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Pompeii Pompeii was an ancient city in western Italy, south-east of Naples. Following an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, the city was completely buried beneath volcanic ash. Excavations of the site, which began in 1748, have revealed that the ruins had been extremely well preserved, giving a detailed insight into the everyday life in Roman times.

He was rather glad that they were all out; it was amusing to wander through the house as though one were exploring a dead, deserted Pompeii.

ALDOUS HUXLEY Crome Yellow, 1921

Typhoid Mary Typhoid Mary was the name given to Mary Mallon (d. 1938), an Irish-born American cook who transmitted typhoid fever in the USA. Her name can be used to suggest someone whose presence can instantly empty a place of people.

Archie Young looked round the canteen which was almost empty, all the tables near them had cleared with speed. It was like being Typhoid Mary, he thought. GWENDOLINE BUTLER The Coffin Tree, 1994

Despair

Loss or absence of hope are covered here. The tendency to expect things to

turn out badly is covered at Pessimism. • See also Optimism.

Aegeus In Greek mythology, Theseus had promised his father, Aegeus, that if he successfully destroyed the Minotaur he would signal this on his return to Athens by hoisting white sails, rather than the customary black ones. This he forgot to do and Aegeus, believing his son to be dead, threw himself to his death from a cliff.

Faust Faust is the subject of a medieval legend and subsequently of dramas by Marlowe, Dr Faustus (1604), and Goethe, Faust (1808, 1832). In Marlowe's version, Dr Faustus sells his soul to Mephistopheles in return for a period during which he can have anything he desires. In Goethe's version, Faust becomes Mephistopheles' servant and again is to have what he desires. For much of the time he is despairing and dissatisfied, although he is finally redeemed. Marlowe's Dr Faustus experiences the agony of utter despair as his contract with Mephistopheles ends and his life and soul are forfeit.

Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been described—as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men, without light to guide him on a better way.

THOMAS HARDY The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886

Giant Despair Giant Despair is a character in the Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678, 1684). The giant finds Christian and his companion Hopeful sleeping in the grounds of his castle, Doubting Castle, and puts them in the castle dungeon where 'they lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday night,

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without one bit of bread, or drop of drink, or light, or any to ask how they did'. Giant Despair beats them and advises them to kill themselves. Eventually, they escape using 'the key called Promise' which opens all the locks in the castle.

Slough of Despond The Slough of Despond is a bog into which Christian and his fellow traveller, Pliable, fall because they were not paying attention to the path, in Bunyan's religious allegory Pilgrim's Progress (1678, 1684). Christian sinks deeply into the mire because he carries a burden on his back but manages to struggle through to the other side, where he is helped out. Pliable is quickly discouraged, manages to struggle out of the bog on the side he entered, and gives up the journey. The term 'Slough of Despond' is sometimes used for a state of utter hopelessness and despondency.

We were in the Slough of Despond tonight, and Mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book.

LOUISA M. ALCOTT Little Women, 1868

Burdens fell, darkness gave place to light, Marjorie apocalyptically understood all the symbols of religious literature. For she herself had struggled in the Slough of Despond and had emerged; she too had climbed laboriously and without hope and had suddenly been consoled by the sight of the promised land.

ALDOUS HUXLEY Point Counter Point, 1928

Brussels he sees as 'utterly complacent, and a negative force of great influence', but not quite the Slough of Despond.

The Observer, 1996

Tristram In one version of the medieval legend of Tristram and Iseult, Tristram, when dying, sends for Iseult. He arranges a signal from the boat in which she would be travelling to let him know whether she is on board. If she is coming, a white flag will be flown; a black flag will be flown if she is not. When the boat arrives, the white flag is flying but his wife tells him it is black and he dies in despair, believing that Iseult has not come.

Destiny and Luck

The entries below cover both the idea of predestination and that of for-

tune, whether good or bad. • See also Punishment.

Fate Fate is the name given to a goddess who controls people's destinies, especially one of the Fates or one of the Norns.

Not only is the hand of Fate discernible in this affair; Fate has been leaving fingerprints all around the place ever since Higgins got his bright idea.

ROBERTSON DAviES Leaven of Malice, 1954

In many subtle ways, but mainly by her silence, she showed that Mr Biswas, however grotesque, was hers and that she had to make do with what Fate had granted her. v. s. NAIPAUL A House for Mr. Biswas, 1961

Kenneth Cracknell, Esq. . . . was the learned judge whom Fate had selected to

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preside over the trial of the unhappy Revenue official. JOHN MORTIMER Rumpole's Return, 1980

Fates In Greek and Roman mythology, the Fates were three sisters, daughters of Night, who presided over the destiny of every mortal individual. Clotho spun the thread of a person's life, Lachesis determined the luck that a person would have, and Atropos decided when each individual would die by cutting the thread of their life. They were also called, by the Greeks, the Moirae and, by the Romans, the Parcae.

The Fates had unexpectedly (and perhaps just a little officiously) removed an obstacle from his path.

SAKI 'Cross-Currents' in Reginald in Russia, 1910

Fortuna In Roman mythology, Fortuna was the goddess of fortune.

Fortuna's wheel had turned on humanity, crushing its collarbone, smashing its skull, twisting its torso, puncturing its pelvis, sorrowing its soul.

JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE A Confederacy of Dunces, 1980

Karma In Buddhist philosophy, Karma is the doctrine that the sum total of all a person's actions and experiences in all their incarnations determines the fate of their next incarnation.

Nemesis In Greek mythology, Nemesis was the goddess responsible for retribution, either for a person who had transgressed the moral code or for a person who had taken too much pride in their success or luck (hubris). Nemesis can now be used to refer to a person's doom or terrible but unavoidable fate.

She refused to put so much as a piece of thread into a needle in anticipation of her confinement and would have been absolutely unprepared, if her neighbours had not been better judges of her condition than she was, and got things ready without telling her anything about it. Perhaps she feared Nemesis, though assuredly she knew not who or what Nemesis was.

SAMUEL BUTLER The Way of All Flesh, 1903

It was six a.m. and Bruce's appointment with nemesis was well under way. His old life was already over. Even if he survived his ordeal, nothing would ever be the same again.

BEN ELTON Popcorn, 1996

Norns In Nordic mythology, the Norns were three goddesses who spun the fate of both people and the gods. They were named Urd (the past), Verdandi (the present), and Skuld (the future), and gathered under the ash tree Yggdrasil.

Yonder float the white swans—an Icelandic story-teller would say they are Norns, presiders over destiny.

F. METCALFE Oxonian in Iceland, 1861

Odysseus Odysseus, the King of Ithaca in Greek mythology and hero of Homer's Odyssey, spent ten years returning home to his wife Penelope after the Trojan War was over. During this period he encountered numerous obstacles and dangers that he had to overcome. He can thus be associated with a long period of bad luck. • See special entry • ODYSSEUS on p. 283.

Woeps was on the phone. Cook heard him say, 'Is it bad?' and he suspected his friend was talking to his wife about yet another domestic calamity. Woeps' only serious

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fault—and it could hardly be called a fault—was his Odyssean attraction for bad luck.

DAVID CARKEET Double Negative, 1980

Oedipus In Greek mythology, Oedipus was left on a mountain to die because of a prophecy that he would kill his father. He was rescued by a shepherd and grew up in ignorance of his own parentage. Oedipus subsequently quarrelled with and killed his father, Laius, and then unwittingly married his own mother, Jocasta, with whom he had four children. When they discovered the truth, Oedipus blinded himself and Jocasta hanged herself. Oedipus can be alluded to as someone who is predestined to act in a particular way and is powerless to act otherwise.

Mr. Tulliver's prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred pounds on bond. 'It must be no client of Wakem's,' he said to himself; and yet at the end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary; not because Mr. Tulliver's will was feeble, but because external fact was stronger. Wakem's client was the only convenient person to be found. Mr. Tulliver had a destiny as well as Oedipus, and in this case he might plead, like Oedipus, that his deed was inflicted on him rather than committed by him.

CEORCE ELIOT The Mill on the Floss, 1860

Polycrates Polycrates was the ruler of Samos and was extraordinarily lucky. So much luck put him in danger of retribution from Nemesis, and in order to appease her he threw away a very valuable ring. The ring was found by a fisherman in the belly of a fish and returned to Polycrates, who was subsequently killed.

Destruction

A number of these entries describe the end of the world according to

various mythologies. There are also several accounts of cities being lev-

elled, whether by trumpet blast, fire and brimstone, or atomic bomb.

Abaddon Abaddon (literally 'destruction' or 'abyss') is 'the angel of the bottomless pit' in the Book of Revelation, sometimes identified with the Devil.

Some red-liveried, sulphur-scented imp of Abaddon.

AUGUSTA J . WILSON Vashti, 1869

Apocalypse The Apocalypse is a name given to the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. The book recounts a divine revelation of the future to St John, including the total destruction of the world: 'And, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood' (Rev. 6: 12). Following this comes the last battle between the forces of good and evil, the final defeat of Satan and the creation of a new heaven and earth. The four agents of destruction, personified in the

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Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death. The word 'apocalypse' has now come to mean any event of great or total destruction, in more recent times especially a nuclear holocaust.

The land about them was laid to waste in a small but extravagant apocalypse; bushes were uprooted and leafless, the ground was littered with little pieces of bridge.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, 1990

For a year I had lived with the possibility of Liam Brady's transfer to another club in the same way that, in the late fifties and early sixties, American teenagers had lived with the possibility of the impending Apocalypse.

NICK HORNBY Fever Pitch, 1993

Armageddon According to the Book of Revelation, Armageddon is the site of the last battle between the forces of good and evil before the Day of Judgement. The term is often used to describe a destructive conflict on a huge scale, latterly especially a nuclear war.

I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Creek Premier. . . . I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon.

JOHN BUCHAN The Thirty Nine Steps, 1915

He has read somewhere that eighty per cent of all aircraft accidents occur at either take-off or landing. . . . By taking the non-stop polar flight to London, in preference to the two stage journey via New York, Zapp reckons that he has reduced his chances of being caught in such an Armageddon by fifty per cent.

DAVID LODGE Changing Places, 1975

We expect Armageddon; the Bible has trained us well. We assume either annihilation or salvation, perhaps both. Millenarian beliefs are as old as time; the apocalypse has always been at hand.

PENELOPE LIVELY Moon Tiger, 1988

Dresden Dresden is a city in eastern Germany, on the river Elbe. It was one of Germany's most beautiful cities until it was almost totally destroyed by heavy Allied bombing on the night of 13 February 1945. Dresden has been extensively rebuilt since 1945.

Goth • See VANDAL.

CÔtterdâmmerung In Germanic mythology, Gotterdammerung was 'the twilight of the gods', their destruction and that of the world in a final battle with the forces of evil. This is the title of the last opera in Wagner's Ring Cycle. The term can be used to refer to the cataclysmic downfall of a powerful organization or regime. • See also RACNAROK.

That same night at the national stadium, England faced their gotterdammerung against the All Blacks.

Scottish Rugby, 1991

'There was certainly a huge dust-up about it; she said. 'I mean, we're talking mega here, right? Apparently it had been going on for the best part of a year and Myra was the last to know. When she did find out it was like Gotterdammerung. I believe Myra brandished a knife at Lara and told her to be on the next stagecoach out of

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town and, according to local legend, she had Simon's balls bronzed and still wears them round her neck on a chain!

JOYCE HELM Foreign Body, 1997

Hiroshima Hiroshima is a city and port on the south coast of the island of Honshu, western Japan. It was the first city to be the target of an atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on 6 August 1945, which resulted in the deaths of more than a third of the city's population of 300,000.

There was every likelihood that they would freeze on Friday, or fry, or vanish in pure energy with nothing left of them but shadows like the men of Hiroshima after the lightburst.

A. s. BYATT The Virgin in the Garden, 1978

Jericho Jericho is a town in Palestine, one of the world's oldest settlements and believed to have been occupied from at least 9000 BC. According to the Bible, Jericho was a Canaanite city destroyed by the Israelites after they crossed the Jordon into the Promised Land, led by Joshua. Its walls were flattened by the shout of the army and the blast of the trumpets. 'So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat . . . and they took the city' (Joshua 6: 20).

At that period English society was still a closed body and it was not easy for a Jew
to force its barriers, but to	Ferdy they fell like the walls of Jericho,
w. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The	Alien Corn, 1951

As	Jenny Long drove to the hospital the next morning she sang softly to herself. She
was	quite confident that it wouldn't be long before Harry gave in and said it was

time they got married. After all, even Jericho fell in the end. MAX MARQUIS Written in Blood, 1995

Juggernaut In Hindu mythology, Juggernaut, or Jagannath (meaning 'lord of the world'), is the name of an image of Krishna annually carried in procession on an enormous cart. Devotees of the god are said to have thrown themselves under its wheels to be crushed in the hope of going straight to paradise. The word can be used to denote a huge destructive force that crushes whatever is in its path.

That human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886

And now, young Pongo, stand out of my way, or I'll roll over you like a Juggernaut,

p. c. WODEHOUSE Cocktail Time, 1958

The horse was terrified already by the noise and the proximity of the horse box, but horses don't altogether understand about the necessity of removing themselves pronto from under the wheels of thundering juggernauts. Frightened horses, on the whole, are more apt to run into the paths of vehicles, than away.

DICK FRANCIS Trial Run, 1978

Nineveh Nineveh was an ancient city located on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite the modern city of Mosul. It was the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire during the reign of Sennacherib until it was destroyed in 612 BC by the Babylonians and Medes. Its destruction is forecast by the Old Testament prophet Nahum. Elsewhere in the Bible, the prophet Jonah is called by God to

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preach to the people of Nineveh and warn them of the destruction of their city unless they reform their wicked behaviour.

He	had as much of a vested interest in the damnation of the trekkers as Jonah had
had	in the annihilation of Nineveh.

ANDRÉ BRINK Imaginings of Sand, 1996

Pompeii The ancient city of Pompeii in western Italy was completely buried beneath volcanic ash following an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

I picked up the waste-paper basket and found, among ash to equal the destruction of Pompeii, a large number of old cigar butts, and handful of unopened bills ... and an unopened cablegram.

JOHN MORTIMER Rumpole's Return, 1980

Ragnarok In Norse mythology, Ragnarok (literally 'destined end of the gods' or 'twilight of the gods') is the final battle between the gods and the forces of evil that will result in the destruction of the world, the Scandinavian equivalent of the Gôtterdàmmerung.

An all-out race war would be triggered, a final, bloody Ragnarok of the races.

Time, 1993

Sirens In Greek mythology, the Sirens were sea creatures who lured sailors to destruction on dangerous rocks by the beauty of their singing. Sirens are usually depicted as women or as half-woman and half-bird. •See special entry

D ODYSSEUS on p. 283.

She will always be the odd Japanese artist who stole Britain's greatest rock'n'roller, the wife of John Lennon, the woman who split the Beatles, the siren on whose rock the mythical innocence of the Sixties was wrecked.

The Independent, 1996

Sodom and Gomorrah Sodom and Gomorrah were towns in ancient Palestine, probably south of the Dead Sea. According to Gen. 19: 24, they were destroyed by fire and brimstone from heaven as a punishment for the depravity and wickedness of their inhabitants. Lot, the nephew of Abraham, was allowed to escape from the destruction of Sodom with his family. His wife disobeyed God's order not to look back at the burning city and she was turned into a pillar of salt.

Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse! And the only reason why the land don't sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is used in a way infinitely better than it is.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852

Vandal The Vandals were a Germanic people that overran part of Roman Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Of the various invading peoples of this period (Goths, Visigoths, Huns, etc.), it is the Vandals whose name is most closely associated with the idea of mass invasion and wanton destruction. In modern usage, a vandal is a person who maliciously destroys or damages property.

The	glittering dresses on the blank-faced or	headless	mannequins are no longer
what	they seemed, the incarnation of desire.	Instead	they look like party trash.