Adamant and Adamantine in Mythology
- In Greek Mythology, the Titan Cronus castrated his father Uranus using an adamant sickle. An adamantine sickle or sword was also used by the hero Perseus to decapitate the Gorgon Medusa while she slept.
- In the Greek Tragedy, Prometheus Bound translated by G. M. Cookson, Hephaestus is to bind Prometheus "to the jagged rocks in adamantine bonds infrangible."
- In John Milton's Paradise Lost (Book 1), Satan is hurled "to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire". Later (Book 6), Satan's shield is described as "of tenfold adamant," and the armor worn by the angels is described as "adamantine."
- In some versions of the Alexander Romance, Alexander the Great builds walls of Adamantine, the Gates of Alexander, to keep the giants Gog and Magog from pillaging the peaceful southern lands.
Read more about this topic: Adamant
Famous quotes containing the words adamant, adamantine and/or mythology:
“All things are flowing, even those that seem immovable. The adamant is always passing into smoke. The plants imbibe the materials which they want from the air and the ground. They burn, that is, exhale and decompose their own bodies into the air and earth again. The animal burns, or undergoes the like perpetual consumption. The earth burns, the mountains burn and decompose, slower, but incessantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The vanishing volatile froth of the present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the Adamantine Record of the past.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)