United States or Uganda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And Nestor, knight of Gerene, answered, "Son of Atreus, I too would gladly be the man I was when I slew mighty Ereuthalion; but the gods will not give us everything at one and the same time. I was then young, and now I am old; still I can go with my knights and give them that counsel which old men have a right to give.
"She is married," said Orestes, "to this Pylades, whom thou seest." "And of what country is he and who is his father?" "His father is Strophius the Phocian; and he is a kinsman, for his mother was the daughter of Atreus and a friend also such as none other is to me." Then Orestes set forth to his sister the cause of his coming to the land of the Taurians.
Conscience may be a giant; that makes a Socrates or a Jesus: it may be a dwarf; that makes an Atreus or a Judas. The puny conscience soon turns reptile; the twilight thickets, the brambles, the thorns, the marsh waters under branches, make for it a fatal haunting place; amid all this it undergoes the mysterious infiltration of ill suggestions.
Timber originals were not, however, the only sources from which the early inhabitants of Greece drew their inspiration. The so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ, a circular underground chamber 48 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and with a pointed vault, is a well-known specimen of more regular yet archaic building.
Those who held the strong city of Mycenae, rich Corinth and Cleonae; Orneae, Araethyrea, and Licyon, where Adrastus reigned of old; Hyperesia, high Gonoessa, and Pellene; Aegium and all the coast-land round about Helice; these sent a hundred ships under the command of King Agamemnon, son of Atreus.
It is only the Tartuffes and the Holy Willies who, whilst they persist in their guilt, talk of leaving the issue to the Divine Providence of God. Doble has also pointed out to me in the first edition of the Spectator the following passage at the end of No. 14: 'On the first of April will be performed at the Play-house in the Hay-market an opera call'd The Cruelty of Atreus.
"Nevertheless he did distribute some meeds of honour among the chieftains and kings, and these have them still; from me alone of the Achaeans did he take the woman in whom I delighted let him keep her and sleep with her. Why, pray, must the Argives needs fight the Trojans? What made the son of Atreus gather the host and bring them? Was it not for the sake of Helen?
"When Proserpine had dismissed the female ghosts in all directions, the ghost of Agamemnon son of Atreus came sadly up to me, surrounded by those who had perished with him in the house of Aegisthus.
But Achilles slept in an inner room, and beside him the daughter of Phorbas lovely Diomede, whom he had carried off from Lesbos. Patroclus lay on the other side of the room, and with him fair Iphis whom Achilles had given him when he took Scyros the city of Enyeus. When the envoys reached the tents of the son of Atreus, the Achaeans rose, pledged them in cups of gold, and began to question them.
We stood still and marvelled, for Achilles in his anger with the son of Atreus suffered us not to fight. I am his squire, and came with him in the same ship. I am a Myrmidon, and my father's name is Polyctor: he is a rich man and about as old as you are; he has six sons besides myself, and I am the seventh. We cast lots, and it fell upon me to sail hither with Achilles.
Word Of The Day