"Pythian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The great bulk of his portrayals of the nobility preceded his classical subjects, which took form from his superb model. She was Cassandra; she was Iphigenia, St. Caecilia, Bacchante, Calope, The Spinstress, Joan of Arc, The Pythian Princess Calypso, and Magdalene,—the two latter subjects painted to order for the ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... things, and see thoroughly what it demands; for otherwise we cannot arrive at the knowledge of ourselves. And because this precept was too important an one to be discerned by a man, it has on that account been attributed to God. The Pythian Apollo, then, enjoins us to know ourselves: but this knowledge is to know the power of our mind and body, and to follow that course of life which enjoys the circumstances in which it is placed. And since ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... well-to-do should submit to compulsory expenditures outside their own countries; and for the athletes the prizes for each event are sufficient. This ruling does not apply to any one of them who might come out victor in the Olympian or Pythian games, or some contest here at Rome.[12] Such are the only persons who ought to be fed, and then the cities will not exhaust themselves without avail nor anybody practice save those who have a chance of winning, since one can follow some other pursuit that is more advantageous ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... planetarie warrs! We might have seen him rage and rave, yea worse, 'Tis very like we might have heard him curse The year, the month, the day, the hour, the place, The company, the wager, and the race; Decry all recreations, with the names Of Isthmian, Pythian, and Olympick games; Exclaim against them all both old and new, Both the Nemaean and the Lethaean too: Adjudge all persons, under highest pain, Always to walk on foot, and then again Order all horses to be hough'd, that we Might never more the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... auspicium melioris aevi[Lat][obs3]. 513. Oracle.— N. oracle; prophet, prophesier, seer, soothsayer, augur, fortune teller, crystal gazer[obs3], witch, geomancer[obs3], aruspex[obs3]; aruspice[obs3], haruspice[obs3]; haruspex; astrologer, star gazer[obs3]; Sibyl; Python, Pythoness[obs3]; Pythia; Pythian oracle, Delphian oracle; Monitor, Sphinx, Tiresias, Cassandra[obs3], Sibylline leaves; Zadkiel, Old Moore; sorcerer &c. 994; interpreter &c. 524. [person who predicts by non-mystical (natural) means] predictor, prognosticator, forecaster; weather forecaster, weatherman. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the idea of good, and order his life after that pattern; if necessary, taking his turn at the helm of State, and training up others to be his successors. When his time comes he shall depart in peace to the islands of the blest. He shall be honoured with sacrifices, and receive such worship as the Pythian oracle approves. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the reader will find a noble instance in Pindar's first Pythian Ode, where he employs from the verse beginning nausiphoretais d' adrasea, &c. to the end of the stanza, one of the happiest and most natural illustrations that is to be met with either in the works of Pindar, or in those of any Poet whatever. The abrupt address to Phoebus, when he ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... already again and again pressed on your attention the beginning of the arts of men in the make and use of the plowshare. Read more carefully—you might indeed do well to learn at once by heart,—the twenty-seven lines of the Fourth Pythian, which describe the plowing of Jason. There is nothing grander extant in human fancy, nor set down in human words: but this great mythical expression of the conquest of the earth-clay and brute-force by vital human energy, will ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of the fire of the brain, so Athena of the fire of the heart; and as Hercules wears for his chief armor the skin of the Nemean lion, his chief enemy, whom he slew; and Apollo has for his highest name "the Pythian," from his chief enemy, the Python slain; so Athena bears always on her breast the deadly face of her chief enemy slain, the Gorgonian cold, and venomous agony, that turns ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... however, the ghost of the murdered man became a source of serious annoyance to the people of the place, killing the inhabitants of the town, regardless of age and sex. Finally, matters came to such a pass that the town was abandoned. But the Pythian priestess bade the people return to Tecmessa and appease the hero by building him a temple and precinct of his own, and giving him every year the fairest maiden of the town to wife. They took this ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... she often did when brought into contact with this man's enthusiasm—a delight almost like terror; for it made her shudder and tremble as though within her own poor frame was that Pythian effluence, felt, not ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... procession. The Senate, knights, and innumerable throngs of people went forth to meet him. The walls trembled from shouts of "Hail, Augustus! Hail, Hercules! Hail, divinity, the incomparable, the Olympian, the Pythian, the immortal!" Behind him were borne the crowns, the names of cities in which he had triumphed; and on tablets were inscribed the names of the masters whom he had vanquished. Nero himself was intoxicated with delight, and with ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a loud Amen! And so most striking to me, as I approached the village and the little plain church perched aloft, was the air of intense excitement that possessed that mass of black folk. A sort of suppressed terror hung in the air and seemed to seize us,—a pythian madness, a demoniac possession, that lent terrible reality to song and word. The black and massive form of the preacher swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in singular eloquence. The people moaned and fluttered, and then the gaunt-cheeked ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in advance of sculpture and painting. The chief merit of the Delian Hymn is in the concluding description of the assembled Ionians, happy seafarers like the Phaeacians in the morning of the world. The confusions of the Pythian Hymn to Apollo make it less agreeable; and the humour of the Hymn to Hermes is archaic. All those pieces, however, have delightfully fresh descriptions of sea and land, of shadowy dells, flowering meadows, dusky, fragrant caves; of the mountain glades where the wild beasts ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... (a non- existent word), of confusing "Delphos" with Delos, and placing the Delphian Oracle in an island. In the same play the author, quite needlessly, makes the artist Giulio Romano (1492-1546) contemporary with the flourishing age of the oracle of the Pythian Apollo. This, at least, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... out very strong, in this season of trouble; almost the last we see of our excellent Wilhelmina. Like a lioness; like a shrill mother when her children are in peril. A noble sisterly affection is in Wilhelmina; shrill Pythian vehemence trying the impossible. That a Brother, and such a Brother, the most heroic now breathing, brave and true, and the soul of honor in all things, should have the whole world rise round him, like a delirious Sorcerer's-Sabbath, intent to hurl the mountains on him,—seems ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the Duke's character, how generously does he forbear every expression of scorn, and cover the man's frailties with a mantle of comprehensive apology, and, in fact, the true apology, by gathering them together, one and all, as the united results of some secret nympholepsy, or some sacred Pythian inspiration:— ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... It may be that something in it touches a peculiar tone of feeling; but to me there is nothing like the ninth Pythian. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the Pythian priestess rose, Events of future actions to disclose. Laurel triumphant generals did wear, And laurel heralds in their hands did bear. Poets ambitious of unfading praise, Phoebus, the Muses all are crown'd with bays. And ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Callinus, the Ephesian, made a religion of patriotism. Tyrtaeus (B.C. 660), somewhat later, of Sparta, was devoted to the same theme. Pindar, the Theban, began his career (B.C. 494) in the time of the conquests of Darius, and composed one of his Pythian odes in the year of the battle of Marathon. He taught a divine retribution on good and evil; taught that "the bitterest end awaits the pleasure that is contrary to right,"[231] taught moderation, and that "a man should always keep in view the bounds and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... doing? Morality, in whose name we are so scrupulous, demands above everything else, truth and sincerity. But the beginning of all truth is that we do not impose upon ourselves. "Know thyself" is written over the entrance of the Pythian sanctuary. And it is this inspiring summons of the radiant god of Delphi that psychoanalysis seeks ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... to tell the truth, I don't get much time for reading, we're always so busy at the store and——But we had the dandiest professional reciter at the Pythian ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... seated on two stools, and casting up division sums on their respective slates—a point of education to which Mr. Morton attended with great care. As soon as his father's back was turned, Master Tom's eyes wandered from the slate to the muffin, as it leered at him from the slop- basin. Never did Pythian sibyl, seated above the bubbling spring, utter more oracular eloquence to her priest, than did that muffin—at least the parts of it yet extant—utter to the fascinated senses of Master Tom. First he sighed; then he ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... secret of moving others is, that the poet be himself moved. We have seen how well Schiller's temper and circumstances qualified him to fulfil this condition: treatment, not of his choosing, had raised his own mind into something like a Pythian frenzy; and his genius, untrained as it was, sufficed to communicate abundance of the feeling to others. Perhaps more than abundance: to judge from our individual impression, the perusal of the Robbers produces an effect powerful ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... begins with Terpander the Lesbian (fl. 670 B.C.), who was many times the victor in the musical contests at the Pythian temple of Delphi. He added three new strings to the cithara, which had consisted only of four, and this heptachord was employed by Pindar, and remained long in high repute; he was also the first who marked the different tones in music. With other musicians, he united the music of Asia Minor ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... he must speak in a manner different from the rest of mankind. He thereupon began to writhe his body, to screw up his face, to hold in his breath, and to exhale it in a forcible manner, insomuch that the priestess of the Pythian god at Delphos could not have acted her part to better advantage. Inspiration soon became so habitual to him that he could scarce deliver himself in any other manner. This was the first gift he communicated to his disciples. These aped very sincerely their master's several grimaces, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... speckled with sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill-furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... whose business it was to recite these poems from memory; and from the edicts of Solon and the Sikyonian Kleisthenes (Herod., V. 67), we may infer that the case was the same in other parts of Greece. Passages from the Iliad used to be sung at the Pythian festivals, to the accompaniment of the harp (Athenaeus, XIV. 638), and in at least two of the Ionic islands of the AEgaean there were regular competitive exhibitions by trained young men, at which prizes were given to the best reciter. The difficulty ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... secret one for the death of her son. The guardian of Orestes arrives, and, in the character of a messenger from a Phocian friend, announces the death of Orestes, and minutely enumerates all the circumstances which attended his being killed in a chariot-race at the Pythian games. Clytemnestra, although visited for a moment with a mother's feelings, can scarce conceal her triumphant joy, and invites the messenger to partake of the hospitality of her house. Electra, in touching ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... they form a link in the chain of this history. By them, such as they were, however, the influence of the drama was established so far that it was soon found necessary to regulate it by law; the players who entered into competition at the Pythian games being enjoined to represent successively the circumstances that had preceded, accompanied and followed the victory of Apollo over Python. Some years after this, came Susarion of Megara, the first inventor of comedy who appeared at the head of a company of actors attacking the vices ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... the fortunate order which, the evening before, he had had so much trouble to recover from the hooked fingers of the intendant. Placed in an envelope, and addressed to Fouquet, it had not even been divined by Planchet, who in divination was equal to Calchas or the Pythian Apollo. D'Artagnan thus sent back the order to Fouquet, without compromising himself, and without having thenceforward any reproaches to make himself. When he had effected this proper restitution, "Now," said he to himself, "let us inhale much maternal air, much freedom from ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... multitude of the beauties of the irregular Euripides, it is obvious to notice the characters of Alcestis and the Clytemnestra of the Electra; the soliloquies of Medea; the picturesque situation of Ion, the minister of the Pythian temple; the opening scene of the Orestes; and the dialogues between Phaedra and her attendant in the Hippolytus, and the old man and Antigone in the Phoenissae;—passages which are either unconnected with the development of the plot, or of an importance superior to it. Thus the Greek ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar. A New Translation in English Verse. Crown 8vo. Cloth, price ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... whereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to carry to their head a great goblet full of wine without a trembling and a shaking in the hand that holds it. This of old was accounted a prefiguration and mystical pointing out of the Pythian divineress, who used always, before the uttering of a response from the oracle, to shake a branch of her domestic laurel. Lampridius also testifieth that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to acquire unto himself the reputation of a soothsayer, did, on several holy days of prime solemnnity, in the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... which, placed by the side of the throne of Midas, were still objects of admiration in the treasury of the Corinthians in the time of Herodotus. To these he added at various times such valuable gifts that the Pythian priestess, who had hitherto been poor, was in later times accounted to have owed to him her wealth. Having made sure of the good will of the immortals, Gyges endeavoured to extend his influence among the Greek colonies along the coast, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... made by Philip, thanks to their inaction. "When the Greeks once abused their power to oppress others, all Greece rose to prevent this injustice; and yet today we suffer an unworthy Macedonian, a barbarian of a hated race, to destroy Greek cities, celebrate the Pythian games, or have them celebrated by his slaves. And the Greeks look on without doing anything, just as one sees hail falling while he prays that it may not touch him. You let increase his power without taking a step to stop it, each regarding ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... do as you do, and I wish as you wish, and I implore you to address powerful and solemn prayers to the gods, and in addition to immolate a sheep as a token of our gratitude. Let us sing the Pythian chant in honour of the god, and let Chaeris accompany ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... of spirit have been often commended, as when the Pythian Apollo rebuked the pompous sacrifice offered at his shrine by a rich Magnesian, and said that he preferred the simple cake and frankincense of a pious Achaean which was offered ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... follow. And now, on a dull evening, some three weeks after Audrey's dinner-party, he was alone in his study, smoking, as he leaned back in his easy-chair, in one of those dreamy moods which with him meant fiction in the making, the tobacco-smoke curling round his head the Pythian fumes of his inspiration. The study was curiously suggestive of its owner's inconsistencies. With its silk cushions, Oriental rugs, and velvet draperies, its lining of books, and writing-table heaped with manuscripts and proofs, it witnessed to his impartial love of luxury ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... didst thou, fair mount, when Greece was young, See round thy giant base a brighter choir; Nor e'er did Delphi, when her priestess sung The Pythian hymn with more than mortal fire, Behold a train more fitting to inspire The song of love than Andalusia's maids, Nurst in the glowing lap of soft desire: Ah! that to these were given such peaceful shades As Greece can still bestow, though Glory ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... have needed a greater than the Pythian Priestess to have given me hopes of either in Florence. And yet, as we pursued our way, by the Borg' Ognissanti towards the river, I could not but be struck by the subdued aspect of the citizens, who, far ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett |
