Athens

“ But that unruly Athens, where fools decided the gravest questions of polity and right and wrong, where it was not safe to be just, and where property, which you had garnered up by the thrift and industry of to-day, might be wrung from you by the caprices of the mob to-morrow,—that very Athens probably secured the greatest human happiness and nobleness of its era, invented art, and sounded for us the depths of philosophy: God lent to it the noblest intellects, and it flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain-peaks of civilization. ”

“ The history of mediæval Athens is full of surprises. A Burgundian nobleman founding a dynasty in the ancient home of heroes and philosophers; a roving band of mercenaries from the westernmost peninsula of Europe destroying in a single day the brilliant French civilisation of a century; a Florentine upstart, armed with the modern weapons of finance, receiving the keys of the Akropolis from a gallant and chivalrous soldier of Spain—such are the tableaux which inaugurate the three epochs of her Frankish annals. ”

“ The history of Athens includes in itself the history of the human mind. Science and art—erudition and genius—all conspired—no less than the trophies of Miltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades—the jealousy of Sparta—to the causes of the rise and fall of Athens. ”

“ These two causes united reveal to us the true secret why Athens obtained a pre-eminence in intellectual grandeur over the rest of Greece. Had Corinth obtained the command of the seas and the treasury of Delos—had Corinth established abroad a power equally arbitrary and extensive, and at home a democracy equally broad and pure—Corinth might have had her Pericles and Demosthenes, her Phidias, her Sophocles, her Aristophanes, her Plato—and posterity might not have allowed the claim of Athens to be the Hellas Hellados, “the Greece of Greece.” ”

“ The wisdom of Athens, which, confined within its own narrow domain, could but have enlightened the inhabitants of a few cities, is now spreading over the entire earth; the words of its sages are instructing our haughty rulers; the myths of our poets are civilizing Rome. This, then, is the glory of Athens; and such glory must needs be eternal. Lands may change owners, and physical force give a momentary, a seeming nobility to a barbarian; but mind is immortal! the empire of ideas lasts for ever. Thus is Athens the civilizer of the nations. ”

“ If anybody doubts that modern Athens is beautiful, let him go to that spot and look down through the evening light and behold a marble vision such as the world nowhere else presents. Whatever ancient Athens may have been, it would hardly surpass this in beauty, and if Pericles could stand here to-day and gaze down upon the new city which has arisen to preserve his treasures, I think he would be satisfied.
When the others had gone to visit the Hill of Mars, Laura and I wandered back to the Parthenon, followed its silent corridors, and saw it all again to our hearts' content. ”

“ The Athens that we know intimately is the Athens of the Restoration. Really we know almost nothing of fifth-century Athens but her external politics and the remains of her monuments. The restored Athens is the city of Plato, of Demosthenes, and of Praxiteles. She has still to be the mother of philosophy, ethics, oratory, political science, comedy of manners, logic, grammar, and the essay and the dialogue as forms of literature. This is the only Athens which we know at all intimately from within. ”

“ And this, the Athens of poetry and art, is but another aspect of the Athens of political history. The same individuality, the same free and passionate energy that worked in the hearts of her sculptors and her poets, moulded also and inspired her city life. In contradistinction to the stern and rigid discipline of Sparta, the Athenian citizen displayed the resource, the versatility and the zeal that only freedom and self- reliance can teach. ”

“ While Sparta, as we have seen, remained content with the wisdom indigenous to her soil, scanty and imperfect as it was, Athens converted herself into one vast mart, whither every man who had anything new to communicate hastened eagerly, and found the sure reward of his ingenuity. Philosophers, sophists, geometricians, astronomers, artists, musicians, actors, from all parts of Greece and her most distant colonies, flocked to Athens to obtain from its quick-sighted, versatile, impartial, and most generous people that approbation which in the ancient world constituted fame. ”

“ We may go forth conquering and to conquer; we may launch our triremes on immaterial seas, and subdue unknown empires of the spirit!—And here is Athens the quick-witted, hegemon of Greece; her ships everywhere on the wine-dark seas; her citizens everywhere; her natural genius swelled by an enormous sense of achievement; her soul, grown great under a great stress, now freed from the stress and at leisure to explore:—in contact with opposite-minded Sparta; in contact with conservative and somewhat luxuriously-living slow Thebes;—with a hundred other cities;—in contact with proud Persia ”

“ THE LAST KING OF ATHENS You remember how Cecrops came to Attica and built a city so beautiful that the gods marvelled, and how Athene made the first olive-tree and was therefore awarded the honour of naming the city and becoming its patron. The olive-tree was now said to grow on a rock in the stronghold or Acropolis of the city.
In ancient days Sparta was a more important city than the beautiful one built by Cecrops, but little by little, as the years passed, Athens became supreme in Greece and the most glorious city of the world. ”

“ The Athenian community, through its political eminence, its intellectual character, so original and diversified, its culture,—such that almost every citizen was qualified for civil office,—has no parallel in history. It is the elevation, not of a select class of the citizens, but of the whole society, which gives to Athens its unique distinction. Public spirit and enterprise, which made her navy dominant in the Aegean and over the sea-coast of Asia Minor, went hand in hand with delight in eloquence and in the creations of genius. ”

“ To make Athens the mightiest state in Greece, to build up the fabric of her material greatness—these were the objects for which he was ready to devote the best energies of heart and brain, and if need were, to lay down his life. He might be skilled in every elegant accomplishment, an acute reasoner, an orator, a musician, a poet ”

“ These then are the views, men of Athens, which I have communicated to my fellow soldiers and which I am now writing to the whole body of the citizens throughout all Greece. May the gods who decide all things vouchsafe me to the end the assistance which they have promised, and may they grant to Athens all possible favours at my hands! May she always have such Emperors as will honour her and love her above and beyond all other cities! ”

“ The principal monuments of Athens have been so frequently delineated and described, that a traveller, on first arriving, recognizes on every side long-familiar forms, and his first impressions lose perhaps something of their vividness in proportion to this previous familiarity. But nothing that I had ever read or seen at all prepared me for the beauty of the Athenian landscape; nor can any one, without visiting Athens, understand how exquisitely the ancient edifices are designed in relation to this landscape, and how much the subtle charm of their proportions is enhanced by this combination. ”

“ We pass from Athens and from Attica; one stage more, one bound rather, over the central sea of Greece, will lead us beyond the bounds of Hellas itself. One thought more comes across us as we pass from Athens, as we make ready to pass from Greece. Between the work of the earliest and of the latest Grecian heroes there is a strange likeness. Thêseus—that name will do as well as any other—brought together rival cities to form one abiding commonwealth, and thereby to create the Athens alike of archons, emperors, dukes, and kings. ”

“ We alone do good to our neighbours not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless spirit. To sum up; I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. ”

“ We know that Athens, which during the most brilliant period of its history counted only fifty-four hundred free-born citizens—less than the population of a small modern town—was able to produce within a very brief epoch more men of supreme distinction than all the rest of Europe from the Age of Pericles until the dawn of the Renaissance. Hers is still the art of the world, the literature of the world, the philosophy of the world, the culture of the world. ”

“ The Democracy of Athens was in truth the noblest fruit of that self-developing power of the Greek mind which worked every possession of the common heritage into some new and more brilliant shape, but which learned nothing, nothing of all that formed its real life and its real glory, from the Barbarians of the outer world. Men tell us that Greece learned this or that mechanical invention from Phœnicia or Egypt or Assyria. ”

“ Rounding this cape, the navigator soon came in sight of the splendid city of Athens, “built nobly on the Ægean shore, the eye of Greece, the mother of arts and eloquence.”138 Idolatrous shrines crowned every height, and gorgeous temples for the worship of false gods were found in all the streets. Athens was probably by far the most renowned city Paul had yet entered; and it embraced a large class of poets, philosophers, and men of literary leisure. “All the Athenians, and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.” ”

“ Perhaps it is this total absence of every thing elegant in the shape of man from the public streets and walks of the Athens, that has given so singular a twist to the minds and manners of the Athenian fair. ”

“ If our simple parents came to a general assembly at Athens and made complaints, a cry was raised, Hear, hear! there is a sea-monster going to speak. Such is Athens become, like a morass in a tropical country full of leeches, toads, and poisonous snakes, in which no man of decent habits can set his foot. ”

“ Ionic colonnades relieve the classical simplicity of the façade, with some marble and terra-cotta groups of statuary. The general effect is very calm, pure, and dignified, and very satisfying. The Athenians are proud, and with reason, of this beautiful building, which they owe to the generosity of one of their countrymen.
Modern Athens, despite its dust, is a delightful city to dwell in. Nobody in it looks rich,—that dreadful look!—and scarcely anybody looks poor. The king and the princes stroll casually about the streets, or may be met on the Acropolis or walking by the sea at Phalerum. ”

“ During these busy years Athens became a marvel of beauty and art, the resort of strangers from all quarters, the ablest workers in marble and metal, [Pg 364] the noblest artists, poets, and philosophers, until for more than a century that city was the recognized centre of the loftiest products of the human intellect. ”

“ In the Athens, this relative superiority of the humbler classes over those whom chance, ancestry, or office has set up into the high places, is not only more remarkable than in any other locality that I ever visited, but the most remarkable, at least the most admirable feature in the character of the Athens herself. ”

“ Athens in half a day—if one could call it that. He was not the only one to see the ancient capital in such short order, but it remains true that any such cavalier disposition of so famous a place is unfortunate and wholly inadequate. Athens is no place for the hasty “tripper,” for not only are the ancient monuments worthy of long and thoughtful contemplation, but the modern city itself is abundantly worthy of intimate acquaintance. ”

“ The most simple explanation is, that the Athenian of those days saw magnificent possibilities of fame and power before him. It was possible, even probable, that Athens might become the queen city of the western world, whose commands would be obeyed from Sicily to the shores of the Euxine. In that case the men who had made Athens would have a harvest of immortal glory, and if they lived to see their work done, would be the most enviable of men, rewarded by praise, wealth, and power. ”

“ In strengthening and ornamenting Athens, in developing the full activity of her citizens, in providing temples, religious offerings, works of art, solemn festivals, all of surpassing attraction,—he intended to exalt her into something greater than an imperial city with numerous dependent allies. He wished to make her the centre of Grecian feeling, the stimulus of Grecian intellect, and the type of strong democratical patriotism combined with full liberty of individual taste and aspiration. ”

“ The colors and contours formed one glorious model for the sculptor and the painter, one perpetual inspiration for the poet. Even if Athens had never been the seat of a famous race, she would have won fame as being situated in one of the most beautiful localities in the world. ”

“ No such narrowness characterised Athens, and when she established herself as the intellectual capital of Greece, all men of genius received a welcome there, and we find all forms of literature deserting their native homes, even their native dialects, to come to Athens. ... As long as literature had many centres, there was no danger of all falling by a single stroke; but when it was centralised in Athens, and the blow delivered by Philip at Chæronea had fallen on Athens, classical Greek literature perished in a generation. ”