United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"This exhibition of the 'imagines, or waxen effigies of heroes and demigods, is a venerable custom, and inciteth the vulgar to virtue by great and invisible examples. "Waxen images? What, are they not the apostles themselves, embalmed, or the like?" The friar moaned. "They did not exist in the year 800.
Another richly dressed mask marched beside him, carrying a yellow parasol covered with symbolic designs. These masks, as a lama sitting near me explained to us, represented six classes of beings subject to the metamorphoses; the gods, the demigods, men, animals, spirits and demons.
Hence the early annals of the Siamese, or Sajamese, abound in fables of heroes, demigods, giants, and genii, and afford but few facts of practical value. Swayed by religious influences, they joined, in the spirit of the Hebrews, the name of God to the titles of their rulers and princes, whom they almost deified after death.
Fools wish to pass for wits; wits want to be thought men of talent; men of talent wish to be treated as men of genius; as for men of genius, they are more reasonable; they consent to be only demigods.
The people of to-day, too intelligent to be misled or abused for selfish ends even by demigods, are ready, on the other hand, to comprehend and to follow with enthusiasm every better leading. The result is, that our greatest men and women wield to-day an unselfish empire, more absolute than your czars dreamed of, and of an extent to make Alexander's conquests seem provincial.
Some idea may be formed of the extreme ignorance and debased condition of the serfs when I mention that in many parts of the country, where the influence of the court is not so immediately felt by the proprietors, they have assumed such despotic powers over their dependents, and exercise to this day such an inexorable command over their lives, liberties, and persons, that the poor creatures have almost learned to regard them as demigods.
The apotheosis was worthy of these three heroes whom fable would have placed in the rank of demigods. And now will this attempt, unprecedented in the annals of travels, lead to any practical result? Will direct communication with the moon ever be established? Will they ever lay the foundation of a traveling service through the solar world?
After a time this spectacular excitement the noisy monotony of which began to weary me calmed down a little; gods, demigods, kings, men and spirits got up, and followed by all the other maskers, directed themselves toward the temple door, whence issued at once, meeting them, a lot of men admirably disguised as skeletons.
Cecilia's Day," thus celebrates the launching of the ship "Argo," and the power of the music of Orpheus, whom he calls the Thracian: "So when the first bold vessel dared the seas, High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain, While Argo saw her kindred trees Descend from Pelion to the main. Transported demigods stood round, And men grew heroes at the sound."
Prince Ptolemy, farewell, and of thee will I make mention, even as of the other demigods; and a word methinks I will utter not to be rejected of men yet unborn, excellence, howbeit, thou shalt gain from Zeus. This epithalamium may have been written for the wedding of a friend of the poet's. The idea is said to have been borrowed from an old poem by Stesichorus.
Word Of The Day