Authors of Greece

Greek literature is more modern in its tone than Latin or Medieval or Elizabethan. It is the expression of a society living in an environment singularly like our own, mainly dem...

Finding Paris waiting for him, Hector passed out to the battlefield. Aided by Glaucus he wrought great havoc, so much that Athena and Apollo stirred him to challenge the bravest...

What then is left to admire in the _Iliad_? It is well to remember that the poem is not the first but the last of a long series; its very perfection of form and language makes i...

That night Odysseus and his son removed the arms from the walls, the latter being told to urge as a pretext for his action the necessity of cleaning from them the rust and of re...

_The Seven against Thebes_ was performed in 472. It was one of a trilogy, a series of three plays dealing with the misfortunes of Oedipus' race. After the death of Oedipus his s...

In the marvellous scene which follows Aeschylus reaches the pinnacle of tragic power. Cassandra advances to the palace, but starts back in horror as a series of visions of growi...

The elders promise obedience, but grave news is reported by a guard who has been set to watch the corpse. Someone had scattered dust lightly over the dead and departed without l...

Fortune has been kind in preserving us this play. The great difference between the art of Sophocles and that of Aeschylus is here apparent. Only one man has ventured to paint fo...

The secret Oedipus will impart at the proper time. The need for protection soon comes. Creon attempts to persuade Oedipus to return to Thebes but is met by a curse, whereupon th...

Though slight and weakly constructed, this play is important. Its two features are first, the love of argument, a weakness of all the Athenians who frequented the Law Courts and...

Thoas, the King of the land, learns from her that the two Greeks are guilty of kindred murder; their presence has defiled the holy image which needs purification in the sea as w...

This violent attack on Cleon was vigorously met; Aristophanes was prosecuted and seems to have made a compromise. In his next comedy, the _Clouds_ (which was presented in 423) h...

Aristophanes is no doubt criticising Plato's _Republic_, but allowing for altered circumstances we cannot go far wrong if we see here a picture of the suggested remedy for the s...

The next book opens with the famous accusation of Histiaeus by Artaphernes: "Thou hast stitched this boot and Aristagoras hath put it on." Histiaeus in fear fled to his own city...

An Athenian reply failed to convince the allies of her innocence; one of the Spartan Ephors forced the congress to declare that Athens had violated the peace. A second assembly...

The defects of Thucydides are evident; his style is harsh, obscure and crabbed; it is sometimes said that he seems wiser than he really is mainly because his language is difficu...

In this dialogue we first seem to catch the voice of Plato himself as distinct from that of Socrates. The latter was undoubtedly most keenly interested in the more human process...

Again, the possibility of knowledge depends upon accurate definition and the scientific comparisons of instances. These involve long and fatiguing thought and very often the rew...

"When a State is built on unanimity, when allies in a war find their interests identical, men gladly labour together, bearing their troubles and sticking to their task. But when...

For the miracle of miracles is this man's universality of outlook. It makes us ashamed of our own pretentiousness and swollen-headed pride when we reflect what this great archit...