76. tyrteiska hymnen, a martial hymn by the ancient Spartan poet Tyrtaeus who flourished in the seventh century B.C.
81 ff. The Song of the Athenians is written in distich form, a strophic group of two lines; this was a favorite form for elegiac and other solemn poetry.
93 ff. The Song of the Goths is characterized both by the irregularity of old German verse and the alliteration of the Eddic poetry of Scandinavia. It forms a striking contrast to the careful chiseling of the Greek verse.
94. nickar here implies not only a nodding or swaying motion but a command, as expressed in what follows. Thus, the pine tree of the North, like the oak of Dodona, is voicing the decree of destiny.
112. lekt Maraton. The beating off of the Goths on this occasion, however, did not prove as decisive a battle as that of Marathon. Not until their defeat by Claudius in the battle of Naissus two years later did the Goths cease to harass and devastate Greece and other territories of the Roman empire inadequately protected by its legions (see line 8).
I KLOSTERCELLEN.
4. kodex, manuscript in text hand on parchment, usually containing some portion of Scripture or of classic literature.
19-20. By conserving classic learning the monks during medieval times nurtured the seeds of culture from which was to spring the Reformation of the Church and its concomitant, the civilization of the modern age. Cf. lines 14-16.
24. Platos himmel och Perikles' republik.—What the poet here refers to as "Plato's heaven" may be briefly defined as the ideal world (as conceived in his philosophy), dominated by the highest of all ideas, that of absolute good. But the ideal good in Plato's philosophy did not mean a personal God, hence a purely religious conception of heaven was not a part of his system.
Pericles, though himself of aristocratic birth, was the protagonist of democracy in Greece, in opposition to Cimon, who through his influence was exiled 460 B.C. The republic subsequently established by Pericles was in fact, according to the contemporary historian Thucydides, an autocracy by common consent.—-The line has reference to the activity of the learned friars, especially of the Renaissance period, in reduplicating copies of the remnants of the old Greek literature, thereby saving to the world the knowledge of Greek thought and Greek institutions.