Ancient Insight In A Modern Age

Northern Advocate, 25 May 1938, Page 2

Ancient Insight In A Modern Age

“The Pageant of Greece,” by R. W Livingstone (Oxford Press. 10/6) Local booksellers and Public Library,

This comfortably-sizcd, well printed | and easily-read book is a find. I said | so to an acquaintance. Ho immedi- j alely stabbed my enthusiasm with n scornful question; “However can you Waste time; on Greece when Europe may boil over any moment, in Czecho-1 Slovakia.” The question did not deflate my enthusiasm. It was not hard to answer, and he admitted that it Was a point of view he had not considered. I had replied: ‘The very reason that you suggest for passing up a book about the great thinkers of Greece is the very reason why. to me, It is the book for the hour.” In the midst of wars and threats of a European conflagration that will scorcn Civilisation, it is necessary to keep our nerves in order our judgment cool and undeceived, and our hearts nourished with a good courage. Nothing exposes us to'panic, confusion and defeatism in such a crisis as lack of historical knowledge. And in all the wide fields of the past where research has reaped and scholarship garnered the finest grain, there is no knowledge so steadying, so fortifying, so clarifying as that which the great thinkers of ancient Greece have bequeathed to

The Glory That Was Greece. In their own words, but in our mother tongue, this book presents the marshalled procession of their greatest thoughts and sayings. Let me quote from the author’s preface;— This book is intended for those who know no Greek, but wish to form some idea of its greatest writers and what they wrote. It is not a book about the Greeks: such books can £)e.- at best' pale reflections of the central fire at which they are lit. It consists of selections from the greatest Greek writers, with such a sketch of their lives and works as may give an idea of what they were and did. Anyone who reads these pages will not merely read famous or typical extracts from the great Greek writers, but will also follow in outline the most important part of that vast intellectual development which started with Hornet and oulasted the Roman Empire, f ‘ v Classical Gold. Many years ago there came into my hands a little paper-covered book called “Classical Gold.” It has been read and re-read, till it is almost falling to pieces. I used it as perturbed souls use the sacred places of prayer and spiritual cheer. I turned to it in seasons of disturbed and dislocated judgment, in times and moods of distress and haunting fear, in experiences ' like those at the war front, when loneliness, peril and despair beset the spirit and offered extinction as the only escape from the intolerable burden of life, and I never turned to it in vain. It was like the one anchor that held when vindictive storms were driving the ship towards a fatal reef.- It illuminated what Edgar Allan Poe meant by bis famous lines; — “On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.” Valiant Wisdom. Yet “Classic Gold” was only a miniature of the rich wealth and valiant wisdom garnered for our delight and inspiration in ‘The Pageant of Greece,” and, to take only the chapter on “Thucydides,” one could alter an old -classical name here and there and feel that he was speaking to England and the British Empire today, addressing their statesmen and people as the world’s trustees of light and freedom for the race. One can lay down the daily newspaper • with profoundly troubled thoughts. Is Chamberlain right? What will Hitler do next? What is Mussolini’s aim? How far toward the West is Japan's horizon? One can take up the “Pageant of Greece,” Thucydides in particular, and quickly

the mind is merged into a now quint, given a longer-ranged vision, the surer grip of a 'balanced life." Yes, this book is a find, and worth dozens of ordinary books, And i, bridges two worlds, the Ancient and the Modern. with the inspiration of immprtal insight and valour.'