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Elysian
Elysium (/ɪˈlɪzi.əm/,) known as the Elysian Fields (Ancient Greek: Ἠλύσιον πεδίον, Ēlýsion pedíon) or Elysian Plains, is a conception of the afterlife that developed over time and was maintained by some Greek religious and philosophical sects and cults. It was initially separated from the Greek underworld--the realm of Hades. Only mortals related to the gods and other heroes could be admitted past the river Styx. Later, the conception of who could enter was expanded to include those chosen by the gods, the righteous, and the heroic. They would remain at the Elysian Fields after death, to live a blessed and happy afterlife, and indulge in whatever enjoyment they had enjoyed in life.
Goethe's Ankunft im Elysium by Franz Nadorp
The Elysian Fields were, according to Homer, located on the western edge of the Earth by the stream of Okeanos.In the time of the Greek poet Hesiod, Elysium would also be known as the "Fortunate Isles", or the "Isles (or Islands) of the Blessed", located in the western ocean at the end of the earth. The Isles of the Blessed would be reduced to a single island by the Theban poet Pindar, describing it as having shady parks, with residents indulging in athletic and musical pastimes.
The ruler of Elysium varies from author to author: Pindar and Hesiod name Cronus as the ruler, while the poet Homer in the Odyssey describes fair-haired Rhadamanthus dwelling there. "The Isle of the Blessed" is also featured in the 2nd-century comedic novel A True Story by Lucian of Samosata.
Melissa (ladybug) liked this
the difficulties decreased on examination.
Sibyl's
A woman that prophisied
During classical antiquity, according to various accounts, priestesses and priests in the sacred grove interpreted the rustling of the oak (or beech) leaves to determine the correct actions to be taken. According to a new interpretation, the oracular sound originated from bronze objects hanging from oak branches and sounded with the wind blowing, similar to a wind chime.
Or which way the wind blows
There were many sibyls in different locations throughout the ancient world. Because of the importance of the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of early Rome as codified in Virgil's Aenied VI, and because of her proximity to Rome, the Cumaean Sibyl became the most famous among the Romans.
Centuries ago, concurrent with the 50th Olympiad, not long before the expulsion of Rome's kings, an old woman "who was not a native of the country"[2] arrived incognita in Rome. She offered nine books of prophecies to King Tarquin; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquin at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she burned three more and repeated her offer. Tarquin then relented and purchased the last three at the full original price, whereupon she "disappeared from among men".[2]
The books were thereafter kept in the Temple of Juipiter on the Capitoline Hill, Rome, to be consulted only in emergencies. The temple burned down in the 80s BC, and the books with it, necessitating a re-collection of Sibylline prophecies from all parts of the empire (Tacitus 6.12). These were carefully sorted and those determined to be legitimate were saved in the rebuilt temple. The Emperor Augustus had them moved to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, where they remained for most of the remaining Imperial Period.
The Cumaean Sibyl is featured in the works of various Roman authors, including Virgil (the Eclogues, the Aeneid), Ovid (the Metamophoses) and Petronius (the Satyricon).
Stories recounted in Virgil's Aeneid
The Cumaean Sibyl prophesied by “singing the fates” and writing on oak leaves. These would be arranged inside the entrance of her cave, but if the wind blew and scattered them, she would not help to reassemble the leaves and recreate the original prophecy.
The Sibyl was a guide to the underworld (Hades), whose entrance lay at the nearby crater of Avernus. Aeneas employed her services before his descent to the lower world to visit his dead father Anchises, but she warned him that it was no light undertaking:
Trojan, Anchises' son, the descent of Avernus is easy.
All night long, all day, the doors of Hades stand open.
But to retrace the path, to come up to the sweet air of heaven,
That is labour indeed.
— Aeneid 6.126-129.
The Sibyl acts as a bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead (cf. concept of liminality). She shows Aeneas the way to Avernus and teaches him what he needs to know about the dangers of their journey.
The epigraph to T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922) is a quote from the Satyricon of Petronius (48.8) wherein Trimalchio states, "Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumīs ego ipse oculīs meīs vīdī in ampullā pendere, et cum illī puerī dīcerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondēbat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω." ("For I indeed once saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in her jar, and when the boys asked her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she answered 'I want to die'.")
Gerard Manley Hopkins' so-called "caudal" (i.e., lengthened) sonnet "Spelt from Sybil's Leaves" offers a somber prophecy and meditation on life and death.
The title of Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar has been said to be a reference to the ampulla in which the Sibyl lived.
Robert Graves fashioned a poetic prophesy by the Sibyl to bind the story together in his work of historical fiction, I, Claudius (1934).
Geoffrey Hill's poem "After Cumae" in For the Unfallen (1958) also refers to the Sibyl's "mouthy cave".
Mary Shelley claimed in the introduction to her novel The Last Man that in 1818 she discovered, in the Sibyl's cave near Naples, a collection of prophetic writings painted on leaves by the Cumaean Sibyl. She claimed she edited these writings into the current first-person narrative of a man living at the end of the 21st century, which in-story proves to be the end of humanity
arched dome-like roof.
An aperture in the midst let in the light of heaven; but this was overgrown with brambles and underwood, which acted as a veil, obscuring the day, and
solemn religious hue to the apartment. It was spacious, and nearly circular, with a raised seat of stone, about the si...
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skeleton of ...
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a goat
green hood which shelters the grain of the unripe Indian corn.
When was the trail of tears?
On examination, we found that all the leaves, bark, and other substances, were traced with written characters.
This was certainly the Sibyl's Cave; not
Di mie tenere frondi altro lavoro Credea mostrarte; e qual fero pianeta Ne' nvidio insieme, o mio nobil tesoro?
Raphael's Transfiguration in St. Peter's;
Yet such is human nature, that the excitement of mind was dear to me, and that the imagination, painter of tempest and earthquake, or, worse, the stormy and ruin-fraught passions of man, softened my real sorrows and endless regrets, by clothing these fictitious ones in that ideality, which takes the mortal sting from pain.
England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves.
high-bred triflers
himself received with intoxicating flattery.
I really like some of the combinations of words...like "intoxicating flattery."
This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent:
his craving for the usual diet of admiration, and more than all, the fiend of gambling, which fully possessed him, made his good resolutions transient, his promises vain. With the quick sensibility peculiar to his temperament, he perceived his power in the brilliant circle to be on the wane.
Addictions of all kinds play on the mind like this.
greater sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter of his destiny.
on my father's imprudence and follies.
with poverty for his sole companion, buried himself in solitude among the hills and lakes of Cumberland.
that the late idol of high-bred beauty should, even in a fallen state, appear a being of an elevated and wondrous nature to the lowly cottage-girl. The attachment
He died in debt,
royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who gave substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical.
There was freedom in it, a companionship with nature, and a reckless loneliness; but these, romantic as they were, did not accord with the love of action and desire of human sympathy, characteristic of youth.
she dreamt "of moving accidents by flood and field"—she lost herself delightedly in these self-created wanderings, and returned with unwilling spirit to the dull detail of common life. Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of affection.
boasted independence was daily instigating me to acts of tyranny, and freedom was becoming licentiousness.
last and worst degradation, to hate myself. I clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my war against civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it.
Adrian visited London,
seventeen,
17...1717?
the Elysian fields, Virgil describes the souls of the happy as eager to drink of the wave which was to restore them to this mortal coil. The young are seldom in Elysium, for their desires, outstripping possibility, leave them as poor as a moneyless debtor. We are told by the wisest philosophers of the dangers of the world, the deceits of men, and the treason of our own hearts: but not the less fearlessly does each put off his frail bark from the port, spread the sail, and strain his oar, to attain the multitudinous streams of the sea of life. How few in youth's prime, moor their vessels on the
...more
With breathless amaze I entered on the gay scene, whose actors were —the lilies glorious as Solomon, Who toil not, neither do they spin.
The mere flow of animal spirits was Paradise, and at night's close I only desired a renewal of the intoxicating delusion. The dazzling light of ornamented rooms; lovely forms arrayed in splendid dresses; the motions of a dance, the voluptuous tones of exquisite music, cradled my senses in one delightful dream. And is not this in its kind happiness? I appeal to moralists and sages. I ask if in the calm of their measured reveries, if in the deep meditations which fill their hours, they feel the
The mind flags beneath the weight of thought, and droops in the heartless intercourse of those whose sole aim is amusement. There is no fruition in their vacant kindness, and sharp rocks lurk beneath the smiling ripples of these shallow waters.
the joy of which it had become barren.
Goethe has said, that in youth we cannot be happy unless we love. I did not love; but I was devoured by a restless wish to be something to others.
At this period the name and exploits of one of my countrymen filled the world with admiration.
Lord Raymond was the sole remnant of a noble but impoverished family.
that power should they feel as an iron yoke.
He was courteous, honey-tongued—an adept in fascinating arts.
the house of Windsor to the crown, and that, on the event of Adrian's incurable disorder and his marriage with the sister,
magic ring of regality.
the mighty theatre on which is acted the only drama that can, heart and soul, bear me along with it in its development. A voice most irresistible, a power omnipotent, drew me thither.
The ruins of majestic oaks which had grown, flourished, and decayed during the progress of centuries, marked where the limits of the forest once reached, while the shattered palings and neglected underwood shewed that this part was deserted for the younger plantations, which owed their birth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, and now stood in the pride of maturity.
the younger trees. These,
their weak boughs sighing as the wind buffetted them—a weather-beaten crew.
when each beheld the other, childhood passed, as full grown actors on this changeful scene.
did madness scatter the well-appointed legions, and was he no longer the lord of his own soul? Beloved
He entrusted to her keeping the treasures of his soul, his aspirations after excellence, and his plans for the improvement of mankind. As
as he each day became more certain that the path he pursued was full of difficulty, and that he must seek his reward, not in the applause or gratitude of his fellow creatures, hardly in the success of his plans, but in the approbation of his own heart, and in her love and sympathy, which was to lighten every toil and recompence every sacrifice.
