The title of the book, like Milton's poem, recalls the biblical story of Samson, who was captured by the Philistines, his eyes burned out, and taken to Gaza, where he was forced to work grinding grain in a mill.
This was one of the last quarries to ship slate down the Dwyryd, but after 1865 slate was taken down to Tan y Manod using a 4 pitch incline.
Begun in or around the year 720 BC, a rebellion against the Assyrian Empire broke out, participated in by ancient Syria and the Philistines (descendants of the 'Sea Peoples') from Mycenaean Greece, and also with Egyptian encouragement.
Cabell took an author's revenge: the revised edition of 1926 included a previously "lost" passage in which the hero is placed on trial by the Philistines, with a large dung-beetle as the chief prosecutor.
Nothing is known for certain about the original language or languages of the Philistines; however, they were not part of the Semitic Canaanite population.
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Another theory, proposed by Jacobsohn and supported by others, is that the name derives from the attested Illyrian locality Palaeste, whose inhabitants would have been called Palaestīnī according to normal grammatical practice.
For centuries it was known as the "Way of the Philistines" and linked Egypt to present-day Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and beyond.
During the invasion, the Philistines and Edomites were taking advantage of the situation and raiding towns and villages within the Southern Kingdom.
Philistines | Standing Dish with ''Samson Crushing the Philistines with the Jawbone of an Ass'', ca. 1580. Now at the Taft Museum of Art |
Since 1996 he has directed the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project, excavating the ancient site of Tell es-Safi, which is identified as Canaanite and Philistine Gath (one of the five cities of the Philistines mentioned in the Bible, the home of Goliath).
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Among the topics that he has studied are: ancient trade; metallurgy; pottery production and provenience; scientific applications in archaeology; archaeological survey; the archaeology of Jerusalem; The Middle Bronze Age of the Levant; chronology of the 2nd Millennium BCE; the Sea Peoples and the Philistines; relations between Egypt and the Levant; ancient weapons and warfare; ancient cult and religion.
The Oxford Companion to American Literature notes that Norris' novels dealt with "such problems as modern education, women in business, hereditary and environmental influences, big business, ethics and birth control." He also published three plays: The Rout of the Philistines (with Nino Marcelli, 1922), A Gest of Robin Hood (with Robert C. Newell, 1929), and Ivanhoe: A Grove Play 1936.
After the arrival of the Philistines, one of the Sea Peoples, Ekron became a fortified urban center that supplied Egypt and the Assyrian empire with 700 tons of olive oil a year, making it the largest olive oil industrial center in the ancient Middle East.
The unit's name is derived from the Bible, where the Judge Samson is described as having attached torches to the tails of three hundred foxes, leaving the panicked beasts to run through the fields of the Philistines, burning all in their wake.
Virgins & Philistines contained all original material except "The Hammond Song" (a cover of The Roches song), and "Can’t Get Enough of You Baby" (written by Linzer/Randell), which was the only track that received much airplay.