classical tags
classical clichés for all
Please with any additions, or with any particularly amusing or inappropriate real-life examples. Thanks to Marcia for her contributions.
Homer and Trojan War
- Trojan horse
- Achilles' heel
- Stentorian roar
- Myrmidons
- Scylla and Charybdis
- Siren voices
- A Cassandra (always wrongly used to mean prophet of doom; never actually used of somebody who is right)
- A mentor
- An odyssey
- epic proportions
- working like a Trojan (why?)
- Greeks bearing gifts
- to hector
- lotus eating
- a Nestor
- a faithful Penelope
- to pile Pelion on Ossa
Gods and Goddesses
- mercurial disposition
- saturnine character
- titanic strength
- hermetic seal
- venereal disease
- jovial countenance
- martial music
- Dionysian licence
- Apollonian control
- Olympian detachment
- Junoesque proportions (of a woman = huge)
- Bacchanalian orgies
- panic button
- Parnassian figure
Ancient philosophy
- stoic endurance
- epicurean delights
- platonic friendship
- cynical indifference
- academic pretensions
- Socratic argument
- peripatetic teachers (never of Aristotle!)
Ancient history
- Lucullan feast
- draconian measures
- fabian tactics
- ostracism
- philippic
- crossing the Rubicon
- Caesar's wife
- Gordian knot
- pyrrhic victory
- Augustan elegance
- Spartan conditions
- rich as Croesus
- hoi polloi (normally the hoi polloi, of course!)
Mythology
- Sisyphean task
- Promethean cunning
- Protean versatility
- Pandora's Box
- Procrustes' bed
- tantalizing offer
- Morpheus (arms of)
- Midas touch
- a harpy
- stygian gloom
- Gorgon stare
- Hell hath no Fury ...
- a Chimaera
- halcyon days
Labours of Hercules
- Herculean labours
- Augean filth
- Hydra's heads
- a sop to Cerberus
Literature
- oedipal desires
- Cloudcuckooland
- Aristophanic humour
- Thespian talents
Miscellaneous
- sapphic practices
- priapic condition
- Delphic obscurity
- Sibylline obfuscation
- colossal impertinence
- calliope
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