A Greek Orator.

All studies of Greek subjects are of peculiar value to Americans, because Greece was in reality our mother, while England was only a kind and wise step-mother. That freedom we enjoy, the principles which occupied our political ancestors, the modern industry, the gymnastics in our games, the rights and powers of modern woman, the breadth of our literature, the predominance of reason, the prevailing taste for art, are repetitions of what were once the delight of the Greeks. Notwithstanding the intervening centuries the land of Homer and Socrates is near to us. This nearness is not the result of only intellectual resemblances, but it comes from the fact that the Greeks were a nation of writers; and they were not forerunners of Browning. They could indeed produce poems, but they possessed the ability to

compose plain history. The facts of the Greek and Latin times are better known by us than are the facts of the dark ages of the Christian era. Many of the Christian centuries did not care anything about common, historic facts. The moment a mind reached the ability to write it began to discuss some abstract point in metaphysics and theology and had no idea that anybody living, or destined to live, would ever care to know anything about the common things of state, or field, or shop, or home. The two classic states were fair combinations of poetry and practical common sense. There were as many historians as there were poets, because the classic literature included history in its art. Homer was no more the father of poetry than Herodotus was the father of history. The Rome which had a Virgil possessed also a Tacitus.

The fondness of the classics for written truth of all kinds makes those races nearer to us than are the Christians of the fifteenth century. We know more about the expedition of Xenophon to Babylon and return

than we know about the Crusades of the Christian knights. The Crusades lie in our minds much like the stories told by Hermann Grimm, or hinted at in legends of King Arthur, but the expedition of Xenophon is so seen that it resembles not a little, Sherman's march to the sea, or Morgan's raid through Ohio. Xenophon did not make a large enough volume, but so far as it goes it tells a simple story of what took place. We can see Xenophon in his tent, just as the battle is about to open, busy putting on his best clothes that if he should be wounded or slain, he might not be treated with the disrespect which is liable to befall a dead or wounded private. The book is an exact portrait of a piece of the Greek period.

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The art of photography came many thousands of years too late. Even when history paints the mind and soul of a past worthy, it is unable to recall his face. interesting Atlantis has sunk. Could Fortune empower the political student to realize a few reasonable wishes, one of those wishes might well be to have upon

his library wall three portraits: those of Æschines, Demosthenes, and with them Philip of Macedon. These three men vexed the world when it was still young, and as sorely vexed each other. This was in the fourth century before the dawn of our period. Philip held aloft a powerful sword; and Demosthenes and Æschines debated as to the heads upon which the sword ought to fall. The warrior inflamed the speech of the statesman. While Greece had made language and oratory advance toward perfection, Macedon had built up a military ambition which was to tax to the extreme the power of Athenian thought and utterance. That the sad lines in the face of Demosthenes may be understood, he must be seen in the relations he sustained to the young king of the North, and also to the Athenian lawyer who was brilliant, but base in character and false to his country. In his best days, Demosthenes was met by a victorious sword and an eloquent but deceitful tongue. When the modern dramatist declared the pen to be mightier than the sword, he neglected to

state whether even a great orator ought to be willing to contend against both.

The fourth century (before Christ) was rich in Greek forces. Within its boundaries came the lives and graves of Socrates, Plato, Xenophon and all the members of that rationalistic school. But by this study of logic and all the arts, the best citizens had been turned away from the love of war, and the Greek army became a conglomeration of substitutes. Fighting tasks were let out by contract. A soldier was only a laborer, more devoted to a paymaster than to a flag.

The Athenians had never equaled the Spartans in the love of war. The Athenians were Democrats. They were wedded to an idea which has since become more popular—the idea of the most happiness for the most. Plato had made politics into a poem of which the burden was happiness. Man ought to be educated, musical, graceful and free. The State was indeed to be the greatest object, but its greatness was to be not military but mental. Sparta sustained to Athens such relations as fifty