Encyclopedia > Procrustes

  Article Content

Procrustes

In Greek mythology, Procrustes ("the stretcher") was a bandit from Attica killed by Theseus. In Eleusis, he had a bed which he invited passersby to lie down in. When they did so, he either stretched them or cut off body parts to make them fit into the bed. He continued this until killed by Theseus.

Procrustes was only a nickname for Damastus or Polypemon.

Any attempt to reduce men to one standard, one way of thinking, or one way of acting, is called placing them on Procrustes' bed, and the person who makes the attempt is called Procrustes.

Ovid VII, 438.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Holtsville, New York

... (7.0 mi²). 18.0 km² (7.0 mi²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water. Demographics As of the census of 2000, there are 17,006 ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 27.8 ms