Greek Literature: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Columbia UniversityColumbia University Press, 1912 - 316 pages |
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Aeneid Aeschines Aeschylus Alcaeus ancient Archilochus Aristophanes Aristotle artistic Athenian Athens Attic Comedy Bacchylides beauty character charm choral chorus Cicero classical comic poets contemporary Demosthenes Dionysus divine drama elegiac elements epic epigram Euripides expression fact fancy feeling fifth century fragments genius gods Greece Greek literature Greek poet Hellenic Hellenistic period hero Herodotus hexameter historian Homer human ideal Iliad Iliad and Odyssey imagination individual influence Isocrates language later Latin literature legends literary lyric Lysias matter Menander ment mime mind modern moral narrative nature never odes orators oratory passion perhaps Pericles philosophy Pindar Plato play plot poems poet's poetic poetry political popular Prometheus prose reader rhetoric Roman Rome Sappho satire says scene scholars seems sense Simonides Socrates song Sophocles soul speech spirit story style theme Theocritus things thought Thucydides tion tradition tragedy translation truth types Vergil verse words writing Zeus
Popular passages
Page 163 - And very likely the strictly historical character of my narrative may be disappointing to the ear. But if he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten.
Page 166 - Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular inquiry.
Page 163 - THUCYDIDES, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war in which the Peloponnesians and the Athenians fought against one another. He began to write when they first took up arms, believing that it would be great and memorable above any previous war. For he argued that both states were then at the full height of their military power, and he saw the rest of the Hellenes either siding or intending to side with one or other of them. No movement ever stirred Hellas more deeply than this; it was shared by...
Page 122 - Will they ever come to me, ever again, The long, long dances, On through the dark till the dim stars wane? Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the stream Of wind in my hair? Shall our white feet gleam In the dim expanses? O feet of the fawn to the greenwood fled, Alone in the grass and the loveliness; Leap of the hunted, no more in dread, Beyond the snares and the deadly press.
Page 164 - For twenty years I was banished from my country after I held the command at Amphipolis, and associating with both sides, with the Peloponnesians quite as much as with the Athenians, because of my exile, I was thus enabled to watch quietly the course of events.
Page 122 - Oh, feet of a fawn to the greenwood fled, Alone in the grass and the loveliness ; Leap of the hunted, no more in dread, Beyond the snares and the deadly press : Yet a voice still in the distance sounds, A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds ; O wildly laboring, fiercely fleet, Onward yet by river and glen.
Page 296 - Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus, orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: 850 tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
Page 31 - My spirit is too weak— mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep That I have not the cloudy winds to keep, Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. Such dim-conceived glories of the brain, Bring round the heart an...
Page 123 - Happy he, on the weary sea, Who hath fled the tempest and won the haven. Happy whoso hath risen, free, Above his striving.
Page 201 - Aristides, who assessed the tribute of the Confederacy, and whose daughters, after his death, were dowered by the state, indignant at the contumely threatened to justice, and asking, " Are you not ashamed ? When Arthmios of Zeleia brought Persian gold to Greece, and visited Athens, our fathers wellnigh put him to death, though he was our public guest, and proclaimed him expelled from...