No More Learning

He has
not that "curious felicity" which makes us linger lovingly over the
very words in which a Plato, a Montaigne, a Burke casts his thought.
Even in the delineation of a great scene, like the defeat at Syracuse
or the downfall of Athens, he is rarely picturesque. He does not
appeal indeed to the youthful imagination, but to the mature judg-
ment. We can well imagine that this calm, even-toned, judicious
voice made itself heard effectively in the debates of the English Com-
mons.
Of course no one man can ever write an ideal history of that
unique, creative, many-sided Hellenic race; but the work of Mr. Grote
is still, a half-century after its creation, indispensable as an account
of political institutions among the Greeks. Even here the thousands
of newly discovered inscriptions, the fortunate reappearance of Aris-
totle's treatise on the Athenian Constitution, and the ceaseless march
of special investigation, make desirable some fresh annotation upon
almost every page. The familiarity with Greek lands and folk which
gives a charm to Professor Curtius's work is missing from Mr. Grote's.
Still more do we miss any warm enthusiasm for Hellenic art, which
was so indispensable an element in their life. Even their literature
is to him less a beautiful organism quivering with life than a source
for more or less accurate information. In this and in many other
respects he is curiously like the Athenian student of history and of
truth, Thucydides, who could write, in the day of Phidias and Sopho-
cles, as if he had never heard of a myth or a statue. It is true
also that Grote is always an English liberal, finding in every page
of history fresh reason for hope and trust in modern democracy.
This indeed we do not regard as adverse criticism at all. If a man


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GEORGE GROTE
6747
be not actually blinded to truth by narrow prejudices, the more
cordially his own convictions color his writings the greater will be
their value and vitality. Posterity will bring more and more human
experience to the interpretation of the remote past. They may yet
understand Periclean Athens, out of their own similar life, infinitely
better than our century could do. Like Chapman's or Pope's Homer,
Grote's Greece may yet have a value of its own, quite apart from the
question of its truthfulness to Hellenic antiquity, as a monument of
Victorian England. To us however it is still the largest, truest,
most adequate general picture yet drawn of Hellas from the days of
Homer to the time of Alexander.
Hardly less intense was Mr. Grote's interest in the Greek philoso-
phy. The chapters on Socrates and on the Sophists are perhaps the
ablest and the most original in the history. Moreover, as soon as
that great work was completed, he began the series of treatises on
the philosophic schools which was an indispensable portion of his
task. The three volumes on 'Plato and his Companions,' however,
did not appear until 1865; and of the great projected work on Aris-
totle, only a small segment took shape before death overtook the
noble, generous old scholar. His wife long survived him, and her
'Personal Life of George Grote,' despite numerous minor lapses of
memory, is one of the most valuable books in its class.
The important article on Mr. Grote in the 'Dictionary of National
Biography,' by Professor Robertson, is based in part on intimate per-
sonal acquaintance. Mr. Grote's minor works are all mentioned there.
Least known of all to the general public is a small volume of poems.
These were printed privately by his widow in 1872, and were chiefly
written during his courtship, which was unduly prolonged and embit-
tered by parental opposition. We intentionally reserve for a final
detail this especially appealing human experience of the statesman,
metaphysician, and historian.
THE DEATH, CHARACTER, AND WORK OF ALEXANDER THE
GREAT
From A History of Greece'
THE
HE intense sorrow felt by Alexander for the death of Hephæs-
tion-not merely an attached friend, but of the same age
and exuberant vigor as himself-laid his mind open to
gloomy forebodings from numerous omens, as well as to jealous.
mistrust even of his oldest officers. Antipater especially, no
longer protected against the calumnies of Olympias by the sup-
port of Hephæstion, fell more and more into discredit; whilst his


## p. 6748 (#124) ###########################################

6748
GEORGE GROTE
son Kassander, who had recently come into Asia with a Mace-
donian reinforcement, underwent from Alexander during irasci-
ble moments much insulting violence. In spite of the dissuasive
warning of the Chaldean priests, Alexander had been persuaded
to distrust their sincerity and had entered Babylon, though not
without hesitation and uneasiness. However, when after having
entered the town he went out of it again safely on his expedition
for the survey of the lower Euphrates, he conceived himself to
have exposed them as deceitful alarmists, and returned to the
city with increased confidence for the obsequies of his deceased
friend.
The sacrifices connected with these obsequies were
on the
most prodigious scale. Victims enough were offered to furnish a
feast for the army, who also received ample distributions of wine.
Alexander presided in person at the feast, and abandoned himself
to conviviality like the rest. Already full of wine, he was per-
suaded by his friend Medius to sup with him, and to pass the
whole night in yet further drinking, with the boisterous indul-
gence called by the Greeks Kômus or Revelry. Having slept off
his intoxication during the next day, he in the evening again
supped with Medius, and spent the second night in the like
unmeasured indulgence. It appears that he already had the seeds
of a fever upon him, which was so fatally aggravated by this
intemperance that he was too ill to return to his palace. He
took the bath, and slept in the house of Medius; on the next
morning he was unable to rise. After having been carried out
on a couch to celebrate sacrifice (which was his daily habit), he
was obliged to lie in bed all day. Nevertheless he summoned
the generals to his presence, prescribing all the details of the
impending expedition, and ordering that the land force should
begin its march on the fourth day following, while the fleet, with
himself aboard, would sail on the fifth day. In the evening he
was carried on a couch across the Euphrates into a garden on
the other side, where he bathed and rested for the night. The
fever still continued, so that in the morning, after bathing and
being carried out to perform the sacrifices, he remained on his
couch all day, talking and playing at dice with Medius; in the
evening he bathed, sacrificed again, and ate a light supper, but
endured a bad night with increased fever. The next two days
passed in the same manner, the fever becoming worse and worse;
nevertheless Alexander still summoned Nearchus to his bedside,


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GEORGE GROTE
6749
discussed with him many points about his maritime projects, and
repeated his order that the fleet should be ready by the third
day. On the ensuing morning the fever was violent; Alexander
reposed all day in a bathing-house in the garden, yet still calling
in the generals to direct the filling up of vacancies among the
officers, and ordering that the armament should be ready to move.
Throughout the two next days his malady became hourly more
aggravated. On the second of the two, Alexander could with
difficulty support the being lifted out of bed to perform the sac-
rifice; even then, however, he continued to give orders to the
generals about the expedition. On the morrow, though desper-
ately ill, he still made the effort requisite for performing the
sacrifice; he was then carried across from the garden-house to
the palace, giving orders that the generals and officers should
remain in permanent attendance in and near the hall. He caused
some of them to be called to his bedside; but though he knew
them perfectly, he had by this time become incapable of utter-
ance. One of his last words spoken is said to have been, on
being asked to whom he bequeathed his kingdom, "To the
strongest;" one of his last acts was to take the signet ring from
his finger, and hand it to Perdikkas.
For two nights and a day he continued in this state, without
either amendment or repose. Meanwhile the news of his mal-
ady had spread through the army, filling them with grief and
consternation. Many of the soldiers, eager to see him once more,
forced their way into the palace and were admitted unarmed.
They passed along by the bedside, with all the demonstrations of
affliction and sympathy; Alexander knew them, and made show
of friendly recognition as well as he could, but was unable to
say a word.
Several of the generals slept in the temple of
Serapis, hoping to be informed by the god in a dream whether
they ought to bring Alexander into it as a suppliant to expe-
rience the divine healing power. The god informed them in
their dream that Alexander ought not to be brought into the tem-
ple; that it would be better for him to be left where he was. In
the afternoon he expired,- June, 323 B. C. ,—after a life of thirty-
two years and eight months, and a reign of twelve years and
eight months.
The death of Alexander, thus suddenly cut off by a fever
in the plenitude of health, vigor, and aspirations, was an event
impressive as well as important in the highest possible degree, to


## p. 6750 (#126) ###########################################

6750
GEORGE GROTE
his contemporaries far and near. When the first report of it was
brought to Athens, the orator Demadês exclaimed, "It cannot be
true: if Alexander were dead, the whole habitable world would
have smelt of his carcass. " This coarse but emphatic comparison.
illustrates the immediate, powerful, and wide-reaching impression
produced by the sudden extinction of the great conqueror. It
was felt by each of the many remote envoys who had so re-
cently come to propitiate this far-shooting Apollo, by every man
among the nations who had sent these envoys, throughout
Europe, Asia, and Africa, as then known,- to affect either his
actual condition or his probable future. The first growth and
development of Macedonia, during the twenty-two years preced-
ing the battle of Chæroneia, from an embarrassed secondary State
into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment
of contemporaries and admiration for Philip's organizing genius.
But the achievements of Alexander during his twelve years of
reign, throwing Philip into the shade, had been on a scale so
much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious re-
verse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure not only
of human expectation, but almost of human belief. The Great
King (as the King of Persia was called by excellence) was and
had long been the type of worldly power and felicity, even down
to the time when Alexander crossed the Hellespont. Within four
years and three months from this event, by one stupendous
defeat after another, Darius had lost all his western empire, and
had become a fugitive eastward of the Caspian Gates, escaping
captivity at the hands of Alexander only to perish by those of
the satrap Bessus. All antecedent historical parallels - the ruin
and captivity of the Lydian Croesus, the expulsion and mean life
of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples
of the mutability of human condition-sank into trifles compared
with the overthrow of this towering Persian Colossus. The orator
Æschinês expressed the genuine sentiment of a Grecian specta-
tor when he exclaimed (in a speech delivered at Athens shortly
before the death of Darius):-"What is there among the list
of strange and unexpected events that has not occurred in our
time? Our lives have transcended the limits of humanity; we
are born to serve as a theme for incredible tales to posterity.
Is not the Persian King, who dug through Athos and bridged
the Hellespont, who demanded earth and water from the Greeks,
who dared to proclaim himself in public epistles master of all
―


## p. 6751 (#127) ###########################################

GEORGE GROTE
6751
mankind from the rising to the setting sun,-is not he now
struggling to the last, not for dominion over others but for the
safety of his own person? "
Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander's career,
even in the middle of 330 B. C. , more than seven years before his
death. During the following seven years his additional achieve-
ments had carried astonishment yet farther. He had mastered,
in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, not merely all the
eastern half of the Persian empire, but unknown Indian regions
beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and
Thrace, he possessed all that immense treasure and military force
which had once rendered the Great King so formidable. By no
contemporary man had any such power ever been known or con-
ceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were
doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian
spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxês when they
beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.
Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the
time of his death little more than thirty-two years old—the age
at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important com-
mands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome; two
years younger than the age at which Timour first acquired the
crown and began his foreign conquests. His extraordinary bodily
powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military
experience; and what was still more important, his appetite for
further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase
it at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete, as it had
been when he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past
career had been, his future achievements, with such increased
means and experience, were likely to be yet greater. His ambi-
tion would have been satisfied with nothing less than the con-
quest of the whole habitable world as then known; and if his
life had been prolonged, he would probably have accomplished it.
Nowhere (so far as our knowledge reaches) did there reside any
military power capable of making head against him; nor were
his soldiers, when he commanded them, daunted or baffled by
any extremity of cold, heat, or fatigue. The patriotic feelings of
Livy disposed him to maintain that Alexander, had he invaded
Italy and assailed Romans or Samnites, would have failed and
perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclus-
ion cannot be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline
of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry


## p. 6752 (#128) ###########################################

6752
GEORGE GROTE
of Alexander's army, the same cannot be said of the Roman
cavalry as compared with the Macedonian Companions. Still less
is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have
been found a match for Alexander in military genius and com-
binations; nor, even if personally equal, would he have pos-
sessed the same variety of troops and arms, - each effective in
its separate way and all conspiring to one common purpose,
nor the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulat-
ing them to full effort. I do not think that even the Romans
could have successfully resisted Alexander the Great; though it
is certain that he never throughout all his long marches encoun-
tered such enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and
Lucanians-combining courage, patriotism, discipline, with effect-
ive arms both for defense and for close combat.
Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest
military excellence either as a general or as a soldier, none was
wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own
chivalrous courage,—sometimes indeed both excessive and un-
seasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be
fairly imputed to him,- we trace in all his operations the most
careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in
guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in
adapting himself to new contingencies. Amidst constant success,
these precautionary combinations were never discontinued. His
achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific
military organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming
effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any
other personage of antiquity, by the matchless development of all
that constitutes effective force, as an individual warrior, and
as organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind
impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Arês, but also the intelligent,
methodized, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in
Athênê. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against
enemies; in which category indeed were numbered all mankind,
known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him.
In his Indian campaigns, amidst tribes of utter strangers, we
perceive that not only those who stand on their defense, but also
those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains, are
alike pursued and slaughtered.
a sol-
Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as
dier and a general, some authors give him credit for grand and
beneficent views on the subject of imperial government, and for


## p. 6753 (#129) ###########################################

GEORGE GROTE
6753
I
intentions highly favorable to the improvement of mankind.
see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can vent-
ure to anticipate what would have been Alexander's future, we
see nothing in prospect except years of ever-repeated aggression
and conquest, not to be concluded until he had traversed and
subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal
dominion conceived not metaphorically but literally, and con-
ceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geo-
graphical knowledge of the time-was the master passion of his
soul. At the moment of his death he was commencing fresh
aggression in the south against the Arabians, to an indefinite
extent; while his vast projects against the western tribes in
Africa and Europe, as far as the Pillars of Hêraklês, were con-
signed in the orders and memoranda confidentially communicated
to Kraterus. Italy, Gaul, and Spain would have been successively
attacked and conquered; the enterprises proposed to him when
in Baktria by the Chorasmian prince Pharasmanês, but postponed
then until a more convenient season, would have been next taken
up, and he would have marched from the Danube northward,
round the Euxine and Palus Mæotis, against the Scythians and
the tribes of Caucasus. There remained moreover the Asiatic
regions east of the Hyphasis, which his soldiers had refused to
enter upon, but which he certainly would have invaded at a
future opportunity, were it only to efface the poignant humilia-
tion of having been compelled to relinquish his proclaimed pur-
pose. Though this sounds like romance and hyperbole, it was
nothing more than the real insatiate aspiration of Alexander, who
looked upon every new acquisition mainly as a capital for acquir
ing more: "You are a man like all of us, Alexander" (said the
naked Indian to him), "except that you abandon your home like
a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions;
enduring hardship yourself and inflicting hardship upon others. "
Now, how an empire thus boundless and heterogeneous, such as
no prince has ever yet realized, could have been administered.
with any superior advantages to subjects, it would be difficult to
show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining, of keeping
satraps and tribute gatherers in authority as well as in subordi-
nation, of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions.
distant by months of march, would occupy the whole life of a
world-conqueror, without leaving any leisure for the improve-
ments suited to peace and stability, if we give him credit for
such purposes in theory.
XII-423


## p. 6754 (#130) ###########################################

6754
GEORGE GROTE
But even this last is more than can be granted. Alexander's
acts indicate that he desired nothing better than to take up the
traditions of the Persian empire: a tribute-levying and army-
levying system, under Macedonians in large proportion as his
instruments, yet partly also under the very same Persians who
had administered before, provided they submitted to him. It has
indeed been extolled among his merits that he was thus willing to
reappoint Persian grandees (putting their armed force, however,
under the command of a Macedonian officer), and to continue
native princes in their dominions, if they did willing homage
to him as tributary subordinates. But all this had been done
before him by the Persian kings, whose system it was to leave
the conquered princes undisturbed, subject only to the payment
of tribute, and to the obligation of furnishing a military contin-
gent when required. In like manner Alexander's Asiatic empire
would thus have been composed of an aggregate of satrapies
and dependent principalities, furnishing money and soldiers; in
other respects left to the discretion of local rule, with occasional
extreme inflictions of punishment, but no systematic examination
or control. Upon this, the condition of Asiatic empire in all
ages, Alexander would have grafted one special improvement:
the military organization of the empire, feeble under the Achæ-
menid princes, would have been greatly strengthened by his
genius and by the able officers formed in his school, both for
foreign aggression and for home control.
In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander
was Hellenic to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose,
no one could be less Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental
violence of impulse, unmeasured self-will, and exaction of rever-
ence above the limits of humanity, have been already recounted.
To describe him as a son of Hellas, imbued with the political
maxims of Aristotle and bent on the systematic diffusion of
Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind, is in my
judgment an estimate of his character contrary to the evidence.
Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aris-
totle as to the best mode of colonizing; but his temper altered
so much after a few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not
only to lose all deference for Aristotle's advice, but even to hate
him bitterly. Moreover, though the philosopher's full sugges-
tions have not been preserved, yet we are told generally that he
recommended Alexander to behave to the Greeks as a leader or
president, or limited chief, and to the Barbarians (non-Hellenes) as


## p. 6755 (#131) ###########################################

GEORGE GROTE
6755
a master; a distinction substantially coinciding with that pointed
out by Burke in his speeches at the beginning of the American
war, between the principles of government proper to be followed
by England in the American colonies and in British India. No
Greek thinker believed the Asiatics to be capable of that free
civil polity upon which the march of every Grecian community
was based. Aristotle did not wish to degrade the Asiatics below
the level to which they had been accustomed, but rather to pre-
serve the Greeks from being degraded to the same level. Now,
Alexander recognized no such distinction as that drawn by his
preceptor. He treated Greeks and Asiatics alike, not by ele-
vating the latter but by degrading the former. Though he
employed all indiscriminately as instruments, yet he presently
found the free speech of Greeks, and even of Macedonians, so dis-
tasteful and offensive that his preferences turned more and more
in favor of the servile Asiatic sentiment and customs. Instead
of Hellenizing Asia, he was tending to Asiatize Macedonia and
Hellas. His temper and character, as modified by a few years of
conquest, rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recom-
mended by Aristotle towards the Greeks; quite as unfit as any
of the Persian kings, or as the French Emperor Napoleon, to
endure that partial frustration, compromise, and smart from free
criticism, which is inseparable from the position of a limited.
chief. Among a multitude of subjects more diverse-colored than
even the army of Xerxês, it is quite possible that he might have
turned his power towards the improvement of the rudest por-
tions. We are told (though the fact is difficult to credit, from
his want of time) that he abolished various barbarisms of the
Hyrkanians, Arachosians, and Sogdians. But Macedonians as
well as Greeks would have been pure losers by being absorbed
into an immense Asiatic aggregate.
This process of Hellenizing Asia,— in so far as Asia was ever
Hellenized, which has often been ascribed to Alexander, was
in reality the work of the Diadochi who came after him; though
his conquests doubtless opened the door and established the mili-
tary ascendency which rendered such a work practicable. The
position, the aspirations, and the interests of these Diadochi-
Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleukus, Lysimachus, etc. - were materially
different from those of Alexander. They had neither appetite.
nor means for new and remote conquest; their great rivalry was
with each other; each sought to strengthen himself near home


## p. 6756 (#132) ###########################################

6756
GEORGE GROTE
against the rest. It became a matter of fashion and pride with
them, not less than of interest, to found new cities immortalizing
their family names. These foundations were chiefly made in the
regions of Asia near and known to Greeks, where Alexander
had planted none. Thus the great and numerous foundations of
Seleukus Nikator and his successors covered Syria, Mesopotamia,
and parts of Asia Minor. All these regions were known to
Greeks, and more or less tempting to new Grecian immigrants,
not out of reach or hearing of the Olympic and other festivals
as the Jaxartês and the Indus were. In this way a considerable
influx of new Hellenic blood was poured into Asia during the
century succeeding Alexander; probably in great measure from
Italy and Sicily, where the condition of the Greek cities became.
more and more calamitous, besides the numerous Greeks who
took service as individuals under these Asiatic kings. Greeks,
and Macedonians speaking Greek, became predominant, if not in
numbers at least in importance, throughout most of the cities in
western Asia. In particular, the Macedonian military organiza-
tion, discipline, and administration were maintained systematically
among these Asiatic kings. In the account of the battle of Mag-
nesia, fought by the Seleukid king Antiochus the Great against
the Romans in 190 B. C. , the Macedonian phalanx, constituting
the main force of his Asiatic army, appears in all its complete-
ness, just as it stood under Philip and Perseus in Macedonia
itself.
Moreover, besides this, there was the still more important fact
of the many new cities founded in Asia by the Seleukidæ and
the other contemporary kings. Each of these cities had a con-
siderable infusion of Greek and Macedonian citizens among the
native Orientals located here, often brought by compulsion from
neighboring villages. In what numerical ratio these two elements
of the civic population stood to each other, we cannot say. But
the Greeks and Macedonians were the leading and active portion,
who exercised the greatest assimilating force, gave imposing
effect to the public manifestations of religion, had wider views
and sympathies, dealt with the central government, and carried
on that contracted measure of municipal autonomy which the city
was permitted to retain. In these cities the Greek inhabitants,
though debarred from political freedom, enjoyed a range of social
activity suited to their tastes. In each, Greek was the language
of public business and dealing; each formed a centre of attraction.


## p. 6757 (#133) ###########################################

GEORGE GROTE
6757
and commerce for an extensive neighborhood; altogether, they
were the main Hellenic or quasi-Hellenic element in Asia under
the Greco-Asiatic kings, as contrasted with the rustic villages,
where native manners and probably native speech still continued
with little modification. But the Greeks of Antioch, or Alexan-
dria, or Seleukeia, were not like citizens of Athens or Thebes,
nor even like men of Tarentum or Ephesus. While they com-
municated their language to Orientals, they became themselves
substantially Orientalized. Their feelings, judgments, and habits
of action ceased to be Hellenic. Polybius, when he visited Alex-
andria, looked with surprise and aversion on the Greeks there
resident, though they were superior to the non-Hellenic popula-
tion, whom he considered worthless. Greek social habits, festi-
vals, and legends passed with the Hellenic settlers into Asia; all
becoming amalgamated and transformed so as to suit a new
Asiatic abode. Important social and political consequences turned
upon the diffusion of the language, and upon the establishment
of such a common medium of communication throughout western
Asia. But after all, the Hellenized Asiatic was not so much a
Greek as a foreigner with Grecian speech, exterior varnish, and
superficial manifestations; distinguished fundamentally from those
Greek citizens with whom the present history has been concerned.
So he would have been considered by Sophoklês, by Thucydidês,
by Sokratês.
We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension
of science that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of eight
hundred talents in money, placing under his directions several
thousand men, for the purpose of prosecuting zoölogical re-
searches. These exaggerations are probably the work of those
enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of
the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and
Alexander in the early part of his reign, may have helped Aris-
totle in the difficult process of getting together facts and speci-
mens for observation, from esteem towards him personally rather
than from interest in his discoveries. The intellectual turn of
Alexander was towards literature, poetry, and history.
He was
fond of the Iliad especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians;
so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in
Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various trage-
dies of Eschylus, Sophoklês, and Euripidês, with the dithyrambic
poems of Telestês and the histories of Phlistus.


## p. 6758 (#134) ###########################################

6758
GEORGE GROTE
THE RISE OF CLEON
From the History of Greece ›
UN
NDER the great increase of trade and population in Athens.
and Peiræus during the last forty years, a new class of
politicians seem to have grown up, men engaged in various
descriptions of trade and manufacture, who began to rival more
or less in importance the ancient families of Attic proprietors.
This change was substantially analogous to that which took place
in the cities of medieval Europe, when the merchants and traders
of the various guilds gradually came to compete with, and ulti-
mately supplanted, the patrician families in whom the supremacy
had originally resided. In Athens, persons of ancient family and
station enjoyed at this time no political privilege; and since the
reforms of Ephialtês and Periklês, the political constitution had
become thoroughly democratical. But they still continued to form
the two highest classes in the Solonian census founded on prop-
erty, the pentakosiomedimni, and the hippeis or knights.
An individual Athenian of this class, though without any legal
title to preference, yet when he stood forward as candidate for
political influence, continued to be decidedly preferred and wel-
comed by the social sentiment at Athens, which preserved in its
spontaneous sympathies distinctions effaced from the political code.
Besides this place ready prepared for him in the public sympathy,
especially advantageous at the outset of political life, he found
himself further borne up by the family connections, associations,
and political clubs, etc. , which exercised very great influence both
on the politics and the judicature of Athens, and of which he
became a member as a matter of course. Such advantages were
doubtless only auxiliary, carrying a man up to a certain point of
influence, but leaving him to achieve the rest by his own per-
sonal qualities and capacity. But their effect was nevertheless
very real, and those who, without possessing them, met and buf-
feted him in the public assembly, contended against great disad-
vantages. A person of such low or middling station obtained no
favorable presumptions or indulgence on the part of the public
to meet him half-way; nor had he established connections to
encourage first successes, or help him out of early scrapes. He
found others already in possession of ascendency, and well dis-
posed to keep down new competitors; so that he had to win his
―――
1


## p. 6759 (#135) ###########################################

GEORGE GROTE
6759
own way unaided, from the first step to the last, by qualities
personal to himself: by assiduity of attendance, by acquaintance
with business, by powers of striking speech, and withal by un-
flinching audacity, indispensable to enable him to bear up against
that opposition and enmity which he would incur from the high-
born politicians and organized party clubs, as soon as he appeared
to be rising up into ascendency.
The free march of political and judicial affairs raised up
several such men, during the years beginning and immediately
preceding the Peloponnesian War. Even during the lifetime of
Periklês they appear to have arisen in greater or less numbers:
but the personal ascendency of that great man-who combined
an aristocratical position with a strong and genuine democratical
sentiment, and an enlarged intellect rarely found attached to
either-impressed a peculiar character on Athenian politics. The
Athenian world was divided into his partisans and his oppo-
nents, among each of whom there were individuals high-born and
low-born-though the aristocratical party properly so called, the
majority of wealthy and high-born Athenians, either opposed or
disliked him. It is about two years after his death that we begin
to hear of a new class of politicians.
Among them all,
the most distinguished was Kleon, son of Kleænetus.
Kleon acquired his first importance among the speakers against
Periklês, so that he would thus obtain for himself, during his
early political career, the countenance of the numerous and aris-
tocratical anti-Perikleans. He is described by Thucydidês in gen-
eral terms as a person of the most violent temper and character
in Athens,—as being dishonest in his calumnies and virulent in
his invective and accusation. Aristophanês in his comedy of
'The Knights' reproduces these features, with others new and dis-
tinct, as well as with exaggerated details, comic, satirical, and
contemptuous. His comedy depicts Kleon in the point of view
in which he would appear to the knights of Athens: a leather-
dresser, smelling of the tan-yard; a low-born brawler, terrifying
opponents by the violence of his criminations, the loudness of his
voice, the impudence of his gestures, moreover, as venal in
his politics, threatening men with accusations and then receiving
money to withdraw them; a robber of the public treasury, per-
secuting merit as well as rank, and courting the favor of the
assembly by the basest and most guilty cajolery. The general
attributes set forth by Thucydidês (apart from Aristophanês, who
•


## p. 6760 (#136) ###########################################

6760
GEORGE GROTE
does not profess to write history), we may well accept: the pow-
erful and violent invective of Kleon, often dishonest, together
with his self-confidence and audacity in the public assembly.
Men of the middling class, like Kleon and Hyperbolus, who per-
severed in addressing the public assembly and trying to take a
leading part in it against persons of greater family pretension
than themselves, were pretty sure to be men of more than usual
audacity. Had they not possessed this quality, they would never
have surmounted the opposition made to them; we may well
believe that they had it to a displeasing excess—and even if
they had not, the same measure of self-assumption which in
Alkibiadês would be tolerated from his rank and station, would
in them pass for insupportable impudence. Unhappily, we have
no specimens to enable us to appreciate the invective of Kleon.
We cannot determine whether it was more virulent than that of
Demosthenes and Eschinês, seventy years afterwards, each of
those eminent orators imputing to the other the grossest impu-
dence, calumny, perjury, corruption, loud voice, and revolting
audacity of manner, in language which Kleon can hardly have
surpassed in intensity of vituperation, though he doubtless fell
immeasurably short of it in classical finish. Nor can we even
tell in what degree Kleon's denunciations of the veteran Periklês
were fiercer than those memorable invectives against the old age
of Sir Robert Walpole, with which Lord Chatham's political career
opened.
had grown
His personal hold on the public assembly
into a sort of ascendency which Thucydidês describes by saying
that Kleon was "at that time by far the most persuasive speaker
in the eyes of the people. " The fact of Kleon's great power of
speech, and his capacity of handling public business in a popular
manner, is better attested than anything else respecting him,
because it depends upon two witnesses both hostile to him,-
Thucydidês and Aristophanês. The assembly and the dikastery
were Kleon's theatre and holding-ground: for the Athenian people
taken collectively in their place of meeting, and the Athenian
people taken individually, were not always the same person and
had not the same mode of judgment; Demos sitting in the Pnyx
was a different man from Demos at home. The lofty combination
of qualities possessed by Periklês exercised ascendency over both
one and the other; but the qualities of Kleon swayed considerably
the former without standing high in the esteem of the latter.


## p. 6761 (#137) ###########################################

6761
EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
(1805-1848)
(1810-1839)
F THIS remarkable brother and sister might have been written
the words: "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives,
and in their death they were not divided. " "We were,"
says Eugénie, "two eyes looking out of one head. " Their history as
well as their literary work is left in the form of Journals and Letters.
Not written for publication, these are most intimate records of their
characters and spirits.
Eugénie and Georges Maurice de Guérin were born in the old
château of Cayly, Languedoc, of a noble but impoverished family;
Eugénie, the eldest of four children, in 1805, and Maurice, the young-
est, August 5th, 1810. On the death of their mother, Eugénie as-
sumed care of the delicate brother to whom her life was thenceforth
devoted. To a desolate home where sorrow and an austere religion
held sway, the morbid note of Maurice's impressionable nature must
be attributed. He went to school in Toulouse, spent five years in
college, joined in 1832 the famous Lamennais in his monastic retreat
at La Chênaie, and finally went to Paris to seek fame by literary
work. Here he taught, wrote, and married, dying at the early age
of twenty-nine on July 19th, 1839. In 1840 Madame George Sand
brought out in the Revue des Deux Mondes his principal composition,
'Le Centaur. '
Maurice was a dreamer from his infancy, possessed of a melancholy
spirit and a wonderful insight into nature's physical and mystical
beauties. "He has a truly interpretative faculty," says Matthew Ar-
nold: "the most profound and delicate sense of the life of nature, and
the most exquisite felicity in finding expressions to render that sense. "
We may divide his life into two periods: the first under the influ-
ence of Lamennais at La Chênaie, where so much of his 'Journal'
was written; and the second in Paris, where he soon became, Sainte-
Beuve tells us, "a man of the world, elegant, even fashionable; a con-
versationalist who could hold his own against the most brilliant
talkers of Paris. " To the first period belongs the greater part of his
'Journal,' upon which, with the Centaur,' his fame rests; for his
verses possess little value. Of the suggestions of landscapes in the
'Journal' Sainte-Beuve says:-"They are delicate; they are felt and


## p. 6762 (#138) ###########################################

6762
EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
painted at the same time: they are painted from near by on the spot,
according to nature, but without crudeness. There is no trace of the
palette. The colors have their original freshness and truth, and also
a certain tenderness. They have passed into the mirror of the inner
man, and are seen by reflection. One finds in them, above all, ex-
pression; and they breathe the very soul of things. "
Maurice de Guérin describes his own life as "made up of serious
projects ever changing, and of permanent but idle dreams; of long
intoxications of the fancy, and of almost absurd contests between my
will and my soul, which is independent and as light in flight as a
wild creature; while in the most sensitive and hidden depths of my
being there is always acute suffering or dull discomfort, according as
the disorder increases or diminishes. " Here then he gives us the key-
note to his life and writings,-morbid introspection combined with a
rare poetic fancy; and it is largely owing to this combination that
the Journal' is an interesting psychological study.
'The Centaur' was suggested by a visit to the Musée des Antiques
with his friend Trébutien, and is masterly in its conception of that
strange imaginative borderland between animal and human life. This
being, partaking equally of both these lives, is supposed to stand in
his melancholy old age on the summit of a mountain, while he
relates to an inquisitive mortal the history of his youth.
Sainte-Beuve considers Eugénie de Guérin of equal rank with her
brother; but Matthew Arnold in his Essays in Criticism' says that
Eugénie's words "are but intellectual signs, not symbols of nature like
Maurice's. They bring the notion of the thing described to the mind;
they do not bring the feeling of it to the imagination. "
The literary interest in Eugénie centres also in her 'Journal. '
Her life was passed at La Cayla, in the simple routine of household
duties and neighborhood charities. Once only she went to Paris, on
the occasion of her brother's marriage. She was intensely religious,
and spent much time in prayer, meditation, and preparation for
death.
Despite her pleasure in the beauty of nature and in the trivial
incidents of her daily life, she was subject to the moods of morbid
depression noted in Maurice. She condemns this, calling it languor,
ennui, or weariness. Of course the Roman Catholic Eugénie de
Guérin is ignorant of Puritan dogma; but allowing for her poetic
temperament and tenderness, her rigid asceticism is strangely identi-
cal with Puritanism. Everything that gives her pleasure seems to
her self-indulgent, even writing. She says, "I have renounced
poetry because I have seen that God did not ask it of me; but the
sacrifice has been so much the more painful, as in abandoning poetry,
poetry has not abandoned me. " Again she writes:-
-


## p. 6763 (#139) ###########################################

EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
6763
"Shall I tell you why I gave up the journal? Because I find the time lost
that I spend in writing. We owe an account of our minutes to God; and is it
not making a bad use of them to employ them in tracing the days that are
departing? Would to God that my thoughts, my spirit, had never taken their
flight beyond the narrow round in which it is my lot to live! In spite of all
that people say to the contrary, I feel that I cannot go beyond my needle-
work and my spinning without going too far; I feel it, I believe it: well then,
I will keep in my proper sphere; however much I am tempted, my spirit shall
not be allowed to occupy itself with great matters until it occupies itself with
them in heaven. »
And Maurice writes:-
:-
"So long as the wind wafts me from time to time whiffs of wild fragrance,
and my ear catches distant accents of the melodies of nature, what shall I
have to regret? Does the spider, which at evening-tide hangs suspended on
its thread between two leaves, concern itself with the flight of the eagle and
the pinions of the birds? And does the imagination of the bird, as it broods
over its nestlings well sheltered beneath some bush, regret the caprices of its
liberty and the soft undulations of its flight through the airy heights? Never
have I had the freedom of the bird, nor has my thought ever been as happy
as its wings; then let us fall asleep in resignation, as does the bird in its nest. »
Maurice was the one thought of Eugénie's life, and all her Jour-
nal' is addressed to him. Two days after his death she writes:-
"No, my dear, death shall not part us, shall not remove you from
my thoughts. Death only separates our bodies; the soul instead of
being there is in heaven, and the change of abodes takes nothing
away from its affections. Far from it; I trust one loves better in
heaven, where all becomes Divine. " Determined that the world
should know Maurice, she wrote to his friends and prepared a memoir
for his works; yet she died on May 31st, 1848, before their publica-
tion. Sainte-Beuve made her the subject of a 'Causerie de Lundi,'
and Trébutien published her 'Reliquæ' at Caen (1855). In 1862 this
tribute appeared for public circulation, was crowned by the French
Academy, and passed through sixteen editions in eight months.
-
FROM THE JOURNAL OF EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN
CHR
HRISTMAS is Come; the beautiful festival, the one I love most,
that gives me the same joy that it gave the shepherds of
Bethlehem. In real truth, one's whole soul sings with joy
at this beautiful coming of God upon earth,- a coming which
here is announced on all sides of us by music and by our charm-
ing nadalet. Nothing at Paris can give you a notion of what
*
* Chimes.


## p. 6764 (#140) ###########################################

6764
EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
Christmas is with us. You have not even the midnight mass.
We all of us went to it, papa at our head, on the most perfect
night possible. Never was there a finer sky than ours was that
midnight; so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing back the
hood of his cloak, that he might look up at the sky. The ground
was white with hoar-frost, but we were not cold; besides, the air,
as we met it, was warmed by the bundles of blazing torchwood
which our servants carried in front of us to light us on our way.
It was delightful, I do assure you; and I should like you to have
seen us there on our road to church, in those lanes with the
bushes along their banks as white as if they were in flower.
The hoar-frost makes the most lovely flowers. We saw a long
spray, so beautiful that we wanted to take it with us as a gar-
land for the communion table, but it melted in our hands: all
flowers fade so soon! I was very sorry about my garland; it
was mournful to see it drip away, and get smaller and smaller
every minute.
Он, ноw pleasant it is, when the rain is dropping from the
sky with a soft sound, to sit by one's fire, holding the tongs and
making sparks! That was my pastime just now; I am fond of
it: the sparks are so pretty; they are the flowers of the hearth.
Verily, charming things take place in the embers, and when I
am not busy I am amused with the phantasmagoria of the fire-
place. There are a thousand little forms in the ashes that come
and go, grow bigger, change, and vanish,-sometimes angels,
horned demons, children, old women, butterflies, dogs, sparrows,
everything, may be seen under the logs. I remember a figure
with an air of heavenly suffering, that seemed to me what a
soul might be in purgatory. I was struck, and wished an artist
had been near me: never was vision more perfect. Watch the
embers, and you will agree that there are beautiful things there,
and that unless one was blind one need never be weary by the
fire. Be sure you listen to the little whistling that comes out
of the embers like a voice of song. Nothing can be sweeter
or purer; it is like the singing of some tiny spirit of the fire.
These, my dear, are my evenings and their delights; add sleep,
which is not the slightest.
You will like to hear that I have just passed a nice quarter
of an hour on the terrace steps, sitting by a poor old woman who


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EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
6765
was singing me a lamentable ballad on an incident that once
happened at Cahuzac. It was apropos of a gold cross that was
stolen off the Holy Virgin's neck. The old woman recollects her
grandmother's telling her she had heard that there had been a
still more sacrilegious robbery in the same church; namely, of
the Host itself, one day when it was left alone in the chancel.
It was a girl, who while everybody was at harvest went to the
altar, and climbing upon it, put the monstrance into her apron
and placed it under a wild rose in the wood. The shepherds who
found it accused her, and nine priests came in procession to adore
the Holy Sacrament of the rose-bush and carry it back to the
wood; but the poor shepherdess was taken, tried, and condemned
to be burned. Just before her death she asked to confess, and
owned her theft to the priest; saying that she was not a thief,
but she wanted to have the Holy Sacrament in the forest: "I
thought that le bon Dieu would be as well pleased under a rose-
bush as on an altar! " At these words an angel descended from
heaven to announce her pardon and console the guilty saint, who
nevertheless was burned on a pile of which the wild rose formed
the first fagot! There is the story of the beggar, to whom I
listened as to a nightingale. I thanked her heartily and offered
her something as a recompense for her ditty, but she would only
take flowers: "Give me a bough of that beautiful lilac. " I gave
her four, as large as plumes, and the poor creature went off, her
stick in one hand and her nosegay in the other, and left me her
ballad.
NEVER have I seen a more beautiful effect of light on the
paper. But does not God make beauty for all the world? All
our birds were singing this morning whilst I was praying. The
accompaniment delights, though it distracts me. I stop to listen.
Then I resume with the thought that the birds and I are carol-
ing our hymns to God; and these little creatures sing, perhaps,
better than I. But the charm of prayer, the charm of communion
with God, they cannot taste: we must have a soul to feel that.
I have this happiness above theirs.
To-day, and now for a long time, I am tranquil: peace in
head and heart; a state of grace for which I bless God. My
window is open.
How calm it is! All the little noises outside
come to me. I love that of the stream. Now I hear a church
clock and the little pendule which answers it. This sound of


## p. 6766 (#142) ###########################################

6766
EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
hours in the distance and in the room has in the night some-
thing mysterious. I think of the Trappists who wake to pray,
of the sick who count all the hours of their suffering, of the
afflicted who weep, of the dead who sleep still and frozen in
their beds.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
T HAS just been raining. Nature is fresh and radiant; the earth
seems to taste with rapture the water which brings it life.
One would say that the throats of the birds had also been
refreshed by the rain; their song is purer, more vivacious, more
brilliant, and vibrates wonderfully in the air, which has become
more sonorous and resounding. The nightingales, the bullfinches,
the blackbirds, the thrushes, the golden orioles, the finches, the
wrens, all these sing and rejoice. A goose, shrieking like a trum-
pet, adds by contrast to the charm. The motionless trees seem
to listen to all these sounds. Innumerable apple-trees in full bloom
look like balls of snow in the distance; the cherry-trees, all white
as well, rise like pyramids or spread out like fans of flowers.
The birds seem at times to aim at those orchestral effects when
all the instruments are blended in a mass of harmony. Would
that we could identify ourselves with spring; that we could go
so far as to believe that in ourselves breathe all the life and all
the love that ferment in nature; hat we could feel ours es to
be at the same time verdure, bird, song, freshness, elasticity,
rapture, serenity! What then should I become? There are mo-
ments when by dint of concentrating ourselves upon this idea
and gazing fixedly on nature, we fancy that we experience some-
thing like this.
Nothing can more faithfully represent this state of the soul
than the shades of evening, falling at this very moment. Gray
clouds just edged with silver cover the whole face of the sky.
The sun, which set but a few moments ago, has left behind light
enough to temper for a while the black shadows, and to soften.
in a measure the fall of night. The winds are hushed, and the
peaceful ocean, as I come to listen on the threshold of the door,
sends me only a melodious murmur which softly spreads over
the soul like a beautiful wave over the beach. The birds, the
first to feel the influence of the night, fly toward the woods, and


## p. 6767 (#143) ###########################################

EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
6767
their wings rustle in the clouds. The coppice, which covers the
entire slope of the hill of Le Val, and resounds all day long with
the chirps of the wren, the gay whistle of the woodpecker, and
the various notes of a multitude of birds, has no more a sound
along its path or within its thickets, unless it be the shrill call
of the blackbirds as they play together and chase one another,
after the other birds have hidden their heads under their wings.
The noise of men, always the last to become silent, gradually
dies away over the face of the fields. The general uproar ceases,
and not a sound is heard except from the towns and hamlets,
where, far into the night, the children cry and the dogs bark.
Silence enwraps me; all things yearn for rest except my pen,
which disturbs perchance the slumber of some living atom asleep
in the folds of my note-book, for it makes its little sound as it
writes these idle thoughts. Then let it cease; for what I write,
have written, and shall write will never be worth the sleep of a
single atom.
THE THOUGHTS OF MACAREUS
From The Centaur,' by Maurice de Guérin
I
HAD my birth in the caves of these mountains. Like the
stream of this valley, whose first drops trickle from some
weeping rock in a deep cavern, the first moment of my life
fell in the darkness of a remote abode, and without breaking
the silence. When our mothers draw near to the time of their
delivery, they withdraw to the caverns, and in the depth of the
loneliest of them, in the thickest of its gloom, bring forth, with-
out uttering a plaint, offspring silent as themselves. Their puis-
sant milk makes us surmount without weakness or dubious
struggle the first difficulties of life; and yet we leave our cav-
erns later than you your cradles. The reason is, that we have
a doctrine that the early days of existence should be kept apart
and enshrouded, as days filled with the presence of the gods.
Nearly the whole term of my growth was passed in the dark-
ness where I was born. The recesses of my dwelling ran so far
under the mountain that I should not have known on which side
was the exit, had not the winds, when they sometimes made.
their way through the opening, sent fresh airs in, and a sudden
trouble. Sometimes too my mother came back to me, having


## p. 6768 (#144) ###########################################

6768
EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
about her the odors of the valleys, or streaming from the waters
which were her haunt. Her returning thus, without a word said
of the valleys or the rivers, but with the emanations from them.
hanging about her, troubled my spirit, and I moved up and
down restlessly in my darkness. "What is it," I cried, "this
outside world whither my mother is borne; and what reigns
there in it so potent as to attract her so often? " At these
moments my own force began to make me unquiet. I felt in it
a power which could not remain idle; and betaking myself either
to toss my arms, or to gallop backward and forward in the
spacious darkness of the cavern, I tried to make out, from the
blows which I dealt in the empty space or from the transport
of my course through it, in what direction my arms were meant
to reach or my feet to bear me. Since that day I have wound
my arms round the busts of centaurs, and round the bodies of
heroes, and round the trunks of oaks; my hands have essayed
the rocks, the waters, plants without number, and the subtlest
impressions of the air,-for I uplift them in the dark and still
nights to catch the breaths of wind, and to draw signs whereby
I may augur my road; my feet-look, O Melampus, how worn
they are! And yet, all benumbed as I am in this extremity of
age, there are days when in broad sunlight on the mountain-
tops I renew these gallopings of my youth in the cavern, and
with the same object, brandishing my arms and employing all
the fleetness which yet is left to me.
O Melampus, thou who wouldst know the life of the centaurs,
wherefore have the gods willed that thy steps should lead thee
to me, the oldest and most forlorn of them all?
It is long
since I have ceased to practice any part of their life. I quit no
more this mountain summit, to which age has confined me. The
point of my arrows now serves me only to uproot some tough-
fibred plant; the tranquil lakes know me still, but the rivers have
forgotten me. I will tell thee a little of my youth; but these
recollections, issuing from a worn memory, come like the drops
of a niggardly libation poured from a damaged urn.
The course of my youth was rapid and full of agitation.
Movement was my life, and my steps knew no bound.
One day
when I was following the course of a valley seldom entered by
the centaurs, I discovered a man making his way up the stream-
side on the opposite bank. He was the first whom my eyes had
lighted on: I despised him. "Behold," I cried, "at the utmost


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EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
6769
but the half of what I am! How short are his steps! and his
movement how full of labor! Doubtless he is a centaur over-
thrown by the gods, and reduced by them to drag himself along
thus. "
Wandering along at my own will like the rivers, feeling
wherever I went the presence of Cybele, whether in the bed of
the valleys or on the height of the mountains, I bounded whither
I would, like a blind and chainless life. But when Night, filled
with the charm of the gods, overtook me on the slopes of the
mountain, she guided me to the mouth of the caverns, and there
tranquillized me as she tranquillizes the billows of the sea.
Stretched across the threshold of my retreat, my flanks hidden
within the cave and my head under the open sky, I watched
the spectacle of the dark. The sea gods, it is said, quit during
the hours of darkness their palaces under the deep; they seat
themselves on the promontories, and their eyes wander over the
expanse of the waves. Even so I kept watch, having at my feet
an expanse of life like the hushed sea. My regards had free
range, and traveled to the most distant points. Like sea-beaches
which never lose their wetness, the line of mountains to the
west retained the imprint of gleams not perfectly wiped out by
the shadows. In that quarter still survived, in pale clearness,
mountain summits bare and pure. There I beheld at one time
the god Pan descend, ever solitary; at another, the choir of the
mystic divinities; or I saw pass some mountain nymph charm-
struck by the Night. Sometimes the eagles of Mount Olympus
traversed the upper sky, and were lost to view among the far-off
constellations, or in the shade of the dreaming forests.
Thou pursuest after wisdom, O Melampus, which is the science
of the will of the gods; and thou roamest from people to people
like a mortal driven by the Destinies. In the times when I
kept my night watches before the caverns, I have sometimes
believed that I was about to surprise the thought of the sleep-
ing Cybele, and that the mother of the gods, betrayed by her
dreams, would let fall some of her secrets; but I have never
made out more than sounds which faded away in the murmur of
night, or words inarticulate as the bubbling of the rivers.
<<
"O Macareus," one day said to me the great Chiron, whose
old age I tended, we are both of us centaurs of the mountain;
but how different are our lives! Of my days all the study is
(thou seest it) the search for plants; thou, thou art like those
XII-424


## p. 6770 (#146) ###########################################

6770
EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN
mortals who have picked up on the waters or in the woods, and
carried to their lips, some pieces of the reed pipe thrown away
by the god Pan. From that hour these mortals, having caught
from their relics of the god a passion for wild life, or perhaps
smitten with some secret madness, enter into the wildness, plunge
among the forests, follow the course of the streams, bury them-
selves in the heart of the mountains, restless and haunted by an
unknown purpose.
The mares beloved of the winds in the far-
thest Scythia are not wilder than thou, nor more cast down at
nightfall, when the North Wind has departed. Seekest thou to
know the gods, O Macareus, and from what source men, animals,
and the elements of the universal fire have their origin? But the
aged Ocean, the father of all things, keeps locked within his own.
breast these secrets; and the nymphs who stand around sing as
they weave their eternal dance before him, to cover any sound
which might escape from his lips half opened by slumber. The
mortals dear to the gods for their virtue have received from
their hands lyres to give delight to man, or the seeds of new
plants to make him rich; but from their inexorable lips, nothing! "
Such were the lessons which old Chiron gave me. Waned to
the very extremity of life, the centaur yet nourished in his spirit
the most lofty discourse.
For me, O Melampus, I decline into my last days, calm as
the setting of the constellations. I still retain enterprise enough
to climb to the top of the rocks, and there I linger late, either
gazing on the wild and restless clouds, or to see come up from
the horizon the rainy Hyades, the Pleiades, or the great Orion;
but I feel myself perishing and passing quickly away, like a
snow-wreath floating on the stream; and soon shall I be mingled
with the waters which flow in the vast bosom of Earth.
Translation of Matthew Arnold.


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