Evelyn Shirley Shuckburgh

“ Life was short and its pains predominated over its pleasures; the future was vague and uncertain. For a few exceptional heroes there was heaven; for a few outrageous sinners—such as Tantalus and Ixion—an eternity of pain; but for the ruck of mankind, if there was a future life at all, it was wrapt in mist and gloom. ”

“ Their great achievement was to prevent the extension of the Persian power into Europe; but they can only claim a very subordinate part in the forward movement of Alexander. Yet they possessed a genius which has conquered the world. Their very passion for separatism gave birth to political science: while in philosophy, in the study of nature, in art, and literature, in nearly everything that affects our spiritual or physical well-being, the Hellenes did work of supreme excellence. ”

“ The Greek polls and politeia showed a great advance on the Oriental monarchy, under which all power was in the hands of one man, and government was carried on by his agents. In Greece a tyrannis—the rule of one man not recognised by law — was not regarded as a form of constitution, but as the negation of constitutional government. ”

“ Prose literature—The drama—Greek art. The Greeks, who called themselves Hellenes, were a race rather than a nation. Though they were the predominant people in certain parts of Europe and Asia, and though they gave their name to the land which still retains it, there was, in fact, no one country with a capital and seat of government which we can speak of as Hellas, as we might of France or Spain. ”

“ The early philosophers, who mostly engaged in speculations as to the physical universe, lived in various parts of Greece—Ionia, Magna Graecia, and Sicily—but in the fifth century we find that all teachers have a tendency to drift to Athens, and when about B.C. 300 and onward literature found a centre rather in Alexandria, Athens still maintained its prestige as the home of philosophy. ”

“ In this, as in literature, Athens long had the supremacy, though never the monopoly. Nearly every important Greek town contributed, and especially the islands of Ægina, Chios, and Samos, and the wealthy city of Pergamus. Two motives may be regarded as the strongest in promoting this art—religion and athleticism. The adornment of temples and the desire to express the ideal of divine personages are responsible for a large number of the finest statues that remain, while almost as many came from the study of the nude figure as seen in the contests of the Stadium. ”

“ The Homeric Greece, on the other hand, differs widely from what we know of it under the Hellenes. The greater divisions of the country seem not to have obtained the names by which they were known in after times. There is no general name for the Peloponnese, unless it be “Argos” in the Odyssey. Thessaly, Epirus, Acarnania, Macedonia, are unknown names. Sparta and Athens occur, but not Lacedaemon or Attica. None of the Greek towns in Asia are mentioned except Miletus. Sicily is not known to the Iliad ”

“ Moreover, the ranks of the immortals were continually being swelled by the addition of deified men or Heroes, whose services to their fellow-men earned this reward, and were commemorated by a special kind of worship in some Heroon in nearly every part of Greece.
In Homer this deification of men is rare, perhaps the only instance is Heracles. But his gods are brought nearer to men. Though they possess immortality and superhuman powers, they are subject to human frailties, to passion, appetite, pain, and pleasure, and like men are subordinated to overruling fate. ”

“ For the Hellenes as we know them not only had Olympus become peopled with other gods and goddesses, of whom Zeus was the father and chief, but their numbers had been increased by the addition of deities representing celestial bodies, and good or bad qualities—the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the Rivers, Youth, Love, Death, Wisdom, Folly, Justice, and the Avengers of Sin. ”

“ That influence, after long periods of darkness and degradation, has revived with full force in these later centuries. We can still conceive nothing greater in Art than the highest achievements of Greece. ”

“ The Roman conquest transferred a great quantity of the best works of Greek art to Italy, and in many cases the artists themselves migrated thither also; for in Italy they would best find patrons and purchasers. ”

“ Theatre at Epidaurus.
spread over Greece, in which hardly any city of importance was without a theatre. Nowhere else did it form so much a part of the life of the people; and though the composition of plays did not last so long as some other forms of literature, the Greeks in this as in other things set an example which has never ceased to exercise decisive influence. In this again Athens took the lead. There was built the first permanent theatre, and there the great masters of tragedy were born. ”

“ These views tended to lower the value set upon human life. Though a certain refinement of taste shrank from the brutalities of the arena, and gladiators were not butchered to make a Greek, as a Roman, holiday, yet the laws in most Greek states were extremely severe in the infliction of the death penalty, and wholesale executions of prisoners or rebels, of opponents in civil dissensions, were of frequent occurrence in various parts of Greece. ”

“ For about ten years Thebes held a like supremacy in Central Greece and a part of Peloponnese. A similar precedency in Sicily was at times attributed to Syracuse, and in Magna Graecia, that is, in the Greek cities of Italy, to Croton or Tarentum.
The nearest approach, however, to an Empire was the position held by Athens between the Persian wars and the end of the Peloponnesian war [B.C. 478–404] . The Confederacy of Delos was formed for a special purpose—to put down piracy and to exclude the Persian fleets from the Ægean, and thus secure the independence of the Greek states of Asia Minor. ”

“ They are eager partisans in human contests; they are influenced by jealousy, love, and hatred; and yet, on the whole, support the eternal laws of right and wrong. The goddess of justice is the assessor of Zeus. ”

“ It was, in fact, the passion for separate existence, rendering effective or enduring union impossible, that greatly accounts for the ease with which the subjugation of the whole race was accomplished by those two powers. ”

“ The spade of the excavator is our only resource. Arms, ornaments, painted pottery, sculptured stone, and mason's work are thus brought to light which reveal something of the habits and skill of an ancient people and its connection with races living in other countries. ”

“ The last was the popular ideal, though seldom completely attained, and the philosophers did not find it difficult to point out its weaknesses and defects. They usually urged that the right form of government was an aristocracy—that is, when the best men governed. ”