Words - skip - Brewer’s

Farnese Hercules [Far-naʹ-ze Hercu-lees]

.

A name given to Glykon’s copy of the famous statue of Lysippos, the Greek sculptor in the time of Alexander the Great. It represents the hero leaning on his club, with one hand on his back, as if he had just got possession of the apple of the Hesperidēs. Farneʹse is the name of a celebrated family in Italy, which became extinct in 1731.

“It struck me that an ironclad is to a wooden vessel what the Farnese Hercules is to the Apollo Belvidere. The Hercules is not without a beauty of its own.”—The Times (Paris correspondent).

· ·

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.