Dionysius consents to this arrangement, but warns that whomever is in Damon’s cell in six hours will be the one who is executed. When Damon asks for permission to put his affairs in order and say goodbye to his family, his friend Pythias volunteers to wait in prison in Damon’s place. In the play, Damon is sentenced to death by the cruel tyrant Dionysius. The print features several illustrations depicting scenes from Banim’s, play Damon and Pythias, which he adapted from the original Greek legend. This 1872 membership certificate recognized that a brother of the order had progressed through the ranks of Page and Esquire and been initiated as a Knight. Rathbone found inspiration for the society in the Greek legend of Damon and Pythias, a story about noble friendship which had been popularized in a 19th-century play by the Irish poet John Banim. President Lincoln, upon learning of the group, expressed his approval of its mission and values, and the Knights became the first fraternal organization in the United States to be chartered through an Act of Congress. He hoped that the nation, torn apart by violence and hate, could begin to heal once renewed by the spirit of brotherhood. Rathbone founded the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization, in Washington, D.C. In 1864, in the midst of the third year of the Civil War, a clerk in the U.S.
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