THE LEGACY OF GREECE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3854, 24 January 1928, Page 7

THE LEGACY OF GREECE.

ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR ADAMS. Professor Adams addressed the Teachers’ Summer School students on “ The Legacy of Greece.” as part of the general subject of Greek art and literature w’hich he is contributing to the syllabus (says the Nelson Mail). The professor, who is professor of classics at Otago University College, dealt very interestingly with his subject, which was heard by 1 ful attendance of students.

“ The Legacy of Greece,” said the lecturer, was the title of a book of essays by leading authorities on the achievements of Greece in all fields. He particularly commended the work to scientists for its chapters on Greek science, which showed how the Greeks laid the foundations of scientific thought for Europe.-- In one lecture it was not possible to do more than indicate in broad outline the nature of our debt to the ancient Greeks. The attitude of the average man was clearly indicated by the expression, Oh,' it’s Greek to me,” by which he meant that it was beyond his ken remote in interest. In the same way people spoke of Greek and Latin as dead languages. As Mark Twain said of the rumour cf his own death; it was a gross exaggeration. Not only was the Greek language the most perfect among the forms of human speech; not only was it for some centuries round about the time of Christ the universal language of the civilised world; but it has been continuously alive in the same country for over 3000 years—from the eleventh century b.c. to the present day. With a knowledge of the language of Plato alone it was possible, for example, to read every one of the numerous notices in the Greek trains to-day. The language, too, was not only the greatest surviving work of Greek art; its alphabet was the origin of our own, the parent indeed of all modern European languages. The lecturer illustrated on the blackboard the way in which our alphabet had been derived from the Greek capital letters, indicating how the differences in the shapes and sounds of the letters had come about.

Some felt the perennial charm of Greece even in the beauty of the Greek script, others in the music of its words, some even in its grammer. The calm and dignified beauty of its architecture and sculpture made a universal appeal. Everyone knew the enchantment of its mythology and there was a romantic fascination about its chequered history.

The legacy c ( an alphabet implied an incalculable debt. The legacy of freedom probably looked a more immediate response. Western civilisation could hardly exaggerate Greece’s service to humanity in the fifth century b.c. , when she defended Europe against the Persians at the well-known battle of Marathon. Thermopylie, and Salamis. The soldier-poet, Aeschylus, the earliest of the great Athenian tragedians, had written an historical play, the “ Persians,” from which modern leaders could learn something of the.char-

acter and significance of the battle of Salamis ; while Browning in his “ Pheidippides ” had caught the spirit of the Athe nians in the battle of Marathon. It was difficult to conceive of a more splendid heritage than -the city-state patriotism of the Athenians that breathed in their answer to the Persian envoy: •“ So- long as the sun keeps the path where he now goeth, never shall we make compact with Xeres, but shall go forth to do battle with him, putting our trust in the gods that fight for us and in the mighty dead, whose dwelling places and holy things he hath contemned and burnt with fire.” The two principles for which the Athenian democracy so passionately fought were freedom to govern themselves by their own laws, and the equality of all citizens before the law. In repulsing the Persian invasions the Greeks had ‘saved us from Oriental despotism and handed on to us the exhilarating atmosphere of freedom which in ancient ■ Athens (so Plato-Wells ug with pawky humour) made even the horses and donkeys knock you out of the way. But more fascinating is the heritage that Greece has left us in her love of beauty and knowledge and imagination. It has been said that ‘everything that stands in our modern civilisation is (Roman, and everything that moves, ex-

cept the blind forces of Nature, is Greek in its origin. While the function of Rome was government and law, and her ideal, empire, the Greek ideal was beauty and intellect. Western Europe responded deeply to Greek influence in the last two centuries B.C. and the earlier centuries of the Roman Empire. Then the Renaissance was largely a rediscovery of the artistic value of Greece and a return towards a joyousness of life that had been lost and forgotten. But by the eighteenth century the tide of Hellenism was ebbing; and that century, although it did produce Pope’s “ Homer,” was Latin in its classicism, its typical English figure being Dr Johnson, “ the last of the Romans.” But by the early nineteenth century we find enthusiasm for Greek culture reawakening in England and on the Continent. Gray and Collins, Andre Chenier, Winckelmann, Lessing, and the Schlegels were pioneers of the Hellenism that worked into the romantic movement of Schille and Goethe, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Landor, Browning, Matthew Arnold—to name some of the greatest. All these had felt the charm of Greek art, about which the lecturer would speak elsewhere, and the fascination of Greek literature, with its beauty, vigour, md variety. Modern civilisation could not afford to ignore these treasures; and, while there is inevitably a certain untranslatable quality in all great pieces of literature, practically all the great works of Greek literature have been well translated into English, many admirably translated. .< The lecturer then enumerated and briefly characterised the greatest poets and prose-writers of ancient Greece from Homer to Theocritus, who had' been called the Alpha and the Omega.cf Greek literature, and illustrated by reading excerpts from some of them. He had not had time even to mention that the Greeks had created and in many instances perfected every form of intellectual life —not merely the various branches of literature, art, architecture; but political thought, philosophy, history, medicine, biology, natural science, mathematics, astronomy. All these and more Europe owed to the Greeks.