But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.
'T is lack of kindly warmth.
Love divine, all love excelling, Joy of heaven to earth come down. _Divine Love._ Of right and wrong he taught Truths as refined as ever Athens heard; And (strange to tell!) he practised what he preached.
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
Modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis=--He sets me down now at Thebes, now at Athens, _i.e._, the poet does so by his magic art.
Life's uncertain voyage.
Glaube nur, du hast viel gethan / Wenn dir Geduld gewohnest an=--Assure yourself you have accomplished no small feat if only you have learned patience. _Goethe._ [Greek: Glauk' Athenaze]--Owls to Athens.
who you want to meet and we’ll bring him to you.’ ‘Abraham is a hostage,’ Satyrus said. ‘You can’t bring him out of Athens, and I need to see him.’ His captains looked at him with something like suspicion. ‘I’m going to Athens,’ he insisted. ‘Without your fleet?’ Sandokes asked. ‘Haven’t you got this backward, lord? If you must go, why not lead with a show of force?’ ‘Can you go three days armed and ready to fight?’ Satyrus asked. ‘In the midst of the Athenian fleet? No. Trust me on this, friends. And obey – I pay your wages. Go to Aegina and wait.’ Sandokes was dissatisfied and he wasn’t interested in hiding it. ‘Lord, we do obey. We’re good captains and good fighters, and most of us have been with you a few years. Long enough to earn the right to tell you when you are just plain wrong.’ He took a breath. ‘Lord, you’re wrong. Take us into Athens – ten ships full of fighting men, and no man will dare raise a finger to you. Or better yet, stay here, or you go to Aegina and we’ll sail into Athens.’ Satyrus shrugged, angered. ‘You all feel this way?’ he asked. Sarpax shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Aekes and Sandokes have a point, but I’ll obey you. I don’t know exactly what your relationship with Demetrios is, and you do.’ He looked at the other captains. ‘We don’t know.’ Sandokes shook his head. ‘I’ll obey, lord – surely I’m allowed to disagree?’ Satyrus bit his lip. After a flash of anger passed, he chose his words carefully. ‘I appreciate that you are all trying to help. I hope that you’ll trust that I’ve thought this through as carefully as I can, and I have a more complete appreciation of the forces at work than any of you can have.’ Sandokes didn’t back down. ‘I hope that you appreciate that we have only your best interests at heart, lord. And that we don’t want to look elsewhere for employment while your corpse cools.’ He shrugged. ‘Our oarsmen are hardening up, we have good helmsmen and good clean ships. I wager we can take any twenty ships in these waters. No one – no one with any sense – will mess with you while we’re in the harbour.’ Satyrus managed a smile. ‘If you are right, I’ll happily allow you to tell me that you told me so,’ he said. Sandokes turned away. Aekes caught his shoulder. ‘There’s no changing my mind on this,’ Satyrus said. Sandokes shrugged. ‘We’ll sail for Aegina when you tell us,’ Aekes said. Satyrus had never felt such a premonition of disaster in all his life. He was ignoring the advice of a god, and all of his best fighting captains, and sailing into Athens, unprotected. But his sense – the same sense that helped him block a thrust in a fight – told him that the last thing he wanted was to provoke Demetrios. He explained as much to Anaxagoras as the oarsmen ran the ships into the water. Anaxagoras just shook his head. ‘I feel like a fool,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I won’t change my mind.’ Anaxagoras sighed. ‘When we’re off Piraeus, I’ll go off in Miranda or one of the other grain ships. I want you to stay with the fleet,’ Satyrus said. ‘Just in case.’ Anaxagoras picked up the leather bag with his armour and the heavy wool bag with his sea clothes and his lyre. ‘Very well,’ he said crisply. ‘You think I’m a fool,’ Satyrus said. ‘I think you are risking your life and your kingdom to see Miriam, and you know perfectly well you don’t have to. She loves you. She’ll wait. So yes, I think you are being a fool.’ Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘You asked,’ Anaxagoras said sweetly, and walked away. 3 Attika appeared first out of the sea haze; a haze so fine and so thin that a landsman would not even have noticed how restricted was his visibility.
I 'll example you with thievery: The sun 's a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon 's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun; The sea 's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears; the earth 's a thief, That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen From general excrement: each thing 's a thief.
Anacharsis coming to Athens, knocked at Solon's door, and told him that he, being a stranger, was come to be his guest, and contract a friendship with him; and Solon replying, "It is better to make friends at home," Anacharsis replied, "Then you that are at home make friendship with me."
"I am searching for a man."= _Diogenes, going about Athens by day with a lit lantern._
Maid of Athens, ere we part, Give, oh give me back my heart!
It was the duty of the Apostles and of the early Christians in general to stand forth in the name of the only true God, and to prove to the world that their God had nothing in common with the idols worshipped at Athens and Ephesus. It was the duty of the early converts to forswear all allegiance to their former deities, and if they could not at once bring themselves to believe that the gods whom they had worshipped had no existence at all, they were naturally led on to ascribe to them a kind of demoniacal nature, and to curse them as the offspring of that new principle of Evil with which they had become acquainted in the doctrines of the early Church.... Through the whole of St. Augustine's works, and through all the works of earlier Christian divines, there runs the same spirit of hostility blinding them to all that may be good, and true, and sacred, and magnifying all that is bad, false, and corrupt, in the ancient religions of mankind. Only the Apostles and their immediate disciples venture to speak in a different and, no doubt, in a more truly Christian spirit of the old forms of worships.... What can be more convincing, more powerful, than the language of St. Paul at Athens?
This people is not peculiar only by their antiquity, but also remarkable by their duration, which has been unbroken from their origin till now. For while the nations of Greece and Italy, of Lacedæmon, Athens and Rome, and others who came after, have long been extinct, these still remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many powerful princes who have a hundred times striven to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as we can easily understand by the natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved, and extending from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our histories.
Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.
Immortal gods, I crave no pelf; I pray for no man but myself; Grant I may never prove so fond, To trust man on his oath or bond.
Abstineto a fabis=--Having nothing to do with elections (_lit._ Abstain from beans, the ballot at Athens having been by beans).
"You speak truth," said Themistocles; "I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been of Athens."
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
Bos in lingua=--He has an ox on his tongue, _i.e._, a bribe to keep silent, certain coins in Athens being stamped with an ox.
~Appearances.~--It is the appearances that fill the scene; and we pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies. When the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial urn, and burst into broken sobs, how few then knew that it held the ashes of his son!--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain; wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,--there is exhibited in its noblest form the immortal influence of Athens.
Wie die Blumen die Erd', und die Sterne den Himmel / Zieren, so zieret Athen Hellas und Hellas die Welt=--As the flowers adorn the earth and the stars the sky, so Athens adorns Greece, and Greece the world.
Are not within the leaf of pity writ.
Every room Hath blazed with lights and bray'd with minstrelsy.
Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur / Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit / Irritat mulcet falsis terroribus implet / Ut magus: et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis=--That man seems to me able to do anything (_lit._ walk on the tight-rope) who, as a poet, tenures my breast with fictions, can rouse me, then soothe me, fill me with unreal terrors like a magician, set me down either at Thebes or Athens.
We have seen better days.
Here 's that which is too weak to be a sinner,--honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire.
"Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth." -- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages, claming that he was crippled and would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Although the insurance-company doctor testified that his bones had healed properly and that he was fully capable of walking, the judge decided for the plaintiff and awarded him $500,000. When he was wheeled into the insurance office to collect his check, Miller was confronted by several executives. "You're not getting away with this, Miller," one said. "We're going to watch you day and night. If you take a single step, you'll not only repay the damages but stand trial for perjury. Here's the money. What do you intend to do with it?" "My wife and I are going to travel," Miller replied. "We'll go to Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, Athens and, finally, to a place called Lourdes -- where, gentlemen, you'll see yourselves one hell of a miracle."
The law is past depth to those that, without heed, do plunge into it.
Nor Athens had withheld her generous sons, The people of Erectheus. Him of old The teeming glebe produced, a wondrous birth! And Pallas rear'd him: her own unctuous fane She made his habitation, where with bulls The youth of Athens, and with slaughter'd lambs Her annual worship celebrate. Then led Menestheus, whom, (sage Nestor's self except, Thrice school'd in all events of human life,) None rivall'd ever in the just array Of horse and man to battle. Fifty ships Black-prowed, had borne them to the distant war.
Men are at best only stewards, and they are very select men indeed who are elected of heaven to this honour. The most want the necessary discrimination, and are in their place only when, like Athenian maidens, "bearers of the basket."
Paris is the synonym of Cosmos, Paris is Athens, Sybaris, Jerusalem, Pantin. All civilizations are there in an abridged form, all barbarisms also. Paris would greatly regret it if it had not a guillotine.
Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me."
Monte Cristo summoned the Greek attendant, and bade her inquire whether it would be agreeable to her mistress to receive his visit. Haidee's only reply was to direct her servant by a sign to withdraw the tapestried curtain that hung before the door of her boudoir, the framework of the opening thus made serving as a sort of border to the graceful tableau presented by the young girl's picturesque attitude and appearance. As Monte Cristo approached, she leaned upon the elbow of the arm that held the narghile, and extending to him her other hand, said, with a smile of captivating sweetness, in the sonorous language spoken by the women of Athens and Sparta, "Why demand permission ere you enter? Are you no longer my master, or have I ceased to be your slave?" Monte Cristo returned her smile. "Haidee," said he, "you well know."
A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was imbrued in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every abhorrent adjective in the description, and identified himself with every witness at the Inquest. He faintly moaned, "I am done for," as the victim, and he barbarously bellowed, "I'll serve you out," as the murderer. He gave the medical testimony, in pointed imitation of our local practitioner; and he piped and shook, as the aged turnpike-keeper who had heard blows, to an extent so very paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding the mental competency of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle's hands, became Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed himself thoroughly, and we all enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully comfortable. In this cosey state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful Murder.
Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.
When the Roman people had listened to the diffuse and polished discourses of Cicero, they departed, saying one to another, "What a splendid speech our orator has made!" But when the Athenians heard Demosthenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration, that they quite forgot the orator, and left him at the finish of his harangue, breathing revenge, and exclaiming, "Let us go and fight against Philip!"--_Colton._
Races which are petrified in dogma or demoralized by lucre are unfit to guide civilization. Genuflection before the idol or before money wastes away the muscles which walk and the will which advances. Hieratic or mercantile absorption lessens a people's power of radiance, lowers its horizon by lowering its level, and deprives it of that intelligence, at once both human and divine of the universal goal, which makes missionaries of nations. Babylon has no ideal; Carthage has no ideal. Athens and Rome have and keep, throughout all the nocturnal darkness of the centuries, halos of civilization.
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
3:1. For which cause, forbearing no longer, we thought it good to remain at Athens alone.
Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."
Many arrive at second masters / Upon their first lord's neck.
Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes.
For nothing must be flattered, not even a great people; where there is everything there is also ignominy by the side of sublimity; and, if Paris contains Athens, the city of light, Tyre, the city of might, Sparta, the city of virtue, Nineveh, the city of marvels, it also contains Lutetia, the city of mud.
Feast-won, fast-lost.
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
17:16. Now whilst Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, seeing the city wholly given to idolatry.
Friendship's full of dregs.
What man didst thou ever know unthrift, that was beloved after his means?
Simonides calls painting silent poetry, and poetry speaking painting.
So Pallas spake, Goddess cærulean-eyed, And o'er the untillable and barren Deep Departing, Scheria left, land of delight, Whence reaching Marathon, and Athens next, She pass'd into Erectheus' fair abode. Ulysses, then, toward the palace moved Of King Alcinoüs, but immers'd in thought Stood, first, and paused, ere with his foot he press'd The brazen threshold; for a light he saw As of the sun or moon illuming clear The palace of Phæacia's mighty King. Walls plated bright with brass, on either side Stretch'd from the portal to th' interior house, With azure cornice crown'd; the doors were gold Which shut the palace fast; silver the posts Rear'd on a brazen threshold, and above, The lintels, silver, architraved with gold. Mastiffs, in gold and silver, lined the approach On either side, by art celestial framed Of Vulcan, guardians of Alcinoüs' gate For ever, unobnoxious to decay. Sheer from the threshold to the inner house Fixt thrones the walls, through all their length, adorn'd, With mantles overspread of subtlest warp Transparent, work of many a female hand. On these the princes of Phæacia sat, Holding perpetual feasts, while golden youths On all the sumptuous altars stood, their hands With burning torches charged, which, night by night, Shed radiance over all the festive throng. Full fifty female menials serv'd the King In household offices; the rapid mills These turning, pulverize the mellow'd grain, Those, seated orderly, the purple fleece Wind off, or ply the loom, restless as leaves Of lofty poplars fluttering in the breeze; Bright as with oil the new-wrought texture shone. Far as Phæacian mariners all else Surpass, the swift ship urging through the floods, So far in tissue-work the women pass All others, by Minerva's self endow'd With richest fancy and superior skill. Without the court, and to the gates adjoin'd A spacious garden lay, fenced all around Secure, four acres measuring complete. There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, Pomegranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, The honied fig, and unctuous olive smooth. Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang Perennial, whose unceasing zephyr breathes Gently on all, enlarging these, and those Maturing genial; in an endless course Pears after pears to full dimensions swell, Figs follow figs, grapes clust'ring grow again Where clusters grew, and (ev'ry apple stript) The boughs soon tempt the gath'rer as before. There too, well-rooted, and of fruit profuse, His vineyard grows; part, wide-extended, basks, In the sun's beams; the arid level glows; In part they gather, and in part they tread The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes Here put their blossom forth, there, gather fast Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme Flow'rs of all hues smile all the year, arranged With neatest art judicious, and amid The lovely scene two fountains welling forth, One visits, into ev'ry part diffus'd, The garden-ground, the other soft beneath The threshold steals into the palace-court, Whence ev'ry citizen his vase supplies.
Thus he, provision gath'ring as he went And gold abundant, roam'd to distant lands And nations of another tongue. Meantime, Ægisthus these enormities at home Devising, slew Atrides, and supreme Rul'd the subjected land; sev'n years he reign'd In opulent Mycenæ, but the eighth From Athens brought renown'd Orestes home For his destruction, who of life bereaved Ægisthus base assassin of his Sire. Orestes, therefore, the funereal rites Performing to his shameless mother's shade And to her lustful paramour, a feast Gave to the Argives; on which self-same day The warlike Menelaus, with his ships All treasure-laden to the brink, arrived.
O that men's ears should be / To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!
There is no time so miserable, but a man may be true.
As Athenodorus was taking his leave of C?sar, "Remember," said he, "C?sar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters to yourself."
Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.
Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Phædra I also there, and Procris saw, And Ariadne for her beauty praised, Whose sire was all-wise Minos. Theseus her From Crete toward the fruitful region bore Of sacred Athens, but enjoy'd not there, For, first, she perish'd by Diana's shafts In Dia, Bacchus witnessing her crime.
What need we have any friends, if we should never have need of them?
"Yes, but listen: this was not all. The war with Spain being ended, Fernand's career was checked by the long peace which seemed likely to endure throughout Europe. Greece only had risen against Turkey, and had begun her war of independence; all eyes were turned towards Athens--it was the fashion to pity and support the Greeks. The French government, without protecting them openly, as you know, gave countenance to volunteer assistance. Fernand sought and obtained leave to go and serve in Greece, still having his name kept on the army roll. Some time after, it was stated that the Comte de Morcerf (this was the name he bore) had entered the service of Ali Pasha with the rank of instructor-general. Ali Pasha was killed, as you know, but before he died he recompensed the services of Fernand by leaving him a considerable sum, with which he returned to France, when he was gazetted lieutenant-general."
Great men should drink with harness on their throats.
The goddess Athene is armed with the Gorgon's head.
For our own part, we never pronounce those words without pain and without respect, for when philosophy fathoms the facts to which they correspond, it often finds many a grandeur beside these miseries. Athens was an ochlocracy; the beggars were the making of Holland; the populace saved Rome more than once; and the rabble followed Jesus Christ.
The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by it.
Pity is the virtue of the law, / And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
Ceremony was but devised at first / To set a gloss on faint deeds ... / But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws. (Frederick Merton, The Rothschilds, A Family Portrait , New York: Atheneum, 1962.
17:15. And they that conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens: and receiving a commandment from him to Silas and Timothy, that they should come to him with all speed, they departed.
I am not an Athenian nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
He's most truly valiant / That can wisely suffer the worst that man / Can breathe; and make his wrongs his outsides: / To wear them like his raiment, carelessly, / And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart, / To bring it into danger.
'Tis not enough to keep the feeble up, / But to support them after.
Demosthenes told Phocion, "The Athenians will kill you some day when they once are in a rage." "And you," said he, "if they are once in their senses."
For pity is the virtue of the law, / And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy, nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, as Pisa after the hundred years she had been held in bondage by the Florentines.
18:1. After these things, departing from Athens, he came to Corinth.
17:22. But Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious.
Policy sits above conscience.
To revenge is no valour, but to bear.
For the history, especially the ecclesiastical history, of Astorga, see the anonymous _Historia de la ciudad de Astorga_ (Valladolid, 1840); with _Fundación de la ... iglesia ... de Astorga_, by P.A. Ezpeleta (Madrid, 1634); and _Fundación, nombre y armas de ... Astorga_, by P. Junco (Pamplona, 1635). Entry: ASTORGA
Judicial astrology, as a form of divination, is a concomitant of natural astrology, in its purer astronomical aspect, but mingled with what is now considered an unscientific and superstitious view of world-forces. In the _Janua aurea reserata quatuor linguarum_ (1643) of J.A. Comenius we find the following definition:--"_Astronomus siderum meatus seu motus considerat: Astrologus eorundem efficaciam, influxum, et effectum_." Kepler was more cautious in his opinion; he spoke of astronomy as the wise mother, and astrology as the foolish daughter, but he added that the existence of the daughter was necessary to the life of the mother. Tycho Brahe and Gassendi both began with astrology, and it was only after pursuing the false science, and finding it wanting, that Gassendi devoted himself to astronomy. In their numerous allusions to the subtle mercury, which the one makes when treating of a means of measuring time by the efflux of the metal, and the other in a treatise on the transit of the planet, we see traces of the school in which they served their first apprenticeship. Huygens, moreover, in his great posthumous work, _Cosmotheoros, seu de terris coelestibus_, shows himself a more exact observer of astrological symbols than Kircher himself in his _Iter exstaticum_. Huygens contends that between the inhabitants of different planets there need not be any greater difference than exists between men of different types on the earth. "There are on the earth," continues this rational interpreter of the astrologers and chiromancers, "men of cold temperament who would thrive in Saturn, which is the farthest planet from the sun, and there are other spirits warm and ardent enough to live in Venus." Entry: ASTROLOGY