Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 3, 2025
Then Hercules continued his way through Illyria, hastened over the river Eridanus, and came to the nymphs of Jupiter and Themis, who dwelt on the banks of the stream. To these Hercules put his question. "Go to the old river god Nereus," was their answer. "He is a seer and knows all things. Surprise him while he sleeps and bind him; then he will be forced to tell you the right way."
Him the Thunderer hurled From th' empyrean headlong to the gulf Of the half-parched Eridanus, where weep Even now the sister trees their amber tears O'er Phaeton untimely dead" In the beautiful lines of Walter Savage Landor, descriptive of the Sea-shell, there is an allusion to the Sun's palace and chariot.
It is as instructive as any of those which have been made the subject of profound research. There is a great space in the heavens over which none of the old constellations extend, except the River Eridanus as now pictured, but we do not know where this winding stream of stars was supposed by the old observers to come to an end.
That was what the poets taught me, and I looked forward, if ever fortune should bring me to the Eridanus, to standing under a poplar, catching a few tears in a fold of my dress, and having a supply of the commodity.
And the fields of this paradise seemed less green, the air became less pure and balmy, and the sky less radiant, and the waters of the paradisal river Eridanus grew muddy. The poets became tired of hearing one another recite, the heroes lost delight in their wrestling and chariot racing and in their exercises with the spear and the bow.
"As when the palsied universe aghast Lay .... mute and still, When drove, so poets sing, the sun-born youth Devious through Heaven's affrighted signs his sire's Ill-granted chariot. Him the Thunderer hurled >From th'empyrean headlong to the gulf Of the half-parched Eridanus, where weep Even now the sister trees their amber tears O'er Phaeton untimely dead."
But in primitive times the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all well covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places.
The Acropolis of the ancient Athens extended to the Ilissus and Eridanus, and included the Pnyx, and the Lycabettus on the opposite side to the Pnyx, having a level surface and deep soil.
Cross once more to Asia, and Samos awaits you, with the fall of Polycrates, and his daughter's flight into Persia; and the ancient story of Tantalus's folly, and of the feast that he gave the Gods; of butchered Pelops, and his ivory shoulder. In Italy, we have the Eridanus, Phaethon, and his poplar-sisters, who wept tears of amber for his loss.
Without venturing to insist on so heterodox a notion, I may remark as an odd coincidence that probably such a picture or sculpture would have shown the smoke ascending from the Altar which I have already described, and in this smoke there would be shown the bow of Sagittarius; which, interpreted and expanded in the way I have mentioned, might have accounted for the 'bow set in the clouds, for a token of a covenant. It is noteworthy that all the remaining constellations forming the southern limit of the old star-domes or charts, were watery ones the Southern Fish, over which Aquarius is pouring a quite unnecessary stream of water, the Great Sea Monster towards which in turn flow the streams of the River Eridanus.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking