EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 151, 27 May 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

THE IMMORTAL GREEKS. Before passing on to look at Greece as it is to-day let us refresh" our mind 9 with Greek names —men who have an everlasting place in the history of the world. As we sail towards the coast of Greece these names flash before U6 — Aristotle who lived over 300 years before Christ; and Plato, like Aristotle, a tutor of Alexander the .Great, and possibly the world’s greatest and clearest thinker. For us Greece must ever mean Leonidas the Spartan who died gloriously, Themistocles who beat the Persians, and that mighty talker of the antique world —Socrates —who drank the cup of hemlock in 399 8.C., calmly leaving the world after giving it some of the greatest thoughts it has ever had. How can we see Greece without recalling Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, who lived at Nicopolis and declared that men might hurt his body but could not invade the serenity of his mind? Or shall we come to Calaureia to which Demosthenes fled from Athens, and recall some of the heroic lines of this greatest of all Greek orators ? If so, we shall remember that he took poison rather than fall into the hands of his enemies. But there is no end to the Greek Immortals. We think of Pythagoras the mathematician and philosopher, who was born at Samos about 580 years before Christ. We think of Euripides, born at Salamis, perhaps in the very year Themistocles beat the Persians. The most tragic of the Greek poets, his tragedies are true to life and as correct in their psychology ,as anything that has ever been written. Among a host of other names the name of Plutarch comes to mind. The famous biographer who was born at Chaeroneia about a dozen years after Christ was crucified, he remains one of the greatest of all story tellers, and to him we owe a vast amount of informa-, tion about famous Greeks which must otherwise have perished long .ago. (G)