Chains and fetters
object · 3 works · 3 mentions · 5 anchored passages
bonds · chains · iron fetters · salāsil wa-aghlāl · shackles · withes · سلاسل وأغلالا
in the texts
Bacchae
The bindings Pentheus orders used against the captured Bacchae and the disguised Dionysus, which prove powerless against divine will.
Of their own accord, the chains were loosed from their feet and keys opened the doors without human hand.
And having bound them in iron fetters, I will soon stop them from this ill-working revelry.
He found a bull by the stable where he took and shut me up, and threw shackles around its knees and hooves, breathing out fury, dripping sweat from his body, gnashing his teeth in his lips.
Hymn 7 to Dionysus
The restraints the pirates try unsuccessfully to fasten on Dionysus.
They sought to bind him with rude bonds, but the bonds would not hold him, and the withes fell far away from his hands and feet:
Risālat al-Wāridāt
The chains and fetters of the punitive imagery, presented as the shape the lagging soul's deficiencies take on, and as temporary, lasting only until it is sanctified and joins the foremost.
And whoever set out toward the Path, but was heedless of what the company seeks, and lagged behind in the journey, and put on the garments of harm (*al-ḍayr*) — those deficiencies appeared to him as serpents and scorpions, chains and fetters;