Tartarus

“ Little malicious fays sit on the little children's tables, as if they were tender children, and very much loved to see men and human pleasure; anon they start up as wild huntresses, and run through the blossoms; a thousand hands turn up the garden with its blossoming trees, and point its black, gloomy thicket of roots like summits up into heaven; Gorgon heads look out of the twigs, and up in the thunder-house there is an incessant weeping and laughing;—nothing is fair and soft but the great, daring Tartarus. ”

“ Now, I hold that, in most matrimonial instances, it is as well to provide for repentance; and wealth has its advantages and its alleviations in affairs of the heart, as in all other affairs. It was by means of a golden bough that Æneas passed the evil spirits of Tartarus, and gained Elysium in safety." ”

“ There Gyes and Cottus and great-souled Obriareus live, trusty warders of Zeus who holds the aegis.
And there, all in their order, are the sources and ends of gloomy earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry heaven, loathsome and dank, which even the gods abhor. It is a great gulf, and if once a man were within the gates, he would not reach the floor until a whole year had reached its end, but cruel blast upon blast would carry him this way and that. And this marvel is awful even to the deathless gods. ”

“ because thou shalt be nothing, for ever."
And the Lord Juss cried aloud in his agony, "Fling me to Tartarus, deliver me to the black infernal Furies, let them blind me, seethe me in the burning lake. For so should there yet be hope. But in this horror of Nothing is neither hope nor life nor death nor sleep nor waking, for ever. ”

“ In winter the population rises to 30,000.
Tartars (originally Tatars) , a name of no precise ethnological signification, used in the 13th century to describe the Mongolic, Turkish, and other Asiatic hordes, who, under Genghis Khan (q. v.) , were the terror of Eastern Europe, and now bestowed upon various tribes dwelling in Tartary, Siberia, and the Asiatic steppes.
Tartarus, a dark sunless waste in the nether deeps, as far below earth as heaven is above it, into which Zeus hurled the Titans that rebelled against him ”

“ Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince, And thou, in military prowess next, Gabriel, lead forth to battle these my sons Invincible; lead forth my armed Saints, By thousands and by millions, ranged for fight, Equal in number to that Godless crew Rebellious: Them with fire and hostile arms Fearless assault; and, to the brow of Heaven Pursuing, drive them out from God and bliss, Into their place of punishment, the gulf Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide His fiery Chaos to receive their fall. ”

“ In the thread of human life.”
Scott.
Atropos, the third sister, armed with a huge pair of shears, remorselessly cut short the thread of life,—an intimation that another soul would ere long find its way down into the dark kingdom of Hades.
Tartarus.
When the gates of Tartarus turned on their hinges to receive the newcomer, a chorus of cries, groans, and imprecations from within fell upon his ear, mingled with the whistling of the whips incessantly plied by retributive deities. ”

“ Tartar is the name of the race of people to which the Turks, Cossacks, and several other peoples belong. The name by which they called themselves was Tatar; but Europeans changed it to Tartar, from the Latin word Tartarus, which means "hell." This gives us some idea of the impression these fierce people made on mediæval Europe—an impression which is kept in memory by the present humorous use of the word. [156]
It is chiefly Eastern peoples whose names have passed into common words meaning fierce and cruel people. Our fairy tales are full of tales of "ogres." ”

“ Now in the days of Cronos there existed a law respecting the destiny of man, which has always been, and still continues to be in Heaven,—that he who has lived all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, and even quite lately in the reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on the very day on which the men were to die ”

“ But this, though it might have led him to the larger views of the heathen world held by Origen and Clement, did not prevent his condemning to eternal torments even the most virtuous of the heathen. He tells Marcella, a Roman lady (41–42) , that one object he has in writing to her is to instruct her that the consul-elect Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, who was known as a model of public and domestic virtue, and who had then recently died, is in Tartarus, while their friend Lea, who had died the same day, is in heaven. ”

“ But see what it is to possess a good conscience! In spite of rats, cold, spiders, and beetles, the great Tartarin found in the horror of that state-prison, haunted by the shades of martyrs, the same solid and sonorous sleep, mouth open, fists closed, which came to him, between the abysses and heaven, in the hut of the Alpine Club. He fancied he was dreaming when he heard his jailer say in the morning:—
“Get up; the prefect of the district is here... He has come to examine you...” Adding, with a certain respect, “To bring the prefect out in this way... why, you must be a famous scoundrel.” ”

“ Tartarin began cutting down his food, taking very watery soup. Early in the morning, too, he walked round the town seven or eight times, and at nights he would stay in the garden from ten till eleven o'clock, alone with his gun, to inure himself to night chills; while, so long as the menagerie remained in Tarascon, a strange figure might have been seen in the dark, prowling around the tent, listening to the growling of the lion. This was Tartarin, accustoming himself to be calm when the king of beasts was raging. ”

“ Father Verbiast, in his description of the Emperor of China's voyage into the Eastern Tartary, Anno 1682, gives an account of a way of hunting the Tartars have, not much unlike this; only whereas the Indians surround their game with fire, the Tartars do it with a great body of armed men, who having environed the ground they design to drive, march equally inwards, which, still as the ring lessens, brings the men nearer each other, till at length the wild beasts are encompassed with a living wall. ”

“ Our Tarascon correspondent writes:—
“The city is in distress. There has been no news for several months from Tartarin the lion-slayer, who set off to hunt the great feline tribe in Africa. What can have become of our heroic fellow-countryman? Those hardly dare ask who know, as we do, how hot-headed he was, and what boldness and thirst for adventures were his. Has he, like many others, been smothered in the sands, or has he fallen under the murderous fangs of one of those monsters of the Atlas Range of which he had promised the skins to the municipality? ”

“ The youth tells him to pick up the card himself. As he stoops for the purpose a blow from the mace puts an end to him. Three Tartaros are thus overcome; and their mansion passes into the possession of the hero. The combat with the triple serpent lasts two days. The victor returns to the Tartaro’s palace, merely taking the seven tongues and the seven pieces of silk, and thus enabling the charcoal-burner to make his false claim. The king in his joy gives a dinner to his friends, to which of course the hero is not invited. The Tartaros owned three olanos, ogre-dogs. ”

“ They alone are permitted to retain their weapons in their own charge. Indeed, the Tartar here lives as a conqueror, and glories in the emblems of conquest which he still has around him. In other respects, they are all subject to the same laws, and wear the same dress, but differ a good deal in their countenance and expression. Commonly the Tartars are a fairer people than the Chinese, and some of them much resemble Europeans. ”

“ At that time Tartarin was not the Tartarin which he is today, the great Tartarin de Tarascon who is so popular throughout the Midi of France, however, even at this epoch, he was already the king of Tarascon.
Let us examine how he acquired his crown. You will be aware, for a start, that everyone in these parts is a hunter. From the highest to the lowest hunting is a passion with the Tarasconais and has been ever since the legendary Tarasque prowled in the marshes near the town and was hunted down by the citizens. ”

“ The other remained motionless.
“A fine chance to be done with life, to return into chaos through the bowels of the earth, and roll from fissure to fissure like that bit of ice which I kick with my foot...” And he leaned over frightfully to watch the fragment bounding downward and echoing endlessly in the blackness.
“Take care!..” cried Tartarin, livid with terror. Then, desperately clinging to the oozing wall, he resumed, with hot ardour, his argument of the night before in favour of existence. “There’s good in it... What the deuce!.. At your age, a fine young fellow like you... ”

“ The Tartaro. Once upon a time there was the son of a king who for the punishment of some fault became a monster. He could become a man again only by marrying. One day he met a young girl who refused him, because she was so frightened at him. And the Tartaro wanted to give her a ring, which she would not accept. However, he sent it her by a young man. As soon as the ring was upon her finger it began to say, “Thou there, and I here.”4 It kept always crying out this, and the Tartaro pursued her continually ”

“ His illustrations of Tartar life are especially graphic and amusing. Here is a specimen. “When not on horseback, a Tartar is generally quite idle, and passes a great part of the day crouched in his tent, drinking tea, and sometimes he lounges about like a Parisian dandy, though not quite in the same way. When he has a mind to see what is passing in the world, he mounts his horse, and goes galloping away into the desert, without heeding in what direction, and whenever he sees the smoke of a tent rising, he makes a call, and has a gossip.” ”

“ On the right loomed up confusedly the heavy mass of a mountain—perhaps the Atlas range. On the heart-hand, the invisible sea hollowly rolling. The very spot to attract wild beasts.
With one gun laid before him and the other in his grasp, Tartarin of Tarascon went down on one knee and waited an hour, ay, a good couple, and nothing turned up. Then he bethought him how, in his books, the great lion-slayers never went out hunting without having a lamb or a kid along with them, which they tied up a space before them, and set bleating or baa-ing by jerking its foot with a string. ”

“ But the presence of this burdensome quadruped rendered the thing impossible. What kind of a triumphal entry would he make? Good heavens! not a sou, not a lion, nothing to show for it save a camel!
“Tarascon! Tarascon!”
He was obliged to get down.
O amazement!
Scarce had the hero’s red fez popped out of the doorway before a loud shout of “Tartarin for ever!” made the glazed roof of the railway station tremble. “Long life to Tartarin, the lion-slayer!” And out burst the windings of horns and the choruses of the local musical societies. ”

“ It has been already said that the Tartars are idolaters. Each man of any consequence has a table aloft in the wall of one of his chambers, on which a name is written, to signify the great God of Heaven, whom he adores once each day, with a censer of burning incense ”

“ AT Milianah, Tartarin of Tarascon alighted, leaving the stage-coach to continue its way towards the South.
Two days’ rough jolting, two nights spent with eyes open to spy out of window if there were not discoverable the dread figure of a lion in the fields beyond the road—so much sleeplessness well deserved some hours repose. Besides, if we must tell everything, since his misadventure with Bombonnel, the outspoken Tartarin felt ill at ease, notwithstanding his weapons, his terrifying visage, and his red cap, before the Orleansville photographer and the two ladies fond of the military. ”

“ The unfortunate Tartarin did not know where to shrink. The fond, mute gaze of these splendrous Oriental orbs agitated him, perturbed him, and made him feel like dying with flushes of heat and fits of cold shivers.
To finish him, the lady’s slipper meddled in the onslaught: he felt the dainty thing wander and frisk about over his heavy hunting boots like a tiny red mouse. What could he do? Answer the glance and the pressure, of course. Ay, but what about the consequences? A loving intrigue in the East is a terrible matter! ”

“ AND when the Tartars had subdued a great part of the world, they came unto the sayd olde man, and tooke from him the custody of his paradise: who being incensed thereat, sent abroad divers desperate and resolute persons out of his forenamed paradise, and caused many of the Tartarian nobles to be slaine. The Tartars seeing this, went and beseiged the citie wherein the sayd olde man was, tooke him, and put him to a most cruell and ignominious death. ”

“ The Tartars believe in God as the Creator of the universe and as the Rewarder and Avenger of all, but they also worship the sun, moon, fire, earth, and water, and idols made in felt, like human beings. They have little toleration, and put Michael of Turnigoo and Féodor to death for not worshipping the sun at midday at the command of Prince Bathy. They are a superstitious people, believing in enchantment and sorcery, and looking upon fire as the purifier of all things. ”