GREECE..

Athens.

ALTERED CONDITION OF ATHENS.

T grieves me to behold the commonwealth.

I binge were not thus administered of old;

Then men of sense and virtue, men whose merits
Gave them consideration in the state,

Held the first offices: to such we bowed

As to the gods, and gods indeed they were,
For under their wise counsels we enjoyed
Security and peace. But now, alas!

We have no other guide in our elections

Save chance, blind chance, and on whatever head
It falls, though worst and meanest of mankind,
Up starts he a great man, and is at once
Installed prime Rogue and Minister of State.

ATHENS.

Eupolis. Tr. W. Peter.

NYMPHS of the rain,

Let us visit again

The city by Pallas beloved, the home,

The populous home of choicest delights,
Where for the appointed secret rites

From year to year the mystic dome
Duly unfolds its hallowed portals;

And gifts are there to the Powers Divine, And many a statue and lofty shrine, And pomps for all the blessed immortals; Banquet and wreathy sacrifice Hallow each season as it flies;

And ever, at the voice of spring,

Bacchus his graceful mirth renews; Sweet choirs in strife melodious sing, And all the festive echoes ring

With thunders of the Scenic Muse.

Aristophanes. Tr. J. B. Patterson.

Α'

ATHENS.

THENS, the stately-walled, magnificent!
Proem most beauteous for Alcmæon's race,
Whereon to lay the base

Of sacred song, their steeds' proud ornament!
For what more eminent

Country or home, shall I in Grecia name,

Inhabited? No city, wherein fame

Sounds not Erectheus' sons; they who for thee,
Apollo, have built up a gorgeous shrine

In Pytho the divine.

Five victories in Corinth lead me on; One in Olympia, Jove's, the chief of these; And two from Cyrrha; yours, O Megacles,

And your forefathers'! At the new success
In part rejoicing, yet for this I mourn;
That beauteous deeds in envy meet return.
"T is said indeed that mortal happiness,
When most it flourisheth, to last, must be
Thus checkered with a strange variety.

ATHENS.

Pindar. Tr. H. F. Cary.

LOOK once more, ere we leave this specular mount,

Westward, much nearer by southwest behold

Where on the Ægean shore a city stands

Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil,
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or surburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his, who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,

Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,

Æolian charms, and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;
High actions and high passions best describing;
Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

ATHENS.

John Milton.

OF

softer genius, but not less intent

To seize the palm of empire, Athens rose. Where, with bright marbles big and future pomp, Hymettus spread, amid the scented sky,

His thymy treasures to the laboring bee,
And to botanic hand the stores of health;
Wrapt in a soul-attenuating clime,
Between Ilissus and Cephissus glowed
This hive of science, shedding sweets divine,
Of active arts, and animated arms.
There, passionate for me, an easy-moved,
A quick, refined, a delicate, humane,