Ancient literature

“ Notwithstanding that the period in which he flourished was remarkable for its number of men, who, by their genius and learning revived the golden ages of ancient literature, he was admitted by all to be without his equal, be it in erudition or intellect, power of writing or intimacy with Latin. ”

“ In order to appreciate the poetry of antiquity, it is necessary to take into consideration the religious ideas which lie at its root, which also in the course of their development have determined the character alike of ancient literature and art ”

“ What is obvious in that ancient literature is the belief in a complete circle of correspondences between every root sound in the human voice and elements, forms and colours, and that the alphabet was sacred in character.
Intuitions which modern psychologists regard as evidence of decadence are found present in the literature of antiquity. ”

“ Thus it happened that the splendid literature of the Ancient World—so rich in beauty and so significant in thought—came into hands worthy of receiving it. Scholars, artists and thinkers seized upon the wondrous heritage and found in it a whole unimagined universe of instruction and delight. At the same time the physical discoveries of explorers and men of science opened out vast fresh regions of speculation and adventure. Men saw with astonishment the old world of their fathers vanishing away, and, within them and without them, the dawning of a new heaven and a new earth. ”

“ But now the proof which establishes the general authenticity of ancient historians, and which demonstrates that their writings are, in the main, what they profess to be—that is—genuine narratives of events, composed and published in the age to which they are usually assigned, carries with it, by implication, a proof of the genuineness of other remains of ancient literature. ”

“ Because ancient literature and art cannot be fully understood or appreciated without some knowledge of Mythology. It was mingled with every theme of the classic poet, and [Pg 16] inspired the highest skill of the painter and sculptor. ”

“ In this department, as in others, men of splendid talents and the most copious learning conformed to the narrow spirit of their age; their labours extracted from a multitude of insulated details what the remains of ancient literature did not afford united in any single work, a systematic account of Roman antiquities. ”

“ Yet it must be allowed that the principles on which such questions are argued, and the facts connected with the transmission of ancient literature to modern times, are in themselves highly important; and that they well deserve more attention than they often receive. ”

“ There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of the ancient classics. Take any one of them into your hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel yourself refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened; just as though you had quenched your thirst at some pure spring. Is this the effect of the old language and its perfect expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of a thousand years? Perhaps both together. But this I know. ”

“ And as the facts on which this proof depends are precisely of the same kind in profane, as in sacred literature, and as the same principles of evidence are applicable to all questions relating to the genuineness of ancient books, it is highly desirable that the proof of the genuineness of the Sacred Writings should be viewed—in its place, as forming a part only of a general argument, which bears equally upon the entire literary remains of antiquity. ”

“ The few specialists in ancient religions may indeed sail smoothly in the current of his thought; but the very nature of a subject which ramifies so extensively and so intricately into the whole of ancient life, concerning itself with practically all the manifestations of ancient [vii] civilization—philosophy, religion, astrology, magic, mythology, literature, art, war, commerce, government—will of necessity afford some obstacle to readers unfamiliar with the study of religion. ”

“ I am indebted for the whole of this note to Greswell’s Early Parisian Greek Press, i. 1.
Study of antiquities. 47. Ancient learning is to be divided into two great departments; the knowledge of what is contained in the works of Greek and Roman authors, and that of the matériel, if I may use the word, which has been preserved in a bodily shape, and is sometimes known by the name of antiquities. Such are buildings, monuments, inscriptions, coins, medals, vases, instruments, which by gradual accumulation have thrown a powerful light upon ancient history and literature. ”

“ When the fourteenth century began to study the classics, the first feeling was one of joy in the newly revealed dignity of the human mind; it was a strange and delightful thing, as they gradually came to know the great writers of ancient Greece and Rome, to see the reason moving freely, exploring, speculating, discussing, without restraint. ”

“ But in epic poetry, in the same way that all streams flow into and commingle in the ocean, all contrasts are softened off and dissolved, and, in a true and genuine epic poem, the ancient mythology must not impress us as heathen—or, at least, this character must not there be so decidedly apparent as it is in Grecian tragedy. ”

“ The discovery that the writings of the ancient world were filled with a genuine vitality and virility, and that the old authors had dealt with world problems in a profound and masterly fashion, and with far more vision than had ever been possible for the mediævalists, gave rise to an eager desire and enthusiasm for the classics that went beyond all bounds. ”

“ To my Lord PEMBROKE. I Have sometimes in travelling been apt, within my own mind, to make a comparison between the excellence of the study of Philosophy, and that commonly called Antiquity, that is, ancient history. ”

“ While, in studying the great writers of antiquity, we are not only learning to understand the ancient mind, but laying in a stock of wise thought and observation, still valuable to ourselves; and at the same time making ourselves familiar with a number of the most perfect and finished literary compositions which the human mind has produced—compositions which, from the altered conditions of human life, are likely to be seldom paralleled, in their sustained excellence, by the times to come. ”

“ The study of Popular Antiquities, as connected with the early history of mankind, is one of deep interest, involving researches into the different ancient systems of religion, and is a subject of too serious a nature to be enlarged on in the following pages. ”

“ Even those venerable works which bear the names of some of the greatest of ancient Greek and Roman writers, and which have been accepted by generation after generation, down to modern times, as stories of unquestionable truth, have been compelled by scientific criticism, after a long battle, to descend to the common level, and to confession to a large admixture of error. ”

“ But this impropriety, it is presumed, will disappear, when it is declared that these poems are presented to your Ladyship, not as labours of art, but as effusions of nature, showing the first efforts of ancient genius, and exhibiting the customs and [Pg 2] opinions of remote ages: of ages that had been almost lost to memory, had not the gallant deeds of your illustrious ancestors preserved them from oblivion.
No active or comprehensive mind can forbear some attention to the reliques of antiquity. ”

“ It is also quite as credible as many of the stories concerning the early history of the heroes of ancient history and fable, which are thought worth recording by every author who writes of Greece and Rome, and are read by every child with wonder. ”

“ While the student of prehistorical antiquities will, therefore, direct attention to the likeness revealed by comparative mythology, the historian of nations will rather be attracted by those differences which express themselves in mature art, literature, and religion. ”

“ Fictions, like that of a primitive age and its primitive people, possessed from the first of the true knowledge of God and all the sciences,—of sacerdotal races,—and, when we come to minutiae, of a Roman epic, supposed to be the source of the legends which pass current for the history of ancient Rome, &c., have taken the place of the pragmatising which detected psychological motives and associations. ”

“ In those places which are only distinguished by classical fame, and valuable remains of antiquity, have your classics in your hand and in your head; compare the ancient geography and descriptions with the modern, and never fail to take notes. ”

“ The various facts, above alluded to, serve to connect the literary remains of antiquity—now in our hands, with the period of their pristine existence:—we traverse the long era of general ignorance—that wide gulf which separates the intelligence and civilization of antiquity from the intelligence and civilization of modern times, and we land, as it were, upon the native soil of these monuments of Mind, and we once more find ourselves surrounded by that abundance of evidence which belongs to an advanced state of knowledge. ”

“ The literatures of classical antiquity are no longer the only ones in which great creations of poetry in perfect beauty of form are found, or models of historical writing, or of oratorical eloquence, or of philosophical reasoning. ”

“ So that a Man can have but half an Idea of the ancient Eloquence, and that not always faithful, who judges of it without such a Skill in Greek and Latin as can enable him to read Histories, Orations and Poems in those Languages, with Ease and Pleasure. ”

“ The teacher of the classics has come to realize that the obligations of the present to the past are not to be so clearly presented and so vividly appreciated in connection with the formal study of art and literature as in the investigation of the great social, political, and religious problems which throughout all the ages have engaged the thought of cultivated men.
9 Sources.—It has been already remarked (§6) that Classical Philology draws its knowledge from three sources, the literary, epigraphic, and monumental remains of Greece and Rome. ”

“ Still, when a student is trying to understand the inner religion of the ancients, he realizes how immensely valuable a creed or even a regular liturgy would be.
Literature enables us sometimes to approach pretty close, in various ways, to the minds of certain of the great men of antiquity, and understand how they thought and felt about a good many subjects. ”

“ Knowing from experience, that Works upon Antiquities, described in language cold as the marbles they illustrate, are not of deep interest to the general reader, the Author has, therefore, avoided the usual frigid style, and has consequently placed around them such fervent, and glowing words, as their novel characters have authorized and demanded. ”

“ Most of the Ancients, both Greeks and Romans, form'd their Tragedies upon fabulous History; most of the Moderns either upon true History, or upon Fiction of their own Invention, or such as has been borrow'd from Romances of later Writers; which tho' they are fabulous, are not, however, trite and vulgar, like several of the Ancients ”

“ Nor is this ideal converse with remote objects like that which is produced by fictitious narratives; for such excursions of the fancy through unreal regions, are disconnected with the rest of our ideas and convictions: on the contrary, the ideal presence of an accomplished mind in the scenes of ancient history is firmly, and by innumerable ties, combined with the knowledge of present realities. ”

“ But reasons of still greater moment recommend the subject of the following pages to the attention of the reader; for it is certain that every one, whether or not [Pg 5] he is contented to admit, without inquiry, the authenticity of profane history, has the highest personal concern in the truth of that particular portion of ancient history with which the Christian religion is connected; and, therefore, every one should think himself bound to convince himself of the genuineness of the books in which its principles are contained. ”

“ We are put in possession of a prodigious mass of most curious and interesting information bearing upon the history of philosophy, conveyed in the richest and most winning language. Antiquity produced no works which could rival these as manuals of instruction ; as such they were employed until the downfal of the Roman empire; they stood their ground and kept alive a taste for literature during the middle ages; they were still zealously studied for a long period after the revival of learning ”

“ With exceptions, of course, the tone of antiquity in literature, as to love and to its objects, is either the tone of slightly unreal philosophising, or the tone of the naughty story, or that of half-paraded, half-confessing contempt. ”

“ When stories of the ancient gods and goddesses are told, they may be very briefly outlined as the imaginative stories of an ancient race. This will give them their true place, without in the least detracting from their charm. ”

“ The study of ancient history requires for its basis a sound, able, philological, and grammatical spirit, which is proof against every temptation to indulge in fanciful etymologies; a well cultivated and practised taste, so as to distinguish possibilities or probabilities, and realities ”

“ Even the ancient authors, with all the subtle aromas and the powerful essences their mighty imaginations had distilled through the ages, could not concentrate into their magic ink this relentless, yet elusive spaciousness which this dweller in cities now beheld. ”

“ The principal facts of ancient history, and the authenticity of the works from which chiefly our knowledge of antiquity is derived, are now freely admitted, after a few exceptive instances have been set off, which are unproved, or doubtful. ”