James Clarke asked why Art should present a so much more inspiring view of Greek Mythology than Poetry.
Margaret said that all her ideas of it were deduced from Art. She did not profess to know much of the Greek authors, and depended chiefly upon Homer, but wished that some of the gentlemen who ought to know more would speak.
William Story thought it was because the poets wrote for popular applause, for recitation and its immediate effect. Sculptors labored more purely for their Art.
I thought too that the dramatists often had a political aim, and manœuvred Olympus to suit it!
James Clarke said that if in our time every public speaker must bend to his audience to a degree, it was still more necessary in Greece.
We were told to consider Minerva for the next conversation, and to write down our thoughts about her. For my part I don’t like using Latin names for Greek deities. It greatly confuses my ideas. Jupiter and Zeus seem very different to me.
In regard to the story that Apollo never saw a shadow, Caroline Sturgis asked how Apollo could destroy an alien nature if he never met it.
There was quite an unsatisfactory talk about this, which would have ended had anybody remembered how the sun solves the enigma every day. The sun never sees the shadow it destroys. When its rays fall, light is. It annihilates the alien by merely being. So Truth annihilates Falsehood, yet cannot meet it. The two are never in one presence.
CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY.