"Cretan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... harvests they accounted their own, whenever they had the means of driving off the one or of seizing upon the other; nor did the least scruple on the right of property interfere on such occasions. Hamish Mhor argued like the old Cretan warrior: ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the animosities which then prevailed, and united them in zeal for excellence and virtue. So that, in some measure, he prepared the way for Lycurgus towards the instruction of the Spartans. From Crete Lycurgus passed to Asia, desirous, as is said, to compare the Ionian expense and luxury with the Cretan frugality and hard diet, so as to judge what effect each had on their several manners and governments; just as physicians compare bodies that are weak and sickly with the healthy and robust. There also, probably, he met with Homer's poems, which ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the stories. People told them in all parts of the world long before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan signs or Cyprian syllabaries, or alphabets were invented. They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over. The grannies told them to the grandchildren, and when the grandchildren became ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... tales wherever they go. Paris may have worn my arms, or another man. I bought them from a chapman in Crete, and asked nothing of their first master. As for Ilios, I fought there in my youth, and served the Cretan Idomeneus, but I got little booty. To the King the wealth and women, to us the sword-strokes. Such is the ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... Rumelia: Greece had failed to annex Crete, and ran the risk, if the Young Turks' experiment succeeded, of seeing the {3} fulfilment of all her national aspirations frustrated for ever. A group of military malcontents in touch with the Cretan leader translated the popular feeling into action: a revolt against the reign of venality and futility which had for so many years paralyzed every effort, which had sometimes sacrificed and always subordinated the interests of the nation to the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... what remains to guide them in returning to the nest? The ribbon spun on the road. In the Cretan labyrinth, Theseus would have been lost but for the clue of thread with which Ariadne supplied him. The spreading maze of the pine-needles is, especially at night, as inextricable a labyrinth as that constructed for Minos. The Processionary ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... and Gentlemen, before reaching my text, to remind you of the characteristically beautiful setting. The place is Crete, and the three interlocutors—Cleinias a Cretan, Megillus a Lacedaemonian, and an Athenian stranger—have joined company on a pilgrimage to the cave and shrine of Zeus, from whom Minos, first lawgiver of the island, had reputedly derived not ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Oh yes, I saw sweet beautie in her face, Such as the daughter of Agenor had, That made great Ioue to humble him to her hand, When with his knees he kist the Cretan strond ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Cretan Zeus, fed, when an infant, by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Ida with the milk of the goat Amalthaa and honey brought by the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Cretan architect, the traditional builder (with his son Metagenes) of the great Ionic temple of Artemis at Ephesus set up by the Greeks in the 6th century. Some remains of this temple were found by J.T. Wood and brought to the British Museum. In connexion with the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the third, the hunt and capture of the hind of Diana, with its hoofs of brass; the fourth, the taking alive of the boar of Erymanthus; the fifth, the cleansing of the stables of Augeas; the sixth, the destruction of the Stymphalian birds; the seventh, the capture of the Cretan bull; the eighth, the capture of the mares of Diomedes of Thrace; the ninth, the seizure of the girdle of the queen of the Amazons; the tenth, the killing of Geryon and capture of his oxen; the eleventh, fetching ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... there was, in numbers both of horse and foot, almost a complete army; and, as they were posted on the middle road, the greatest number of the Romans fell in with them. The Macedonians had also the advantage in this, that the king himself was present to encourage them; and the Cretan auxiliaries, fighting in good order, and in a state of preparation, against troops disordered and irregular, wounded many at a distance, where no such danger was apprehended. If they had acted with prudence in the pursuit, they would have secured an advantage of great importance, not only ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Phoebus bear, A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear; Would you with ivy wreath your flowing hair, Not Bacchus' self with Phaon could compare: Yet Phoebus loved, and Bacchus felt the flame, One Daphne warm'd, and one the Cretan dame; Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me, Than e'en those gods contend in charms with thee. 30 The Muses teach me all their softest lays, And the wide world resounds with Sappho's praise. Though great Alcaeus more sublimely sings, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Then to the Patron of his Art he pray'd; The Patron of his Art refus'd his Aid. But now the Goddess Mother, mov'd with Grief, And pierc'd with Pity, hastens her Relief. A Branch of Healing Dittany she brought, Which in the Cretan Fields with Care she sought; Rough is the Stem, which woolly Leaves surround; The Leafs with Flow'rs, the Flow'rs with Purple crown'd: Well known to-wounded Goats; a sure Relief To draw the pointed Steel, and ease the Grief. This Venus ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Cretan settlers when the dusky sail (33) Spread the false message of the hero dead; Here, where Hesperia, curving as a bow, Draws back her coast, a little tongue of land Shuts in with bending horns the sounding main. Yet insecure the spot, unsafe in storm, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... few years ago his reign appeared to be drawing to an ignominious end. His functions were usurped by a military league and his sons removed from the army. Anarchy was spreading, at that time I expressed the opinion that the only person capable of saving Greece—if Greece could yet be saved—was the Cretan insurgent, M. Venizelos. This suggestion appealed to the Chief of the Military League and was adopted. Venizelos was invited to Athens with the results known to all the world. At first reluctantly tolerated, he was subsequently highly appreciated by King George ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Antandros' coast His fair Creusa mourn'd, for ever lost; Yet cut the bonds of Love on Tyber's shore, And bought a bride with young Evander's gore. Here droop'd the victim of a lawless flame: The amorous frenzy of the Cretan dame He fled abhorrent, and contemn'd her tears, And to the dire suggestion closed his ears. But nought, alas! his purity avail'd— Fate in his flight the hapless youth assail'd, By interdicted Love to Vengeance ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... points) the striking picture of his own youthful feeling toward the Church of England contained in the "Chapter of Autobiography," and the refined criticism of "Robert Elsmere," published in 1888. Almost the last thing he wrote, a pamphlet on the Greek and Cretan question, published in the spring of 1897, has all the force and cogency of his best days. Two things were never wanting to him: vigor of expression and an admirable ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... acousticon, or ear-trumpet, which has been thought a modern discovery; or of the speaking-trumpet, which is a kind of cure for distant deafness. These would be admirable proofs of musical power![117] We have the testimony of Plutarch, and several other ancient writers, that Thaletas the Cretan, delivered the Lacedemonians from the pestilence by the sweetness of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... back as 5500 B.C. and Sargon at about 3800 B.C. has been abandoned by the majority of prominent archaeologists, the exceptions including Professor Flinders Petrie. Recent discoveries appear to support the new chronological system. "There is a growing conviction", writes Mr. Hawes, "that Cretan evidence, especially in the eastern part of the island, favours the minimum (Berlin) system of Egyptian chronology, according to which the Sixth (Egyptian) Dynasty began at c. 2540 B.C. and the Twelfth at c. 2000 B.C.[8] Petrie dates the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... establish myself as a liar—the prize liar of them all, but I had to tell the sort of lie that they simply could not cope with. Something that would throw them into such utter confusion that they wouldn't dare convict me." He grinned impishly at Meyerhoff. "The paradox of Epimenides the Cretan. It really stopped them cold. They knew I was an Earthmen, which meant that my statement that Earthmen were liars was a lie, which meant that maybe I wasn't a liar, in ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... Scented Garden-site for Heart-delight, calls Harun (chapt. vii.) the "Master of munificence and bounty, the best of the generous." And even the latest writers have not ceased to praise him. Says Ali Aziz Efendi the Cretan, in the Story of Jewad[FN257] (p. 81), "Harun was the most bounteous, illustrious and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... her fury. In vain, looking fierce through the patronage of Venus, will you comb your hair, and run divisions upon the effeminate lyre with songs pleasing to women. In vain will you escape the spears that disturb the nuptial bed, and the point of the Cretan dart, and the din [of battle], and Ajax swift in the pursuit. Nevertheless, alas! the time will come, though late, when thou shalt defile thine adulterous hairs in the dust. Dost thou not see the son of Laertes, fatal to thy nation, and ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... his head the nobles set a price—its weight in gold. He hides on the Aventine, and the Aventine is stormed. He escapes by the Sublician bridge and the bridge is held behind him by one friend, almost as Horatius held it against an army. Yet the nobles and their hired Cretan bowmen force the way and pursue him into Furina's grove. There a Greek slave ends him, and to get more gold fills the poor head with metal—and is paid in full. Three hundred died with Tiberius, three thousand were put to death for his brother's sake. With the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... historians and poets, Ariadne fell in love with him, and from her he received the clue of string, and was taught how to thread the mazes of the Labyrinth. He slew the Minotaur, and, taking with him Ariadne and the youths, sailed away. Pherekydes also says that Theseus also knocked out the bottoms of the Cretan ships, to prevent pursuit. But Demon says that Taurus, Minos's general, was slain in a sea-fight in the harbour, when Theseus sailed away. But according to Philochorus, when Minos instituted his games, Taurus was expected to win every prize, and was grudged this honour; for his great ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... The most of our civil governments, as Aristotle says, "leave, after the manner of the Cyclopes, to every one the ordering of their wives and children, according to their own foolish and indiscreet fancy; and the Lacedaemonian and Cretan are almost the only governments that have committed the education of children to the laws. Who does not see that in a state all depends upon their nurture and bringing up? and yet they are left to the mercy of parents, let them be as foolish ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... operations for further colonisation. On leaving Rhodes, the choice of two routes presented itself to them. To the south-west they could see the distant outline of Karpathos, and on the far horizon behind it the summits of the Cretan chain. Crete itself bars on the south the entrance to the AEgean, and is almost a little continent, self-contained ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I say, looked ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... so aldermanic That one would furnish forth ten dinners, Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic, Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic 210 Should make some ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... patient, impassive Japanese craftsmen who draw and colour some exquisite trifling design, a bird, a palm tree, and then cut the picture in half in order to fit it into a panel of some quaint little lacquered cabinet as full of unexpected cupboards and drawers as the Cretan Labyrinth was full of turnings. He studied the books of the living as Egypt's priests were wont to study The Book of the Dead, pondering upon Arnold Bennett, who could produce atmosphere without ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... separate service of his own. Sometime before his return, a mob, excited by the report that "Puritanism" was taught in these schools, nearly forced its way into the house of Dr. Kalopothakes; but an officer of the police passed at the moment, and arrested some of the ringleaders. The Cretan refugees were then there, and about twelve hundred of these were in their ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... [313] The Cretan tincture was extracted from a plant which Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny respectively name. The last calls it the Phycos thalassion. This was not a sea-weed, but a lichen—probably the same from which the orchid purple of modern ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... ten years later, by Benoit de Sainte-More. The chief sources of Benoit were versions, probably more or less augmented, of the famous records of the Trojan war, ascribed to the Phrygian Dares, an imaginary defender of the city, and the Cretan Dictys, one of the besiegers. Episodes were added, in which, on a slender suggestion, Benoit set his own inventive faculty to work, and among these by far the most interesting and admirable is the story of Troilus and Briseida, known better to us by her later name of Cressida. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... sorry for the break-up of it, and augur no good from any changes of arrangement likely to take place in concurrence with Kensington, where, the same day that I had been meditating by the old shark, I lost myself in a Cretan labyrinth of military ironmongery, advertisements of spring blinds, model fish-farming, and plaster bathing nymphs with a year's smut on all the noses of them; and had to put myself in charge of a policeman to get out again. Ever ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... all day, looking out over the blue waters and the purple hills of AEgina to the dim, distant shore beyond. Now and then she could see a white-winged ship sailing in the offing; but men said that it was a Cretan vessel, and very likely was filled with fierce Cretan warriors, bound upon some cruel errand of war. Then it was rumored that King Minos had seized upon all the ships of Athens, and had burned a part of the city, and had forced the people to ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... B. Hawes, Dr. Mackenzie, Professors Burrows, Murray, and Browne, and Messrs. D. G. Hogarth and H. R. Hall, to name only a few among many, my obligations are only less than to the acknowledged chief of Cretan explorers. ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... not find him named in the list of Cretan birds; but even if often seen, his dim red breast was little likely to make much impression on the Greeks, who knew the flamingo, and had made it, under the name of Phoenix or Phoenicopterus, the center of their myths of scarlet birds. They broadly embraced ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... through rain, through many hundred Mays VII Gods dine on prayer and sacred song VIII A smile will turn away green eyes IX Two Kings there were, one Good, one Bad X I see that Hermes unawares XI Semiramis, the whore of Babylon XII Bring hemlock, black as Cretan cheese XIII Walking through the town last night XIV The change of many tides has swung the flow XV Piero di Cosimo XVI I would know what cannot be known XVII The yellow bird is ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... subsequently into north-western Anatolia, have never falled to bring back ceramic specimens of Aegean appearance from the valleys of the Rhyndncus, Sangarius and Halys. In Egypt in 1887 W. M. F. Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style at Kahun in the Fayum, and farther up the Nile, at Tell el-Amarna, chanced on bits of no fewer than 800 Aegean vases in 1889. There have now been recognized in the collections at Cairo, Florence, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... than nine versions in his masterly edition, l.c., besides another fragment "Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane," i., 258. He parallels the marriage of Peleus and Thetis in Apollodorus III., xiii., 5, 6, which still persists in modern Greece as a Cretan ballad. ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... A Cretan ballad, taken down about 1820-30, relates that a young peasant, falling in love with a nereid, was advised by an old woman to seize his beloved by the hair just before cock-crow, and hold her fast, whatever transformation ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... said Fronto, 'I will say no more than this, that in its whole aspect this bears the same front, as the black aspersions of the wretch Macer, whose lies, grosser than Cretan ever forged, poured in a foul and rotten current from his swollen lips; yea, while the hot irons were tearing out his very heart-strings, did he still belch forth fresh torrents blacker and fouler ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... ideas on the authority of others, who are themselves in error, or else have an interest in deceiving him. To remove this Cimmerian darkness, these barriers to the improvement of his condition; to disentangle him from the clouds of error that envelope him; to guide him out of this Cretan labyrinth, requires the clue of Ariadne, with all the love she could bestow on Theseus. It exacts more than common exertion; it needs a most determined, a most undaunted courage—it is never effected but by a persevering ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... year, before whose threatening front, Routed the dog-star sinks. But if it be For wheaten harvest and the hardy spelt, Thou tax the soil, to corn-ears wholly given, Let Atlas' daughters hide them in the dawn, The Cretan star, a crown of fire, depart, Or e'er the furrow's claim of seed thou quit, Or haste thee to entrust the whole year's hope To earth that would not. Many have begun Ere Maia's star be setting; these, I trow, Their looked-for harvest fools with empty ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... barks the Cretan king commands, Of Gnossus, Lyctus, and Gortyna's bands; And those who dwell where Rhytion's domes arise, Or white Lycastus glitters to the skies, Or where by Phaestus silver Jardan runs; Crete's hundred cities pour forth all her sons. These march'd, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... again by some Cretan bowmen, he was rescued by a maiden, who dreamed that wolves had brought into the city a chained lion, bereft of its claws, and that she had given it claws and set it free. When she saw Aristomenes among his captors, she believed that her dream had come true, and that the gods desired her ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... news to the Roman army. Then the legions formed in several deep columns. The passage of the river commenced. According to the orders of the Chief of the Hundred Valleys, the archers and slingers resumed their shooting, while Cretan archers and slingers from the Balearic Islands, spreading over the opposite bank, ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... part of the tale of Zayn al-Asnam—the Quest of the Ninth Image—and the Turkish version of which my friend Mr. Gibb has kindly furnished us with a translation from the mystical work of 'Ali 'Aziz Efendi, the Cretan, although no other version has hitherto been found,[FN382] I have little doubt that the story is of either Indian or Persian extraction, images and pictures being abhorred by orthodox (or sunni) Muslims generally; and such also, I think, should we consider all the Arabian tales of young ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Grecians in a ring beheld The coursers bounding o'er the dusty field. The first who marked them was the Cretan king; High on a rising ground, above the ring, The monarch sat: from whence with sure survey He well observ'd the chief who led the way, And heard from far his animating cries, And saw the foremost steed with ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... he found on the succeeding day, when, by the help of his staff, he essayed an infirm walk in the great thoroughfare of the old city. The houses were not much altered, but the signboards had got new names and figures; and as for the faces, they were to him even as those in Crete to the Cretan, after he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years—a similitude only true in this change, for Epimenidas was still as young when he awoke as when he went to sleep, but William Halket was old among the young and the grown, who were unknown to him, as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... after thought, "were I a thrifty man and a spiteful one, I would not eat them. Instead, I should have the same cluster served me every morning that I might say to mine enemies, with truth, that I have Cretan grapes for breakfast daily. They will keep," he added presently, "for it is tradition that stores laid ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... of their preparations and his own victory, and desired as many ships as possible to be speedily sent to him, as he stood in daily expectation of a battle. Twenty were accordingly sent, but instructions were given to their commander to go first to Crete. For Nicias, a Cretan of Gortys, who was proxenus of the Athenians, had persuaded them to sail against Cydonia, promising to procure the reduction of that hostile town; his real wish being to oblige the Polichnitans, neighbours ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... fitful gleams Brake from his dense black forehead, which display'd The enduring chiefs as their distracted fleets Tossed, toiling with the waters, climbing high, And plunging downward with determined beaks, In lurid anguish; but the Cretan king And all his crew were 'ware of under-tides, That for the groaning vessel made a path, On which the impending and precipitous waves Fell not, nor suck'd to their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... descended from a Cretan family, whose name is famous in the annals of Candia. He was born in Russia, and was studying in Germany when the Greeks took up arms against the Turks. His elder brothers, Nicolas and Manolis, having resolved to join the cause of their countrymen, repaired to Marseilles, where, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... sensationalism. The world had witnessed and experienced much the last few years. The Pacific Railroad had been completed ; Grant had been elected President of the United States; Egypt had been flooded with savans: the Cretan rebellion had terminated ; a Spanish revolution had driven Isabella from the throne of Spain, and a Regent had been appointed: General Prim was assassinated; a Castelar had electrified Europe with his advanced ideas upon the liberty of worship; Prussia had humbled Denmark, and annexed Schleswig-Holstein ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Energy of Mithridates.] But when once the die was cast, Mithridates threw himself into the war with the energy of long-suppressed rage. He sent to court the alliance of Egypt and the Cretan league, to whom he represented himself as the champion of Greece against her tyrant. He tried to stir up revolts in Thrace and Macedonia. He arranged with Tigranes that an Armenian army should co-operate with him, leaving him the land it occupied, but carrying off the plunder. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... of the origin of the Cornucopia. Jupiter at his birth was committed by his mother Rhea to the care of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the infant deity with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter broke off one of the horns of the goat and gave it to his nurses, and endowed it with the wonderful power of becoming filled with whatever ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch |
