Produced by Tonya Allen, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
1909
The following pages are intended to serve as a general introduction toGreek literature and thought, for those, primarily, who do not knowGreek. Whatever opinions may be held as to the value of translations, itseems clear that it is only by their means that the majority of modernreaders can attain to any knowledge of Greek culture; and as I believethat culture to be still, as it has been in the past, the most valuableelement of a liberal education, I have hoped that such an attempt as thepresent to give, with the help of quotations from the original authors,some general idea of the Greek view of life, will not be regarded aslabour thrown away.
It has been essential to my purpose to avoid, as far as may be, allcontroversial matter; and if any classical scholar who may come acrossthis volume should be inclined to complain of omissions or evasions, Iwould beg him to remember the object of the book and to judge itaccording to its fitness for its own end.
"The Greek View of Life," no doubt, is a question-begging title, but Ibelieve it to have a quite intelligible meaning; for varied and manifoldas the phases may be that are presented by the Greek civilization, theydo nevertheless group themselves about certain main ideas, to bedistinguished with sufficient clearness from those which have dominatedother nations. It is these ideas that I have endeavoured to bring intorelief; and if I have failed, the blame, I submit, must be ascribedrather to myself than to the nature of the task I have undertaken.
From permission to make the extracts from translations here printed my
best thanks are due to the following authors and publishers:—Professor
Butcher, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. E. D. A. Morshead, Mr. B. B. Rogers, Dr.
Verrall, Mr. A. S. Way, Messrs. George Bell and Sons, the Syndics of the
Cambridge University Press, the Delegates of the Clarendon Press,
Oxford, Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Mr. John Murray, and Messrs. Sampson
Low, Marston and Co.—I have also to thank the Master and Fellows of
Balliol College, Oxford, for permission to quote at considerable length
from the late Professor Jowett's translations of Plato and Thucydides.
Appended is a list of the translations from which I have quoted.
AESCHYLUS (B.C. 525—456). "The House of Atreus" (I.E. the "Agamemnon," "Choephorae" and "Eumenides"), translated by E. D. A. MORSHEAD (Warren and Sons). The "Eumenides," translated by DR. VERRALL (Cambridge, 1885).
ARISTOPHANES (C. B.C. 444—380). "The Acharnians, the Knights, and the Birds," translated by JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE (Morley's Universal Library, Routledge). [Also the "Frogs" and the "Peace" in his Collected Works, (Pickering)]. The "Clouds," the "Lysistrata" ["Women in Revolt,"] the "Peace," and the "Wasps," translated by B. B. ROGERS
ARISTOTLE (B.C. 384—322). The "Ethics," the "Politics,"
and the "Rhetoric," translated by J. E. C. WELLDON
(Macmillan & Co.).
DEMOSTHENES (B.C. 385—322). "Or