THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE' 



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THE HARBOR OP PPRiEUS, SEAPORT OP MODERN ATHENS 



It is a ride of only 20 minutes by electric railway from Piraeus to the Greek capital. In ancient 

 times the port was connected with Athens by the celebrated Long Walls. 



It is a tiny country we are about to 

 enter. The Attic plain stretches from the 

 sea in an irregular oval from south to 

 north; the entire province contains a bare 

 700 square miles. 



Yet Attica "balances in the universe the 

 glory of Imperial Rome." "Remember 

 well, Qumtius," writes Cicero to his 

 friend, "that you have command over the 

 Greeks, who have civilized all peoples, in 

 teaching them gentleness and humanity, 

 and to whom Rome owes the light she 

 possesses." Cicero, of course, meant 

 Attica, for it was in this little country 

 that what we call the Greek genius was 

 most effectively at work in the fifth cen- 

 tury before our era. 



SPARTA AND ATHENS COMPARED 



Chateaubriand, spurring his horse along 

 the Sacred Way from Eleusis, through 

 the defile of Daphne, over a road which 

 had felt the footsteps of the Three Hun- 

 dred marching to glorious death at Ther- 

 mopylae, which had shaken to the tread of 

 Sulla's legions in a later day, which had 

 quivered as Attila and his rude hosts ad- 



vanced with barbaric shouts toward 

 Athens, drew rein to muse over the won- 

 der and the loveliness here revealed to 

 him: 



"Sparta and Athens have kept even in 

 their ruins their different characters ; 

 those of the former are sad, serious, and 

 solitary ; those of the second are laughing, 

 light, and inhabited. On viewing the 

 country of Lycurgus all one's thoughts 

 became serious, masculine, profound ; the 

 soul is fortified and seems to put on a 

 glory and expand ; before the city of Solon 

 one is as enchanted by the prestige of 

 genius; one is possessed by the idea of 

 the perfection of man, considered as a 

 rational and immortal being. 



"Love of country and liberty was not 

 for the Athenians a blind instinct, but an 

 enlightened sentiment, founded on this 

 taste for the beautiful in all its manifes- 

 tations with which Heaven had so liber- 

 ally endowed them ; in fine, in passing 

 from the ruins of Sparta to those of 

 Athens I felt that I would have wished 

 to die with Leoriidas and to live with 

 Pericles." 



