AUTHORS OF GREECE AND ROME ONE SHOULD KNOW--MASTERPIECES
OF THE ANCIENT WORLD THAT MAY BE ENJOYED IN GOOD
ENGLISH VERSIONS.
In choosing the great books of the world, after the Bible and
Shakespeare, one is brought face to face with a perplexing problem. It
is easy to provide a list for the scholar, the literary man, the
scientist, the philosopher; but it is extremely difficult to arrange any
list for the general reader, who may not have had the advantage of a
college education or any special literary training. And here, at the
outset, enters the problem of the Greek, Latin and other ancient
classics which have always been widely read and which you will find
quoted by most writers, especially those of a half century ago. In this
country literary fads have prevailed for a decade or two, only to be
dropped for new fashions in culture.
Take Emerson, for instance. His early development was strongly affected
by German philosophy, which was labeled Transcendentalism. A. Bronson
Alcott, who never wrote anything that has survived, was largely
instrumental in infecting Emerson with his own passion for the dreamy
German philosophical school. Emerson also was keenly alive to the
beauties of the Greek and the Persian poets, although he was so
broad-minded in regard to reading books in good translations that he
once said he would as soon think of swimming across the Charles river
instead of taking the bridge, as of reading any great masterpiece in the
original when he could get a good translation.
Many of Emerson's essays are an ingenious mosaic of Greek, Latin,
Persian, Hindoo and Arabic quotations. These extracts are always apt and
they always point some shrewd observation or conclusion of the Sage of
Concord; but that Emerson should quote them as a novelty reveals the
provincial character of New England culture in his day as strongly as
the lectures of Margaret Fuller.
The question that always arises in my mind when reading a new list of
the hundred or the fifty best books by some recognized literary
authority is: Does the ordinary business or professional man, who has
had no special literary training, take any keen interest in the great
masterpieces of the Greeks and Romans? Does it not require some special
aptitude or some special preparation for one to appreciate Plato's
_Dialogues_ or Sophocles' _OEdipus_, Homer's _Iliad_ or Horace's
_Odes_, even in the best translations? In most cases, I think the
reading of the Greek and Latin classics in translations is barren of any
good results. Unless one has a passionate sympathy with Greek or Roman
life, it is impossible, without a study of the languages and an intimate
knowledge of the life and ideals of the people, to get any grasp of
their best literary work. The things which the scholar admires seem to
the great public flat and commonplace; the divine simplicity, the lack
of everything modern, seems to narrow the intellectual horizon. This, I
think, is the general result.
But over against this must be placed the exceptions among men of
literary genius like Keats and Richard Jefferies, both Englishmen of
scanty school education, who rank, to my mind, among the greatest
interpreters of the real spirit of the classical age. Keats, like
Shakespeare, knew "small Latin and less Greek"; yet in his _Ode on a
Grecian Urn_ and his _Endymion_ he has succeeded in bringing over into
the alien English tongue the very essence of Greek life and thought.
Matthew Arnold, with all his scholarship and culture, never succeeded in
doing this, even in such fine work as _A Strayed Reveler_ or _Empedocles
on Etna_. In the same way Jefferies, who is neglected by readers of
today, in _The Story of My Heart_ has reproduced ancient Rome and made
Julius Caesar more real than we find him in his own _Commentaries_.
If you can once reach the point of view of Keats or Jefferies you will
find a new world opening before you--a world of fewer ideas, but of far
more simple and genuine life; of narrower horizon, but of intenser power
over the primal emotions. This was a world without Christ--a world which
placidly accepted slavery as a recognized institution; which calmly
ignored all claims of the sick, the afflicted and the poverty-stricken,
and which admitted the right to take one's own life when that life
became burdensome through age or disease, or when self-destruction would
save one from humiliation and punishment.
[Illustration:
BUST OF HOMER IN THE MUSEUM OF NAPLES
ANOTHER FINE BUST IS IN THE LOUVRE AT PARIS
BUT ALL ARE IDEALIZED FOR THE WORLD
HAS NO AUTHENTIC RECORDS OF THE
AUTHOR OF THE
"ILIAD" AND THE "ODYSSEY"]
These ideas are all reflected in the great masterpieces of the Greeks
and the Romans which have come down to us. Sometimes this reflection is
tinged with a modern touch of sentiment, as in the _Meditations_ of
Marcus Aurelius; but usually it is hard and repellant in its
unconsciousness of romantic love or sympathy or regard for human rights,
which Christianity has made the foundation stones of the modern world.
This difference it is which prevents the average man or woman of today
from getting very near to the classic writers. Even the greatest of
these, with all their wealth of beauty and pathos, fail to impress one
as do far less gifted writers of our own time.
At the head of the ancient classics stand Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
and Virgil's _AEneid_. It is very difficult to get the spirit of either
of these authors from a metrical translation. Many famous poets have
tried their hand on Homer, with very poor results. About the worst
version is that of Alexander Pope, who translated the _Iliad_ into the
neat, heroic verse that suited so well his own _Essay on Man_ and his
_Dunciad_. Many thousand copies were sold and the thrifty poet made a
small fortune out of the venture. All the contemporary critics praised
it, partly because they thought it was good, as they did not even
appreciate the verse of Shakespeare, and partly because they feared the
merciless pen of Pope. The Earl of Derby translated the _Iliad_ into
good blank verse, but this becomes very tiresome before you get through
a single book. William Cullen Bryant, the American poet, gave far
greater variety to his verse and his metrical translation of the _Iliad_
and the _Odyssey_ is perhaps the best version in print. The best
metrical translation of the _AEneid_ is that of Christopher P. Cranch.
The very best translation for the general reader is the prose version of
Butcher and Lang. These two English scholars have rendered both the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ into good, strong, idiomatic prose, and in
this form the reader who doesn't understand Greek can get some idea of
the beauty of the sonorous lines of the original poem. Conington and
Professor Church have each done the same service for Virgil and their
prose versions of the scholarly Latin poet will be found equally
readable.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF VIRGIL
TAKEN FROM A BUST BY L. P. BOITARD
AND ENGRAVED ON COPPER FOR THE
FRONTISPIECE OF WARTON'S
VIRGIL, 1753]
Homer and Virgil give an excellent idea of the ancient way of looking
upon life. Everything is clear, brilliant, free from all illusions;
there are no moral digressions; the characters live and move as
naturally as the beasts of the field and with the same unconscious
enjoyment of life and love and the warmth of the sun. The gods decree
the fate of men; the prizes of this world fall to him who has the
stoutest heart, the strongest arm and the most cunning tongue. Each god
and goddess of Olympus has favorites on earth, and when these favorites
are in trouble or danger the gods appeal to Jove to intercede for them.
None of the characters reveals any except the most primitive emotions.
Helen of Troy sets the whole ancient world aflame, but it is only the
modern poets who put any words of remorse or shame into her beautiful
mouth. And yet these old stories are among the most attractive that have
ever been told. They appeal to young and old alike, and when one sees
the bright eyes of children flash over the deeds of the heroes of Homer,
he may get some idea of what these tales were to the early Greeks. Told
by professional story-tellers about the open fire at night, they had
much to do with the development of the Greek mind and character, as seen
at its best in the age of Pericles. Virgil took AEneas of Troy as his
hero and wrote his great national epic of the founding of Rome.
Only brief space can be given to the other worthies of the classical
age. Every one should have some knowledge of Plato, whose great service
was to tell the world of the life and teachings of Socrates, the wisest
of the ancients. Get Jowett's translation of the _Phaedo_ and read the
pathetic story of the last days of Socrates. Or get the _Republic_ and
learn of Plato's ideal of good government. Jowett was one of the
greatest Greek scholars and his translations are simple and strong, a
delight to read.
Of the great Greek dramatists read one work of each--say, the _Antigone_
of Sophocles, the _Medea_ of Euripides and the _Prometheus_ of AEschylus.
If you like these, it is easy to find the others. Then there is
Plutarch, whose lives of famous Greeks and Romans used to be one of the
favorite books of our grandfathers. It is little read today, but you can
get much out of it that will remain as a permanent possession. The
Romans were great letter-writers, perhaps because they had not developed
the modern fads of society and sport which consume most of the leisure
of today, and in these letters you will get nearer to the writer than in
his other works.
[Illustration:
PLATO, AFTER AN ANTIQUE BUST
PLATO GAVE THE WORLD ITS CHIEF KNOWLEDGE
OF SOCRATES AND HE ALSO ANTICIPATED
MANY MODERN DISCOVERIES IN
SCIENCE AND THOUGHT]
Cicero in his most splendid orations never touched me as he does in his
familiar letters, while Pliny gives a mass of detail that throws a clear
light on Roman life. Pliny would have made an excellent reporter, as he
felt the need of detail in giving a picture of any event. There are a
score of other famous ancient writers whose work you may get in good
English translations, but of all these perhaps you will enjoy most the
two philosophers--Epictetus, the Greek stoic, and Marcus Aurelius, who
retained a refreshing simplicity of mind when he was absolute master of
the Roman world. Most of the Greek and Latin authors may be secured in
Bohn's series of translations, which are usually good.
This ancient world of Greece and Rome is full of stimulus to the general
reader, although he may have no knowledge either of Latin or Greek. More
and more the colleges are abandoning the training in the classics and
are substituting German or French or Italian for the old requirements
of Greek and Latin. As intellectual training, the modern languages
cannot compare with the classical, but in our day the intense
competition in business, the struggle for mere existence has become so
keen that it looks as though the leisurely methods of education of our
forefathers must be abandoned.
The rage for specializing has reached such a point that one often finds
an expert mining or electrical engineer graduated from one of our great
universities who knows no more of ancient or modern literature than an
ignorant ditch-digger, and who cannot write a short letter in correct
English. These things were not "required" in his course; hence he did
not take them. And it is far more difficult to induce such a man to
cultivate the reading habit than it is to persuade the man who has never
been to college to devote some time every day to getting culture from
the great books of the world.