All the Glory That Was Greece.
From Marathon (490 B. C.) clarion of the birth of Athens, to Ægospotami (405 B. C.) her knell of death, momentous history was made.
Ægospotami knelled the fall of Athens; Leuctra, of Sparta; Mantinea, of Epaminondas-Thebes; and Chæronea, of all Hellas; but not all of Athens died at Ægospotami. Pericles, Aspasia, Phidias, Ictinus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon—have not died; they are effective forces in the world today.
Spartan military excellence, Spartan hardihood and endurance is a bubble that burst; it is no more: but Attic excellence of intellect endures imperishably—with Platonic wonder as freshly fair in college halls today as in the Academia and Lyceum of the old Athenian day. Mind is the only Conqueror.
Blue sky of Athens, white cliff Acropolis,—so unchanging amid change, so laughing fair among the ruins of the glory that was Greece!
Nature’s ever young irreverence towards the wreck of time is invigorating. It calls to the heart of man in language the heart understands, What’s Time!
“Men said, ‘But time escapes
Live now or never.’
“He said, ‘What’s time! Leave Now for dogs and apes—
Man has Forever.’”
—Browning.