A. A. Milne - "If I May"

William Ingraham Russell - "The Romance and Tragedy"

Various - "Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870"

Franz Grillparzer - "Das goldene Vliess"

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Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

M >> Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson >> Mosaics of Grecian History




Socrates next refers to the indignation that he may have occasioned
because he has not wept, begged, and entreated for his life,
and has not brought forward his children and relatives to plead
for him, as others would have done on so serious an occasion.
He says that he has relatives, and three children; but he declares
that not one of them shall appear in court for any such purpose
--not from any insolent disposition on his part, but because he
believes that such a course would be degrading to the reputation
which he enjoys, as well as a disgrace to the state. He then
closes his defence as follows:

"But, setting aside the question of dishonor, there seems to
be something wrong in petitioning a judge, and thus procuring
an acquittal, instead of informing and convincing him. For his
duty is not to make a present of justice, but to give judgment;
and he has Sworn that he will adjudge according to the law, and
not according to his own good pleasure; and neither he nor we
should get into the habit of perjuring ourselves--there can be
no piety in that. Do not, then, require me to do what I consider
dishonorable, and impious, and wrong, especially now, when I
am being tried for impiety. For if, O men of Athens, by force
of persuasion and entreaty, I could overpower your oaths, then
I should be teaching you to believe that there are no gods, and
convict myself, in my own defence, of not believing in them.
But that is not the case; for I do believe that there are gods,
and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers
believe in them. And to you and to God I commit my cause, to
be determined by you as is best for you and me."

As he had expected, and as the tenor of his speech had assured
his friends would be the case, Socrates was found guilty--but by
a majority of only five or six in a body of over five hundred.
He would make no proposition, as was his right, for a mitigation
of punishment; and after sentence of death had been passed upon
him he spent the remaining thirty days of his life in impressing
on the minds of his friends the most sublime lessons in philosophy
and virtue. Many of these lessons have been preserved to us in
the works of Plato, in whose Phoe'do, which pictures the last
hours of the prison life of Socrates, we find a sublime conversation
on the immortality of the soul. The following is an extract from
this work:


Socrates' Views of a Future State.

"When the dead arrive at the place to which their demon leads
them severally, first of all they are judged, as well those who
have lived well and piously as those who have not. And those
who appear to have passed a middle kind of life, proceeding to
Ach'eron, and embarking in the vessels they have, on these arrive
at the lake, and there dwell; and when they are purified, and
have suffered punishment for the iniquities they may have committed,
they are set free, and each receives the reward of his good deeds
according to his deserts; but those who appear to be incurable,
through the magnitude of their offences, either from having
committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless
murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls
into Tartarus, whence they never come forth. But those who appear
to have been guilty of curable yet great offences, such as those
who through anger have committed any violence against father
or mother, and have lived the remainder of their life in a state
of penitence, or they who have become homicides in a similar
manner--these must, of necessity, fall into Tartarus; but after
they have fallen, and have been there a year, the wave casts
them forth, the homicide into Cocy'tus, [Footnote: Co-cy'tus]
but the parricides and matricides into Pyriphleg'ethon; [Footnote:
Pyr-i-phlege-thon, "fire-blazing;" one of the rivers of hell]
but when, being borne along, they arrive at the Acheru'sian
lake, [Footnote: Ach'e-ron. Cocytus signifies the river of wailing;
Pyriphlegethon, the river that burns with fire; Acheron, the
river of woe; and the Styx, another river of the lower world,
the river of hatred. Thus Homer, in describing "Pluto's murky
abode," says:

There, into Acheron runs not alone
Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud,
From Styx derived; there also stands a rock,
At whose broad base the roaring rivers meet.
Odyssey. B. X.]
there they cry out to and invoke, some, those whom they slew,
others, those whom they injured; and, invoking them, they entreat
and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake and to
receive them; and if they persuade them, they go out, and are
freed from their sufferings; but if not, they are borne back
to Tartarus, and thence again to the rivers, and they do not
cease from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom
they have injured--for this sentence was imposed on them by the
judges. But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy
life--these are they who, being freed and set at large from these
regions in the earth as from a prison--arrive at the pure abode
above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among these,
those who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy
shall live without bodies throughout all future time, and shall
arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these, which it
is neither easy to describe, nor at present is there sufficient
time for the purpose.

"For the sake of these things which we have described we should
use every endeavor to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life,
for the reward is noble and the hope great. To affirm positively,
however, that these things are exactly as I have described them,
does not become a man of sense; but that either this, or something
of the kind, takes place with respect to our souls and their
habitations--since our soul is certainly immortal--appears to
me most fitting to be believed, and worthy the hazard for one
who trusts in its reality; for the hazard is noble, and it is
right to allure ourselves with such things, as with enchantments;
for which reason I have prolonged my story to such length. On
account of these things, then, a man ought to be confident about
his soul, who during this life has disregarded all the pleasures
and ornaments of the body as foreign from his nature, and who,
having thought that they do more harm than good, has zealously
applied himself to the acquirement of knowledge, and who, having
adorned his soul not with a foreign but with its own proper
ornaments--temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom, and truth--
thus waits for his passage to Hades as one who is ready to depart
whenever destiny shall summon him."

After some farther conversation with his friends respecting the
disposition to be made of his body, and having said farewell
to his family, Socrates drank the fatal hemlock with as much
composure as if it had been the last draught at a cheerful banquet,
and quietly laid himself down and died. "Thus perished," says
DR. SMITH, "the greatest and most original of Grecian philosophers,
whose uninspired wisdom made the nearest approach to the divine
morality of the Gospel." As observed by PROFESSOR TYLER of Amherst
College, "The consciousness of a divine mission was the leading
trait in his character and the main secret of his power. This
directed his conversations, shaped his philosophy, imbued his
very person, and controlled his life. This was the power that
sustained him in view of approaching death, inspired him with
more that human fortitude in his last days, and invested his
dying words with a moral grandeur that 'has less of earth in
it than heaven.'" [Footnote: Preface to "Plato's Apology and Crito."]
There was a more special and personal influence, however, to
which Socrates deemed himself subject through life, and which
probably moved him to view death with such calmness.

With all his practical wisdom, the great philosopher was not
free from the control of superstitious fancies. He not only always
gave careful heed to divinations, dreams, and oracular intimations,
but he believed that he was warned and restrained, from childhood,
by a familiar spirit, or demon, which he was accustomed to speak
of familiarly and to obey implicitly. A writer, in alluding to
this subject, says: "There is no more curious chapter in Grecian
biography than the story of Socrates and his familiar demon,
which, sometimes unseen, and at other times, as he asserted,
assuming human shape, acted as his mentor; which preserved his
life after the disastrous battle of De'lium, by pointing out
to him the only secure line of retreat, while the lives of his
friends, who disregarded his entreaties to accompany him, were
sacrificed; and which, again, when the crisis of his fate
approached, twice dissuaded him from defending himself before
his accusers, and in the end encouraged him to quaff the poisoned
cup presented to his lips by an ungrateful people."


ART.

Having briefly traced the history of Grecian literature in its
best period, it remains to notice some of the monuments of art,
"with which," as ALISON says, "the Athenians have overspread
the world, and which still form the standard of taste in every
civilized nation on earth."

* * * * *

I. SCULPTURE AND PAINTING.

Grecian sculpture, as we have seen, had attained nearly the summit
of its perfection at the commencement of the Persian wars. Among
those who now gave to it a wider range may be mentioned Pythagoras,
of Rhegium, and Myron, a native of Eleu'therae. The former executed
works in bronze representing contests of heroes and athletes;
but he was excelled in this field by Myron, who was also
distinguished for his representations of animals. The energies
of sculpture, however, were to be still more directly concentrated
and perfected in a new school. That school was at Athens, and
its master was Phid'ias, an Athenian painter, sculptor, and
architect, who flourished about 460 B.C. "At this point," observes
LUeBKE, [Footnote: "Outlines of the History of Art," by Wilhelm
Luebke; Clarence Cook's edition.] "begins the period of that
wonderful elevation of Hellenic life which was ushered in by
the glorious victory over the Persians. Now, for the first time,
the national Hellenic mind rose to the highest consciousness
of noble independence and dignity. Athens concentrated within
herself, as in a focus, the whole exuberance and many-sidedness
of Greek life, and glorified it into beautiful unity. Now, for
the first time, the deepest thoughts of the Hellenic mind were
embodied in sculpture, and the figures of the gods rose to that
solemn sublimity in which art embodied the idea of divinity in
purely human form. This victory of the new time over the old
was effected by the power of Phidias, one of the most wonderful
artist-minds of all time."

Phidias was intrusted by Pericles with the superintendence of
the public works erected or adorned by that lavish ruler, and
his own hands added to them their most valuable ornaments. But
before he was called to this employment his statues had adorned
the most celebrated temples of Greece. "These inimitable works,"
says GILLIES, [Footnote: Gillies's "History of Ancient Greece,"
p. 178.] "silenced the voice of envy; and the most distinguished
artists of Greece--sculptors, painters, and architects--were
ambitious to receive the directions, and to second the labors
of Phidias, which were uninterruptedly employed, during fifteen
years, in the embellishment of his native city." The chief
characteristic of Phidias was ideal beauty of the sublimest order
in the representation of divinities and their worship; and he
substituted ivory for marble in those parts of statues that were
uncovered, such as the face, hands, and feet, while for the covered
portion he substituted solid gold in place of wood concealed
with real drapery. The style and character of his work are well
described by LUeBKE, as follows:

"That Phidias especially excelled in creating images of the gods,
and that he preferred, as subjects for his art, those among the
divinities the essence of whose nature was spiritual majesty,
marks the fundamental characteristic of his art, and explains
its superiority, not only to all that had been produced before
his time, but to all that was contemporary with him, and to all
that came after him. Possessed of that unsurpassable masterly
power in the representation of the physical form to which Greek
art, shortly before his time, had attained by unceasing endeavor,
his lofty genius was called upon to apply these results to the
embodiment of the highest ideas, and thus to invest art with
the character of sublimity, as well as with the attributes of
perfect beauty. Hence it is said of him, that he alone had seen
images of the gods, and he alone had made them visible to others.
Even in the story that, in emulation with other masters, he made
an Amazon, and was defeated in the contest by his great
contemporary Polycle'tus, we see a confirmation of the ideal
tendency of his art. But that his works realized the highest
conceptions of the people, and embodied the ideal of the Hellenic
conception of the divinity, is proved by the universal admiration
of the ancient world. This sublimity of conception was combined
in him with an inexhaustible exuberance of creative fancy, an
incomparable care in the completion of his work, and a masterly
power in overcoming every difficulty, both in the technical
execution and in the material."

Probably the first important work executed by Phidias at Athens
was the colossal bronze image of Minerva, which stood on the
Acropolis. It was nearly seventy feet in height, and was visible
twenty miles out at sea. It was erected by the Athenians, in
memory of their victory over the Persians, with the spoils of
Marathon. A smaller bronze statue, on the same model, was also
erected on the Acropolis. But the greatest of the works of Phidias
at Athens was the ivory and gold statue of Minerva in the Parthenon,
erected with the booty taken at Salamis. It was forty feet high,
representing the goddess, "not with her shield raised as the
vigorous champion of her people, but as a peaceful, protecting,
and victory-giving divinity." Phidias was now called to Elis,
and there he executed his crowning work, the gold and ivory statue
of Jupiter at Olympia. "The father of the gods and of men was
seated on a splendid throne in the cella of his Olympic temple,
his head encircled with a golden olive-wreath; in his right hand
he held Nike, who bore a fillet of victory in her hands and a
golden wreath on her head; in his left hand rested the
richly-decorated sceptre." The throne was adorned with gold and
precious stones, and on it were represented many celebrated scenes.
"From this immeasurable exuberance of figures," says LUeBKE, "rose
the form of the highest Hellenic divinity, grand and solemn and
wonderful in majesty. Phidias had represented him as the kindly
father of gods and men, and also as the mighty ruler in Olympus.
As he conceived his subject he must have had in his mind those
lines of Homer, in which Jupiter graciously grants the request
of Thetis:

'As thus he spake, the son of Saturn gave
The nod with his dark brows. The ambrosial curls
Upon the sovereign one's immortal head
Were shaken, and with them the mighty Mount
Olympus trembled.'" [Footnote: Iliad, I., 528-580.
Bryant's translation.]

While the art of painting was early developed in Greece, certainly
as far back as 718 B.C., the first painter of renown was
Polygno'tus, of Tha'sos, who went to Athens about 463 B.C., and
established there what was called "the Athenian school" of painting.
Aristotle called him "the painter of character," as he was the
first to give variety to the expression of the countenance, and
ease and grace to the outlines of figures or the flow of drapery.
He painted many battle scenes, and with his contemporaries,
Diony'sius of Col'oplon, Mi'con, and others, he embellished many
of the public buildings in Athens, and notably the Temple of
Theseus, with representations of figures similar to those of
the sculptor. About 404 B.C. painting reached a farther degree
of excellence in the hands of Apollodo'rus, a native of Athens,
who developed the principles of light and shade and gave to the
art a more dramatic range. Of this school Zeux'is, Parrha'sius,
and Timan'thes became the chief masters.


PARRHASIUS.

Of the artists of this period it has been asserted by some
authorities that Parrhasius was the most celebrated, as he is
said to have "raised the art of painting to perfection in all
that is exalted and essential;" uniting in his works "the classic
invention of Polygnotus, the magic tone of Apollodorus, and the
exquisite design of Zeuxis." He was a native of Ephesus, but
became a citizen of Athens, where he won many victories over
his contemporaries. One of these is recorded by Pliny as having
been achieved in a public contest with Zeuxis. The latter displayed
a painting of some grapes, which were so natural as to deceive
the birds, that came and pecked at them. Zeuxis then requested
that the curtain which was supposed to screen the picture of
Parrhasius be withdrawn, when it was found that the painting
of Parrhasius was merely the representation of a curtain thrown
over a picture-frame. The award of merit was therefore given
to Parrhasius, on the ground that while Zeuxis had deceived the
birds, Parrhasius had deceived Zeuxis himself.

The Roman philosopher Seneca also tells a story of Parrhasius
as follows: While engaged in making a painting of "Prometheus
Bound," he took an old Olynthian captive and put him to the torture,
that he might catch, and transfer to canvas, the natural expression
of the most terrible of mortal sufferings. This story, we may
hope, is a fiction; but the incident is often alluded to by the
poets, and the American poet WILLIS has painted the alleged scene
in lines scarcely less terrible in their coloring than those
pallid hues of death-like agony which we may suppose the
painter-artist to have employed.

Parrhasius and his Captive.

Parrhasius stood gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Cau'casus--
The vulture at his vitals, and the links
Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;
[Footnote: Vulcan; the Olympian artist, who,
when hurled from heaven, fell upon the Island
of Lemnos, in the AEgean. He forged the chain
with which Prometheus was bound.]
And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye
Flashed with a passionate fire; and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,
Were like the wing'd god's, breathing from his flight.
[Footnote: The winged god Mercury.]

"Bring me the captive now!
My bands feel skilful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow.
Upon the bended heavens, around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.

"Ha! bind him on his back!
Look! as Prometheus in my picture here!
Quick, or he faints! stand with the cordial near!
Now--bend him to the rack!
Press down the poisoned links into his flesh,
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

"So, let him writhe! How long
Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!
How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

"'Pity' thee! So I do.
I pity the dumb victim at the altar;
But does the robed priest for his pity falter?
I'd rack thee though I knew
A thousand lives were perishing in thine!
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

"Yet there's a deathless name!
A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn;
And, though its crown of flame
Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars I'd bind it on!

"Ay, though it bid me rifle
My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst;
Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first;
Though it should bid me stifle
The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild--

"All--I would do it all
Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot--
Thrust foully into earth to be forgot!
O heavens! but I appall
Your heart, old man! Forgive--ha! on your lives
Let him not faint!--rack him till he revives!

"Vain--vain--give o'er. His eye
Glazes apace. He does not feel you now;
Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow.
Gods I if he do not die
But for one moment--one--till I eclipse
Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!

"Shivering! Hark! he mutters
Brokenly now: that was a difficult breath--
Another? Wilt thou never come, O Death?
Look how his temple flutters!
Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!
He shudders--gasps--Jove help him! So--he's dead!"

* * * * *

How like a mounting devil in the heart
Rules the unreined ambition! Let it once
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought,
And unthrones peace forever. Putting on
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns
The heart to ashes, and with not a spring
Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip,
We look upon our splendor and forget
The thirst of which we perish!

* * * * *

II. ARCHITECTURE.

In Architecture, too, thy rank supreme!
That art where most magnificent appears
The little builder, man; by thee refined,
And smiling high, to full perfection brought.
--THOMSON.

We have already referred, in general terms, to the monuments
of art for which the era of Athenian greatness was distinguished,
and have stated that it was more particularly in the "Age of
Pericles" that Athenian genius and enthusiasm found their full
development, in the erection or adornment of those miracles of
architecture that crowned the Athenian Acropolis or surrounded
its base. The following eloquent description, from the pen of
BULWER, will convey a vivid idea of the magnitude and the
brilliancy of the labors performed for


The Adornment of Athens.

"Then rapidly progressed those glorious fabrics which seemed,
as Plutarch gracefully express it, endowed with the bloom of a
perennial youth. Still the houses of private citizens remained
simple and unadorned; still were the streets narrow and irregular;
and, even centuries afterward, a stranger entering Athens would
not at first have recognized the claims of the mistress of Grecian
art. But to the homeliness of her common thoroughfares and private
mansions the magnificence of her public edifices now made a
dazzling contrast. The Acropolis, that towered above the homes
and thoroughfares of men--a spot too sacred for human habitation--
became, to use a proverbial phrase, 'a city of the gods.' The
citizen was everywhere to be reminded of the majesty of the state
--his patriotism was to be increased by the pride in her beauty--
his taste to be elevated by the spectacle of her splendor.

"Thus flocked to Athens all who throughout Greece were eminent
in art. Sculptors and architects vied with one another in adorning
the young empress of the seas: then rose the masterpieces of
Phidias, of Callic'rates, of Mnesicles, which, either in their
broken remains, or in the feeble copies of imitators less inspired,
still command so intense a wonder, and furnish models so immortal.
And if, so to speak, their bones and relics excite our awe and
envy, as testifying of a lovelier and grander race, which the
deluge of time has swept away, what, in that day, must have been
their brilliant effect, unmutilated in their fair proportions--
fresh in all their lineaments and hues? For their beauty was
not limited to the symmetry of arch and column, nor their materials
confined to the marbles of Pentel'icus and Pa'ros. Even the exterior
of the temples glowed with the richest harmony of colors, and
was decorated with the purest gold: an atmosphere peculiarly
favorable to the display and the preservation of art, permitted
to external pediments and friezes all the minuteness of ornament
--the brilliancy of colors, such as in the interior of Italian
churches may yet be seen--vitiated, in the last, by a gaudy and
barbarous taste. Nor did the Athenians spare any cost upon the
works that were, like the tombs and tripods of their heroes, to
be the monuments of a nation to distant ages, and to transmit
the most irrefragable proof 'that the power of ancient Greece
was not an idle legend.'" [Footnote: "Athens: Its Rise and Fall,"
pp. 256, 257.]


1. THE ACROPOLIS AND ITS SPLENDORS.

The Acropolis, the fortress of Athens, was the center of its
architectural splendor. It is a rocky height rising abruptly
out of the Attic plain, and was accessible only on the western
side, where stood the Propylae'a, a magnificent structure of the
Doric order, constructed under the direction of Pericles by the
architect Mnesicles, and which served as the gate as well as
the defence of the Acropolis. But the latter's chief glory was
the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, built in the time of Pericles
by Icti'nus and Callic'rates, and which stood on the highest
point, near the center. It was constructed entirely of the most
beautiful white marble from Mount Pentelicus, and its dimensions
were two hundred and twenty-eight feet by one hundred and two
--having eight Doric columns in each of the two fronts, and
seventeen in each of the sides, and also an interior range of
six columns in each end. The ceiling of the western part of the
main building was supported by four interior columns, and of
the eastern end by sixteen. The entire height of the building
above its platform was sixty-five feet. The whole was enriched
within and without with matchless works of art by various artists
under the direction of Phidias--its chief wonder, however, being
the gold and ivory statue of the Virgin Goddess, the work of
Phidias himself, elsewhere described.

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He wrote it in just three weeks, furiously and loudly tap-tap-tapping away on his typewriter on 12ft long reels of paper so that he did not have to stop, just writing writing writing fuelled only, he said, by coffee…

It became one of the most important American novels of the last century and yesterday the original manuscript - a scroll taped together with eight reels of paper - of Jack Kerouac's On The Road was unfurled in the UK for the first time.
Fifty years after the novel which more or less defined the Beat generation, was published in Britain, the Barber Institute in Birmingham is showing what is now one of the most valuable literary manuscripts in existence as part of its exhibition Jack Kerouac: Back On the Road.

The exhibition's curator Professor Dick Ellis said there had been a lot of competition to get the scroll which is itself spending a lot of time on the move, having toured a string of US cities and hitting the road to Rome once this show is over. "We're very excited indeed," he said. "This is an iconic manuscript. It is a record of the huge effort Kerouac put into composing it. It was 20 days of typing 6,500 words a day, flat out, in spontaneous composition. He wanted to record things with the most possible accuracy using the spontaneous technique. His typewriter became a compositional instrument.

"Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing rather than writing, I would say he was learning the ability of using the typewriter like a jazz instrument, like a saxophone. He also had an incredible memory. And he had great speed at typing, he became a lightning typist. He came to be able to use a typewriter in a way that has not been seen before or since. Kerouac said he wrote fast because the road was fast."

About 22 of the scroll's 120ft will be on display in a specially built cabinet and while visitors will have to slightly tilt their heads, Ellis believes they will get a much deeper knowledge of what Kerouac was all about. It comes to Birmingham courtesy of Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who bought it for $2.4m (£1.6m) in 2001 before agreeing to a tour. Of course, in the published novel, there are paragraph breaks but in the scroll, there are none. Kerouac did not have the time. The exhibition runs until January 28.

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