The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

ninth plague of Egypt
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represented not the threat of ruin but rather a
distant exoticism: “Quinquireme of Nineveh from
distant Ophir / Rowing home to haven in sunny
Palestine.”
ninth plague of Egypt (eejipt) Impenetrable
darkness. According to the Old Testament book of
Exodus, God sent 10 plagues to punish the Egyptians
for oppressing the Israelites and failing to
acknowledge God’s power. <strong>The</strong> ninth of these took
the form of “a thick darkness in all the land of
Egypt three days” (Exodus 10:22). “By reason of
the density of the interwoven foliage overhead, it
was gloomy there at cloudless noontide, twilight
in the eve ning, dark as midnight at dusk, and black
as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight” (Thomas
Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874). See also
egyptian darkness; plagues of egypt.
Niobe (niobee) <strong>The</strong> archetype of the inconsolable
grieving mother. In Greek mythology Niobe
was the daughter of Tantalus and wife of Amphion,
king of <strong>The</strong>bes, with whom she had 12 children.
When she arrogantly boasted herself superior to
the goddess Leto, who had only two children
(Apollo and Artemis), Leto’s offspring punished
her by killing all 12 of her children with arrows.
<strong>The</strong> inconsolable Niobe was herself turned into a
stone on Mount Sipylus in Lydia but even in this
petrifi ed form was said still to weep tears for her
children. In canto 4 of Childe Harold (1819) Lord
Byron subsequently dubbed Rome after the fall of
the empire the Niobe of nations. “Like Niobe, all
tears” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, c. 1600).
nirvana (nervahnb) A state of euphoric bliss or
spiritual ecstasy. Nirvana is the aim of both the
Buddhist and Hindu religions, a state achieved by
transcending such ordinary human preoccupa-
tions as pain, passion, and anxiety and through this
extinguishing any sense of personal identity. “And
then gradually my mind drifted away into strange
vague dreams, always with that black face and red
tongue coming back into them, and so I lost myself
in the nirvana of delirium, the blessed relief of
those who are too sorely tried” (Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, Tales of Terror and Mystery, 1923).
Nisus and Euryalus (nisbs, yooreealbs) An archetype
of perfect friendship. Nisus and Euryalus
were two Trojans who journeyed to Italy with
Aeneas and died during night attack on the camp
of the Rutulians while the enemy was deep in
drunken sleep. Unfortunately Euryalus lost his life
in the fi ght, and when Nisus tried to avenge his
friend, he too was killed. <strong>The</strong> friendship of Nisus
and Euryalus has long since become proverbial.
<strong>The</strong> boys vowed to escape or die together in the attempt,
faithful to the end like Nisus and Euryalus.
Noah’s ark See ark.
Noah’s wife (nobz) A quarrelsome, obstreperous
wife. Tradition has it that when Noah tried to
usher his family into the ark to escape the Flood
(Genesis 7:13), his wife refused. <strong>The</strong> quarrel
between Noah and his wife was one of the stock
scenes of medieval mystery plays. She was a regular
Noah’s wife, always shrieking abuse at her hapless
mate, and few men relished the prospect of crossing her
threshold.
noble savage <strong>The</strong> fundamental goodness of
human nature, especially as seen in the uneducated
savage untainted by the debatable advantages
of civilization. <strong>The</strong> term is particularly
associated with the French writer and phi los opher
Jean- Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), specifi cally