Speech on the Underworld in Greek Mythology Essay Example for Free

Speech on the Underworld in Greek Mythology Essay The Underworld, better known as Hades after the god who ruled it, was a dark and dreary place where the shades, or souls, of those who died lived. In the next few minutes, I will tell you about how one came to die, the topography of the Underworld, and the beings whom dwelled there. br brYour whole life was planned and plotted by the Fates. The Fates were the three goddesses who controlled the destiny of everyone from the time they were born to the time they died. They were: Clotho, the spinner, who spun the thread of a persons life, Lachesis, the apporitioner, who decided how much times was to be allowed each person, and Atropos, the inevitable, who cut the thread when you were supposed to die. When Atropos cut your thread you were dead and then you made your journey to Hades. Upon death, the shade is lead by Hermes to the entrance of the Underworld and to the banks of the Acheron. br brThere were five rivers that made up the Underworld. They were the Acheron (the river of woe), Cocytus (the river of lamentation), Phlegethon (river of fire), Lethe (river of forgetfulness), and the Styx (river of hate). This poem, written by an anonymous writer, was written about the rivers in the Underworld. br brAbhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate, brSad Acheron of sorrow black and deep; brCocytus named of lamentation loud brHeard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon brWhose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. brFar off from these a slow and silent stream, brLethe, the river of oblivion, rolls  br Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks brForthwith his former state and being forgets, brForgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain. br brWhen one would die, the family would place one obol, or a coin, under the deceaseds tongue. This coin would pay as fare to Charon who would ferry the dead over the Acheron River. Charon is the ferryman who is often depicted as an old sulky man, or as a winged demon carrying a double hammer. Those who cannot afford to pay Charon were doomed to wonder the banks of the Acheron River for one hundred years. Guarding the Underworld was the three-headed dog Cerberus. He permitted new spirits to enter, but never one to leave. br brWhen you arrived at the Underworld, three judges determined your sentence. They were Rhadamanthus, Minos the first, and Aeacus. Rhadamanthus, the son of Zeus and Europa, was rewarded to be judge because of the justice he showed on Earth. Minos the First, the son of Zeus and Europa, was another judge who, before he died, was the ruler of Crete, and most know him from the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. The third judge is Aeacus, the son of Zeus and the nymph Aegina, assisted Poseidon and Apollo build the walls of the city Troy. After his death Zeus rewarded him the position of judge. br brYou could go to three different places in the Underworld, depending on your life on Earth and what you had done. Most shades went to the Asphodel Fields, but before you entered you drank from the Lethe River, causing you to forget everything that had happened in your past life. Asphodel was an ugly , gray, ghostly weed that covered the Fields. This place was for the normal, everyday person, who did nothing special in his or her life. The second place they could go was the Elysian Fields or Elysium. Elysium was reserved for the heroes, or people the gods favored. Regular feasts, banquets, and hunts were held there. The third and final place you could go to was the lowest region of the world, called Tartarus. It was surrounded by a wall of bronze and beyond that three-fold layer of night. Tartarus, presided over by Kronos, was where the souls went who had defied the gods in some way. The Hundred-headed Giants guarded it. Around Tartarus is Phlegethon, with its flames and clashing rocks. One of the Furies, Tisiphone, sits upon the iron tower, with her bloody robe, and sleepless day and night, guards the entrance. br brFew people dwell in the Underworld, because of its gloominess and darkness. Hades, the King of the Dead, rules over the entire Underworld. The god was a dread figure to the living, who were quite careful how they swore oaths to his name. To many people, to utter his name was frightening, so they used another word in its place. Since all precious minerals came from under the earth, the people thought of Hades as very wealthy. He was was sometimes referred to as Ploutos, meaning wealth. This accounts for the name given him by the Romans, who called him Pluto. Hades sits on a throne of ebony and carries a scepter. He also has a helmet that makes him invisible, given to him by the Cyclopes. Persephone, Hadess wife, also lives with him in his palace. Along with Charon, the ferryman, the Furies live down there also. The furies are the three daughters of Mother Earth, conceived from the blood of Uranus. They were powerful goddesses that personified conscience and punish people for their crimes. They were Megaera (jealousy), Tisiphone (blood avenger), and Alecto (unceasing in pursuit). They were usually depicted as winged women with serpent hair. When called upon they would hound their victims till they died in a rage of madness or suicide. br brThe Underworld is what the Greeks and Romans believed you went after you died. It was where everything horrible, evil, and sad lived. If you werent a hero or a favorite of the gods you were sent to that horrible place. What a dreadful thing to look forward to after your life was completed on Earth. I hope you enjoyed learning about the Underworld and the beliefs of the Greek and Roman peoples afterlife. Thank You.

Should We Really Give Children the Vote? :: Exploratory Essays

Should We Really Give Children the Vote? Sixteen year old Vita Wallace is an activist for children’s rights. In her argument, â€Å"Give children the vote,† she attempts to show that an injustice has been made to citizens of the United States. Wallace’s major claim, or thesis (McFadden, 2003), is that citizens under the age of 18 shouldn’t be denied the right to vote on account of age. Rather, she argues, children should be allowed to vote at whatever age suits them individually. By saying individually, she is using a qualifier, words and phrases used to limit and modify the overgeneralization of claims (McFadden). It is important that Wallace uses the term individually, because she recognizes that an age limit would be inappropriate for some children. After this point, most of the essay is dedicated to her opinion on why it is important for children to vote. Wallace’s uses appeal to the reader’s values, also known as warrants (McFadden). The emotional pleas may cause the audi ence to stop and consider her logic, but lack of facts and evidence leaves the argument unconvincing. With her jumpy writing and scattered thoughts the argument is hard to read, and even harder to believe. Therefore, I found the essay to be unsuccessful in persuading my opinion. The logic and evidence used to support her major claim, known as grounds (McFadden) is hard to find. The strongest evidence in the whole essay is statistics of eligible adult voters. With this information, she points out that only 36-40 percent of eligible adults actually vote. However, 25 percent of the population is under the age of 18, leading to Wallace’s statement that â€Å"Although elected representatives are responsible for all of us, they are responsible to only a few of us† (Wallace, 1998, p. 146). This statement would be effective but Wallace loses her credibility at the end of the paragraph when she calls politicians and voters selfish. By doing this she is using a fallacy, statements based on poor logic and mistaken belief (Clark, p. 81). By saying they are selfish she is using an Ad Hominem argument, which is an attack on the person rather than the issue (Clark, 1998, p. 83). Throughout the essay Wallace develops many minor claims, which are secondary statements supporting the major claim (McFadden). Right away she discusses â€Å"Discriminatory laws† which prevent high school drop-outs from getting their driver’s licenses.

Works of Paul Cezanne

Paul Cezanne was born in 1839 in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence. He was the son of a wealthy banker. He became interested in art at an early age, which did not please his father. Cezanne was educated at the College Bourbon at Aix, where he befriended Emile Zola. Both Cezanne and Zola decided they would like to devote themselves to art. Zola settled down to a literary career in Paris, but Cezanne, after a short period as a law student, decided to go with his father†s wishes that he should carry on the management of the family bank. He failed in this however, and was allowed to settle in Paris and attend the Atelier Suisse, where he was expected to prepare for the examinations of the Ecole des Beaux – Arts, which coincidentally, he never passed. He became known as one of the most extreme revolutionary painters. He became acquainted with the group of painters who encircled Manet and were later known as the Impressionists. During this period, he was most influenced by Delacroix and by the baroque painters that Delacroix studied, by Rubens and Tintoretto. The â€Å"color† theories of Delacroix combined with the â€Å"law of simultaneous contrast† formulated by the chemist Michel Chevreul, by the end of the 1860†³s were beginning to be taken up by the young artists that Cezanne was familiar with. Cezanne†s ambition was to create grandiose compositions of a purely imaginative description, expressive of his own moods, using either violently dramatic themes as he did in â€Å"Les Assassins† or â€Å"L†Autopsie†, or lyrical motifs, such as â€Å"Le Judgement de Paris,† or â€Å"Dejeuner sur l†herbe. Cezanne also painted a series of portraits in which dramatic and psychological effects were undertoned. In all these early works, the color is reduced to a few simple notes in which black, white, earth reds, and yellows predominate. He showed at this stage nothing of the curiosity about natural effects of color which distinguished the Impressionist group. During the years 1872-1873, a great change came over Cezanne. He spent the summers of these years at Auvers-sur-Oise in the company of Camille Pissarro, one of the foremost Impressionistic painters. Pissarro was older than Cezanne and had already discovered his personal style and perfected a methodical and precise technique adapted to it. For the first time Cezanne learned to look on nature with a curiosity and learned the process of recording the results that were obtained. And above all, the whole world of atmosphere color was revealed to him. Certain pictures painted by Cezanne in these years resemble very nearly Pissarro†s work, but they show Cezanne†s reater power over organizing form. For these years, Cezanne may be In the last decade of the 19th century belong some of Cezanne†s most celebrated works. These include the portrait of Geffroy, which could be unequaled in modern art for the completeness of its realization and the complexity and assurance of harmonies, several pictures of men seated at a cafe table and playing cards, and a series of landscapes dominated by the mass of Mont Sainte-Victoire. At the very end of his life, there seems to have been a reappearance of the romantic tendencies of his youth. His paintings became more richer, more intense, and vivid in color. In the 1880s and 1890s, his name had become almost unknown in the larger art circles of Paris. However, his fame began to gradually circulate among artists, and in 1904 an exhibition of his works in the Autumn salon revealed to the public this unknown genius. Most of his fame came posthumously, as Cezanne died at Aix in 1906.

The Judiciary Committee of the Virginia State Bar Association Free Essay Example, 1250 words

The major role of this committee is to ensure that any judicial vacancy is filled with the right candidate. The process involves first considering and appropriately searching for the right nominees. Finally, a committee member from a given Virginia State Bar disciplinary district is assigned the responsibility of scrutinizing any identified nominees from their district in Virginia (Virginia State Bar Council, 2012). The vacancies that require such nominations are often in the Supreme Court of Virginia, the State Corporation Commission, and Virginia Seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the Court of Appeals of Virginia. Each investigation brings out a report before the JCEC then interviews them. Upon investigation, the candidates are then voted for qualification and putting into consideration the committee policy requirements of integrity, experience, temperament, professional competence, public service, and civic activities (Warner & Kaine, 2014, p. 1). As active members, the members of the Virginia Judicial Candidate Evaluation Committee are admitted to practice law in Virginia as attorneys and are also engaged, whether part time or full time, salaried or not, in practicing law (The Virginia State Bar, 2010). We will write a custom essay sample on The Judiciary Committee of the Virginia State Bar Association or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Like most American States, Virginia State continues to use an electoral system to appoint and retain its judges. However, this is disadvantageous since nominees have to campaign and this is time consuming and expensive, and the judges find themselves ethical dilemma situations. Furthermore, such campaigns cause even the lowest ranking judges to receive reappointments despite proof of eminent unfairness and eminent disqualification like the case of Judge Birdie Hairston Jamison (Fain, 2014). For some judges like Lucas D-Portsmouth, the act involved systematic bias even though Jamison was a female from the minority black people. Virginia State Bar Association- Alternative Dispute Resolution Besides its responsibility in the selecting candidates for judicial positions, the JCEC in Virginia is responsible for addressing professional ethics and standards of practice; enlightening ADR professionals and lawyers regarding trending issues and opportunities in the field through the Virginia ADR newsletter, CLE programs, and the website; developing creative uses of ADR processes and Strategies to offer improved services to clients; and monitoring public and legislation policy. In the State of Virginia, ADR is the responsibility of a Joint Dispute Resolution Committee that is active in all areas of ADR, including conciliation, negotiation, arbitration, mediation, restorative justice, settlement conferences, and collaborative law.