IV
THE GRAND CENTURY
ὅθι παῖδες Ἀθαναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν κρηπῖδ’ ἐλευθερίας.
Pindar.
The Rise of Athens
EVER in all the world’s history was there such a leap of civilisation as in Greece of the fifth century. In one town of about thirty thousand citizens during the lifetime of a man and his father these things occurred: a world-conquering Power was shattered for ever, a naval empire was built up, the drama was developed to full stature, sculpture grew from crude infancy to a height it has never yet surpassed, painting became a fine art, architecture rose from clumsiness to the limit of its possibilities in one direction, history was consummated as a scientific art, the most influential of all philosophies was begotten. And all this under no fostering despot, but in the extreme human limit of liberty, equality, and fraternity. One Athenian family might have known Miltiades, Themistocles, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Pheidias, Pericles, Anaxagoras, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polygnotus, and Ictinus.
No historical cause will account for genius, no historian can predict its coming. Some say that great literature is produced by outbursts of national emotion, as Shakespeare was “produced” by the defeat of the Spanish Armada (though he
Plate XXXV. EARLY COINS OF SICILY AND MAGNA GRÆCIA
| 1. NAXOS. | 2. TARENTUM. | 3. CATANA. | 4. SYRACUSE. |