These supreme exemplars of prose and verse, he declares, have no lesson for us of unstudied eloquence and unpremeditated art. Everything was polished to the pitch of perfection with unremitting toil.
Architecture and sculpture reveal the highest glories of Greek art. The refinements of line by which optical delusion was corrected in the Parthenon are pointed out with admiration. Speaking of the frieze of the same temple, he remarks: “There is even this subtlety in the detail of the work—that, as this band of figures was intended to be seen high above the spectator, care was taken to carve the lower limbs in slightly flatter relief than the upper, and the limbs of the horses were even made a little lighter than in nature, in order to counterbalance the predominance which the part nearer to the spectator’s vision might assume.” Glimpses of genius—pains and skill—such as that are of high artistic, yes, and moral value to our youth. Attention is called to what so many of us ignore, that color was freely used in both building and sculpture. Our flat whites would have been unbearable to these masters. Their perfection in statuary is the loving despair of the world to-day.
In the chapter on science are a host of facts which are not unfamiliar to the scholar, but which serve to hush some of our modern boastfulness. Some things will be new to many readers. Such are the system of numerical notation, almost as simple as our Arabic digits. The extent of Greek mathematical investigation is better known. Of great interest is the account of Greek medicine, which got so far beyond the nostrums, the philtres and superstitions to which medieval quackery returned.
In politics is found the weak point of Greece; yet even here we must use the historical perspective. And thus, by contrast, this ancient advance over Oriental thraldoms and tyrannies is all the more wonderful.
In matters of private law it is almost startling to come across a will like this, taken from a papyrus of Græcised Egypt: “This is the will of Peisias the Lycian, son of X., of sound mind and deliberate intention. May it be my lot to live on in health and manage mine own property, but should anything human happen to me, I bequeath to my children so much, to my wife such and such things, I set free certain slaves; I set apart money for religious purposes. And I appoint as executors such and such people.” A will like this would be admitted to probate in any surrogate’s court to-day.
The chapters on philosophy and theology are necessarily deep, but of supreme importance. For in them we are reminded of how by pure thinking the Greeks anticipated the best and latest of our modern thought. The atomic theory, the unity of the universe, the oneness of God, the eternal sanctions of the right, the high behests of the moral law, were all worked out over two thousand years ago.
“If the time should ever come when men will no longer be led by revelation, when they will reject miracle and prophecy, and determine to be led by the mere light of reason ... there will still remain the ethical types which Zeno and Epicurus have crystallized in their systems—there will always remain the man of duty and the man of pleasure, the man who lives for others and he who lives for himself, in terms of modern philosophic jargon, the Altruist and the Egoist, the Spiritualist and the Materialist.”
It were well for our youth and their teachers to bow before a race who in that dim and early age could think the thoughts and set in motion the influences which are most vital among us of the later time.
The Fall of the Curtain.