The Myth of Hercules

“Some men are born to a great deal of trouble, yet bear it with so light a heart that they never seem to have a care in the world. This was the case with Hercules. His troubles began early, and they never ceased until the day he died, but he was always cheerful and strong.

When he was a mere babe of a few months, he met his first great danger. His mother, Alcmena, had put him to bed one night with his twin brother, Iphicles. Their cradle was the inside of a bronze shield. The babes were healthy, and they had been given a good warm bath and plenty of milk before they were tucked in, so they were asleep in a moment.

Toward midnight two huge snakes came crawling into the nursery. Marvelous snakes they were, and their eyes shone with a light which filled the room with its glare. They came gliding swiftly toward the cradle, and there might then have been an end of both of its little occupants, but at that moment the children awoke. Iphicles, like any other baby, was terribly frightened and began to cry with all his lungs, but Hercules did not seem in the least afraid. When the snakes came close to him, he seized them both about the necks and squeezed them with all his might.”

-----> The Myth of Hercules.

Commentaires

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

The Origin of Human Speech - and the Psychic Mechanism of the Voice

Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment’s reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk… One theory is that primitive words were imitative of sounds: man copied the barking of dogs and thereby obtained a natural word with the meaning of ‘dog’ or ‘bark.’ To this theory, nicknamed the bow-wow theory, Renan objects that it seems rather absurd to set up this chronological sequence: first the lower animals are original enough to cry and roar; and then comes man, making a language for himself by imitating his inferiors. But surely man would imitate not only the cries of inferior animals, but also those of his fellow-men, and the salient point of the theory is this: so...

History of Cotton, Wool and Textiles

History of Cotton, Wool and Textiles On the 3d of May 1734, there was a hanging at Cork which made a good deal more noise than such a very ordinary event generally did in those days. There was nothing remarkable about the malefactor, or the crime he had committed. He was a very commonplace ruffian, and had earned his elevation to the gallows by a vulgar felony. What was remarkable about the affair was, that the woollen weavers of Cork, being then in a state of great distress from want of work, dressed up the convict in cotton garments, and that the poor wretch, having once been a weaver himself, "employed" the last occasion he was ever to have of addressing his fellow creatures, by assuring them that all his misdeeds and misfortunes were to be traced to the "pernicious practice of wearing cottons." "Therefore, good Christians," he continued, "consider that if you go on to suppress your own goods, by wearing such cottons as I am now clothed in, you w...

HUMAN AND LITERATURE

Rechercher dans ce blog