Hetaera

“ Whatever anyone may suppose to be the origin of the romantic element, no one with any acquaintance with the subject is likely to wish to maintain that the virgin-love of New Comedy is developed out of the Hetaera-worship of its predecessor on the stage. ”

“ Unless he can feel that she loves him, none of those privileges, which, to the ordinary Hetaera-lover of the day, would have been of themselves the complete consummation of love, are of any value to him. ἔξεστί μοι τοῦτο καὶ βούλομαι, οὐ ποιῶ δέ.
The aim of the lover is not to gratify himself, but to inspire love. [305] That we are here face to face with a form of love which is not only actually absent from Middle Comedy, but is by nature absolutely foreign to that literature and could not possibly appear in it, is too obvious to need further emphasis. ”

“ The brisk diplomatic intercourse between the Great King and the Greek states in the 4th century may have produced effects that were not merely political. We certainly find among those members of the Persian aristocracy, who came by residence in Asia Minor into closer contact with the Greeks, some traces of interest in the more ideal side of Hellenism. A man like the younger Cyrus invited Greek captains to his friendship for something more than their utility in war, and procured Greek hetaerae for something more than sensual pleasure. ”

“ Now the latter were some of the most beautiful and distinguished in the city, both slaves and free, some hetaerae, some virgins, some wives,--not merely, that is to say, public wenches, but both girls and women of the very noblest families. Every man was given authority to have whichever one he wished, for the women were not allowed to refuse any one. Consequently, the multitude being a regular rabble, they drank greedily and reveled in wanton conduct. ”

“ Is a hundred years when present a long time? But, first, see whether a hundred years can be present at once. For if the first year in the century is current, then it is present time, and the other ninety and nine are still future. Therefore, they are not yet. But, then, if the second year is current, one year is already past, the second present, and all the rest are future. And thus, if we fix on any middle year of this century as present, those before it are past, those after it are future. Therefore, a hundred years cannot be present all at once. ”

“ Be strong, O Theodore, behold the time of the hours of thy fight hath drawn nigh, and many signs and wonders shall appear in the place where thy body is laid. And behold, our Lord Jesus Christ promiseth thee a righteous promise, and saith unto thee. ‘All those who shall celebrate thy commemoration, or fill the hungry with good, or give alms on the day of thy commemoration, or give drink to the thirsty, or shall give an offering or incense, or a book to the church in thy name, I will erase their sins from the roll, and they shall never see punishment. ”

“ For, if we should suppose the creation, or fall of the angels, was at the beginning of the Julian period, we should speak properly enough, and should be understood if we said, it is a longer time since the creation of angels than the creation of the world, by 7640 years : whereby we would mark out so much of that undistinguished duration as we suppose equal to, and would have admitted, 7640 annual revolutions of the sun, moving at the rate it now does. ”

“ God, with all the batteries of omnipotence loaded with thunderbolts, stands it century after century. I have no doubt sometimes an angel comes to Him and suggests, "Now is the time to strike." "No," says God; "wait a year, wait twenty years, wait a century, wait five centuries." ”

“ Nor is the greater or less extent of duration at all important, when we once pass the limits of evidence and verifiable reality. One century of recorded time, adequately studded with authentic and orderly events, presents a greater mass and a greater difficulty of transition to the imagination than a hundred centuries of barren genealogy. Herodotus, in discussing the age of Homer and Hesiod, treats an anterior point of 400 years as if it were only yesterday ”

“ CHRONOLOGY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SCIENCE
Although the testimony of history is definite and decisive as to the chronology of the world, within the limits of a few hundred years, there is a general assumption, in all branches of scientific inquiry, that man must have existed many thousand years beyond the period thus assigned to him. Lyell speaks of “the vastness of time” [59] required for his development, and Bunsen, as we have seen, requires twenty thousand years, at least, between the Deluge and the nativity of our Lord: and wherefore this discrepancy? ”

“ Thus the Greek Chronologers, who follow Timæus and Eratosthenes, have made the Kings of their several Cities, who lived before the times of the Persian Empire, to Reign about 35 or 40 years a-piece, one with another; which is a length so much beyond the course of nature, as is not to be credited. For by the ordinary course of nature Kings Reign, one with another, about eighteen or twenty years a-piece: and if in some instances they Reign, one with another, five or six years longer, in others they Reign as much shorter: eighteen or twenty years is a medium. ”

“ But because there is nothing beyond old age, we call that long; all these things are said to be long or short, according to the proportion of time they were given us for. Aristotle saith, there is a kind of insect near the river Hypanis, which runs from a certain part of Europe into the Pontus, whose life consists but of one day; those that die at the eighth hour, die in full age; those who die when the sun sets are very old, especially when the days are at the longest. Compare our longest life with eternity and we shall be found almost as short-lived as those little animals. ”

“ But whose ages, if not the Creator’s? For because ages consist of times, and times are made up of days, and months, and years; since also days, and months, and years are measured by suns, and moons, and stars, which He ordained for this purpose (for “they shall be,” says He, “for signs of the months and the years”) , [10] it clearly follows that the ages belong to the Creator, and that nothing of what was fore-ordained before the ages can be said to be the property of any other being than Him who claims the ages also as His own. Else let Marcion show that the ages belong to his god. ”

“ All this and much more,—the whole Mythological Cycle,— represents what came over into Irish literature from ancient manvantaric periods, and the compression of the records of millions of years. A century seems a very long time while it is passing; but at two or three millenniums ago, no longer than a few autumns and winters; and at a million years' distance, the doings and changes, the empires and dynasties of a hundred centuries, look to the eyes of racial memory like the contents of a single spring. ”

“ And often they characterize the things the most ancient by the name of Eternity; and again they call the whole duration of our time Eternity, in so far as the ancient and unchangeable, and the measurement of existence throughout, is a characteristic of Eternity. But they call time that concerned in generation and decay and change, and sometimes the one, and sometimes the other. Wherefore also, the Word of God says that even we, who are bounded here by time, shall partake of Eternity, when we have reached the Eternity which is imperishable and ever the same. ”

“ Even the vaguer, but shorter, period of a generation will be an idea he cannot grasp. We have therefore found no such tales in the lower savagery; and even among the Lapplanders and the Siberian tribes the stories we have been able to collect speak only of short periods, such as the transition from autumn to spring, where a man had slept through the winter, and the expansion of a day into a month, or a year. In these two cases not only the phases of the moon and the measurement of time by them, which must have been early in development, but also the cycle of the seasons had been observed. ”

“ One historian, indeed, assures us that they threw their years into cycles of ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, and that by these cycles they regulated their chronology.15 But this assertion—not improbable in itself—rests on a writer but little gifted with the spirit of criticism, and is counter-balanced by the silence of every higher and earlier authority, as well as by the absence of any monument, like those found among other American nations, to attest the existence of such a calendar. ”

“ But we think that these things are spoken of as if they required a long period of time, in order that an account may be made by us of the whole times of the earthly life, so that we might suppose that when the king makes a reckoning with each one of his many servants the matter would require so vast a period of time, until these things come to an end which have existed from the beginning of the world down to the consummation of the age, not of one age, but of many ages. ”

“ The fourth, the "age of fire"—Tletonatiuh—was to be the last; it began with the restoration of the human race, and, according to their mythology, was to end with the fourth sun. It was owing to this superstition that the closing years of their cycle were full of anxiety; they regarded every omen in the sky, they were never free from the fear that the god of fire would devour them at the termination of every cycle.
This century, or cycle, contained fifty-two years, divided into four periods of thirteen years each. ”

“ In fact, one might infer from his book that the miracles of Christ were not heard of till say a century, or three quarters of a century, after His time, for he says, "they were never heard of out of Palestine until long after the events are said to have occurred." [185:1] (P. 192.)
In such a case, "long after" is very indefinite. It may be a century, or three quarters of a century, or perhaps half a century. It cannot be less, for every generation contains a considerable number of persons whose memories reach back for forty or fifty years. ”

“ The Etruscan sages affirmed, that this prodigy betokened the mutation of the age, and a general revolution in the world. For according to them there are in all eight ages, differing one from another in the lives and the characters of men, and to each of these God has allotted a certain measure of time, determined by the circuit of the great year. ”

“ When time is symbolized, it is always proportioned to the duration of the other symbols used. Thus, in Dan. 8th, when beasts symbolize kingdoms, it would have been incongruous to have specified the duration of the vision in literal years; for beasts do not continue during centuries, as the kingdoms symbolized by them have done. But days are proportioned to years, as beasts are to kingdoms; so that there is a fitness in symbolizing the years foreshadowed in that vision, by 2300 days; between which measure of time and the duration of the existence of beasts, there is a perfect congruity. ”

“ A fully developed calendar of this nature is possessed by the Herero, and has been published from the year 1820 [451] . I give a few years as examples:—1820, ojo (= year of the) tjekeue: from the name of the Matabele chief who in 1820 came to Okahandja with a white peace-ox and made peace with Katjamuaha. 1842, ojohange, ‘year of peace’, the Nama and Herero made peace. 1843, ojomaue, ‘year of the stones’: the Herero as the slaves of Jonker Africander had to build for him a stone wall; or ojovihende, ‘year of the stakes’: the Herero had to build a palisade around Jonker’s dockyard. ”

“ The 1260 years are not yet expired, nor the testimony finished. "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." (Isa. lix. 19.) The mystic woman is yet in the wilderness, and there she is nourished with the hidden manna "a time, times and half a time," "forty and two months, or twelve hundred and sixty days,"—that is, years; for, as formerly noticed, all these expressions mean the same period of time; the period during which the witnesses prophesy, on the one side, and the gentiles tread the outer court, on the other. ”

“ In the study of events, the two circumstances of time and place constantly demand our attention. Accordingly, Chronology and Geography have been called the two eyes of History. It is only by the use of both that we can gain a complete and life-like impression of events. ”

“ But, although we may be unable to estimate the minimum of time required for the changes in physical geography above alluded to, we cannot fail to perceive that the duration of the period must have been very protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction may have followed, separating the Pleistocene from the historical periods, and constituting an interval no less indefinite in its duration. ”

“ If the interpretation of the text be correct, calculation would fix the date between the year 3,007 and 3,010 of the ancient era, or a thousand years after the epoch attributed to the reign of Menkera in Mariette's chronological table. In any case, it is to be hoped that future discoveries will enable us with certainty to trace back the course of ages, and to determine positive dates for the origins of history, with which may be connected the fluctuating chronology of the most remote events of which the human race has preserved the memory. ”

“ The significance of the time-reckoning of the primitive peoples for the history of chronology seems to have been only gradually grasped by the author in the course of his work, since it is not until after he has touched occasionally upon the question of primitive time-reckoning in the course of his account of the chronological systems of the Oriental peoples that he inserts the chapter in question between the latter and the chapters on the chronology of antiquity. ”