Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Lucian of Samosata is responsible for the strange story of Minerva how Jupiter commanded Vulcan to split open his skull with a sharp axe, and how the warlike virgin leaped in full maturity from the cleft in the brain, thoroughly armed and ready for deeds of martial daring, brandishing her glittering weapons with fiery energy, and breaking at once into the wild Pyrrhic dance.

Born at Samosata, Syria, about 120 A.D.; died about 200; apprenticed to his maternal uncle, who was a sculptor, but ran away in dislike of the art; becoming interested in the Rhetoricians, began to write himself; his works, as collected in English, comprize four volumes, among them "Dialogues of the Gods," "Dialogues of the Dead," "Zeus, the Tragedian," "The Ferryboat," and "Toxaris."

Paul of Samosata, not in his doctrine, but in his life, is an alien, a foreigner, an adversary, and no friend or servant of Jesus.

So urgent was the mischief, so intolerable the shame, that even the dissolute Michael, the son of Theodora, was compelled to march in person against the Paulicians: he was defeated under the walls of Samosata; and the Roman emperor fled before the heretics whom his mother had condemned to the flames.

VIII. Paul of Samosata, about thirty years after Origen, so distinguished himself in the controversy concerning the nature of Christ as to be the subject of two councils or synods, assembled at Antioch, upon his opinions. Yet he is not charged by his adversaries with rejecting any book of the New Testament.

Baldwin had anticipated the unconditional surrender of Samosata; but the Turkish governor had some of the Edessenes in his power, and he refused to give up the city except on the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk shortly afterward fell into Baldwin's hands, and was put to death. The days of its greatest splendor had passed away.

Among the rest, he besieged Antiochus, king of Commagene, in the city of Samosata, who made an offer of a thousand talents for his pardon, and a promise of submission to Antony's commands.

Of the lotus of the Hindoos Nimrod says: "The lotus is a well-known allegory, of which the expanse calyx represents the ships of the gods floating on the surface of the water, and the erect flower arising out of it, the mast thereof... but as the ship was Isis or Magna Mater, the female principle, and the mast in it the male deity, these parts of the flower came to have certain other significations, which seem to have been as well known at Samosata as at Benares."

Marcellus almost certainly used incautious language, and it was many years before even Athanasius was fully awake to the danger from the Sabellian side. This is what seems to have influenced the bishops most of all. This also was true, for the word had been rejected as materializing by a large council held at Antioch in 269 against Paul of Samosata.

Peace was made before long on Semiarian terms. A collection was made of the decisions against Photinus and Paul of Samosata, together with the Lucianic creed, and signed by Liberius of Rome, by Ursacius and Valens, and by all the Easterns present. Liberius had not borne exile well.