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IXION 100.00%
Son of Phlegyas (or of Ares), and king of the Lapithae. By Dia he was the father of Pirithae (who, according to Homer, however, was a son of Zeus). He attempted to withhold from his father-in-law, Deloneus, the bridal gifts he had promised. Deloneus accordingly detained the horses of Ixion. The latter invited him to his house and threw him into a pit filled with fire. When Zeus not only purified him from this murder, but even invited him to the table of the gods, he became arrogant and insolent, and even sought to win the love of Hera. Zeus thereupon formed of the clouds a phantom resembling Hera, and by it Ixion became the father of the Centaurs. On his boasting of the favours he imagined the goddess to have granted him, Zeus caused him to be punished for this crime by being fastened to a wheel, on which he was to turn in terror for evermore in the world below.
 
PHLEGYAS 68.77%

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Son of Ares and Chryse, father of Ixion and Coronis; king of the powerful robber-tribe Phlegyae in the neighbourhood of the Boeotian Orchomenus. To revenge his daughter (see ASCLEPIUS), he set fire to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and was killed with all his people either by the arrows of the god or by the bolt of Zeus. He had also to atone for his sin in the underworld.
 
CENTAURI 51.43%

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Homer and the older mythology represent the Centaurs are a rude, wild race, fond of wine and women , dwelling in the mountains of Thessaly, especially on Pelion and CEta. In Homer they are spoken of as shaggy animals, living in the mountains. It was, perhaps, not until the 5th century B.C. that they were represented in the double shape now familiar to us. Originally the Centaur was conceived as a being with the body of a man standing on a horse's legs; but in later times the human body was represented as rising up in the front of a horse's body and four legs (see cut). According to one version of the current legend they were the offspring of Nephele and Ixion; according to another, the son of this pair, Kentauros, begat them upon mares (see IXION). The story of their contest with the Lapithae at the wedding of Pirithous, born of their drunkenness and lust, is as early as Homer [Iliad i 268, Odyssey xxi 295 foll.] (See PIRITHOUS.) In Homer Nestor, and in the later story Theseus, are represented as taking part in it. It was a favourite subject with poets and artists. The Centaurs were driven from Pelion by Pirithous and the Lapithae, and even the wise Chiron was forced to go with them (see CHIRON). Artists were always fond of treating the fabulous combats of the Centaurs and the heroes of old; but in later times the Centaurs appear in a different light. They form part of the following of Dionysus, moving peaceably in his festal train among satyrs, nymphs, and Bacchants, drawing the victorious car of the god and his queen Ariadne, playing on the lyre, and guided by gods of love. The forms of women and children were sometimes represented in the shape of Centaurs, and used in various ways by artists for their smaller pictures. For the Centauro-Tritones or Ichthyocentauri ("Fish-Centaurs") see TRITON.
 
PEIRITHOUS 29.91%
Son of Dia by her husband Ixion, or (according to another account) by Zeus; prince of the Lapithae, and friend of Theseus. When he was celebrating, on Mount Pelion, his marriage with Hippodamia, daughter of Atrax, one of the Lapithae, there arose the celebrated battle between the Lapithae and the Centaurs, which ended in the defeat of the latter. The Centaurs and the most distinguished Greek heroes had been invited to the wedding; but one of the former, Eurytion, in drunken boldness, attempted to carry off the bride, and, following his example, the other Centaurs fell upon the women of the Lapithae. Since Theseus and one of the Lapithae, Caeneus (q.v.), rescued the bride, Peirithous assisted the former in the abduction of Helen. Accompanied by Theseus, Peirithous descended into the world below, in order to carry off Persephone, and was compelled to pine there in everlasting chains as a punishment, while Theseus (q.v.) was released by Heracles. Peirithous' son Polypoetes marched to Troy with Leonteus, the grandson of Caeneus, and after the fall of Troy is said to have founded with him the city of Aspendus in Pamphylia.
 
HADES, REALM OF 12.83%

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According to the belief current among the Greeks, the world of the dead, or the spacious abode of Hades, with its wide doors, was in the dark depths of the earth. In the Odyssey, its entrance and outer court are on the western side of the river Oceanus, in the ground sacred to Persephone, with its grove of barren willows and poplars. Here is the abode of the Cimmerians, veiled in darkness and cloud where the sun never shines. The soil of this court, and indeed of the lower world in general, is a meadow of asphodel, an unattractive weed of dreary aspect usually planted on graves. The actual abode of the subterranean powers is Erebos, or the impenetrable darkness. In later times entrances to the lower world were imagined in other places where there were cavernous hollows which looked as if they led into the bowels of the earth. Such places were Hermione and the promontory of Taenarum in the Peloponnese, Heraclea on the Euxine, and Cumae in Italy, where the mythical Cimmerli were also localized. The lower world of Homer is intersected by great rivers, the Styx, the Acheron (river of woe), Cocytus (river of cries), a branch of the Styx, Phlegethon and Pyriphlegethon (rivers of fire). The last two unite and join the waters; of the Acheron. In the post-Homeric legend, these rivers are represented as surrounding the infernal regions, and another river appears with them, that of Lethe, or oblivion. In the waters of Lethe the souls of the dead drink forgetfulness of their earthly existence. The lower world once conceived as separated from the upper by these rivers, the idea of a ferryman arose. This was Charon, the son of Erebos and of Nyx, a gloomy, sullen old man, who takes the souls in his boat across Acheron into the realm of shadows. The souls are brought down from the upper world by Hermes, and pay the ferryman an obolos, which was put for this purpose into the mouths of the dead. Charon has the right to refuse a passage to souls whose bodies have not been duly buried. In Homer it is the spirits themselves who refuse to receive any one to whom funeral honours have not been paid. At the gate lies the dog Cerberus, son of Typhaon and Echidna. He is a terrible monster with three heads, and mane and tail of snakes. He is friendly to the spirits who enter, but if anyone tries to got out he seizes him and holds him fast. The ghosts of the dead were in ancient times conceived as incorporeal images of their former selves, without mind or consciousness. In the Odyssey the seer Tiresias is the only one who has retained his consciousness and judgment, and this as an exceptional gift of Persephone. But they have the power of drinking the blood of animals, and having done so they recover their consciousness and power of speech. The soul therefore is not conceived as entirely annihilated. The ghosts retain the outer form of their body, and follow, but instinctively only, what was their favourite pursuit in life. Orion in Homer is still a hunter, Minos sits in judgment as when alive. Perhaps the punishments inflicted in Homer on Tityus, Tantalus, and Sisyphus (for Ixion, the Danaides, Peirithous, and others belong to a later story) should be regarded in this light. The penalties inflicted on them in the upper world may be merely transferred by Homer to their ghostly existence. For the idea of a sensible punishment is not consistent with that of an unconscious continuance in being. It must be remembered, at the same time, that Homer several times mentions that the Erinyes punish perjurers after death. We are forced then to conclude that the ancient belief is, in this instance, found side by side with the later and generally received idea, that the dead, even without drinking blood, preserved their consciousness and power of speech. Connected with it is the notion that the have the power of influencing men's life on earth in various ways. The most ancient belief knows nothing of future rewards of the righteous, or indeed of any complete separation between the just and the unjust, or of a judgment to make the necessary awards. The judges of the dead are in the later legend Minos, Rhadamanthys, Aecus, and Triptlemus. It was a later age, too, which transferred Elysium and Tartarus to the lower world, Elysium as the abode of the blessed, and Tartarus as that of the damned. In the earlier belief these regions had nothing to do with the realm of Hades (See HADES). The name Tartarus was in later times often applied to the whole of the lower world. The ghosts of those who had lived a life of average merit were imagined as wandering on the asphodel meadow. In general it must be said that the ancient ideas of a future life were always subject to considerable changes, owing to the influence of the doctrines taught in the mysteries, and the representations of poets, philosophers, sculptors, and painters (see POLYGNOTUS). The general tendency was to multiply the terrors of Hades, especially at the gates, and in Tartarus. (For the deities cf the lower world see HADES, PERSEPHONE, and ERINYES.) The Greek beliefs on the subject found their way to Rome through the instrumentality of the poets, especially Vergil. But they did not entirely supplant the national traditions. (See ORCUS, MANIA, MANES, LARES, and LARVAe. )
 
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