It is useless to expect “Christian sentiments” in the fourth century B.C., yet perhaps an age should be judged not by its average, but by its best. Athenians can utter nobler prayers than those of the type of Phormion. Xenophon makes his model young householder Ishomenus pray nobly “that I may enjoy health and strength of body, the respect of my fellow citizens, honorable safety in times of war, and wealth honestly increased.”[*]
[*] Xenophon, The Economist, xi, p. 8.
There is a simple little prayer also which seems to be a favorite with the farmers. Its honest directness carries its own message.
“Rain, rain, dear Zeus, upon the fields of the Athenians and the plains.”[*]
[*] It was quoted later to us by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who adds, “In truth, we ought not to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble fashion.”
Higher still ascends the prayer of Socrates, when he begs for “the good” merely, leaving it to the wise gods to determine what “the good” for him may be; and in one prayer, which Plato puts in Socrates’s mouth, almost all the best of Greek ideals and morality seems uttered. It is spoken not on the Acropolis, but beside the Ilissus at the close of the delightful walk and chat related in the Phædrus.
“Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me the beauty of the inward soul, and may the outward and the inward man be joined in perfect harmony. May I reckon the wise to be wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry. Anything more?—That prayer, I think, is enough for me.”
Phormion and his party are descending to the city to spend the evening in honest mirth and feasting, but we are fain to linger, watching the slow course of the shadows as they stretch across the Attic hills. Sea, sky, plain, mountains, and city are all before us, but we will not spend words upon them now. Only for the buildings, wrought by Pericles and his mighty peers, we will speak out our admiration. We will gladly confirm the words Plutarch shall some day say of them, “Unimpaired by time, their appearance retains the fragrance of freshness, as though they had been inspired by an eternally blooming life and a never aging soul.”[*]
[*] Plutarch wrote this probably after 100 A.D., when the Parthenon had stood for about five and half centuries.