He snubbed Plato, too; didn’t want anything, only his 388 tub and his lantern and hunt round for a honest man, though I don’t see how he got round in it. But Josiah sez the tub wuz on castors, and he had a idee of havin’ our old washtub fixed up and go to Washington, D. C., in it with our old tin lantern, jest to be uneek and hunt round there for an honest man.
Sez I middlin’ dry, “You may have to go further, Josiah.” But I shan’t encourage him in it. And our wash-tub wouldn’t hold him up anyway; the hoops had sprung loose before I left home.
At the southwest of Athens is the Mount Hymettus. I’d hearn a sight about its honey. Josiah thought he would love to buy a swarm of bees there, but I asked him how could he carry ’em to Jonesville. He said that if he could learn ’em to fly ahead on us he could do it. But he can’t.
The road west wuz Eulusas, the Sacred Way. And to the north wuz the Academy of Plato, and that of Aristotle wuz not fur away. One day I see there on an old altar, “Sacred to either a god or goddess.” They believed in the rights of wimmen, them old Pagans did, which shows there is good in everything.
And how smart Socrates wuz; I always sot store by him, he wuz a good talker and likely in a good many ways, though I spoze he and his wife didn’t live agreeable, and there might have been blame on both sides and probable wuz. How calm he wuz when on trial for his life, and when he had drunk the hemlock, sayin’ to his accusers:
“I go to death and you to life; but which of the twain is better is known only to Divinity.”
And Mr. Plato; don’t it seem as if that old Pagan’s words wuz prophetic of Christ when he spoke of an inspired teacher:
“This just person must be poor, void of all qualifications save virtue. A wicked world will not bear his instructions and reproofs. And therefore within three or four 389 years after he begun to preach he should be persecuted, imprisoned, scourged, and at last put to death.”
Hundreds of years after, Paul preaching the religion of Christ Jesus, met the Epicurians and Stoics representing Pleasure and Pride. Strong foes that religion has to contend with now. Then he addressed the multitude from the Areopagus, Mars’ Hill.
What feelin’s I felt; how real and nigh to my heart his incomparable sermon that he preached in that place seemed to be as I stood there. I thought of how the cultured, beauty-loving nature of Paul must have been affected by his surroundings as he stood there in the midst of statutes and altars to Apollo, Venus, Bacchus. The colossial golden figure of Minerva, holdin’ in her outstretched right hand a statute of victory, four cubits high. So big and glorious-lookin’ Minerva wuz that her glitterin’ helmet and shield could be seen fur out to sea. The statute of Neptune on horseback hurling his tridant; the temple to Ceres and all the gods and goddesses they knew on and to the Unknown God. Here Paul stood surrounded by all these temples so magnificent that jest the gateway to ’em cost what would be ten million dollars in our money.