The Parthenon Frieze, and Other Essays

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1882. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... oidipous tyrannos. That the oldest and most influential university in New England should have brought out, with distinguished success, in her own theatre, an ancient Greek tragedy in the original language, with all the proper equipments of stage, scenery, costume and music, is, in several ways, a most noteworthy event. Educationally considered, it means that the study of ancient Greek, so long a dry, barren encumbrance of the ground, has at last borne fruit, fit to enter as sustenance into the intellectual, moral, and artistic life of the more favoured members of the community. From a literary point of view, it means the revival of an intelligent interest in the robust, earnest, soulstrengthening works of the grand old masters, as opposed to the feeble, pampering, alcoholic love-lore, on which so many mere rhymers and story-tellers nowadays base their lofty titles of poets and men of letters. Lastly, it means that the old supercilious spirit, which regarded paganism as a mere cloud of error, dispelled by the pure light of Christian truth, is giving way to a kindly appreciation of the human as human, of the good and the true, wherever they are found. If such exhibitions are frequently repeated at Cambridge and initiated at other great seats of learning and education, we may hope that in a short time there will issue from our universities a succession of scholarly, philosophical artists, capable of finding for the glad, generous, but only half-grasped ideas, which shape American life, forms as original, perfect, and eternal as those in which Sophokles and his brethren cast the gloomy beliefs that ran through Hellenic life. When that time comes, we shall have a literature as much nobler than that of the Greeks as free love of the good, as good, is nobler than servi...