Athens
iz is .sincerely- to be hoped' that Messrs. Harmsworth will find it possible to print in book-form the admirable series of articles that have been appearing in their History of the World'on Hellenic -life and culture, and to illustrate this book with every one of the pictures which now so vividly 'kindle the text. Such a book would-not only prove a most valuable glide to those teginuing_to study- this epoch, bat would. be 'rk true , delight to such as- already realize, in head and heart Alike, the unpayable debt which all- art- awl literature owe, )Mid Nyill for ever owe, to that epiphany of genius which,
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for a century and a half, shone among the olive trees of Attica. Of all the articles here appearirig,ihnie of,PrOiesSOC Percy Gardner and Professor .F..A. Wright are the' most important, 1'6i :they concentrate on Athens, and Athens is immeasurably our greatest creditor of all the States of Hellas. Attica-itself, geographically, contains an acreage. niukh _less -than -that of Yorkshire, and a population of freemen which never probably reached a hundred thousand, but it was, from the capital, of that country that there streamed forth during this period that living -Water of drama, of philosophy, and of art which consti- tutes our debt to Greece. With the exception of Homer (whose nationality is uncertain), of Pindar, and of Aristotle, the entire wealth bequeathed by Hellas to the world is Athenian. It must 'be remembered, too, that for nearly the Whole of the fifth century n.c., when this radiant splendour Bas at its brightest. Athens was almost invariably at war. c.,onseription -was universal,-the--greatest draMatist of time, Aeschylus, served at Marathon and Salamis, Sophoeles iris - General-4-nd -Socrates -a private in the infantry, but neither wars nor their disasters, neither the rise nor fall of the Athenian Empire, impeded the blossoming of this unique flower. The Athenians as a people were demoniacally possessed by two instincts, namely intellectual curiosity and the adoration of beauty. Following these wherever they led, Athens fulfilled, seemingly without effort, her superb destiny as the leader of all subsequent seekers after knowledge and
. loveliness. • .
- It must, however, be questioned whether religion and ..the glory of the gods were in any real sense the inspirers, as. Professor Gardner suggests, of Athenian art, or whether f it was not -almost entirely beauty. and the glory of Athens which evoked -it. The hierarchy of Olyinpus in the fifth century were not a very edifying lot, -and -we find that Plato, a little later, recommends that the stories of their lonAe 1 loves' and hellish hates should not be taught in schools. -AthenS disakaroved Of excess of wantonness, not because Zeus did not like it, but because it unfitted her young citizens for that perfection of mind and body which was the first duty of man there was nothing morally taboo except what injured his service to the State. For religion, in our sense of the word, ' we must look rather to- the most Holy Mysteries of Eleusis, than to the splendour lavished on the temples of the gods. The very robe of the great statue of Athene in the Parthenon, - wrought by Pheidias out of pure gold, was not consecratedly hers, but the State's, and in the Peloponnesian war it was reckoned as convertible into ships and wages for sailoni if necessity arose. Nor was it primarily for the glory of Athene, bid for- the glory of Athens and-of beauty, that the young ' knights rode up Acropolis Hill on her .birthday; and we 'mmortalized-In the friete offiefl;emple. Cluftth and Strife. it is true, were united, but religion was' not a devotional' force. A far more potent inspirer :of the sculptors and artists at Athens was what we may call the athletic ideal :' it was not really in honour of the god Hermes, but for his delight in the swift limbs of young manhood, that Praxiteles made the statue at Olympia. He-dragged in Hermes far more than Hermes dragged in him. From that ideal Athens never Swerved; and no publie:Seheor worship of athleticism fo:day approached in fervour the devotion of Athens to it -And yet this craze for the -fitness-and beauty of her young citiieiis never blinded her to the importance of mental develolinient. An,Athenian boy, of course, was not bothered- Vath 'foreign languages, since to speak good Attic was all the linguistic equipment that he could need, but he learned how to dance and to behave himself,' and to play the ly're and the flute (until the incorrigible Alcibiades organized a successful strike against the flute as being productive of an ugly face), and to recite the masterpieces of his own tongue, an acquaintance. ship with which is more than most modern schools dream_ of. :7Yet somehow or other, in spite of this idolatry of physical -fitnesa, Athenian boys came to the threshold of their manhood with an equal keenness for mental interests. The two were merged : one seemed to incite the other, and Socrates summed it all up in his prayer at the end of the Phaedrus : - `1-Beloved Pan, and all ye deities that haunt this place, give me inward beauty of soul, and may the outward and the
inward man be at one." .
There lay the spell, the magic of Athens : she realized the 'mystical Unity of bodily and mental beauty... We *de not mean that the athletes of Olympia were high-brow young men, or that the pupils of Plato were sprinters, but what was coninnou to both was this adoration of excellence. Above all, Athens always retained the spirit of a child and the sense of the intoxicating wonder of the world. She saw all that she achieved as a starting-point for something new, as she walked delicately through her pellucid air. . . . The study of these chapters on Athenian art and life will make real to any reader
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