Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
They had fought for three days and nights without a drop of water, the whole day under a scorching sun on a sandy plain. Gordon writing to a friend says: "What a defeat Hicks's was! It is terrible to think of over 12,000 men killed; the Arabs just prodded them to death, where they lay dying of thirst, four days without water! It is appalling. What a hecatomb to death!"
But come, let us now inquire of some soothsayer or priest, yea, or an interpreter of dreams seeing that a dream too is of Zeus who shall say wherefore Phoebus Apollo is so wroth, whether he blame us by reason of vow or hecatomb; if perchance he would accept the savour of lambs or unblemished goats, and so would take away the pestilence from us."
Then Marius, washing his hands and raising them to heaven, vowed a hecatomb to the gods; and Catulus also in like manner raising his hands, vowed to consecrate the fortune of that day. It is said that when Marius had sacrificed and had inspected the victims, he cried out with a loud voice, "Mine is the Victory."
Then opened he the lid of his quiver and took forth a feathered arrow, never yet shot, a source of grievous pangs; and anon he laid the bitter dart upon the string and vowed to Apollo, the son of light, the lord of archery, to sacrifice a goodly hecatomb of firstling lambs when he should have returned to his home in the city of holy Zeleia.
So saying he gave the girl over to her father, who received her gladly, and they ranged the holy hecatomb all orderly round the altar of the god. They washed their hands and took up the barley-meal to sprinkle over the victims, while Chryses lifted up his hands and prayed aloud on their behalf.
The cook uncovered his coppers, plunged his tormentors therein, and produced such a succession of ugly corpses of fowls as I had never seen before. To each man a whole one was allotted, and we bore the steaming hecatomb into the forecastle. The boisterous merriment became hushed at our approach, and faces grew lengthy when the unwholesome aspect of the "treat" was revealed.
They would first make a hecatomb of their hated foes, and then fall upon it. That is the sort of death preferred by the prairie man hunter, trapper, or trader glorious to him as the cannon-furrowed field to the soldier. That is the sort of death of which Walt Wilder spoke when he said, "Let us die, not like dogs, but as men as Americans!"
Julian himself was a model of heathen purity, and spared no pains to infect his wondering subjects with his own enthusiasm for the cause of the immortal gods. Not a temple missed its visit, not a high place near his line of march was left unclimbed. As for his sacrifices, they were by the hecatomb. The very abjects called him Slaughterer. Never was a completer failure.
Mansfield, one of the wildest young fellows in the regiment, had vowed that the leave-taking should be commemorated by some very decisive and open expressions of our feelings, and had already made some progress in arrangements for blowing up the great bell, which had more than once obtruded upon our morning convivialities; but he was overruled by his more discreet associates, and we at length assumed our places at table, in the midst of which stood a hecatomb of all my college equipments, cap, gown, bands, etc.
"Well, I'll have to try to get well in time." The Frenchman resisted the impulse to leap back in surprise, but his eyes narrowed till they were slits in his face. So! This Englishman did not know that this had been the last day of the sacrifices, that at midnight a hecatomb of pigs was to be killed and eaten in the bush in honor of the Ju-Ju.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking