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Introduction To Classical Greek Literature
Introduction To Classical Greek Literature Author:William Cranston Lawton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE MYTHIC WORLD Homer and Herodotos are perhaps the best story-tellers for youth that have ever yet appeared. Every reader of this book will alrea... more »dy have some familiarity with British and American poets : will be aware also that masterpieces have been produced in many other languages, which can be only roughly and partially interpreted into our English speech. But with Greek history, art, letters, we must some day begin that connected thoughtful survey of past European life, recorded for thirty centuries, which alone can make clear to us the meaning and aims of our own national or social organisms. The Present is the child of the Past. The Greeks or Romans, Florentine or Elizabethan men and women, are indeed in many ways unlike ourselves. Change, constant and profound, is a necessity to life : yet there is not one decisive break in all that long tale, from Homer to the present day. Two important truths may here be brought together. First, human nature is in essence ever the same. The elemental passions must always prompt our actions, as the woman, the hero, the rival, reappear in every love-story. Secondly, the long progress of the race is largely repeated in each new human being. Any grown-up who reads " Hiawatha" with children, or with youths the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon, will be forcibly reminded, that what he has outlived is yet as the breath of life to younger folk. A certain childish quality is felt at times in Homer, almost constantly in Herodotos. It heightens the charm and value of both. It is the fresh breath from the youth- time of European man. As we unroll the volume of Homer, it must be remembered, above all, that this life-like panorama is not a realistic but an idealized picture. So, indeed, is all poetry. Long before the need of authe...« less