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Perseus   Listen
proper noun
Perseus  n.  
1.
(Class. Myth.) A Grecian legendary hero, son of Jupiter and Danae, who slew the Gorgon Medusa.
2.
(Astron.) A consellation of the northern hemisphere, near Taurus and Cassiopea. It contains a star cluster visible to the naked eye as a nebula.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Perseus" Quotes from Famous Books



... Guercino, a German edition of Guido. Lord Stanhope's speech against Calonne's book. Dr. Price's answer to Burke. Reasons for creating Mr. Grenville a peer. Richmond arrivals. Duke of Clarence. Mrs. Fitzherbert. Duke of Queensbury. Madame Griffoni. Works of Massaccio. Fra Bartolomeo. Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus—464 ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... received the name of "Mira," or the Wonderful, and Boulliaud in 1667 fixed the length of its cycle of change at 334 days. It was not a solitary instance. A star in the Swan was perceived by Janson in 1600 to show fluctuations of light, and Montanari found in 1669 that Algol in Perseus shared the same peculiarity to a marked degree. Altogether the class embraced in 1782 half-a-dozen members. When it is added that a few star-couples had been noted in singularly, but it was supposed accidentally, close juxtaposition, and that the failure of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the interests of the gang, and beneficial to the rest of mankind. Take, for example, the conduct of this atrocious gang under Aemilius Paulus, against Epirus and Greece generally after the defeat of Perseus, all under the deliberate decrees of the senate: take that of this gang under his son Scipio the younger, against Carthage and Numantia; under Cato, at Cyprus—all in the same manner under the deliberate decrees of the senate. Take ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... scanned and routed automatically and finally beamed to the Star Watch unit commandant in charge of the area closest to the Acquataine Cluster, on the sixth planet circling the star Perseus Alpha. Here again, the order was processed automatically and routed through the local headquarters to the personnel files. The automated files selected three microcard dossiers that matched the requirements ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... literature of any race, in which the hero stands out as the deliverer, the destroyer of evil? Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and delivering it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur; Perseus slaying the Gorgon, and rescuing Andromeda from the sea-beast; Heracles with his twelve famous labours against giants and monsters; and all ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... centuries of gradual dominion, must have possessed the vast and diversified collections of the writings of the nations they conquered: among the most valued spoils of their victories, we know that manuscripts were considered as more precious than vases of gold. Paulus Emilius, after the defeat of Perseus, king of Macedon, brought to Rome a great number which he had amassed in Greece, and which he now distributed among his sons, or presented to the Roman people. Sylla followed his example. Alter the siege of Athens, he discovered an entire library in the temple of Apollo, which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... hereby required and directed to take under your command, the ships named in the margin—[Minotaur, Zealous, Swiftsure, Seahorse, Perseus bomb, and El Corso sloop]—embarking on board them the Governor of Procida, and two hundred troops, as also such officers as are ordered by his Sicilian Majesty to embark with them, and proceed to the Bay of Naples. And it being necessary that the squadron ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... it in the world," he said, "else it would have come to old Max M'Leod;" and he tucked it into the motor. Miss M'Leod on the far side of the car whispered, "Have you found out anything, Mr. Perseus?" ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... which they, enraged, sent a huge monster to ravage the coast. To appease the nymphs, her father thought he must sacrifice his daughter; so he chained her to the water's edge; but as the monster approached, Perseus, assisted by the gods, killed him, delivered Andromeda, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... kingly child, and great was the wrath of her father when he had tidings of the birth. Did the gods in the high heavens laugh at him? The laugh should yet be on his side. Down to the seashore he hurried Danae and her newly-born babe, the little Perseus, put them in a great chest, and set them adrift to be a plaything for winds and waves and a prey for the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... is one coin of Messene which shows him holding the bird while he is standing and thundering. Later coins show combinations which are particularly interesting in connection with the symbolism of our own coins. One of the best of these is a Macedonian coin of the time of Perseus—obverse, head of Perseus; reverse, an eagle on a thunderbolt, within a wreath of oak. In connection with this example should be examined a Roman gold coin of about 269 B.C.—obverse, head of Mars; reverse, an eagle holding in its talons a thunderbolt. This type of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... streak around her neck. Her head beneath her arm, you'll next behold her; Perseus has lopped it from her shoulder,— But let thy crazy passion rest! Come, climb with me yon hillock's breast, Was e'er the Prater[40] merrier then? And if no sorcerer's charm is o'er me, That is a theatre ...
— Faust • Goethe

... beautiful,—more emphatically, because more palpably, than is observable in painting. The inimitable Grecian standard is an immortal precedent; the Medival carvings embody the rude Teutonic truthfulness; where Canova provoked comparison with the antique, as in the Perseus and Venus, his more gross ideal is painfully evident. How artificial seems Bernini in contrast with Angelo! How minutely expressive are the terra-cotta images of Spain! What a climax of absurdity teases the eye in the monstrosities in stone which draw travellers in Sicily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... their voluntary services to the departing consul,[8] and nineteen' years later the experience which had been gained of the wealth that might be reaped from a campaign in Macedonia and Asia drew many willing recruits to the legions which were to be engaged in the struggle with Perseus.[9] The semi-professional soldier was in fact springing up, the man of a spirit adventurous and restless such as did not promise contentment with the small interests and small rewards of life in an Italian ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... hour employ, And be these moments sacred all to joy. Ne'er did my soul so strong a passion prove, Or for an earthly, or a heavenly love: Not when I press'd Ixion's matchless dame, Whence rose Pirithous like the gods in fame: Not when fair Danae felt the shower of gold Stream into life, whence Perseus brave and bold. Not thus I burn'd for either Theban dame: (Bacchus from this, from that Alcides came:) Nor Phoenix' daughter, beautiful and young, Whence godlike Rhadamanth and Minos sprung.(236) Not thus I burn'd for fair Latona's face, Nor comelier Ceres' more majestic ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... made Corcyra; thence, upon the fifth, To Delphi; where to the presiding God A lustratory Sacrifice I made, As for myself, so for the Fleet and Army. Thence in five days I reach'd the Roman camp; Took the command; re-organis'd the War; And, for King Perseus would not forth to fight, And for his camp's strength could not forth be forced, I slipped between his Outposts by the woods At Petra, thence I follow'd him, when he Fight me must needs, I fought and routed him, Into the all-constraining ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... observed that Perseus had not resolution enough to kill himself,(41) I do not thereby pretend to justify the practice of the heathens, who looked upon suicide as lawful; but simply to relate an incident, and the judgment which Paulus AEmilius passed on it. Had I barely hinted a word or two ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... scaffolds of the Sistine Chapel and watches with anxious air young Raphael mounting the steps of the Vatican with the cartoon of the Loggie under his arm. Benvenuto Cellini is meditating his Perseus, Ghiberti is carving the Baptistery doors at the same time that Donatello is rearing his marbles on the bridges of the Arno; and whilst the city of the Medici is staking masterpieces against that of Leo X and Julius II, Titian and Paul Veronese are ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... as Andromeda and her cousin as Perseus as the latter wore no helmet, everybody could of course recognize him. But when he went away without having married her, she had a casque painted, which concealed the face, and said she would not have another face inserted ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... graceful of all courtiers, "let your imperial majesty forgive me; no, you are not the aurora borealis; you are assuredly the most brilliant star of the north, and never was there one so beneficent as you. Andromeda, Perseus, Callisto are not your equals. All these stars would have left Diderot to die of starvation. He was persecuted in his own country, and your benefactions came thither to seek him! Lewis XIV. was less munificent than your majesty: he rewarded merit in foreign countries, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... any wish to hurt. Yet the words did hurt. She saw Thresk redden as she uttered them, and a swift wild hope flamed like a rose in her heart: if this man with the brains and the money and the perseverance sitting at her side should turn out to be the Perseus for her beautiful chained Andromeda, far away there in the state of Chitipur! The lines of a poem came ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... of that radiant type to which belong all bright and genial heroes, righters of wrong, blazing to consume evil, gentle and strong to uplift weakness: Apollo, Hercules, Perseus, Achilles, Sigard, St. George, and many another." Balder has been a favorite subject for poetic treatment, perhaps to best effect in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all stages of culture, even in high stages of civilization when more refined and perverse ideals tend to find favor, and at Pompeii as a decoration on the east side of the Purgatorium of the Temple of Isis we find a representation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, who is shown as a woman with a very small head, small hands and feet, but with a fully developed body, large breasts, and large ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... attraction, the tableaux vivants. That is where I lay in wait for our astute Duke. I will spare you details of nine of the tableaux. There are to be twelve, but Esperance appears only in three, which are the best. In one she represents Andromeda fastened to the rock, and Perseus (the Duke) delivers her after overcoming the dragon. In the second, the 'Judgment of Paris,' she appears as Aphrodite, to whom Paris (the Duke) gives the apple. The third is 'Europa and the Bull,' Europa being personified by Esperance. The Duke does not wish to look ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... finding of Moses has its parallels in almost every country—in the Greek and Roman legends of Perseus, Cyrus, and Romulus—in Indian, Persian, and Arabian tales—and a Babylonian analogue is given, as follows, by the Rev. A. H. Sayce, in the Folk-Lore Journal for 1883: "Sargon, the mighty monarch, the king of Agane, am I. My mother ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... Abdera, a City of the Greeks, at the acting of the Tragedy of Andromeda, upon an extream hot day: whereupon, a great many of the spectators falling into Fevers, had this accident from the heat, and from The Tragedy together, that they did nothing but pronounce Iambiques, with the names of Perseus and Andromeda; which together with the Fever, was cured, by the comming on of Winter: And this madnesse was thought to proceed from the Passion imprinted by the Tragedy. Likewise there raigned a fit of madnesse in another Graecian city, which seized onely the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... least we learn that the Pleiades were 'eminent stars,' but denoting accidents to the sight or blindness, while the cluster Praesepe or the Beehive in like manner threatened blindness. The cluster in Perseus does not seem to have been noticed by astrologers. The variable star Algol or Caput Medusae, which marks the head of Gorgon, was accounted 'the most unfortunate, violent, and dangerous star in the heavens.' It is tolerably clear that ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... commanded Glaucon. "Ageladas the master-sculptor sends me a bronze Perseus in honour of my victory. Shall I churlishly send him no thanks ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... Zeus, father of the Gods, the twin-brothers, Apollo in his glorious shrine at Delphi, Hermes who is the conductor of enterprises: the dear son of the house is harnessed to the car of calamity, moderate its pace—and may Murder cease to breed new Murder. But the Avenger, like Perseus, must not look on the deed as he does it; as she calls the name Mother let him hurl back the ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... and gain and material passion! By eight o'clock (the Widow Peasley's household being an early and orderly one) he was swinging across the long hills, cleaving for himself a furrowed path in the untrodden snow, breathing deep as he gazed across the blue spaces from the crests. Bellerophon or Perseus, aided by immortals, felt no greater sense of achievements to come than he. Out here, on the wind-swept hills that rolled onward and upward to the mountains, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... against Perseus, the phalanx marched without being stopped. But gaps occurred from the resistance that it encountered. Hundreds penetrated into the gaps in the phalanx and killed the men embarrassed with their long pikes. They were effective only when united, abreast, and at shaft's length. There ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... round, and might as well be let to appreciative strangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes on the walls to be stared at. I might have selected rooms, say on the court which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with the head of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini, where we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, so it would seem, have had rooms by the winter garden, where tropical plants rejoice in perennial summer, and blossom and bear fruit, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... a bosom, and so fair it was, Pure as the perfect work of Phidias, That sad Andromeda's discomfiture Left bare, when Perseus passed her on a day, And pale as Death for fear of Death she lay, With breast as ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... of the forty-eight senators, and to give him any office he may ask for." The affair was dropped for some years, but in 1552 Cosimo renewed his attempts, and now began to employ Vasari and Cellini as ambassadors. Soon after finishing his Perseus, Benvenuto begged for leave to go to Rome; and before starting, he showed the Duke Michelangelo's friendly letter on the bust of Bindo Altoviti. "He read it with much kindly interest, and said to me: 'Benvenuto, if you write to him, and can persuade him to return to Florence, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... elder Filippo Strozzi, a picture with little figures of Perseus delivering Andromeda from the Monster, in which are some very beautiful things. It is now in the house of Signor Sforza Almeni, First Chamberlain to Duke Cosimo, having been presented to him by Messer Giovanni Battista, the son of Lorenzo Strozzi, who knew how much ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... of an evil spirit, the absolute opponent of the Queen of the Air,—Typhon against Athena,—in a sense of which I had neither the experience nor the conception when I wrote the illustrations of the myth of Perseus in 'Modern Painters.' Not a word of all those explanations of Homer and Pindar could have been written in weather like that of the last twelve years; and I am most thankful to have got them written, before the shadow came, and I could still see what Homer and Pindar saw. I quote one passage ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... This is practically the Perseus legend of antiquity, which has been made the subject of an elaborate study by Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, 3 vols., London, 1894-6. Mr. Hartland distinguishes four chains of incidents ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... expressed himself correctly or not in such and such a line of the Iliad, whether Martial was indecent or not in such and such an epigram, whether such and such lines of Virgil are to be understood in this way or in that; in short, all his talk is of the works of these poets, and those of Horace, Perseus, Juvenal, and Tibullus; for of the moderns in our own language he makes no great account; but with all his seeming indifference to Spanish poetry, just now his thoughts are absorbed in making a gloss on four lines that have been sent him from ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... in that way by the Emperor Augustus Caesar (III. 26); and when the cities of Asia contend for the honour of building a temple, away he rambles into a discourse about things in general, the wars of Perseus and Aristonicus; the great antiquity of Troy, proclaimed to be the mother of Rome; the love of home of the Lydians; the first names and settlements of the Tyrrhenians; the Sardinians and Etrurians being of the same descent; the divine ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... Marecchia water, should have been buried in the Valdedera at all. But the place and the name were well known in the district to hundreds of peasants, who knew no more who or what Asdrubal had been than they knew the names of the stars which form the constellation of Perseus. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... the bias which its original, or at least its very early inhabitants, had to commerce: all these combined to render it a place of great importance to commerce. Its trade consisted chiefly in slaves: according to Strabo, in the time of Perseus, king of Macedonia, above 10,000 slaves came in and went out daily. The corn, wine, and other commodities of the neighbouring islands; the scarlet linen tunics, manufactured in the island of Amorgos; the rich purple ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... statues of the Gods in white marble in the open air would make him fancy himself in Athens in the olden time. The following statues in bronze and white marble are to be seen on this Piazza. In bronze are: a statue of Perseus by Cellini; Judith with the head of Holofernes by Donatello; David and Goliath; Samson. In white marble are the following beautiful statues: a group representing Hercules and Cacus; another representing a Roman carrying off a Sabine woman. The Hercules, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... Perseus, one of these demigods, was the son of Jupiter, the highest of the gods, and of Danae, a mortal woman. It had been prophesied to Danae's father, Acrisius, king of Argos, that a grandson would take from him both his throne and life, and he therefore ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... mischief, how, after proving the scourge of the country for years, desolating home after home, in all devouring no less than a hundred old men, women, and children, he was at last caught in 1767 by a brave monster-destroying baron, the Hercules and the Perseus of local story. The ravages of wild beasts were a trifle compared to the enormities ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... saw the rocks where long ago, Above the sea that cries and breaks, Swift Perseus with Medusa's snakes Set free the maiden white ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale

... arms they carried were zithers and plectra, masks and buskins. The victories Nero won were such as befitted that sort of army, and he overcame Terpnus and Diodorus and Pammenes, instead of Philip or Perseus or Antiochus. It is probable that his purpose in forcing the Pammenes referred to, who had been in his prime in the reign of Gaius, to compete in spite of his age, was that he might overcome him and vent his dislike in abuse ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... family was the issue of Pelops to whom Zeus had given a shoulder of ivory to replace the one devoured by a goddess. Thus each country had its legends and the Greeks continued to the end to relate them and to offer worship to their ancient heroes—Perseus, Bellerophon, Herakles, Theseus, Minos, Castor and Pollux, Meleager, OEdipus. The majority of the Greeks, even among the better educated, admitted, at least in part, the truth of these traditions. They accepted ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... star in the heavens is Algol (the demon), in the constellation Perseus. Its light fluctuations can be observed without the aid of a telescope, and it completes a cycle of its changes in two or three days. For about two days and thirteen hours it is conspicuously visible as a star of the second magnitude; it then begins ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... cannot imagine how they stare in my face, when I enquire about them, as if no body was permitted to seek after medals, till they were grown a piece of antiquity themselves. I have got some very valuable ones of the Macedonian kings, particularly one of Perseus, so lively, I fancy I can see all his ill qualities in his face. I have a prophyry (sic) head finely cut, of the true Greek sculpture; but who it represents, is to be guessed at by the learned when I return. For you are not to suppose these antiquaries (who are all Greeks) know any ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... my friend, Polydore, Like Perseus mounted on his winged steed, Came on, and down the dang'rous precipice leap'd To save ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway

... I don't. I exchange blows with Slashaway every time I board the Perseus. And as for women—well, there's just one woman in the world for me, and I wouldn't exchange her for all the Turkish images in ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long

... man from Troy, and told [Strophe 2. Here in the haven, How, orb on orb, to strike with cold The Trojan, o'er that targe of gold, Dread shapes were graven. All round the level rim thereof Perseus, on winged feet, above The long seas hied him; The Gorgon's wild and bleeding hair He lifted; and a herald fair, He of the wilds, whom Maia bare, ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... by fate, he had ere now gone down to the house of Hades, and to-day Nestor of Gerenia in his turn sat thereon, warder of the Achaeans, with his staff in his hands. And about him his sons were gathered and come together, issuing from their chambers, Echephron and Stratius, and Perseus and Aretus and the godlike Thrasymedes. And sixth and last came the hero Peisistratus. And they led godlike Telemachus and set him by their side, and Nestor of Gerenia, lord of chariots, spake first ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... 575)] IX, 22.—Philip, king of Macedonia, had put to death his son Demetrius and was about to slay his other son Perseus, when death overtook him. Because Demetrius had gained the affection of the Roman people through his sojourn as hostage and because he himself and the rest of the Macedonian people hoped that he would secure the kingdom after Philip was done with it, Perseus, who was his elder, became jealous ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... dissemination of the legend is most remarkable. Zeus, Father of the gods, visited Semele, it will be remembered, in the form of a thunderstorm; and she gave birth to the great saviour and deliverer Dionysus. Zeus, again, impregnated Danae in a shower of gold; and the child was Perseus, who slew the Gorgons (the powers of darkness) and saved Andromeda (the human soul (1)). Devaki, the radiant Virgin of the Hindu mythology, became the wife of the god Vishnu and bore Krishna, the beloved hero and prototype of Christ. With regard to Buddha St. Jerome ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... second thought the death of the Russian is the best solution. But there's no hurry. Besides," continued Inspector Val, his tones betraying that sublime appreciation of art at its utmost which an amateur of bronzes might have felt in the presence of Cellini's Perseus, "besides, I want you to take a look over this job of London Bill! You'll never again see its equal—never such ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... offerings; the Hilaries sang their joyful lays; the fires upon the pyres, or the fire-altars, were extinguished and rekindled with new fire, or sacred fire of the stars, which the Astrologers taught was brought down from heaven by the winged genius Perseus, the constellation which, anciently, was in conjunction with the Vernal Equinox; Paschal candles, lit from the new fire, were distributed to the faithful and the Paschal feast, Easter feast, or the feast of the passover, was eaten in commemoration of the passion of the incarnate saviours, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... lake. This went on for three years, at the end of which time it fell to the lot of the king's daughter to be sacrificed by the monster. But when the Troyan Andromeda was exposed on the shore of the lake, a Perseus arrived to save her in the form of St. George. While waiting for the monster to appear, the saint laid his head on her knees, and she dressed his locks. Then he fell into so deep a slumber that the monster drew nigh without awaking him. But the Princess ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... in vain. The Andromeda, like her namesake of old, might have been chained to a rock on some mythical island guarded by the father of all sea serpents. As for a new Perseus, well—David knew ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... Medusa was one of the three Gorgons, frightful beings, whose heads were covered with hissing serpents, and who had wings, brazen claws, and huge teeth. Whoever looked at Medusa was turned into stone, but Perseus, by the aid of enchantment, slew her. Minerva (Athene) placed the monster's head in the centre of her shield, which confounded Cupid: see Par. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... have a notion that these skins were to be given as prizes to the victors, referring to Herod, ii. 91, where it is said that the Egyptians, in certain games which they celebrate in honour of Perseus, offer as prizes cattle, cloaks, and [Greek: dermata], hides. Krueger doubts whether they were intended for prizes, or were given as a present ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... you find a stone bearing the figure of a hare, it will be a defence against the devil; if you find a dog and a lion on the same stone, it will be a preservative against dropsy or pestilence. The figure of Orion was believed to give victory in war. If you find a stone, in which is Perseus holding in his right hand a sword, and in his left the Gorgon's head, it is a preservative against lightning and tempest and against the assaults of devils. A stone on which is engraved a long-bearded man sitting on a plough, ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... turned them all To virtues. My impatient, wayward nature, That made me quick in quarrel, now has served me Where meekness could not, and where patience could not, As you shall hear now. I have cast in bronze A statue of Perseus, holding thus aloft In his left hand the head of the Medusa, And in his right the sword that severed it; His right foot planted on the lifeless corse; His face superb and pitiful, with eyes Down-looking on the victim of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... of beauty. In a picture of the Last Judgment by Fra Angelico we say that the bliss of the righteous has been more successfully treated than the torments of the wicked, because the former has been better understood, although the painter's skill in each is equal. In the Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's spirit, finish of execution, and originality of design, while we deplore that want of sympathy with the heroic character which makes his type of physical beauty slightly vulgar and his facial expression vacuous. If the phrase ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... be brought before the most powerful imagination. Truly, the Crystal Palace, in all its departments, offers wonderful means of education. I marvel what will come of it. Among the things that I admired most was Benvenuto Cellini's statue of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, and standing over her headless and still writhing body, out of which, at the severed neck, gushed a vast exuberance of snakes. Likewise, a sitting statue, by Michel Angelo, of one of the Medici, full of dignity ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of stars is known as Andromeda," added Julie, not to be outdone by her chums. "And those three little stars are called The Kids. Off to the left of Perseus—oh, I forgot to say that Perseus is a group of stars at the end of the pan-handle,—well, to the left of them are the bright ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... view those old buildings, cisterns, baths, tombs, &c. And how was [3195]Tully pleased with the sight of Athens, to behold those ancient and fair buildings, with a remembrance of their worthy inhabitants. Paulus Aemilius, that renowned Roman captain, after he had conquered Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, and now made an end of his tedious wars, though he had been long absent from Rome, and much there desired, about the beginning of autumn (as [3196]Livy describes it) made a pleasant ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... unto you; since she has sufficiently wreaked her jealousy at our great successes on me and mine, and has made the conqueror as marked an example of human instability as the captive whom he led in triumph, with this only difference, that Perseus, though conquered, does yet enjoy his children, while the conqueror ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... they worth doing? or at all events is it the province of art to do them? The question ought not to be asked. It is heretical, being contrary to the whole direction of the latter half of this century. The chains binding us to the rocks of realism are faster riveted every day; and the Perseus who is destined to cut them is, I expect, some mischievous little boy at a Board-school. But as the question has been asked, I will own that sometimes, even when deepest in works of this, the now orthodox school, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... completion, and no more Men and Women. And his own taste in art drew him, notoriously, to work in which the striving hand was palpable,—whether it was a triumphant tour de force like Cellini's Perseus, in the Loggia—their daily banquet in the early days at Florence; or the half-articulate utterances of "the Tuscan's early art," like those "Pre-Giotto pictures" which surrounded them in the salon of Casa Guidi, "quieting" them if they were over busy, as Mrs ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... the time; but where are the actions corresponding to it? Where do we read of these Romans and Greeks ever braving the crocodile for the sake of preserving the purity of the lotos herself? Or of sparing a lotos belonging to another, but at their mercy? Perseus himself, much vaunted for his chivalry, did not undertake to save the rock-chained Andromeda from the sea monster until he had extorted a promise that she should be his prize. Fine ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... was born to Danae, a smiling boy whom she named Perseus. For four years she and the nurse kept him hidden, and not even the women who brought their food to the window knew about him. But one day the king chanced to be passing by and heard the child's prattle. When he learned the truth, he was very much alarmed, for he thought that now, in spite ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... the tomb of St. Francis d'Assise, under Hannibal's gate at Spoletta, at the table d'hote Perouse at Arezzo, on the threshold of Petrarch's house; finally, the first person I met in the Piazza of the Grand Duke at Florence, before the Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, Edgar, was Lady Penock. At Pisa she appeared to me in the Campo Santo; in the Gulf of Genoa her bark came near capsizing mine; at Turin I found her at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities; her ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... Siculus and Apollodorus, Amphitryon was the son of Alceus, the son of Perseus, and his wife, Alcmena, was the daughter of Electryon, also the son of Perseus; and thus they were cousins. When their marriage was about to take place, an unforeseen accident prevented it. Electryon, who was king of Mycenae, being obliged to revenge the death of his children, whom the sons ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Dante forget his Infernos, and shake sides with fat Rabelais; and monk Luther, over a flagon of old nectar, talk over old times with Pope Leo. Then, shall we sit by the sages, who of yore gave laws to the Medes and Persians in the sun; by the cavalry captains in Perseus, who cried, "To horse!" when waked by their Last Trump sounding to the charge; by the old hunters, who eternities ago, hunted the moose in Orion; by the minstrels, who sang in the Milky Way when Jesus our Saviour was born. Then shall we list to no shallow gossip of Magellans ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... to Andromeda, and themselves abut on Perseus. The last star in the Square of Pegasus is also the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... magic, for the gods of the pagans are in reality demons. A dragon prevented barbarous and ignorant men from drinking at the fountain of Castalia. We must also remember the dragon of Andromeda, which was slain by Perseus. But let us turn from these pagan fables, in which error is always mixed with truth. We meet dragons in the histories of the glorious archangel Michael, of St. George, St. Philip, St. James the Great, St. Patrick, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... On one side a fountain clung round with antique figures of bronze, by John of Bologna, so admirably wrought as to hold me several minutes in astonishment; on the other, three lofty Gothic arches, and under one of them the Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, raised on a pedestal, incomparably designed and executed; which I could not behold uninterested, since its author has ever occupied a distinguished place in my kalendar of genius. Having examined some groups of sculptures, by Baccio Bandinelli and other mighty artists, I entered ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... set between them. Also there was a small, old-fashioned bar in a corner of the room, and a new-fashioned young woman seated behind it, who was yawning over a piece of fancy needlework, and looked at Spargo when he entered as Andromeda may have looked at Perseus when he made arrival at her rock. And Spargo, treating himself to a suitable drink and choosing a cigar to accompany it, noted the look, and dropped into ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... her walls flashed with the marble and the gold, "nec cessabat luxuria id agere, ut quam plurimum incendiis perdat." Better the state of religion in Italy, before Giotto had broken on one barbarism of the Byzantine schools, than when the painter of the Last Judgment, and the sculptor of the Perseus, sat revelling side by side. It appears to me that a rude symbol is oftener more efficient than a refined one in touching the heart, and that as pictures rise in rank as works of art, they are regarded with less devotion and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... a winged horse which sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus cut off her head. As soon as born he left the earth and flew up to heaven, or, according to Ovid, took up his abode on Mount Helicon, and was always associated with ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope

... Sword Handle of Perseus contains innumerable stars, many doubtless as brilliant as our Sun. We ourselves probably form a part of such a cluster. The Milky Way itself, as we know, entirely surrounds us; it is evident, therefore, that the Sun, and of course we ourselves, actually lie in it. It is, therefore, ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... Dragon myth. Unfortunately, however, no trace can be obtained of the pre-existing Sumerian oral version which the theorizing priests infused with such sublime symbolism. No doubt it enjoyed as great popularity as the immemorial legend of Perseus and Andromeda, which the sages of Greece attempted to rationalize, and parts of which the poets made use of and developed as ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... nag which we at once identify as church property. The sleekness of the flanks betokens his conversance with other people's corn-cribs, and he has a habit of shying at all the farm-house gates as if habituated to stopping whenever he liked and staying to dinner. His Perseus has a semi-gallant, semi-verdant way of lifting his hat, and his voice is ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... sword. The sword of sharpness given to Perseus by Hermes, with which he cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a monster with the head of a woman, and snaky locks, the sight of whom turned those who looked on her into stone. Perseus escaped by looking only at ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... the queen, and thus he made reply: "Mother of monarchs, Perseus' child, take heart; And look but on the fairer side of things. For by the precious light that long ago Left tenantless these eyes, I swear that oft Achaia's maidens, as when eve is high They mould the silken yarn upon their lap, Shall tell Alcmena's story: blest art thou Of women. Such ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch, And all those tales imperishably stored In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich Than any gaudy galleon of Spain Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... translation into the stars, became the natural conclusion of a great many tales. The heroes of mythology, or even those of human society, continued to live in the sky in the form of brilliant stars. There Perseus again met Andromeda, and the Centaur Chiron, who is none other than Sagittarius, was on terms of good fellowship with ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... lacking in these stories some of the elements of Greek legend and mythology which were the mainsprings of the tragedies of Athens. The parallels are striking: Jephtha's daughter and Iphigenia; Samson and his slavery and the servitude of Hercules and Perseus; the fate of Ajax and other heroes made mad by pride, and the lycanthropy of Nebuchadnezzar, of whose vanity Dr. Hanslick once reminded Wagner, warning him against the fate of the Babylonian king who became like unto an ox, "ate ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... rocks where long ago, Above the sea that cries and breaks, Bright Perseus with Medusa's snakes Set free ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale

... fortitude: and he was much loved of the people, as I afterwards learned. And one was a young knight, winged and with a sword in his hand; at his feet a grievous worm of many folds. This I must take for Perseus but that his radiancy did rather point him for Phoebus, the lord of days and the red sun. But in the centre of the whole temple was an altar, high and broad, fenced about with steps and a rail, which I took to be made unto the god of gods or perhaps the king of that country, until I saw ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... constellations—the Great Bear hanging low in the north-east, pointing to the Pole star, and across it to Cassiopeia's bright zigzag high in the heavens; the barren square of Pegasus, with its long tail stretching to the Milky Way, and the points that cluster round Perseus; Arcturus, white Vega and yellow Capella; the Twins, and beyond them the Little Dog twinkling through a coppice of naked trees to eastward; yet further round the Pleiads climbing, with red Aldebaran after them; below them Orion's belt, and last of all, Sirius flashing like a diamond, white and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... associated with them in the minds of the ancients. There, on the varnished round of the globe, ranged the Great and Little Bears, and the Dogs, and the Archer, and the Flying Horse, the Lion, and the Crab, and the Whale, and the Twins, and Perseus and Andromeda, and Cassiopeia. And up there, on the dark inner side of the mighty dome, he seemed to see them all again, and time swung back with him for a moment, and he was a ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... on the steps nearest below me, and presently, beginning where I had begun with Sidney, I went on to point out the polar constellations and to relate the age-worn story of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, Andromeda and the divine Perseus. ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... last very long, for the new-won freedom of Greece existed in name only. As soon as the Romans had completed the conquest of Macedon under its last ruler, Perseus, they ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... which very large values of the radial velocities have been found. With these we shall not for the present deal, but shall confine ourselves to the stars. The greatest radial velocity hitherto found is possessed by the star (040822) of the eighth magnitude in the constellation Perseus, which retires from us with a velocity of 72 sir./st. or 341 km./sec. The nearest velocity is that of the star (010361) which approaches us with approximately the same velocity. The following table contains ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier

... a descendant of the monster that would have eaten Andromeda, and was slain by Perseus in the country of the blameless Ethiopians. Collections of money are recorded occasionally, as in 1680, when no less than one pound eight shillings was contributed "for redemption of Christians (taken by ye Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish slavery." Two hundred years ago the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... omit other things, how nobly did he bear his son's death! I remembered Paulus, [Footnote: Paulus Aemilius, who lost two sons, one a few days before, the other shortly after, the triumph decreed to him for the conquest of the Macedonian King Perseus.] I had seen Gallus,[Footnote: Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, mentioned as an astronomer by Cicero, De Officiis, i. 6, and De Senectute, 14.] in their bereavements. But they lost boys; Cato, a man in his prime and respected by all.[Footnote: The younger ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... left ear; Clytie had on a motor veil; Juno and Ceres were fashionably arrayed in straw hats; a wreath of twisted paper encircled the intellectual brow of Minerva; Psyche peered through spectacles; Perseus was decked with a turban; and, worst of all, the beautiful upper lip of Venus sported a moustache. Armed with a pointer stood Diana, ready, like Mrs. Jarley of the ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... the Archduchess Christina of Austria. Napoleon called the rising sculptor to France, and he there executed the famous nude portrait of Napoleon now preserved in Milan. After his return to Italy he fashioned his Perseus with the Head of Medusa at Rome. When the Belvidere Apollo was carried off to France, this piece of statuary was thought not unworthy of the classic Apollo's place and pedestal in the Vatican. Among the later works of Canova are the colossal group of Theseus Killing ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... the cultivation of the most perfect courtesy between you? Not at first possibly, but it certainly will be. The time may even come when Perseus may raise his voice and roar out his disapproval of Persephone. A certain type of man always shouts when annoyed, not at his friends or clients of course; merely to his clerks and his servants and his wife and the people who are afraid of him. This was a ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... Lect., 464) and Mr. Nutt (MacInnes' Tales, 477) have pointed out, practically the same story (that of Perseus and Andromeda) is told of the Ultonian hero, Cuchulain, in the Wooing of Emer, a tale which occurs in the Book of Leinster, a MS. of the twelfth century, and was probably copied from one of the eighth. Unfortunately ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... and gone and the babe was now grown to a tall lad and a sailor, and went many voyages after merchandise to the islands round. His mother called him Perseus; but all the people in Seriphos said that he was not the son of mortal man, and called him Zeus, the son of the king of the Immortals. For though he was but fifteen, he was taller by a head than any man in the island; and he was the most skilful of all in running and ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... sure of conquering. He shall rise On lighter feet, on feet that vault the skies. Science shall make a mighty foot and new, Light as the feather feet of Perseus flew, Long as the seven leagued boots in tales gone by, This shall bestride the sea and ride the sky. Thus shall he fly, and beat above your nation The clashing pinions of Apocalypse, Ye shall be deep sea ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... flee from its shapes; the supersensible world he must transfuse into the sensible, else the former will rush over into the fantastic, the horrible, the ugly. The Gorgon is down in Hades too, having been slain in the terrestrial Upperworld by a Greek Hero, Perseus, who slew the monster of the Orient which once guarded the fair Andromeda, a kind of Pre-Trojan Helen, chained in captivity, whom the heroic Hellenic soul came to release. Ulysses has now reached the Greek limit, Oriental phantasms will rise unless there be a speedy return to the reality, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... description of the feast takes up three pages of the history of Corio, where we find a minute list of the dishes—wild boars and deer and peacocks, roasted whole; peeled oranges, gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rosewater for washing; and the tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., I wrought in pastry—tutte in vivande. We are also told how masques of Hercules, Jason, and Phaedra alternated with the story of Susannah and the Elders, played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries of San ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... or the corresponding scene of Perseus and Andromeda, is a favourite with artists in northern Gaul and Britain. It occurs on tombstones at Chester (Grosvenor Museum Catalogue, No. 138) and Trier (Hettner, Die roem. Steindenkmaeler zu Trier, p. 206), and Arlon (Wiltheim, Luciliburgensia, plate 57), ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... In another burlesque, "Perseus and Andromeda," I played Dictys; it was in this piece that Arthur Wood used to make people laugh by punning on the line: "Such a mystery (Miss Terry) here!" It was an absurd little joke, but the people used ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... herself—its claws Jew money-lenders, so velvety and innocent when her wilful ignorance made first acquaintance with them; but nobody—not even Mr Thornycroft, not even Jim, CERTAINLY not Rose—could be allowed to play Perseus to this proud Andromeda. Until she could free herself, they were not even to know that she was bound. Of course, she need not have been bound; it was her own fault. She should have managed better ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... perfect of all modern writers, in true taste and judgment. His sagacity was unerring; he combined every ancient excellence, and appears original even in the adoption of acknowledged thoughts and allusions. He is the just and adequate representative of Horace, Juvenal, and Perseus, united, without one indecent blemish; and for my own part, I have always considered him as the most finished gentleman that ever wrote." In his Life, translated by Ozell, we are told, that "he was full of sentiments of humanity, mildness, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... to my crew, and continued the search alone. For by this time I had determined that there should be a Princess on board, carried off to be sold in captivity to the bold bad Moors, and now with beating heart awaiting her rescue by me, the Perseus of her dreams. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... admitted by his fellow-artificers, and at the zenith of his career he had no rivals. Trophies of his skill and artistic genius remain to confirm the verdict of his own time. His great bronze statue of Perseus in Florence; the Nymph of Fontainebleau, now in the Louvre; his golden salt-cellar, made for Francis I., and now in Vienna—these are a few of his masterpieces, and any one of them is of a quality to stamp its maker as a master craftsman of imaginative genius and extraordinary ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... round to look at the bronze Perseus which rose just above him. Benvenuto Cellini's dark hero looked female, with his plump hips and his waist, female and rather insignificant: graceful, and rather vulgar. The clownish Bandinellis were somehow more to the point.—Then all the statuary in the Loggia! ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... the horn of the Bull; hence, one and the same star is found in the tip of the left horn of the Bull and in the right foot of the Charioteer. Supported on the hand of the Charioteer are the Kids, with the She-Goat at his left shoulder. Above the Bull and the Ram is Perseus, having at his right...[11] with the Pleiades moving beneath, and at his left the head of the Ram. His right hand rests on the likeness of Cassiopea, and with his left he holds the Gorgon's head by its top over the Ram, laying it at the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... but the quest of her? It was her element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... was the period during which the Romans, who were at war with Perseus, King of Macedon, complained of their generals, whose ignorance and cowardice had led to the most disgraceful and ridiculous failure, and to the sustaining of much more loss than they inflicted. They, who had just driven Antiochus, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... of the fight), he is said to have been at that time so extremely spent and worn out with labour and want of sleep, that nature could hold out no longer. Now, upon what has been said, the physicians may determine whether sleep be so necessary that our lives depend upon it: for we read that King Perseus of Macedon, being prisoner at Rome, was killed by being kept from sleep; but Pliny instances such as have lived long without sleep. Herodotus speaks of nations where the men sleep and wake by half-years, and they who write the life of the sage Epimenides affirm that he slept seven-and-fifty ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... heaviness. It is only the episodes that are universally read, and the effect of these is diluted by the connecting and accompanying lectures on metaphysics. Wordsworth had his epic mould to fill, and, like Benvenuto Cellini in casting his Perseus, was forced to throw in everything, debasing the metal, lest it should run short. Separated from the rest, the episodes are perfect poems in their kind, and without example ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... not do, so that Lucius AEmilius Paulus (the brother-in-law of Scipio) was sent to reduce him. As AEmilius came into his own house after receiving the appointment, he met his little daughter crying, and when he asked her what was the matter, she answered, "Oh, father, Perseus is dead!" She meant her little dog, but he kissed her and thanked her for the good omen. He overran Macedon, and gained the great battle of Pydna, after which Perseus was obliged to give himself ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the ancient mode of preparing the grain. Bread was not introduced into Rome until five hundred and fifty years after its foundation. Pliny informs us that the Romans learned this, with many other improvements, during the war with Perseus, King of Macedon. The armies, on their return, brought Grecian bakers with them into Italy, who were called pistores, from their ancient practice of bruising the grain ...
— Breakfast Dainties • Thomas J. Murrey

... circulating library. It is always put among the romances, very properly; but you have read it, I suppose. In particular, inquire at Florence for his colossal bronze statue (in the grand square or somewhere) of Perseus. You may read the story in Tooke's "Pantheon." Nothing material has transpired in these parts. Coleridge has indited a violent philippic against Mr. Fox in the "Morning Post," which is a compound of expressions of humility, gentlemen-ushering-in most arrogant ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... compare our antecedents with those of the Lacedaemonian and Persian kings; are they inferior to us in descent? Have we not heard that the former are sprung from Heracles, and the latter from Achaemenes, and that the race of Heracles and the race of Achaemenes go back to Perseus, son of Zeus? ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... upon a rock near the river Tyras, the modern Dnieper. It was said to resemble the footstep of a man, only that it was two cubits long. He will also recall the description given by the same gossipy writer of the Temple of Perseus in the Thebaic district of Egypt, in which a sandal worn by the god, two cubits in length, occasionally made its appearance as a token of the visit of Perseus to the earth, and a sign of prosperity to the land. Pythagoras measured ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... musician; and, as all who read his book must testify, a great master of narrative. Keen as was Benvenuto's interest in himself, and much as he loved to dwell on the splendor of his exploits and achievements, he had little idea that centuries after his death he would live again, less by his "Perseus" and his goldsmith's work than by the book which he dictated casually to a lad of fourteen, while he went about ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... of Danae, who was the daughter of a king. And when Perseus was a very little boy, some wicked people put his mother and himself into a chest, and set them afloat upon the sea. The wind blew freshly, and drove the chest away from the shore, and the uneasy billows ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... He was a Moslem, i.e. a ewe believer in the Islam of his day and Wazir to Kaykobad, founder of the Kayanian dynasty, sixth century B.C. We have before seen him as a contemporary of Moses. My learned friend Ch. Clermone-Ganneau traces him back, with a multitude of his similars (Proteus, Perseus, etc.), to the son of Osiris (p. 45, Horus et ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... plume himself on being a great person only with lads and women, but to see to it that by adorning Sicily with piety and justice and good laws he might make the Academy glorious. On the other hand Euctus and Eulaeus, companions of Perseus, in the days of his prosperity ingratiated themselves with him, and assented to him in all things, and danced attendance upon him, like all the other courtiers, but when he fled after his defeat by the Romans at Pydna, they attacked him ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... protection, then, that she leant; she looked on him as her defender. The muscles of his not gigantic arms seemed to swell and leap to bursting in his coat-sleeves. Those arms should screen his loved one from all evil. Visions of Perseus, and Sir Galahad, and Cophetua, swept before his eyes; he had almost cried to Miss Euphemia, "You need have no fear, I love your niece. I shall bow down and raise her to my throne. They that would touch her shall only do so over my dead body," when hesitating common-sense plucked him by ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... the clouds cutting off its top; and said that it was a mighty giant, the brother of the Evening Star, who held up the sky upon his shoulders, in the midst of the Fortunate Islands, the gardens of the daughter of the Evening Star, full of strange golden fruits; and that Perseus had turned him into stone, when he passed him with the ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley

... the poet, thus shut out of Paradise, to do? He can only make a frenzied effort to record his vision before its very memory has faded from him. Benvenuto Cellini has told us of his tantrums while he was finishing his bronze statue of Perseus. He worked with such fury, he declares, that his workmen believed him to be no man, but a devil. But the poet, no less than the molder of bronze, is under the necessity of casting his work into shape before the metal cools. And his success is never complete. Shelley writes, "When ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... seriously that such a phrase as (d) is meaningless, because its significance becomes apparent only in the second act. No great work of art can be seen at one glance—least of all Wagner's. If a painter puts before us a picture, say, of Perseus and Andromeda, we know at any rate what it is about; and there is no difficulty in understanding a Madonna. But, with the exception of the Dutchman, Wagner reshaped all his subjects so that, for instance, an acquaintance with the Nibelung legends is rather a hindrance than a help to ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... that Strathmore at once moulded and marred was his life: the statue which we all, as we sketch it, endow with the strength of the Milo, the glory of the Belvedere, the winged brilliance of the Perseus! which ever lies at its best; when the chisel has dropped from our hands, as they grow powerless and paralysed with death; like the mutilated torso; a fragment unfinished and broken, food for the ants and worms, buried in the sands that will quickly ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... "2. What internal evidence does the Odyssey afford, that Homer sold his Trojan war-ballads at three yards an obolus? "3. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of battles. "4. State reasons for presuming that the practice of lithography may be traced back to the time of Perseus and the Gorgon's head. "5. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied with spirits? "6. Show the probability of the College Hornpipe having been used by the students of the Academia; and give passages from Thucydides and Tennyson in support ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... "I wanted to tease you," she said lightly. "And I did it too, didn't I? I pretended I was Andromeda when I got round the corner, but no Perseus came to save me. Only an angry dragon ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... out towards them, and I could have wished that that mark of heroism had been omitted by the authorities. But, on the contrary, it was insisted upon vehemently, and there was no getting out of it. So, like another Perseus, I choked down my emotion and girded myself for the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... or he is cap-a-pie in armour, St. George's cross on shield and helm, and a cowardly titanic Caliban sitting amidst desecrations at the mouth of a horrid cave declines his gauntlet of the "New Boomfood Regulations;" or he comes flying down as Perseus and rescues a chained and beautiful Andromeda (labelled distinctly about her belt as "Civilisation") from a wallowing waste of sea monster bearing upon its various necks and claws "Irreligion," "Trampling Egotism," "Mechanism," "Monstrosity," and the like. But it was as "Jack the ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... Readers inclined to pursue the subject should read Mr. L. R. Farnell's "Cults of the Greek States" (Clarendon Press, 1896), Mr. J. G. Frazer's "Golden Bough," his "Pausanias," and Mr. Hartland's work on "The Myth of Perseus." These books, it must be observed, are by no means always in agreement with ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... which was one of his characteristics, took the panel into his own room, and resolved to astonish his father by a most unlooked-for proof of his art. He determined to compose something which should have an effect similar to that of the Medusa on the shield of Perseus, and almost petrify beholders. Aided by his recent studies in natural history, he collected together from the neighboring swamps and the river-mud all kinds of hideous reptiles, as adders, lizards, toads, serpents: insects, as moths, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... George came to us from the East; where, under various forms, as Apollo and the Python, as Bellerophon and the Chimaera, as Perseus and the Sea-monster, we see perpetually recurring the mythic allegory by which was figured the conquest achieved by beneficent Power over the tyranny of Wickedness, and which reappears in Christian art in the legends of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... said she. Her delicate finger pointed at Perseus, who was ascending the eastern heavens: "there is my star. Mere Malheur,—you know her,—she once said to me that that was my natal star, which would rule ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... delicate fibres reaching out Still to detain him; then some twenty steps Of iron staircase winding round and down, And ending in a narrow gallery hung With Gobelin tapestries—Andromeda Rescued by Perseus, and the sleek Diana With her nymphs bathing; at the farther end A door that gave upon a starlit grove Of citron and clipt palm-trees; then a path As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of leaves Stamped black upon it; next a vine-clad length Of solid ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Indian fashion, gave him a strange and deep thrill. It was in just such manner that the Greeks chanted the praises of some hero who had saved them from great disaster, or who had done a mighty deed against dragons. From his early reading came visions of Hercules and Theseus, of Perseus and Bellerophon. But he did not put himself with such champions. He was merely serving a primitive little village, carried by its primitive state farther back than that world in which the more or less legendary ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... into literature with small or large inventions, by carving cherry-stones or carving a colossus. Browning, the creator of men and women, the fashioner of minds, would be a sculptor of figures more than life-size rather than an exquisite jeweller; the attempt at a Perseus of this Cellini was to precede his brooches and buttons. He planned, Mr Gosse tells us, "a series of monodramatic epics, narratives of the life of typical souls." In a modification of this vast scheme Paracelsus, which includes more speakers ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... activity in this direction. At the end of the third Macedonian war he successfully opposed the annexation of Macedonia. He also saved from destruction the Rhodians, who during the war had plainly desired the victory of Perseus, and in the early days, when the Roman commanders had ill success, had deeply wounded the whole Roman nation by an offer to mediate between them and ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... were casts of all famous statues, models of architecture, and the like, and gave Hawthorne his first lesson in art criticism. Hawthorne indicated a preference for Michel Angelo's statue of Giuliano de Medici, called "Il Pensero;" also for the "Perseus" of Cellini, and the Gates of the Florentine Baptistery by Lorenzo Ghiberti. If we except the other statues of Michel Angelo, these are the most distinguished works in ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... mothers. Demigods, the sons of the gods of light and mortal mothers, were credited with the salvation of men from a confused, chaotic existence, and the introduction of new conditions of life, no longer based on the dictates of nature but on the moulding genius of man. "Hercules, Theseus and Perseus overthrew the ancient powers of darkness. They laid the foundations of man's great achievement, civilisation, and were the first to worship the gods of light. They delivered humanity from the gross materialism ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... heroes: was ever a better or braver company brought together—Perseus, Hercules, Siegfried, Roland, Galahad, Robin Hood, and a dozen others? But stop, I am using too many question-marks. There is no need to query heroes known and admired the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... Rome of Asia Minor. Pergamus, under the house of Actalus, was established as a protected kingdom, as Numidia under Masinissa had been. The Greek states, however, were becoming conscious that their freedom was hardly more than a name; Perseus of Macedon once more challenged Rome, not without Greek support. Macedon was finally crushed by Aemilius Paullus at Pydna. From that moment, Rome dropped the policy of maintaining free states beyond the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... coast. The king prayed of an oracle to know how the monster might be appeased, and learned that he must offer up his own daughter, Andromeda. The maiden was therefore chained to a rock by the sea-side, and left to her fate. But who should come to rescue her but a certain young hero, Perseus, who was hastening homeward after a perilous adventure with the snaky-haired Gorgons. Filled with pity at the story of Andromeda, he waited for the dragon, met and slew him, and set the maiden free. As for the boastful queen, the Gods forgave ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... time consul; nor would they suffer the lots to be cast, as was usual, to determine which province should fall to his share, but immediately decreed him the command of the Macedonian war. It is told, that when he had been proclaimed general against Perseus, and was honorably accompanied home by great numbers of people, he found his daughter Tertia, a very little girl, weeping, and taking her to him asked her why she was crying. She, catching him about ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... hair, fastened to the trunk of an ancient disbranched tree. The cross lies at her feet, the cup overturned, the serpents of heresy biting at her from behind with uplifted crests. Coming on before a leading breeze is the sea monster, the Moslem fleet, eager for their prey; while in front is Perseus, the Genius of Spain, banner in hand, with the legions of the faithful laying not raiment before him, but shield and helmet, the apparel of war for the Lady of Nations to clothe herself with ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... each being bound to a rock and exposed to the attack of a terrific animal; in one case a denizen of the air, in the other a monster of the sea; and the deliverers of both being Argives, and of kindred blood to each other, Hercules and Perseus—the former of whom encountered, on foot, the savage bird sent by Jove, while the latter mounted on borrowed wings into the air, to assail the monster which issued from the sea at the command of Neptune. In the picture of Andromeda, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... seemed considerable, and he had not neglected to court the favour of the populace—and assumed the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus. And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his navy is shown by the fact that ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... three generations. He, as had been related, was a bitter political opponent of Scipio Africanus the Great, and he continued his enmity to Scipio's adopted son, called Scipio the Younger, who was really the son of AEmilius Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... puellae.' 10 Quaedam inquit, nudum sinum reducens, 'En heic in roseis latet papillis.' Sed te iam ferre Herculei labos est. 13 Non custos si fingar ille Cretum, 23 Non si Pegaseo ferar volatu, Non Ladas ego pinnipesve Perseus, 25 Non Rhesi nivea citaque biga: Adde huc plumipedes volatilesque, Ventorumque simul require cursum: Quos cunctos, Cameri, mihi dicares, Defessus tamen omnibus medullis 30 Et multis langoribus peresus Essem te mihi, amice, quaeritando. 32 ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... that H. M. S. Perseus was cruising off the mouth of the Canton River. War had been declared with China in consequence of her continued evasions of the treaty she had made with us, and it was expected that a strong naval force would soon gather to bring her to ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... will depend less on flesh contour, and more on picturesque accessories, which, though they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly entertaining in bronze or silver. Verrocchio's statue of Colleone at Venice, Cellini's Perseus at Florence, and Ghiberti's gates at Florence, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... phenomena has its discoverable laws, and therefore leads to a first empirical study of winds, currents, seasonal rainfall and the whole science of hydraulics. With deep national insight, the Greeks embodied in their mythology the story of Perseus and his destruction of the sea monster who ravaged the coast, and Hercules' killing of the many-headed serpent who issued from the Lernean Marshes to lay waste the country of Argos. Even so early a writer as Strabo states that yet earlier authorities interpreted Hercules' victory ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... nature. Conscience fashioned these primitive fancies upon its form, and pulses through them its quickening life; the touch of which makes our children buoyant with aspiration, so that they mount on high, like Perseus of ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... an inextricable trouble, and entangled in a complication which they cannot free themselves from by their own efforts, and out of which Heaven alone can help them. It was a most powerful mind, and one capable of reducing a complex idea to unity, that imagined this group. I looked at Canova's Perseus, and thought it exceedingly beautiful, but, found myself less and less contented after a moment or two, though I could not tell why. Afterwards, looking at the Apollo, the recollection of the Perseus disgusted me, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... force, which if it had its own way would oust from the universe all other pursuits. I think there are many persons who look upon this new birth of our times as a sort of monster rising out of the sea of modern thought with the purpose of devouring the Andromeda of art. And now and then a Perseus, equipped with the shoes of swiftness of the ready writer, with the cap of invisibility of the editorial article, and it may be with the Medusa-head of vituperation, shows himself ready to try conclusions with the scientific dragon. Sir, I hope that Perseus will ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... Who art thy sex's complex harmony God-set more facilely; To thee may love draw near Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility: Thou Perseus' Shield! wherein I view secure The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure! Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free; With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind The bared limbs of the rebukeless mind. Wild Dryad! ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

... the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were as frequently shown as, afterward, the Annunciations in Italian painting. The traditional subjects, the Centaurs and Lapiths, the Amazon war, Theseus and Ariadne, Perseus and Andromeda, were frequently depicted. Humanity and actual Greek life came in for its share. Single figures, still-life, genre, caricature, all were shown, and as painting neared the Alexandrian age a ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... that serpent once injects his black venom, his path to Hades becomes not so much as a cubit's length, not even if Paeeon, if it is right for me to say this openly, should tend him, when its teeth have only grazed the skin. For when over Libya flew godlike Perseus Eurymedon for by that name his mother called him—bearing to the king the Gorgon's head newly severed, all the drops of dark blood that fell to the earth, produced a brood of those serpents. Now Mopsus ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... are an example. Every August we cross their path, and we have a small meteoric display radiating from the sword-hand of Perseus, but never specially more in one August than another. It would seem as if the main shoal has disappeared, and nothing is now left but the stragglers; or perhaps it is that the shoal has gradually become uniformly distributed all along the path. Anyhow, these August meteors ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge



Words linked to "Perseus" :   constellation, mythical being, algol, Greek mythology



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