The student of this literature will find the same names recur again and again. She will soon come to understand its scope, and live in a world of her own—not a forlorn, dry-as-dust world of ruins and ashes, but a bright glad world, which recalls Browning’s words:
“Never morn broke clear as those
On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea,
The deep groves and white temples and wet caves.”
This world is peopled with noble men and fair women, and all they do and say is chronicled with a sweet, majestic simplicity that appeals to the heart. Sin there is, and its resulting sorrow and doom; but the lesson is that which echoes from the recurrent words in the chorus of the Agamemnon:
“Ah, may the Good prevail!”
And when we come down to the story of Socrates, who literally died because he strove to teach that which he knew to be right, we feel that we tread on sacred ground:
“Seeking there,
Calm converse with the great dead, soul to soul,
Who laid up treasure with the like intent.”