The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls
- Автор: Macgregor Mary
- Год: 1914
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Зарубежная литература для детей
Электронная книга - «The Story of Greece and Rome for boys and girls». Краткое содержание книги:
The Story of Greece: Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Macgregor
The Story of Rome, From the Earliest Times to the Death of Augustus, Told to Boys and Girls от Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
The Erechtheum was to the Athenians a shrine, in which lay hidden the story of their past, the Parthenon was to them a sign of the power and the splendour of the age of Pericles.
On the western side of the Acropolis rose a magnificent marble wall called the Propylaea. The marble had been pierced at intervals to make five great gateways, the centre one being for chariots, those on either side leading by steps to the Parthenon. Through these gateways the Athenians marched in solemn procession on their feast days.
A great theatre, sacred to the god Dionysus, was finished in the age of Pericles, and an Odeon or great hall of music was added to it, where contests of song and music were held. The roof of the Odeon was pointed like a tent, and was made of the masts of ships that had been captured from the Persians.
This pointed roof was said by the wits of Athens to be like the helmet of Pericles, whose head was curiously formed, and who often wore a helmet to conceal its strange shape.
‘Here comes Pericles,’ says a comic poet of those days, ‘with the Odeon set on his crown.’
Another great statue of Athene, called Athene Promachos, or Athena Foremost in Battle, stood just within the Propylaea. It was wrought in bronze and showed Athene in armour, holding shield and spear outstretched. This statue, also by Pheidias, was fifty feet high and stood on a pedestal that raised it twenty feet higher, so that it towered above the roofs of the temples. The golden plume on the helmet of the goddess was seen by sailors far out at sea.
With these and many other great works of art, Pericles adorned the city of his love. The Acropolis he said should be no longer a fortress, but a sanctuary.
Some of the Athenians, among them Thucydides, grumbled because Pericles spent the public money on these beautiful buildings.
Pericles heard that the citizens were discontented, and in the open assembly he rose and bade them tell him if they thought he used more money than he ought, to adorn the city.
‘Too much a great deal,’ was the speedy retort.
‘Then,’ said Pericles, ‘since it is so, let the cost not go to your account but to mine, and let the inscriptions upon the buildings stand in my name.’
But the people, surprised at his generosity, and perhaps wishing to share in the glory of his work, were ashamed that they had complained. They bade him spend as much of the public money as he deemed right and ‘spare no cost until all was finished.’
In 479 B.C. the Persians had reduced Athens to ruins. Fifty years later she had been built anew and adorned with temples and statues that made her the wonder of the world.
Marble was found in Attica, gold and ivory were bought with money out of the treasury, but without the magic hand of Pheidias, marble, gold, and ivory had been bought in vain.
CHAPTER LIX
GREAT MEN OF ATHENS
Athens, in the age of Pericles, was the home of literary men as well as of sculptors and architects.
Æschylus, one of the greatest men of the age, was a diligent writer of tragedies or serious plays. You will think that he was diligent indeed, when I tell you that he wrote ninety plays, although only seven are known to us now. His tragedies were acted in the great theatre of Dionysus. The Persae, his first play, was written eight years after the great sea-fight at Salamis, to tell of the victory the Athenians had won over the Persians.
Just as races were run, and music was written by competitors to win renown and gain prizes at the festival of Dionysus, so plays were written and prizes were awarded to the successful author at this great feast. These plays might be about the things that were taking place in Greece at that very time, or the plot might be taken from the old-world stories of Troy. Proud and dauntless were the men and women whom Æschylus made to live upon the stage of Athens. Of many of these you will some day read yourself.
Sophocles and Euripides also wrote tragedies, and Euripides is known, too, for the beauty of his songs. He was a magician who made all that he touched radiant with beauty. Many people loved Euripides because of the wonderful songs and plays which he wrote, but some hated him.
Aristophanes, the writer of comedies or amusing plays that made the Athenians laugh with uncontrollable glee, was one of those who disliked Euripides and held up some of his works to scorn. But Socrates, a greater man than he, loved Euripides and called him his favourite poet.
Herodotus was the first great Greek historian. He was not born in Attica, but he lived some years in Athens. He wrote the story of the Persian wars, while Thucydides wrote that of the Peloponnesian war.
Some of the greatest teachers in Greece at this time were called Sophists. A Sophist meant, at first, one who was clever in any special art. It did not matter what the art was; it might be cooking, gardening, teaching.
Protagoras was one of the most famous Sophists, but the Athenians did not treat him well. For he wrote a book which displeased them, so that they condemned it and accused him of writing against the gods of Greece. So angry were his enemies that Protagoras knew that he could no longer live safely in Athens. He fled from the city and set sail for Sicily, but he was drowned before he reached the island.
It was of his dead friend Protagoras that Euripides was thinking when he wrote in one of his plays, ‘Ye have slain, O Greeks, ye have slain the nightingale of the muses, the wizard bird that did no wrong.’
These are a few of the great men who, with Ictinus, Pheidias, and many another of whom I have not told, made the glory of Greece known throughout the wide world.
CHAPTER LX
THE THEBANS ATTACK THE PLATAEANS
The cause of the Peloponnesian War was jealousy—jealousy between Athens and Sparta. Each wished to be the chief State in Greece, and the only way to settle the dispute in those days was by an appeal to arms.
Athens had a great navy and much wealth. She was at the head of an empire, but the States which she had subdued, and which she had forced to pay tribute, were discontented and unlikely to prove useful allies.
Sparta was the head of the Peloponnesian States. She had a strong army, but she had not money with which to carry on war, nor had she, or any of her allies save Corinth, a fleet that would be of any use against the large, well-equipped fleet of Athens.
As long as Athens could keep the mastery of the sea, she would be able to defy the enemy. Famine would soon subdue her if she lost this mastery, for much of her corn supply came from abroad, and if the corn ships did not reach the Piraeus with their precious freight, the people would starve.
On land Athens could not hope to hold her own against Sparta. Pericles knew this well, and so he urged the Athenians to place their trust in their ships.
‘Let us give up lands and houses,’ he said, ‘but keep a watch over the city and the sea. We should not, under any irritation at the loss of our property, give battle to the Peloponnesians, who far outnumber us. Mourn not for houses or lands, but for men; men may give these, but these will not give men. If I thought that you would listen to me, I would say to you, “Go yourselves and destroy them, and thereby prove to the Peloponnesians that none of these things move you.” Such is the power which the empire of the sea gives.’
The Peloponnesian War began in the early spring of 431 B.C. when the citizens of the little town of Thebes made a treacherous attack upon the town of Plataea.
Thebes belonged to the Boeotian League, which was on good terms with Sparta, upon bad terms with Athens.