim, if there is ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... faith, the belief in immortality. There might be a shadowy world—the poets said so—Odysseus visited its depths and brought back its report—but it was a gloomy place at best. Horace alludes to it always in the tone of the Hebrew Psalmists, or of Hezekiah sick to death, utilizing Minos and Cerberus and Tantalus and Sisyphus for poetic effect, yet ever with an undertone of sadness and alarm. Not Orpheus' self, he says (I, xxiv, 13), in his exquisite lament for dead Quinctilius, can bring back life-blood to the phantom pale ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... metaphysical argument. The physico-theological argument he forced to back, as it were, into the cosmological, and that into the ontological. After this reluctant regressus of the three into one, shutting up like a spying-glass, which (with the iron hand of Hercules forcing Cerberus up to daylight) the stern man of Koenigsberg resolutely dragged to the front of the arena, nothing remained, now that he had this pet scholastic argument driven up into a corner, than to break its neck—which he did. Kant took the conceit out of all the three arguments; but, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... related to times before the invention of the bow and arrow, or of spinning flax. Other stories of Hercules are perhaps of later date, and appear to be allegorical, as his conquering the river- god Achilous, and bringing Cerberus up to day light; the former might refer to his turning the course of a river, and draining a morass, and the latter to his exposing a part of the superstition of the times. The strangling the lion and tearing his jaws asunder, are described from a statue in the Museum Florentinum, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... backs. I will pay fifty dollars apiece for those. Remember—it is the voice of Cohen. The chairs are worth more—some day they'll fetch twice that; but, really, I must throw a sop to that collector-Cerberus within me. He's entitled to something. He had the wit to fetch ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Am I Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-buttered sop of flattery? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... on the door-post, Foyle leered amiably at the Cerberus. "Hello, old sport, I want t'come in. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... sure darts he slew; The golden fruit he stole—in vain The dragon's watch; with triple chain From hell's depths Cerberus he drew. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... quest, the delightful singer Orpheus took that downward way, coming in sight of old Cerberus centiceps, he astutely feigned inattention to the hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and with a wave of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke raised voice. This much you know. It may be communicated to you, that there ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... journey, being seated by a spring to refresh himself, he heard a hideous noise, and presently espied a Lion and a Dragon, fighting, biting, and tearing each other. At length Guy, perceiving the Lion ready to faint, encountered the Dragon, and soon brought the ugly Cerberus roaring and yelling to the ground. The Lion, in gratitude to Guy, run by his horse's side like a true born spaniel, till lack of food made him retire to his ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... music anything but a foretaste of heaven, as long as there is any show of accuracy in the way it is rendered. But, then, you must go straight on, and not go over a difficult phrase until you know it. You must play fair. Orpheus would probably only have provoked Cerberus—certainly wouldn't have put him to sleep—if he had practised, and counted, and gone back six ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... incoherent; each city cheered its champion and tried to cry down all the rest: applause, advice, derision. Glaucon heard the derisive hootings, "pretty girl," "pretty pullet," from the serried host of the Laconians along the left side of the stadium; but an answering salvo, "Dog of Cerberus!" bawled by the Athenian crowds opposite, and winged at Lycon, returned the taunts with usury. As the champions approached the judges' stand a procession of full twenty pipers, attended by as many fair boys in flowing white, marched from the farther ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... in the role of a self-appointed assessor and tax gatherer. I picked up and adopted a little bulldog which had been either abandoned on the cars or lost by its owner, not then thinking that this little Cerberus, as I called it, should later prove, on one occasion, to be my true and only friend when I was in dire distress and in the ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... wicket; for we were carried, to get out our pass or discharge, before a more dreadful monster than ever was read of in the legends of knight-errantry. They called him Gripe-men-all. I can't tell what to compare it to better than to a Chimaera, a Sphinx, a Cerberus; or to the image of Osiris, as the Egyptians represented him, with three heads, one of a roaring lion, t'other of a fawning cur, and the last of a howling, prowling wolf, twisted about with a dragon biting his tail, surrounded with fiery rays. His hands were full of gore, his talons like those of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... or the hunt? Allow me to differ; people always must hunt something, don't you know; primeval instinct! Used to hunt one another," he laughed. "Sometimes do now. Fox is only a substitute for the joys of the man-hunt; sort of sop to Cerberus, as ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... now. The stifled groans of ruined players, as they passed out, their mute imprecations, their stupefied faces, found him impassive. He was the spirit of Play incarnate. If the young man had noticed this sorry Cerberus, perhaps he would have said, "There is only a pack of cards in that heart ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... earth) Could not affright you; no, nor I myself, The wrathful messenger of mighty Jove, That with his sword hath quail'd all earthly kings, Could not persuade you to submission, But still the ports [271] were shut: villain, I say, Should I but touch the rusty gates of hell, The triple-headed Cerberus would howl, And make [272] black Jove to crouch and kneel to me; But I have sent volleys of shot to you, Yet could not enter till the ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... and Panises, or Satyres; the Woods, with Fawnes, and Nymphs; the Sea, with Tritons, and other Nymphs; every River, and Fountayn, with a Ghost of his name, and with Nymphs; every house, with it Lares, or Familiars; every man, with his Genius; Hell, with Ghosts, and spirituall Officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies; and in the night time, all places with Larvae, Lemures, Ghosts of men deceased, and a whole kingdome of Fayries, and Bugbears. They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents, and Qualities; ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... picked up in Dublin entitled Pour I'Irlande. It purports to have been written by a "Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland, and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, Chez Paddy. It is adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively "Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the inscription—"1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English Government." The text is in keeping ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... ever idleness made love to. The thing was in the air!—in the summer, in the blood—as little to be resisted as the impulse to eat when you are hungry, or drink when you thirst. Besides, what particular harm had been done, what particular harm could have been done with such a Cerberus of a husband? As to the outcry which had followed one special incident, nothing could have been more uncalled for, more superfluous. Aldous had demanded contrition, had said strong things with the flashing eyes, the set mouth of a Cato. And ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 10. The Arms of the late Earl of Yarmouth. 11. The Arms of the Duke of Norfolk. 12. Neptune on a Dolphin. 13. A Lion supporting the Arms of Norwich. 14. Charon carrying a reputed Witch to Hell. 15. Cerberus. 16. An Huntsman. 17. Actaeon [with three dogs, and this legend, 'Actaeon ego sum Dominum cognoscite vestrum']. 18. A White Hart couchant [underneath appears in the engraving the artist's name—Johannes Fairchild struxit]. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... in his den they found The triple porter of the Stygian sound, Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rear His crested snakes, and arm'd his bristling hair. The prudent Sibyl had before prepar'd A sop, in honey steep'd, to charm the guard; Which, mix'd with pow'rful drugs, she cast before His greedy grinning jaws, just op'd to roar. With three enormous mouths ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... looked down upon him for his obtusity. He should have been aware that Burgo was a danger to be avoided; and he should have been aware also that Mrs Marsham was a duenna not to be employed. When a woman knows that she is guarded by a watch-dog, she is bound to deceive her Cerberus, if it be possible, and is usually not ill-disposed to deceive also the owner of Cerberus. Lady Glencora felt that Mrs Marsham was her Cerberus, and she was heartily resolved that if she was to be kept in the proper line at all, she would not be ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... hand. He drew his bench nearer to me and held out his great hairy, oily paw, saying, "Let me see the pretty watch." "Not necessary," I replied, putting it back in my pocket and calmly eying him, although my heart began to beat fast. I was alone in the tower with this hairy Cerberus, who, for all I knew, might be contemplating ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... CERBERUS. A dog with three heads, a serpent's tail and several snakes around his neck, who guarded ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... to admit any persons without subjecting them to the rigorous investigation of the pair of eyes that providence had been pleased to place in my head. To those who pleased me not, I was little better than a Cerberus whom it was very difficult to pass; whilst to others, I was all easiness and condescension, ushering them straight to the sanctum sanctorum, in which, behind a desk covered with letters and papers, stood—for he never sat down to his desk—the respectable individual whose lawful commands to obey ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... he, could safely pass down the dim river running through that world: could pass in his golden sun-boat, guided by magic words of Thoth instead of oars or sails; and the guardian hippopotamus (whom Greeks turned into the dog Cerberus) dared not put out ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... of that by and by," answered Pluto. "Do you see these big gates? When we pass these we are at home; and look! there is my faithful dog at the door! Cerberus; ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... the finest wardrobe on the stage, will play a season of bad brogue and flash dresses in this city very soon. This announcement, however, will never see the dawn of November 13th, and we kiss it a fond farewell as we cheerfully submit it as a sop to Cerberus. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... has been the problem of every religion. And the great problem of progress has been to smuggle the newly-discovered truth past Cerberus, the priest, by preparing a sop that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... upon them.[687] There used to be a family in Vanua Levu which enjoyed the high privilege of supplying a hale man to be buried with the king of Fiji on every occasion of a royal decease. It was quite necessary that the man should be hale and hearty, for it was his business to grapple with the Fijian Cerberus in the other world, while his majesty slipped past into the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... unnatural crimes. The Gorgons were three sisters, with hair entwined with serpents. A single gaze upon them chilled the beholder to stone. Besides these there were Scylla and Charybdis, sea-monsters that made perilous the passage of the Sicilian Straits, the Centaurs, the Cyclops, Cerberus, the watch-dog of Hades, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... AEneas stands before the Cumoean Sybil, a very injured painting. Below, Orpheus in Hades plays before Pluto and Persephone to win back Eurydice, who lies bound before them. On the right Hercules rescues Theseus from Hades, and slays Cerberus, and on the left, Eurydice, following Orpheus, looks back, and is re-seized by the demons. These are all exceedingly good and dramatic paintings, and ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... finding proofs of Deroulede's treason, although by the latter's attitude he remained quite convinced that such proof did exist, he was already reckoning upon the cat's paw, the sop he would offer to that Cerberus, the Committee of Public Safety, in exchange for his own ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Lepracauns and the Men of Hunger, whose king is Clobhair. My people, who are ruled by Chiron, live even further to the north. The Sphinx pastures on yonder mountain; and now the Chimaera is old and generally derided, they say that Cerberus visits the Sphinx at twilight, although I was never the ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... pass, exacts a tribute of blood as rigorously as Charon demands an obolus from every soul he ferries over Acheron, the river of death. The fierce dog Garm, cowering in the Gnipa hole, and keeping guard at Hel's gate, is like the three-headed monster Cerberus; and the nine worlds of Nifl-heim are not unlike the divisions of Hades, Nastrond being an adequate substitute for Tartarus, where the wicked were ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the beneficial result of his treatment, and that when the Electoral Prince awakes he will be quite restored to health. He has ordered that no one else be admitted to see the Prince, and Dietrich watches over him like a Cerberus." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... coarseness, and his sensibilities probably blunted from having perpetually to listen to complaints and tales of wrong-doing, which he must perforce ignore; but I do not think his nature is harsh or cruel; the bark of Cerberus is much worse than the bite; and he is quite capable of benevolent actions, done in an uncouth way. The lips of the corpse, up-stairs were scarcely whiter than those that kept working and muttering nervously close by my shoulder, as I sat at my ghastly task. I was right glad when all was ended, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... course, and the sly fellow knew very well that it was no caricature—that is, if he peeped, as he pretends—but a tolerably correct likeness that might have satisfied Sall herself. By-the-by, I have a great mind to bestow it upon him as a 'sop for Cerberus,' should her jealousy ever be aroused by your reports of his devotion to me, or admiration rather, most unequivocally avowed, it must be acknowledged. I really had no intention of injuring Sally, and, if you think ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to it the Parthenius.) Coasting past (the latter), they reached Heraclea (2), a Hellenic city and a colony of the Megarians, situated in the territory of the Mariandynians. So they came to anchorage off the Acherusian Chersonese, where Heracles (3) is said to have descended to bring up the dog Cerberus, at a point where they still show the marks of his descent, a deep cleft more than two furlongs down. Here the Heracleots sent the Hellenes, as gifts of hospitality, three thousand measures of barley and two thousand jars of wine, twenty beeves and one hundred sheep. Through ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... our chief naval station in North America. The town, which is a handsome one, stands on a peninsula, and rises gradually from the water's edge, where there are numerous wharves, alongside which ships can lie to discharge their cargoes. We found in the harbour the Cerberus frigate, Captain Symonds, (see Note 1), hove down alongside the wharf, as also the Savage sloop of war, wearing Commodore Arbuthnot's ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... bulk of giant Geryon Dead mid his kine. His gory heads were cast In dust, dashed down by that resistless club. Before him slain lay that most murderous hound Orthros, in furious might like Cerberus His brother-hound: a herdman lay thereby, Eurytion, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one; Which made some think, when he did gabble, Th' had heard three laborers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash of languages at once. This he as volubly would vent As if his stock would ne'er be spent: And truly, to support that charge, He had supplies as vast and large, For he could ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the most important of them, had distinguishing names—strange, uncouth names; some of them telling of a heathenish origin; others inexplicable and almost unpronounceable—as Ashtaroth, Bael, Belial, Zephar, Cerberus, Phoenix, Balam (why he?), and Haagenti, Leraie, Marchosias, Gusoin, Glasya Labolas. Scot enumerates seventy-nine, the above amongst them, and he does not by any means exhaust the number. As each ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... only one who ventured to visit me, at the hazard of incurring disgrace. He came five or six times to see me, and my guards were so much astonished at his resolution, and awed by his presence, that not a single Cerberus of them all would venture to refuse ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... permitted? Fate delayed no more. But ere the victim feared had struck him down: Perished the limbs while living, and the soul Grew stiff and stark ere yet it fled the frame. Men have been frenzied by the Furies' locks, Not killed; and Cerberus at Orpheus' song Ceased from his hissing, and Alcides saw The Hydra ere he slew. This monster born Brought horror with her birth upon her sire Phorcus, in second order God of Waves, And upon Ceto and the Gorgon brood, (20) Her sisters. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan |
