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seat all the freemen of Athens, and none were kept away by ] el g o 

 scruple, social caste, or lack of means. Theater going was a part of 

 the popular religion. The sermonesque character of many of the 

 choral odes harmonizes with the fact that priests occupied seats of the 

 highest honor, alongside senators and foreign embassadors. 



The talk of the street was a great power at Athens. The newspaper 

 will not deny that one of its tendencies is to make men unsocial. 

 Neighborly confidences must sometimes submit to a discount when 

 the wide world's photograni can he had for less than a half-dime in the 

 morning paper. At Athens no such pitiless, incessant rivalry eclipsed 

 the brilliant talker. Conversation was carefully cultivated as one of 

 the finest of the fine arts. The Athenian was the Frenchman of 

 antiquity. 



When final results are reached the history of the Athenian state 

 becomes a record of degeneracy and disaster. There was a worm at 

 the root of all its outward prosperity. It was a false and fatal theory 

 as the event proved, that permanent strength could be secured to the 

 state by ignoring the claims of the family, the captive and the bond- 

 man; that regarded the least mixture of foreign blood as more degrad- 

 ing than any moral taint; that .made no provision for lightening the 

 burdens of vice, poverty and misfortune. False and short-sighted was 

 the policy that sought to build up a strong and perpetual government 

 with no asylums or free schools for the needy, with no homes worthy 

 to be classed with the Englishman's castle, with nothing worth the 

 patriot's dying for but the glory of the impersonal state as embodied 

 in splendid architecture, magnificent tragedies and grand religious 

 festivals. 



