[24] “Sept des plus fameux parmi les anciens poëtes Arabiques sont désignés par les écrivains orientaux sous le nom de Pleïade Arabique, et leurs ouvrages étaient suspendus autour de la Caaba, ou Mosque de la Mecque.”—Sismondi, Littérature du Midi.
[25] “The distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Cæsars.”—Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, &c. vol. xii. p. 226.
[26] See the description of the night previous to the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II.—Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, &c. vol. xii. p. 225.
[27] “This building (the Castle of the Seven Towers) is mentioned as early as the sixth century of the Christian era, as a spot which contributed to the defence of Constantinople; and it was the principal bulwark of the town on the coast of the Propontis, in the last periods of the empire.”—Pouqueville’s Travels in the Morea.
[28] See the account from Herodotus of the supernatural defence of Delphi.—Mitford’s Greece, vol. i. p. 396-7.
[29] “In succeeding ages the Athenians honoured Theseus as a demigod, induced to it as well by other reasons as because, when they were fighting the Medes at Marathon, a considerable part of the army thought they saw the apparition of Theseus completely armed, and bearing down before them upon the barbarians.”—Langhorne’s Plutarch, Life of Theseus.
[30] “From Thermopylæ to Sparta, the leader of the Goths (Alaric) pursued his victorious march without encountering any mortal antagonist; but one of the advocates of expiring paganism has confidently asserted that the walls of Athens were guarded by the goddess Minerva, with her formidable ægis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles, and that the conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the hostile deities of Greece.”—Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, &c. vol. v. p. 183.
[31] “Even all the chief ones of the earth.”—Isaiah, xiv.
[32] “How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”—Samuel, book ii. chap. i.
[33] For several interesting particulars relative to the Suliote warfare with Ali Pasha, see Holland’s Travels in Albania.