United States or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In this fable Antaeus, who personifies the woodland solitude and the desert African waste, is easily overcome by his adversary, who represents the river Nile, which, divided into a thousand arms, or irrigating canals, prevents the arid sand from being borne away and then back again by the winds to desolate the fertile valley.
Such warfare was more painful to him that gave than to him that received the blows. They next clasped, and strained each his adversary, as Hercules did Antaeus. Mandricardo, more enraged than Orlando, made violent efforts to unseat the paladin, and dropped the rein of his horse. Orlando, more calm, perceived it.
He rose from the earth, like a second Antaeus, with renewed vigor, and when the boatswain attempted to repeat the operation, Catlin dealt him a blow in the body which fairly lifted him from his feet, and, doubling him up, dropped him motionless on the ground. By the aid of his second, the boatswain was soon again on his feet.
Now it is an established fact that all or most famous knights-errant have some special gift, one that of being proof against enchantment, another that of being made of such invulnerable flesh that he cannot be wounded, as was the famous Roland, one of the twelve peers of France, of whom it is related that he could not be wounded except in the sole of his left foot, and that it must be with the point of a stout pin and not with any other sort of weapon whatever; and so, when Bernardo del Carpio slew him at Roncesvalles, finding that he could not wound him with steel, he lifted him up from the ground in his arms and strangled him, calling to mind seasonably the death which Hercules inflicted on Antaeus, the fierce giant that they say was the son of Terra.
As Antaeus renewed his strength by contact with mother earth, so, father do I feel myself grow taller when I only think of her. She is salvation and honor; the other is ruin and misery in the future. My poor, dear Father, you will, you must survive this stroke to see the fulfilment of all your joyful hopes of your son.
Though one be seized by the heel and thrown, which the Siamese applaud as the climax of the wrestler's adroitness, they still struggle grandly on the ground, a double Antaeus of arms and legs, till one be turned upon his back and slapped upon the breast. That is the accepted signal of the victor.
He was soon so nigh, that there could be no possible mistake about the matter. There he was, with the sun flaming on his golden helmet, and flashing from his polished breastplate; he had a sword by his side, and a lion's skin over his back, and on his right shoulder he carried a club, which looked bulkier and heavier than the pine-tree walking stick of Antaeus.
In short, as I said before, Antaeus loved the Pygmies, and the Pygmies loved Antaeus. The Giant's life being as long as his body was large, while the lifetime of a Pygmy was but a span, this friendly intercourse had been going on for innumerable generations and ages. It was written about in the Pygmy histories, and talked about in their ancient traditions.
As Hercules contended in vain against Antaeus, the Son of Earth so long as the earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall, so the soul contends in vain with evil the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle.
It was well for the world that Antaeus happened to be of a sluggish disposition and liked ease better than exercise; for, if he had frisked about like the Pygmies, and touched the earth as often as they did, he would long ago have been strong enough to pull down the sky about people's ears. But these great lubberly fellows resemble mountains, not only in bulk, but in their disinclination to move.
Word Of The Day