Iceni

“ No modern highroad follows it for any distance. Antiquaries have supposed that it once ran on to Royston, Newmarket and Norfolk, and have connected its name with the Iceni, the Celtic tribe inhabiting East Anglia before the Roman conquest. ”

“ Reverse, on some, a horse with or without branch beneath, and with or without wheel, and other rude ornaments, and ADDEDO-MARVS, or ADDEDO, or A [BO] [BO] IIDO [M] , or other abbreviations.
THE ICENI.
A number of inscribed coins about which nothing certain is known have, with considerable show of reason, been attributed generally to the Iceni. ”

“ Since the news of the capture of Mona had arrived, the tribesmen had drilled with increased alacrity and eagerness. Every man saw that the struggle with Rome must ere long take place, and was eager to take a leading share in the conflict. It was upon them that the blow had fallen most heavily in the former partial rising, and they knew that the other tribes of the Iceni held that their defence of their camp should not have been overborne by the Romans as it was ”

“ Actæon interpreted between the Romans and the Carthaginian chief.
"They are legates from Rome, coming to see you in the name of the Republic."
"Who are you, speaking to me in a voice that I seem to know?"
He shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked keenly until he recognized the Greek.
"Is it you, Actæon? Always you, restless Athenian! I thought you were within the city, yet you have managed to slip away to bring these men to me. Well and good! Tell them it is too late. Why waste words? A chieftain who lays siege to a city only receives ambassadors after he is inside the walls." ”

“ There is perhaps no modern book of verse in which a certain melancholy phase of ancient thought is better reproduced than in Ionica, and this gives its slight verses their lasting charm. We have had numerous resuscitations of ancient manners and landscape in modern poetry since the days of Keats and André Chenier. Many of these have been so brilliantly successful that only pedantry would deny their value. But in Ionica something is given which the others have not known how to give, the murmur of antiquity, the sigh in the grass of meadows dedicated to Persephone. ”

“ The loveliness of nature on the Ionian shores, and in the isles that crown the Ægean deep, was soon embellished by the genius of art. Stately processions, hymns chanted in honor of the gods, graceful dances before the altars, statues, and shrines, assemblies for festal or solemn purposes in the open air under the soft sky of Ionia, or within the halls of princes and nobles—these fill up the moments of the new and dazzling existence which the excitable Hellenic race are invited here and now to enjoy. ”

“ The colonies spread until a dodecapolis was established, similar to the union which the Ionians had founded in their old settlements on the northern shore of Peloponnesus. In some cities the Ionian population formed a minority. ... The colonisation of Ionia was undoubtedly, in the main, an achievement of emigrants from Attica, but it was not accomplished by a single family, or in the space of one life-time. ... The two most famous of the Ionian cities were Miletus and Ephesus. The first was a Carian city previously known as Anactoria. ”

“ Iduna, you are cruel, but I did not expect this!”
“Dear Nicæus!” she answered, “you always misinterpret me! It would infinitely delight me to be restored to Hunniades by yourself, but these are no common times, and you are no common person. You forget that there is one that has greater claims upon you even than a forlorn maiden, your country. And whether Iskander be at Croia or not, Greece requires the presence and exertions of the Prince of Athens.” ”

“ The Romans, proud of their origin from Troy and Æneas, treated Ilium with signal munificence; not only granting to it immunity from tribute, but also adding to its domain the neighboring territories of Gergis, Rhœteium and Sigeium—and making the Ilieans masters of the whole coast [805] from the Peræa (or conti [p. 328] nental possessions) of Tenedos (southward of Sigeium) to the boundaries of Dardanus, which had its own title to legendary reverence as the special sovereignty of Æneas. ”

“ I shall look upon the Ionian Sea, not merely from a train or a steamboat as before, but at long leisure: I shall see the shores where once were Tarentum and Sybaris, Croton and Locri. Every man has his intellectual desire; mine is to escape life as I know it and dream myself into that old world which was the imaginative delight of my boyhood. The names of Greece and Italy draw me as no others; they make me young again, and restore the keen impressions of that time when every new page of Greek or Latin was a new perception of things beautiful. ”

“ When the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed the Achæans had formed a great number of small independent communities, some inhabiting islands, and others living in valleys surrounded by chains of mountains. The only tribe whose methods of government are depicted in some detail was one of the least of the Greek peoples, and had its home in Ithaca, a rocky island of the Ionian sea about seventeen miles long and three or four miles broad. The larger tribes were the Mycenæans, the Spartans, and the Achæans of Phthiotis. ”

“ And he knew something besides of most parts of the mainland of Greece, of Crete, Delos, Chios, and the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. The experience of the Iliadic bard was doubtless somewhat, though not greatly, more limited. Its range extended, at any rate, from ‘Pelasgic Argos’ to the Troad, familiarity with which is shown in all sections of the Trojan epic. The cosmopolitan character of both poets is only indeed what might have been expected. The privileged members of an Achæan community must have enjoyed wide opportunities of observation. For Mycenæan culture was strongly eclectic. ”

“ Frederic Jacobs says, fancifully yet truly, that 'the language of Ionia resembles the smooth mirror of a broad and silent lake, from whose depth a serene sky, with its soft and sunny vault, and the varied nature along its smiling shores are reflected in transfigured beauty.' In Ionia, to borrow the expressions of the same eloquent writer, the mind of man 'enjoyed a life exempt from drudgery, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of sensibility and frolic joy, innocent curiosity and childlike faith. ”

“ Howbeit the other long-haired Achaeans will abide here until we have laid waste Troy. Nay, let them also flee in their ships to their dear native land; yet will we twain, Sthenelus and I, fight on, until we win the goal of Ilios; for with the aid of heaven are we come."
[50] So spake he, and all the sons of the Achaeans shouted aloud, applauding the word of Diomedes, tamer of horses. Then uprose and spake among them the horseman Nestor: "Son of Tydeus, above all men art thou mighty in battle, and in council art the best amid all those of thine own age. ”

“ Nay, valiant though thou art, godlike Achilles, urge not on this wise the sons of the Achaeans to go fasting against Ilios to do battle with the men of Troy, since not for a short space shall the battle last when once the ranks of men are met and the god breathes might into either host. But bid thou the Achaeans by their swift ships to taste of food and wine; since therein is courage and strength. For there is no man that shall be able the whole day long until set of sun to fight against the foe, fasting the while from food ”

“ In places the bounding wall runs on the very edge of a precipice, and many a crazy house, overhanging, seems ready to topple into the abyss. The views are magnificent, whether one looks down the valley to the leafy shore, or, in an opposite direction, up to the grand heights which, at this narrowest point of Calabria, separate the Ionian from the Tyrrhene Sea. ”

“ The Prince of Athens, with many admirable qualities, was one of those men who are influenced only by their passions, and who, in the affairs of life, are invariably guided by their imagination instead of their reason. At present all thought and feeling, all considerations, and all circumstances, merged in the overpowering love he entertained for Iduna, his determination to obtain her at all cost and peril, and his resolution that she should never again meet Iskander, except as the wife of Nicæus. ”

“ Then Ismené made answer, "I have heard nothing, my sister, only that we are bereaved of both of our brethren in one day, and that the army of the Argives is departed in this night that is now past. So much I know, but no more."
"Hearken then. King Creon hath made a proclamation that they shall bury Eteocles with all honour; but that Polynices shall lie unburied, that the birds of the air and the beasts of the field may devour him; and that whosoever shall break this decree shall suffer death by stoning." ”

“ Verily, I ween, thou hopest in thy heart, glorious Achilles, on this day to sack the city of the lordly Trojans. Thou fool! in sooth many be the woes that shall yet be wrought because of her. Within her are we, many men and valiant, that in front of our dear parents and wives and sons guard Ilios; nay, it is thou that shalt here meet thy doom, for all thou art so dread and so bold a man of war. ”

“ ICHANA (Ἴχανα: Eth. Ἰχανῖνος) , a city of Sicily, which, according to Stephanus of Byzantium, held out for a long time against the arms of the Syracusans, whence he derives its name (from the verb ἰχανάω, a form equivalent to ἰσχανάω) , but gives us no indication of the period to which this statement refers. The Ichanenses, however, are mentioned by Pliny (iii. 8. s- 14) among the stipendiary towns of the interior of Sicily, though, according to Sillig (ad loc.) the true reading is Ipanenses. [Hippana.] ”

“ The Iliad is nothing but a sense-impression and a poet's use of sense-impressions. There came to Alexander an impression to carry off the wife of Menelaus, and an impression came to Helen to follow him. Now if an impression had led Menelaus to feel that it was a gain to be deprived of such a wife, what would have happened? We should have lost not merely the Iliad, but the Odyssey as well.—Then do matters of such great import depend upon one that is so small:—But what do you mean by "matters of such great import"? Wars and factions and deaths of many men and destructions of cities? ”

“ I must not omit to mention that about this time Bartholomew Pernix, a citizen and merchant of Genoa, who had resided long in Syria for the purpose of commerce, returned to his native country. Soon after, he made a voyage to the island of Ænaria, situated in the Tuscan sea, called formerly Pythacusa, and now in the vulgar Greek Iscla or Ischia; and being a man of an acute genius, and a diligent investigator of natural objects, he observed near the sea-coast several rocks fit for making alum. ”

“ Then began for Greece "the long dark ages, the mediæval epoch, out of which she emerges only in the Homeric Renaissance." The flower of the survivors of that dread time sought a new home east of the Ægean on the isles and shores of Ionia. There these exiles from Argolis laid the foundation of a culture whose influence will abide while the world stands, because Ionia remains the fatherland of all who hold dear what man has reached in art and literature, in science and philosophy. ”

“ The wind and rain were now increased to such a pitch as I have scarce known: the dim bulk of the Inn hung in a mist of swinging vapour, through which the glimmer of the one light aloft, shining, touched the edges of the slanted pikes.
Idonia was plucking weakly at my sleeve. Her eyes were pitifully big. "You look distressed, Denis," she said, in a crazed dull voice. "Why do you look so stern and sad? We are together.... ”

“ We will speak first of the temples and the sculpture of Ionia. The Ionians were a people far more susceptible than were the Dorians to oriental influences. The dress, the art, the luxury of western Asia attracted them with irresistible force. We may suspect, as Brunn has suggested, that Ionian artists worked in the great Assyrian and Persian palaces, and that the reliefs which adorn the walls of those palaces were in part their handiwork. Some of the great temples of Ionia have been excavated in recent years, notably those of Apollo at Miletus, of Hera at Samos, and of Artemis at Ephesus. ”

“ Filled are thy huts with bronze, and women full many are in thy huts, chosen spoils that we Achaeans give thee first of all, whensoe'er we take a citadel. Or dost thou still want gold also, which some man of the horse-taming Trojans shall bring thee out of Ilios as a ransom for his son, whom I haply have bound and led away or some other of the Achaeans? Or is it some young girl for thee to know in love, whom thou wilt keep apart for thyself? Nay, it beseemeth not one that is their captain to bring to ill the sons of the Achaeans. ”

“ Ignatius, a man of Philippi, has been supposed to be Ignatius, the pastor of Antioch; and Syria, the eastern province of the Roman Empire, has been confounded with Psyria or Syria—either of these names representing an island in the Aegean Sea not far from Smyrna. Ignatius, the confessor of Philippi, when in bonds wrote, as we find, a number of letters which were deemed worthy of preservation, but which have long since perished ”

“ The seven Ionian Islands naturally fall into three divisions. Kythera (or Cerigo) in the far South; the centred group, consisting of Zante, Cephalonia, Ithake, and Levkas (or Santa Maura) ; and Corfù and Paxo in the North. Of these divisions, the first fell to the share of a scion of the great Venetian family of Venier—a family which traced its name and descent from Venus, and naturally claimed the island, where she had risen from the sea. Zante, Cephalonia and Ithake had a very curious history—a history long obscure, but now well ascertained. ”