No More Learning

•
Just as I was prepared to start once more, a new appearance
I notice coming down the road: it is the traveling merchant, with
his entire store of goods laden on the back of a little donkey.


## p. 13604 (#418) ##########################################

13604
DENTON J. SNIDER
His salute is friendly, his manner is quick and winning; we go
along together toward the village, talking of many things. He
tells me that he is from Oropus, a town on the Attic border
famous in antiquity; that his name is Aristides, that he is going
to Marathon, and will show me a place to stay during the night.
There is something new and peculiar about this man, the like of
which I have not yet seen in these rural portions of Greece. He
walks with a quick, alert step, he has a shrewdness and bright-
ness of intellect, a readiness and information which are remark-
able in comparison to the ordinary intellectual gifts found in the
country; his features and his physical bearing, his keen dark eye
and nervous twitch, distinguish him in the most striking manner
from the stolid Albanian peasant. He is a Greek of pure blood,
he tells me: manifestly we have met with a new and distinctive
type.
I enter the village of Marathon with Aristides, who brings me
to the chief wine-shop, where lodgings are to be had as well as
refreshing beverage. First a thimbleful of mastic, a somewhat
strong alcoholic drink, with my merchant, who then leaves me
and goes to his business. A number of people are in the wine-
shop; they are the Albanian residents of the village: all look
curiously at the new arrival. The merchant soon passed around
the word that I was from America—a fact which I had imparted
to him on the way. But of America they had very little notion.
The strangest sort of curiosity peeped out of their rather small
eyes: the news spread rapidly through the town that a live
American had arrived; what that was, they all hastened to see.
So they continued to pour in by twos and threes till the spacious
wine-shop was nearly full. Not a word they said, but walked
along in front of the table where I sat, and stared at me; they
kept their kerchiefed heads drawn down in their shaggy capotes,
being dressed in tight breeches like close-fitting drawers, with
feet thrust into low shoes, which run out to a point at the toes
and curl over. Thus they move before me in continuous proces-
sion; when they had taken a close survey of me, they would sit
down on a bench, roll a cigarette in paper, strike fire from a
flint, and begin to smoke. A taciturn, curious, but not unfriendly
crowd. I called for recinato.
――――
Presently a man clad in European garments appeared among
them, and in courteous manner addressed me, talking good Greek
but very bad French: it was the village schoolmaster, whom the


## p. 13605 (#419) ##########################################

DENTON J. SNIDER
13605
people familiarly called Didaskali. I hailed him joyfully as
a fellow-craftsman in a foreign land, and lost no time in announ-
cing to him that I too was a schoolmaster in my country. Pro-
fessional sympathy at once opened all the sluices of his heart:
we were friends on the spot. He was not an Albanian, but a
Greek born in the Turkish provinces; I do not think he was as
bright as my merchant Aristides, though he was probably better
educated. I took a stroll with him around the town; he sought
to show me every possible kindness, with the single exception
of his persistency in talking French. One neat little cottage I
noticed: it was the residence of the Dikastes or village judge;
but the most of the houses were low hovels, with glassless win-
dows, often floorless. Women were shy, hiding forehead and
chin in wrappage at the approach of a stranger,—who perhaps
was too eager in trying to peer into their faces, as if in search
of some visage lost long ago in this valley. Still human nature
is here, too, in Marathon; for I caught a young girl giving a
sly peep through the window after we had passed, which she had
pretended to close when she saw the stranger approaching.
But it is growing dark; I have done a pretty good day's work;
I must put off the rest of the sight-seeing till to-morrow. Only
half a mile below is the Marathonian plain, which one can see
from the village, but it must now be turned over to darkness.
At my request the Didaskali goes back with me to the wine-shop,
when he excuses himself, promising soon to return. There I
had a supper which was eminently satisfactory after a day's walk:
five eggs fried in goat's butter, large quantities of black bread,
and abundance of recinato at one cent a glass,-good-sized
glasses at that.
While I sat there eating, the people began to assemble again.
The Papas, the village priest, came and listened,-the untrou-
sered man, with dark habit falling down to his heels like a
woman's dress, and with long raven hair rolled up in a knot on
the back of his head, upon which knot sat his high, stiff ecclesias-
tical cap; the Dikastes or village judge came, an educated man,
who had studied at the University of Athens, and who dressed in
European fashion, possessing, in noticeable contrast to the rest of
the Marathonians, the latest style of Parisian hat; a lame shop-
keeper came, a Greek of the town; bright, full of mockery, flatter-
ing me with high titles-in order to get me to hire his mules
for my journey, as I had good reason to suspect; finally the
-


## p. 13606 (#420) ##########################################

13606
DENTON J. SNIDER
schoolmaster and the traveling merchant appeared again, both in
excellent humor, and expecting a merry evening. There was no
doctor present: I asked for him; they told me that there was
none in the valley, though it is scourged with malarial fever in
summer; one man in particular complained of the health of the
place. All the representative citizens of Marathon were before me,
looking at me eating in the wine-shop on a wooden table. Some
one asked me about my native language. "This is the language
that I understand best," said I, raising a mouthful of egg and
bread to my lips: "you seem to understand it too. " This jest,
for whose merit I do not make any high claims, caused all the
Albanians to laugh, and set the whole wine-shop in a festive
mood. It is manifest that this audience is not very difficult to
please.
Finally my long repast was finished; long both on account
of the work done and on account of the continued interruptions
caused by question and answer. The people still held out; there
they were before me, more curious than ever, now with a laugh-
ing look on account of that one sterile jest,—laughing out of
the corner of the eye, and with head already somewhat drawn out
of the shaggy capote from expectation. What next? I was on
the soil of illustrious Marathon; expectant gazes were centred
upon me: what had I, as a true American, to do for the honor
of my country? My duty was clear from the start: I must make
a speech. I should have been unfaithful to my nationality had
I not done so at Marathon. Accordingly I shoved the table aside,
pulled out my bench, and in the full happiness of hunger and
thirst satisfied perhaps, too, a little aglow with the golden reci-
nato- I began to address them as follows:-
Andres Marathonioi-Ye men of Marathon
---
At this point I confess I had to laugh myself, looking into that
solid Albanian stare of fifty faces; for the echo of the tremen-
dous oath of Demosthenes, in which he swears by the heroes of
Marathon, rung through my ears, and made the situation appall-
ingly ludicrous. Still, in spite of my laugh, you must know that
I was in deep earnest and full of my theme; moreover, there were
at least four persons before me who could understand both my
Greek and my allusions. As to my Greek, I affirm that Demos-
thenes himself would have understood it had he been there. —


## p. 13607 (#421) ##########################################

DENTON J. SNIDER
13607
though he might have criticized the style and pronunciation. But
I resumed:-
-
Ye men of Marathon, I never was gladder in my life than
I am to be with you to-night. I crossed over the mountains
on foot from Stamata; every step that I took was lighter with
thinking of Marathon. When from yonder summit I first caught
a glimpse of your village and valley, and gave a distant peep
into the plain beyond to the sea, I had to shed tears of joy.
Your name is indeed the greatest, the most inspiring in all
history. In every age it has been the mighty rallying-cry of
freedom; nations oppressed, on hearing it, have taken hope and
risen, smiting to earth their tyrants. It has been the symbol of
courage to the few and weak against the many and strong; the
very utterance of the name inspires what is highest and noblest
in the human breast,-courage, devotion, liberty, nationality.
Under a banner inscribed with that word Marathon, our Western
civilization has heroically marched and fought its battle: here was
its first outpost, here its first and greatest triumph,- and the
shout of that triumph still re-echoes and will go on re-echoing
forever through history. But Marathon is not merely here; it
has traveled around the world along with man's freedom and
enlightenment. Among all civilized peoples the name is known
and cherished; it is familiar as a household word,- nay, it is
a household prayer. In the remote districts of America I have
often heard it uttered-and uttered with deepest admiration and
gratitude. There, in my land, thousands of miles from here, I
first learned the name of Marathon in a log schoolhouse by the
side of the primitive forest; it fell from the lips of a youth who
was passionately speaking of his country.
It had in its very
sound, I can still recollect, some spell, some strange fascination,
for it seemed to call up, like an army of spirits, the great heroes
of the past along with the most intense feelings of the soul.
There you can hear it among the people in their little debates;
also you can hear it from great orators in senate halls. Mara-
thon, I repeat, is the mightiest, most magical name in history,
by which whole nations swear when they march out in defense
of their Gods, their families, and their freedom. By it too they
compare their present with their past, and ever struggle upwards
to fulfill what lies prophetically in their great example. Now I
am in the very place: I can hardly persuade myself that it is
not a dream, and that you are not shadows flitting here before


## p. 13608 (#422) ##########################################

13608
DENTON J. SNIDER
me. In that log schoolhouse I did not even dare dream of this
moment; but it has arrived. I have already had to-day a
glimpse where the old battle-field reposes in the hazy distance;
to-morrow I shall visit it, run over it, spend the whole day upon
it, looking and thinking; for I desire to stamp its features and
its spirit into my very brain, that I may carry Marathon across
the ocean to my land, and show it to others who may not be
able to come here and see it for themselves. Nor shall I refrain
from confessing to you a secret within me: I cannot help think-
ing that I have been here before; everything looks familiar to
me; I beheld yon summit long ago,—the summit of old Kotroni;
I have marched down the Marathonian stream as I marched
to-day; I seem to be doing over again the same things that I
have done here before; I made a speech on this spot ages ago
in Greek,- a much better one, I think, than I am now making.
And further let me tell you what I believe: I believe that I
too fought along at Marathon, that I was one of those ten thou-
sand Athenian soldiers that rushed down yonder hillside and
drave the Oriental men into the sea. I can now behold myself
off there charging down a meadow toward a swamp, amid the
rattle of arms and the hymn of battle, with shield firmly grasped
and with spear fiercely out-thrust, -on the point of which, spit-
ted through and through, I can feel a quivering Persian.
At this strange notion, and still more at the accompanying
gesture made in a charging attitude, the mirthful Greeks could
hold in no longer, but burst suddenly into a loud and prolonged
laugh, in which the Albanians joined; they all laughed, laughed
inextinguishably like the blessed gods on Olympus, and the whole
wine-shop was filled with wild merriment. Whereat the speech
was brought to a close which may be modestly called a happy
one: thus let it be now.
As soon as the speech had come to an end, I rose and looked
out of the wine-shop; desiring to take a short stroll before going
to bed, in order to catch a breath of fresh air, and to see a
Greek evening in the Marathonian vale. Though long after sun-
set, it appeared light out of doors everywhere; that vague flicker
from the sky it was which gives a mystical indefiniteness to
the things of nature, and produces such a marked contrast to the
clear plastic outlines of daytime. The schoolmaster went along,
and we walked up the stream of Marathon, which often gurgled
into a momentary gleam over the pebbles, and then fell back into


## p. 13609 (#423) ##########################################

DENTON J. SNIDER
13609
darkness. The mountains on each side of us were changed
into curious fantastic shapes which played in that subtle light;
caprice of forms now ruled the beautiful Greek world, as begot-
ten in the sport of a Northern fancy; Hecate with her rout of
witches and goblins had broken loose from her dark caverns in
the earth, and was flitting across glimmering patches of twilight
up and down the hillsides. Below the peaks, the dells and little
seams of valleys running athwart one another were indicated by
lines of darkness, so that their whole figure came to resemble a
many-legged monster crawling down the slant; while above on
the summits was the dreamy play of light with the dance of the
fairies. But these shapes let us shun in Greece: we may allow
them to sport capriciously before us for a few moments in the
evening, though in truth they belong not here. Let us then
hasten back to the wine-shop and await to-morrow the return of
Phoebus Apollo, the radiant Greek god, who will slay these
Pythons anew with his shining arrows, and put to flight all the
weird throng, revealing again our world in clear clean-cut out-
lines bounded in this soft sunlight.
When we arrived there, we still found the priest,- the long-
haired, dark-stoled Papas,-though nearly everybody else had
gone home.
He began to catechize me on the subject of reli-
gion, particularly its ceremonies; of which examination I, know-
ing my weakness, tried to keep shy. But he broke out directly
upon me with this question: Were you ever baptized? Therein
a new shortcoming was revealed to myself, for I had to confess.
that I actually did not know; I did not recollect any such event
myself, and I had always forgotten to ask my father whether
the rite had ever been performed over me when an infant. The
priest thought that this was bad, very bad-kakon, polù kakon was
his repeated word of disapprobation; then he asked me if I never
intended to be baptized. This question, here at Marathon, drove
me to bed; I at once called for a light. But it was only one
of the frequent manifestations that will be observed in mod-
ern Greece, of a tendency to discuss religious subtleties. The
ecclesiastical disputes of the Byzantine Empire - Homoousian and
Homoiousian-will often to-day be brought up vividly to the
mind of the traveler. Especially the ceremonies of the Eastern
Church are maintained with much vigor and nice distinction in a
very fine-spun, and consequently very thin, tissue of argumenta-
tion.


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13610
DENTON J. SNIDER
After excusing myself from the Papas, who in company with
me performs a slight inner baptism of himself with a glass of
recinato as the final ceremony of the day, I ask to be conducted
to my quarters, and am led to an adjoining building up-stairs.
The room is without furniture. In one corner of it lies a mat-
tress covered with coarse sheeting and a good quilt, on the floor
- for in Greece bedsteads are not much in vogue: they are con-
sidered to be in the way, and to take up unnecessary room; so
the bedclothes are spread out on the floor along the hearth every
evening, and packed away every morning. This bed was consid-
ered a particularly good one; intended for strangers who might
visit Marathon, and who had to pay for it two francs a night.
Indeed, during a great portion of the year in this hot climate,
the bed is not only unnecessary but a nuisance, in which one can
only roll and swelter; hence the family bed has no such place in
the Greek as in the Northern household.
The light which is left me is also worthy of a passing notice.
It consists of a cup two-thirds filled with water; on the water
lies half an inch of olive oil; on the surface of the oil is floating
a small piece of wood, to which a slender wick is attached reach-
ing into the oil; the upper end of this wick is lighted, and pain-
fully throws its shadowy glimmer on the walls. A truly pristine
light,- going back probably to old Homer, thinks the traveler,
by which the blind bard could have sat and hymned his lines to
eager listeners around the evening board; an extremely econom-
ical light, burning the entire night without any diminution of
the oil apparently, and giving a proportionate illumination; it is
a hard light to read by, still harder to write by. There is no
tallow in the country for candles; the little wax which is pro-
duced is used for tapers in the churches. There is no desk or
chair in the room; one must write on the floor in some way, if
he wishes to send a line to the dear ones, or take a note.
Accordingly the traveler goes to bed, props himself upon
his elbow, opens his book on the floor near the light,- but the
eyes swim for a moment, the head totters, back it falls upon the
mattress: that is the end of one day's adventure; he will rapidly
descend into Lethe, where, though in dream she fight the great
battle over again alongside of Miltiades at one moment, and the
next moment argue the question of baptism with the Papas, he
will lie in sweet unconscious repose, till the Sun-god, rising from
his bath in the ocean, stretch his long golden fingers through the


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13611
window, gently open the eyelids, and whisper to the slumberer,
who will hear though half awake: "Rise, it is the day of Mara-
thon. " Thereupon the traveler leaps from his couch,- for he
knows that it is the voice of a god, and he dares not disobey:
if he have any winged sandals, he now puts them on, for to-day
he will have to make an Olympian flight; if he have that staff
of Hermes with which the Argus-slayer conducts departed souls
out of Hades and into it, he will seize the same and sally forth;
for to-day he will have to call up from the past many mighty
spirits, those colossal shades which still rise at Marathon.
When I came out of my high-sounding chamber in the
morning, I met my good host with a ewer of water, which he
proceeded to pour upon my hands for the purpose of ablu-
tion; unpoetical wash-basins do not exist, or were refused me,
perchance on account of my Homeric habits. After a breakfast
quite like the supper on the previous evening, I begin the march
for the battle of Marathon, having filled a small haversack with
a piece of black bread and some cheese for luncheon, and having
slung around my shoulder a canteen of recinato. Nor do I for-
get my chief weapons,-two books and the maps, which I hold
tightly under my arm. Thus equipped, I tread along,- with
becoming modesty I trust, yet with no small hopes of victory.
But there is no hurry: let the gait still be leisurely. As I
pass down the road through the village which is spread out on
the banks of the stream, I meet many an acquaintance made the
evening before at the wine-shop; each recognizes me by a slight
nod of the head, with a pleasant smile. All of them seemed
still to be laughing at the idea of my being an ancient hoplite
now revisiting former scenes of activity. Such friendly greeting
on every side, together with the genial sunshine of the morning,
puts the traveler into a happy mood, slightly transcendental per-
haps. Whatever he now does is an adventure worth recording to
future ages; whatever he now sees is a divine revelation.
Passing along to a shelving place in the stream, he beholds
the washers: one hundred women or more, at work with furious
muscle, pounding, scouring, rubbing, rinsing the filth-begrimed
fustanellas of their husbands, brothers, sons. There is a strength,
vigor, and I should say anger in their motions, that they seem
animated by some feeling of revenge against those dirty gar-
ments, and in my opinion with good reason. One Amazonian arm
is wielding a billet of wood, quite of the weight and somewhat
―――


## p. 13612 (#426) ##########################################

13612
DENTON J. SNIDER
resembling the shape of the maul with which the American
woodman drives wedges into the gnarled oak. Upon a flat
smooth stone are laid the garments, boiled, soaped, and steaming,
when they are belabored by that maul. None of our modern
machinery is seen; even the wash-board is very imperfect, or
does not appear at all. Somehow in this wise the ancient Nau-
sicaas must have blanched their linen at the clear Marathonian
stream; one will unconsciously search now with eager glances for
the divine Phæacian maid, to see whether she be not here still.
At present the washers are strewn along the marble edge of the
water for quite a distance,-dressed in white, bare-armed, mostly
bare-footed and bare-legged, in the liveliest, fiercest muscular mo-
tion, as if wrestling desperately with some fiend. Look at the
struggling, wriggling, smiting mass of mad women,- Mænads
under some divine enthusiasm,- while the sides of old Kotroni
Mountain across the river re-echo with the thud of their relent-
less billets. A truly Marathonian battle against filth, with this
very distinct utterance: "For one day at least we are going to
be clean in Marathon. "
But it is impossible to look at the washers all the time, how-
ever fascinating the view; indeed, I had almost forgotten that I
am on my way to the field of the great battle-which does not
speak well for an ancient hoplite. I still pass along the stream,
with its white lining of marble through which flows the current
pellucid; what! are the eyes deceived, or is the water actually
diminishing in the channel? Yes, not only has it diminished,
but now a few steps further it has wholly vanished, sunk away
into the earth, leaving merely a dry rocky bed for the wildest
torrent of the storm. Thus that crisp joyous mountain stream
which gave us such delight in its dance down the hill through
the valley, when we looked at it coming to Marathon, now dis-
appears with its entire volume of water, to rise again in the
marshes beyond, or perchance in the sea.
So one saunters down that short neck which attaches the vil-
lage to the plain, joyously attuned by the climate, and trying to
throw himself back into that spirit which created the old Greek
mythology, determined to see here what an ancient Greek would
see. Nature begins to be alive; she begins to speak strange
things in his soul, and to reveal new shapes to his vision; an
Oread skips along, the mountain with him, while the Naiads cir-
cle in a chorus round the neighboring fountain. Such company
―――――


## p. 13613 (#427) ##########################################

DENTON J. SNIDER
13613
he must find if he truly travel in Greece. Not as a sentimental
play of the fancy, not as a pretty bauble for the amusement
of a dreary hour, but as a vital source of faith and action, as
a deep and abiding impulse to the greatest and most beautiful
works, will the loyal traveler seek to realize within himself these
antique forms.
But that shape at yonder spring drawing water-what can it
be? Clearly not a Naiad: dark eyes flashing out from blooming
features that lie half hidden among her hair falling down care-
lessly on both sides of her forehead, a short dress drooping over
her luxuriant frame in romantic tatters of many colors, under
which the bosom swells half exposed, cause the white water-
nymphs to vanish into viewless air, and leave a seductive image
behind, which will long accompany the traveler in spite of him-
self; rising at intervals and dancing through his thoughts even
at Marathon. It is the Wallachian maiden who has come down
from her mountain lodge for water, which in two large casks
she puts on the back of a donkey. A wild beauty, fascinating
on account of wildness, not devoid of a certain coy coquetry, she
seems not displeased to have attracted the marked attention of
that man in Frankish garments who is passing along the road;
for her dark eyes shoot out new sparkles from under the falling
tresses, tempered with subdued smiles. She has nothing to do
with the villagers of Marathon: she is a child of the mountains;
she belongs to a different world. Slowly she passes out of sight
with her charge into the brushwood; looking back at the last
step, she stoops and plucks a flower; then she springs up and
vanishes among the leaves.
It is a slight disappointment, perhaps; but look now in the
opposite direction, and you will behold in the road going toward
the plain a new and very delightful appearance: three white
robes are there moving gracefully along through the clear atmo-
sphere, and seem to be set in high relief against the hilly back-
ground. Three women-evidently of the wealthier people of
the village, for their garments are of stainless purity and adjusted
with unusual care,-
appear to be taking a walk at their leisure
down the valley. Their dress is a long loose gown flowing freely
down to the heels; all of it shows the spotless white except a
narrow pink border. Over this dress is worn a woolen mantilla,
also white with a small border. At the view there arises the
feeling which will often be experienced in other localities of
-


## p. 13614 (#428) ##########################################

13614
DENTON J. SNIDER
Greece with even greater intensity: the feeling of a living plastic
outline which suggests its own copy in marble. No costume can
possibly be so beautiful and so distinct in this atmosphere; there
they move along, as if statues should start from their pedestals
and walk down from their temples through the fields. Why the
white material was taken by the old artists for sculpture, becomes
doubly manifest now: here is the living model in her fair dra-
pery; yonder across the river is the marble, Pentelic marble,
cropping out of the hills. Unite the twain: they belong together;
both have still a mute longing to be joined once more in happy
marriage. I have not the least doubt that the ancient Marathon-
ian woman in the age of the battle paced through this valley
in a similar costume, producing similar sensations in this bluish
transparent air.
But the three shapes draw near; one will look into their faces
as they pass: they are Albanian women,—not beautiful by any
means, not with features corresponding to their costumes, you
will say.
Therefore we must add something very essential to
bring back that ancient Greek woman; for she had brought body
into the happiest harmony with dress, if we may judge of those
types which have come down to us. Still this is a delightful
vision of antique days, passing with stately gait through the clear
sunlit landscape;-forms of white marble in contrast to the
many-colored tatters of the Wallachian maiden, who, having no
sympathy of dress with the climate, shows that she does not
belong to Marathon.
-
Now we have arrived-if you have succeeded in keeping up
with me - at the point where the bed of the river passes into
the plain, in full view of which we at present stand. It sweeps
around almost crescent-shaped, like the side of a vast amphi-
theatre cut into the mountains: the line from tip to tip of the
arc is said to measure about six miles. That line, seen from
the spot where we now are, has a beautiful blue border of spark-
ling water, the Euripus, which separates the mainland from the
island Euboea. There is upon the plain but one tree worthy of
the name,
a conifer which rises strange and solitary about in
the centre of it, and looks like a man, with muffled head in sol-
dier's cloak standing guard, still waiting for some enemy to come
out of the East. The plain is at present largely cultivated, vine-
yards and fields of grain are scattered through it, but the ancient
olives are wanting. At the northern horn of the crescent is a
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DENTON J. SNIDER
13615
large morass running quite parallel to the sea; a smaller one is
at the southern horn. Into the plain two villages debouch, both
having roads from Athens. There is a beautiful shore gradually
shelving off into deep water with a gravel bottom; here the
traveler will sit long and look at the waves breaking one after
another upon the beach. This coast, however, is but a narrow
strip for several miles; just behind it lies amid the grass the
deceptive marsh, not visible at any considerable distance. This
morass and its conformation will explain the great miracle of the
battle: namely, its decisiveness, notwithstanding the enormous
disparity in the numbers of the two contending armies. For the
morass was the treacherous enemy lurking in ambuscade at the
rear and under the very feet of the Persians.
In regard to the battle of Marathon we have only one trust-
worthy account: this is given by Herodotus, the Father of His-
tory. It is short, and omits much that we would like to know,
indeed must know in order to comprehend the battle. Still, a
view of the ground will suggest the general plan, with the help
of the old historian's hints, and of one contemporary fact handed
down by the traveler Pausanias. The battle was a fierce attack
in front, aided by the enemy in the rear, the morass, which had
a double power. It on the one hand prevented the foe from
getting assistance, which could only come from the ships by a
long detour round the narrow strip of coast easily blocked by
a few soldiers. On the other hand, broken or even unbroken
lines being forced into the swampy ground would become hope-
lessly disordered, and would have enough to do fighting the
enemy under their feet.
――――――
Imagine now this line of coast with the vessels drawn up
sternwards along the shelving bank; then comes the narrow
strip of shore on which a portion of the Persian army lies en-
camped; then follows the marshy tract, then the plain upon which.
another portion of the Persian army is drawn up; still further
and beyond the plain is the slope of the mountain, where with
good vision you can see the Athenians arrayed in order of battle.
At the mouth of one of the two villages, doubtless near the
modern hamlet of Vrana, they have taken position; since they
could easily pass round the road and protect the other valley, if
a movement should be made in that direction by the enemy.
Single-handed of all the States of Greece they stand here; they
had sent for aid to the Spartans, who refused to come on ac-
count of a religious festival. Still the suspicion lives, and will


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13616
DENTON J. SNIDER
forever live through history, that this was a mere pretense; that
the Spartans would gladly have seen their rival destroyed,
though at the peril of Greek freedom.
But who are these men filing silently through the brushwood
of Mount Kotroni, in leather helmets and rude kilts, hurrying
forward to the aid of the Athenians? They are the Platæans,
a small community of Boeotia,- in all Greece the only town out-
side of Attica that has the courage and the inclination to face
the Persian foe. One thousand men are here from that small
place,―a quiet rural village lying on the slopes of Kithæron: the
whole male population, one is forced to think, including every
boy and old man capable of bearing arms, is in that band; for
the entire community could hardly number more than three or
four thousand souls. Yet here they are to the last man: one
almost imagines that some of the women must be among them
in disguise,—as to-day the Greek women of Parnassus often
handle the gun with skill, and have been known to fight desper
ately in the ranks alongside of their fathers and brothers. But
think of what was involved in that heroic deed: the rude vil-
lagers assemble when the messenger comes with the fearful news
that the Persian had landed just across at Marathon; in the
market-place they deliberate, having hurried from their labor in
the fields, in 'coarse rustic garb with bare feet slipped into low
sandals; uncouth indeed they seem, but if there ever were men
on the face of this earth, they were in Platæa at that hour. No
faint-hearted words were there, we have the right to assume — - no
half-hearted support; no hesitation: every man takes his place in
the files, the command to march is given, and they all are off.
Nor can we forget the anxiety left behind in the village: the
Greek wife with child on her arm peers out of the door, tak-
ing a last look at the receding column winding up Kithæron,
and disappearing over its summit; there is not a husband, not a
grown-up son remaining in Platæa. What motive, do you ask?
I believe that these rude Greek rustics were animated by a
profound instinct which may be called not only national but
world-historical,- the instinct of hostility to the Orient and its
principle, in favor of political autonomy and individual freedom.
Also another ground of their conduct was gratitude toward the
Athenians who had saved them from the tyranny of Thebes,
their overbearing neighbor: now their benefactors are in the sor-
est need; patriotism and friendship alike command; there can be
no hesitation. So those thousand men on a September day wind
I


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13617
through the pines and arbutes of Kotroni with determined tread,
are received with great joy by the Athenians, and at once take
their position on the left wing ready for the onset.
Let any
village in the world's history match the deed! Well may the
Athenians after that day join the Platæans with themselves in
public prayers to the gods in whose defense both have marched
out.
Scarcely have these allies arrived, we may suppose, when the
moment of battle is at hand. Doubtless it was the most favor-
able moment, and as such eagerly seized by Miltiades: why it
was so favorable, no one at this late day can know. Perhaps the
much-feared Persian cavalry were absent on a foraging expedi-
tion; perhaps the enemy were negligent, or were embarking; or
as Herodotus says, because it was Miltiades's day of command,
-alas, who can tell? At any rate the order to charge is given;
down the declivity the Greeks rush, over the plain for a mile.
The deep files on the wings of their army bear everything before
them; but the centre is defeated for a time and driven back, for
it had apparently been weakened to strengthen the wings. Such
is the first fierce attack.
Now comes the second stage of the struggle, the battle at
the marshes. The front of the enemy, pressed by the Greeks,
and consolidated into a mass of panic-stricken fugitives, bore the
rear backwards; thus the whole hostile army pushed itself into
the swamp.
Whoever has seen a regiment of infantry in a mo-
rass, reeling, struggling with broken lines, sinking under their
equipments, soldiers extricating one foot only to sink deeper with
the other, cursing their stars and damning the war,- that is, a
complete loss of all discipline, and a sort of despair on account
of the new victorious enemy underfoot,—such a person can
imagine the condition of a large part of the Persian army after
that attack. The Greek lines stood on the edge of the marsh,
and smote the struggling disordered mass with little or no loss
to themselves. They also prevented succor from coming round
the narrow tongue of coast till the battle at the morass was over,
wholly victorious for the Greeks.
The narrative of Herodotus omits entirely this second stage.
of the conflict, and modern historians have slurred it over with
little or no separate attention. Thus, however, the whole battle
is an unaccountable mystery. Fortunately this struggle at the
morass and its result are vouched for by an authority at once
XXIII-852


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13618
DENTON J. SNIDER
original and contemporaneous, an authority even better than
Herodotus, who was a foreigner from Asia Minor. It was the
picture in the Pokile at Athens painted not long after the battle.
Of the details of that picture we have several important hints
from ancient authors. Says Pausanias, evidently speaking of its
leading motive, it shows "the barbarians fleeing and pushing one
another into the swamp. " There can be no doubt that this was
the salient and decisive fact of the battle: the barbarians fled
and pushed one another into the swamp. By the fierce onset of
the Greeks the front lines of the enemy were driven upon the
rear, and th
whole multitude was carried by its own weight into
the treacherous ground, numbers only increasing the momentum
and the confusion. Such was the conception of the artist paint-
ing the battle before the eyes of the very men who had partici-
pated in it; such therefore we must take to be the contemporary
Athenian conception. The picture may well be considered to be
the oldest historical document we have concerning the fight, and
as even better evidence than the foreign historian. The ground,
moreover, as we look at to-day, tells the same story. A skill-
ful military commander of the present time, other things being
equal, would make the same plan of attack. Thus too the great
miracle of the battle-the defeat of so many by so few, and the
small loss of the victors-is reasonably cleared up.
____
The third stage of the conflict was the battle at the ships,
while the enemy were embarking. This, to be successful, had
to take place partly upon the narrow strip of shore to which
the Greeks must penetrate at a disadvantage. In their zeal they
rushed into the water down the shelving pebbly bottom in order
to seize the fleet; still the faithful traveler visiting the scene
will, after their example, wade far out into the sea. Seven vessels
were taken out of six hundred, the enemy making good their
embarkation. Many Greeks here suffered the fate of brave
Kynegeirus, brother of the poet Eschylus, who, seizing hold of a
vessel, had his arms chopped off by a Persian battle-axe. In
general, the Greeks were repulsed at the battle of the ships; but
this third stage, since the enemy were leaving, is the least import-
ant of the whole conflict.
Not a word does Herodotus say about the numbers engaged
on either side: a strange, unaccountable omission. Yet he must
have conversed with men who fought at the battle,- with the
leaders possibly,-and he gives with the greatest care the loss on


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13619
both sides,-6,400 Persians, 192 Athenians.
The omission leads
to the conjecture that he could not find out the true figures;
yet why not at Athens, where they must have been known? It
is a puzzle: let each one solve it by his own conjecture, which
is likely to be as good as anybody else's.
Ancient writers much later than the battle give to the Per-
sians from 210,000 to 600,000 men; to the Athenians and Platæ-
ans 10,000 men. Modern writers have sought through various.
sources to lessen this immense disparity, by increasing the
Athenian and diminishing the Persian numbers. Indeed, Mara-
thon became the topic of the wildest exaggeration for the Greek
orators and rhetoricians: 300,000 were said to have been slain by
less than 10,000; Kynegeirus, already mentioned, is declared to
have had first the right hand cut off, then the left hand, then
to have seized the vessel with his teeth like a wild animal; Cal-
limachus, a brave general who was slain, is represented to have
been pierced by so many weapons that he was held up by their
shafts. It was the great commonplace of Athenian oratory;
thence it has passed to be the world's commonplace. Justly, in
my opinion: for it is one of the supreme world-events, and not
merely a local or even national affair; thus the world will talk
of its own deeds. Do not imagine with the shallow-brained de-
tractor that rhetoric has made Marathon; no, Marathon rather
has made rhetoric, among other greater things.
Far more interesting than these rhetorical exaggerations of a
later time are the contemporary accounts which come from the
people and show their faith,-the legends of supernatural appear-
ances which took part in the fight. For there was aught divine,
the people must believe, at work visibly upon the battle-field that
day. Epizelus, a soldier in the ranks, was stricken blind, and re-
mained so during life, at the vision of a gigantic warrior with a
huge beard, who passed near him and smote the enemy. The-
seus the special Athenian hero, Hercules the universal Greek hero,
were there and seen of men; no doubt of it, the heroes all did
fight along, with very considerable effect too. Nor were the gods
absent: the god Pan, regardless of slighted divinity, met the
courier Phidippides on the way to Sparta for aid, and promised
his divine help if the Athenians would neglect him no longer.
Finally, Athena herself, the protecting goddess of the city, in
helm and spear strode there through the ranks, shaking her
dreadful ægis, visible to many-nay, to all-Athenian eyes.


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13620
DENTON J. SNIDER
Even a new hero appears, unheard of before; in rough rus-
tic garb, armed with a plowshare he smote the Oriental foe who
had invaded his soil. After the battle he vanishes: who was he?
On consulting an oracle, the Athenians were merely told to pay
honors to the Hero Echetlus. On the whole the most interesting
and characteristic of all these appearances - the rustic smiter he
is, who reveals the stout rude work put in by the Attic peasant
on that famous day. Indeed, all who fell were buried on the
sacred ground of the battle, and were worshiped as heroes with
annual rites. Still in the time of the traveler Pausanias, about
a hundred and fifty years after Christ, the air was filled at night
with the blare of trumpets, the neighing of steeds, and the clan-
gor of battle.
Says he: "It is dangerous to go to the spot for
the express purpose of seeing what is going on; but if a man
finds himself there by accident without having heard about the
matter, the gods will not be angry. " Greece was, at the period
of Pausanias, extinct in Roman servitude; yet the clash of that
battle could be heard-loud, angry, even dangerous-over six
hundred years after the event. Still the modern peasant hears
the din of combat in the air sometimes; I asked him, he was a
little shy of the matter; the noise, however, has become to him
comparatively feeble,- still there is a noise. But long will it be,
one may well think, before that noise wholly subsides.
So the heroes and gods fought along with the Athenians at
Marathon, visible, almighty, and in wrath. Thus it has been
delivered to us on good authority: thus I, for one, am going to
believe, for the event shows it; far otherwise had been the story
if the gods had not fought along on that day. There would
have been no Marathonian victory, no Athens, no Greek liter-
ature, for us at least. But now Theseus, the deserving hero, will
have a new temple, beautiful, enduring, at this moment nearly
perfect, after almost twenty-four centuries. Athena also will
have a new temple, larger and more beautiful than any hereto-
fore, still the unattained type of all temples; it shall be called,
in honor of the virgin goddess, the Parthenon. Attic song will
now burst forth, Attic art too, celebrating just this Marathon.
victory; that long line of poets, orators, philosophers, historians,
will now appear, all because the gods fought along at Mara-
thon.
The most prominent object on the plain of Marathon is an
artificial mound, perhaps thirty feet high at present; upon it is


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13621
growing some low brushwood. It is generally considered to be
the tomb of the 192 Athenians who were buried on the battle-
field, and had there a monument on which their tribe and their
names were written. To the summit of this mound the traveler
will ascend and sit down; he will thank the brambles grow-
ing upon it that they have preserved it so well in their rude
embrace from the leveling rains. He may reasonably feel that
he is upon the rampart which separates the East from the
West. Yonder just across this narrow strait are the mount-
ains of Eubœa, snow-capped and loftily proud; yet they stooped
their heads to the Persian conqueror. All the islands of the sea
submitted; Asia Minor submitted. But here upon this shore,
defiantly facing the East, was the first successful resistance to
the Oriental principle; its supporters could hardly do more than
make a landing upon these banks, when down from the mount-
ains swept fire and whirlwind, burning them up, driving them
into the sea. Here then our West begins or began in space and
time, we might say upon this very mound; that semicircular
sweep of hills yonder forms the adamantine wall which shut out
Orientalism. Regard their shape once more: they seem to open
like a huge pair of forceps, only in order to close again and
press to death.
Strange is the lot of the men buried here. the unconscious
instruments of a world's destiny-nameless except two or three
possibly. Yet they had some mighty force in them and back of
them: one is quite inclined to think that they must have remotely
felt in some dim far-off presentiment what lay in their deed for
the future, and that such feeling nerved their arms to a hun-
dredfold intensity. Here upon the mound this question comes
home to us before all others: What is man but that which he is
ready to die for? Such is his earthly contradiction: if he have
that for which he is willing to give his life, then he has a most
vital, perdurable energy; but if he have naught for which he
would die, then he is already dead, buried ignobly in a tomb of
flesh.
➖➖
But what is this Greek principle which Marathon has pre-
served for us against the Orient? It is not easy to be formulated
in words, to anybody's complete satisfaction. Politically, it is
freedom; in art, it is beauty; in mind, it is philosophy; and so
on through many other abstract predicables. Perhaps we may
say that the fundamental idea of Greece is the self-development


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13622
DENTON J. SNIDER
of the individual in all its phases, the individual State, the indi-
vidual city or town, the individual man. Henceforth the task is
to unfold the germ which lies within, removed from external
trammels; to give to the individual a free, full, harmonious devel-
opment. Thus will be produced the great types of States, of men,
of events; still further, these types will then be reproduced by the
artist in poetry, in marble, in history, and in many other forms.
This second production or reproduction is indeed, of all Gre-
cian things, the most memorable.
The battle of Marathon is itself a type, and has always been
considered by the world as a supreme type of its kind, represent-
ing a phase of the spiritual. Athens from this moment has
the spirit of which the Marathonian deed is only an utterance.
Soon that spirit will break forth in all directions, producing new
eternal types, just as Marathon is such a type in its way. Athen-
ian plastic art, poetry, philosophy, are manifestations of this same
spirit, and show in a still higher degree than the battle, the vic-
tory over Orientalism. The second Persian invasion came, but
it was only a repetition of the first one; it too was defeated
at Marathon, which was the primitive Great Deed, the standing
image to Greece of herself and all of her possibilities. Hence
the use of it so often by her writers and speakers, as well as by
those of the entire Western world.
-
With Marathon, too, history properly begins; that is, the stream
of history. Now it becomes a definite, demonstrable, unbroken
current, sweeping down to our own times. Before Marathon
indeed there is history, and much history; but it is in flashes,
short or long, then going out in darkness. The history of Greece.
itself before Marathon is merely an agglomeration of events quite
disconnected. The head-waters take their start at Marathon;
Oriental bubblings there, are in abundance, but no stream. In
fact it could not be otherwise: such is just the character of the
Orient, to be unable to create this historical continuity. But
the West has it, and it was won at Marathon, marking the great-
est of all transitions both in the form and in the substance of
history. Moreover, the historic consciousness now arises; history
for the first time is able to record itself in an adequate manner.
If you now scan him closely, you will find that man has come
to the insight that he has done in these days something worthy
of being remembered forever. But where is the scribe to set
it down? Behold, here he comes, old Herodotus, the Father of
P


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13623
History, with the first truly historical book; in which he has
written, together with the rest of the Persian war, the noble
record of just this great Marathonian deed. Thus with the
worthy action appears the man worthy of transmitting its glory.
Still the traveler remains upon the top of the mound, asking
himself, Why is Marathon so famous? Other battles have had
the same disparity of numbers between the two sides, and the
same completeness of victory, while they have had the same
principle of freedom and nationality at stake. The battle of
Morgarten, with its sixteen hundred Swiss against twenty thou-
sand Austrians, is often cited, and is sometimes called the Swiss
Marathon. But Morgarten to the world is an obscure skirmish:
it is not one of the heroic deeds which determined a civilization;
it is not one of the hallowed symbols of the race. This then
must be the cause: Greece has created to a large extent what
we may call the symbols of our Western world, -the typical
deeds, the typical men, the typical forms which are still the ideals
by which we mold our works, and to which we seek, partially at
least, to adjust our lives.
Marathon therefore stands for a thousand battles: all other
struggles for freedom, of which our Occident has been full, are
merely echoes, repetitions, imitations to a certain extent, of that
great primitive action. And Greece is just the nation in his-
tory which was gifted with the power of making all that she did
a type of its kind. The idea of the West she first had, in its
instinctive form, in its primal enchanting bloom; most happily
she embodied that idea in her actions, making them into eternal
things of beauty.
That is, all the deeds of Greece are works of art. In this
sense the battle of Marathon may be called a work of art.
Grandeur of idea with perfect realization is the definition of
such a work, and is that quality which elevates the person who
can rightly contemplate it into true insight. It fills the soul of
the beholder with views of the new future world, and makes him
for a time the sharer of its fruits. Marathon is only that single
wonderful event, yet it is symbolical of all that are to come after
it, you may say, embraces them all; it tells the race for the
first time what the race can do, giving us a new hope and a
new vision. So indeed does every great work of art and every
great action: but this is the grand original; it is the prophecy
of the future standing there at the opening of history, telling us


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13624
DENTON J. SNIDER
what we too may become,- imparting to us at this distance of
time a fresh aspiration.
One step further let us push this thought, till it mirror itself
clearly and in completeness. The Athenians were not only doers
of beautiful deeds, they were also the makers of beautiful things
to represent the same: they were artists. Not only a practical,
but an equal theoretic greatness was theirs: in no people that
has hitherto appeared were the two primal elements of human
spirit will and intelligence-blended in such happy harmony;
here as in all their other gifts there was no overbalancing, but
a symmetry which becomes musical. They first made the deed
the type of all deeds, made it a Marathon; then they embodied
it in an actual work of art. They were not merely able to enact
the great thought, but also to put it into its true outward form,
to be seen and admired of men. Their action was beautiful, often
supremely beautiful,- but that was not enough; they turned
around after having performed it, and rescued it from the mo-
ment of time in which it was born and in which it might perish,
and then made it eternal in marble, in color, in prose, in verse.
>
Thus we can behold it still. On the temple of Wingless Vic-
tory at Athens is to be seen at this day a frieze representing the
battle of Marathon. There is still to be read that tremendous
war poem, the 'Persæ of Eschylus, who also fought at Mara-
thon; the white heat of this first conflict and of the later Persian
war can still be felt in it through the intervening thousands of
years. Upon the summit of the mound where we now stand,
ancient works of art were doubtless placed; the stele inscribed
with the names of the fallen is mentioned by Pausanias. Only a
short distance from this tomb ancient substructions can still be
observed: temples and shrines, statues and monuments, must have
been visible here on all sides; to the sympathetic eye the whole
plain will now be whitened with shapes of marble softly reposing
in the sunshine. The Greeks are indeed the supreme artistic peo-
ple: they have created the beautiful symbols of the world; they
have furnished the artistic type and have embodied it in many
forms; they had the ideal and gave to it an adequate expres-
sion. Moderns have done other great things, but this belongs
to the Greeks.
―
So after the mighty Marathonian deed there is at Athens a
most determined struggle, a supreme necessity laid upon the
people, to utter it worthily, to reveal it in the forms of art, and


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13625
thus to create beauty. Architecture, sculpture, poetry, spring
at once and together to a height which they have hardly since
attained, trying to express the lofty consciousness begotten of
heroic action; philosophy, too, followed; but chiefest of all, the
great men of the time, those plastic shapes in flesh and blood,
manifesting the perfect development and harmony of mind and
body, rise in Olympian majesty, and make the next hundred
years after the battle the supreme intellectual birth of the ages;
-and all because the gods fought along at Marathon and must
thereafter be revealed.
But let us descend from this height, for we cannot stay up
here all day: let us go down from the mound, resuming our
joyous sauntering occupation; let our emotions, still somewhat
exalted, flow down quietly and mingle once more with the soft
pellucid Marathonian rill. The declining sun is warning us that
we have spent the greater part of a day in wandering over the
plain, and in sitting on the shore and the tumulus. Let us still
trace the bed of the river up from the swamp: everywhere along
its bank and in its channel can be seen fragments of edifices.
Here are ancient bricks with mortar still clinging to them;
there is the drum of a column lying in the sand half buried;
pieces of ornamented capitals look up at you from the ground
with broken smiles. Remains of a wall of carefully hewn stone
speak of a worthy superstructure: the foundation of a temple of
Bacchus was discovered here a few years ago, together with a
curious inscription still preserved in the town. The fragments
scattered along and in the channel for half a mile or more tell
of the works once erected on this spot to the heroes and gods
of the plain, and which were things of beauty. The traveler
will seek to rebuild this group of shrines and temples, each in
its proper place and with suitable ornament; he will fill them
with white images, with altars and tripods; he will call up the sur-
ging crowd of merry Greek worshipers passing from spot to spot
at some festival.
As one walks slowly through the fields in the pleasant sun, a
new delight comes over him at the view of the flowers of Mara-
thon. Everywhere they are springing up over the plain, though
it be January still,- many of them and of many kinds, daisies,
dandelions, and primroses,-looking a little different from what
they do at home, yet full as joyous. The most beautiful is a
kind of poppy unknown to me elsewhere; so let me call it the


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13626
DENTON J. SNIDER
*
Marathonian poppy.
In most cases it wraps its face in a half-
closed calyx, as the Greek maiden covers forehead and chin in
her linen veil: still you can look down into the hood of leaves
and there behold sparkling dark eyes. Some of the flowers,
however, are entirely open, some only in bud yet; then there is
every variety of color,-red, purple, and blue, with infinite deli-
cate shadings. One tarries among them and plays after having
gone through the earnest battle; he will stoop down and pluck a
large handful of them in order to arrange them in groups pass-
ing into one another by the subtlest hues. So, after being in
such high company, one gladly becomes for a time a child once
more amid the Marathonian poppies.
.
But will this city [St. Louis] ever mean to the world the
thousandth part of what Marathon means? Will it ever make a
banner under which civilization will march? Will it ever create
a symbol which nations will contemplate as a thing of beauty and
as a hope-inspiring prophecy of their destiny? Will it rear any
men to be exemplars for the race? Alas! no such man has she
yet produced; very little sign of such things is here at present:
we are not a symbol-making people, do not know nor care what
that means; our ambition is to make canned beef for the race
and to correct the census. St. Louis has some fame abroad as a
flour market, but she is likely to be forgotten by ungrateful man
as soon as he has eaten his loaf of bread or can get it from
elsewhere. A great population she has doubtless, greater than
Athens ever had; but I cannot see, with the best good-will, that
in the long run there is much difference between the 350,000
who are here, and the 150,000 who are not but were supposed
to be. Marathon River is often a river without water; but will
turbid Mississippi with her thousands of steamboats-stop! this
strain is getting discordant: at Marathon should be heard no
dissonance, least of all the dissonance of despair. Yes, there is
hope; while the future lasts—and it will be a long time before
that ceases- there is hope. The Marathonian catabothron is
certain to rise here yet, with many other catabothrons, and form
with native rivers a new stream unheard of in the history of the
world. Who of us has not some such article of faith? When
this valley has its milliard of human beings in throbbing activity
over its surface, we all of us, I doubt not, shall look back from
some serene height and behold them; we shall then see that so
many people have created their beautiful symbol.
-
-


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SOCRATES.


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J
n.
T
1.
11


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## p. 13627 (#445) ##########################################

13627
SOCRATES
(469-399 B. C. )
BY HERBERT WEIR SMYTH
REAT teachers are not often great writers: some indeed have
written nothing, and among these the greatest is Socrates.