The Extant Odes of Pindar | Page 6

and
laxer in sexual indulgence than the Christian ethics would allow in
theory, though not perhaps much more so than Christendom has shown
itself in practice. And though undoubtedly the greatest single impulse
ever given to morality came from Palestine, yet the ground which
nurtured the seeds of Christianity was as much Hellenic as Hebrew. It
would be impossible here to enter on an exhaustive comparison of the

ethical capacities of the two races, but before we pronounce hastily for
the superiority of the Hebrew there are surely some difficulties to
surmount. We may well ask, for example, Would Hellas ever have
accepted as her chief national hero such a man as David a man who in
his life is conspicuous by his crimes not less than by his brilliant gifts,
and who dies with the words of blood and perfidy on his lips, charging
his son with the last slaughterous satisfaction of his hate which he had
sworn before his God to forego? And though the great Hebrew prophets
teach often a far loftier morality than this, they cannot have been nearly
so representative of the feeling of this nation as were Aeschylus and
Sophocles and Pindar of the feeling of theirs. The Hebrews of the
prophets' age 'slew the prophets,' and left it to the slayers' descendants
to 'build their sepulchres,' and at the same time to show their inherited
character still more unmistakeably by once more slaying the last
prophet and the greatest.[3]
In truth in the literature, the art, the life generally of Hellas in her prime,
the moral interest whenever it appears, and that is not seldom, claims
for itself the grave and preponderant attention which it must claim if it
is to appear with fit dignity. But it is not thrust forward unseasonably or
in exaggeration, nor is it placed in a false opposition to the interests of
the aesthetic instincts, which after all shade into the moral more
imperceptibly than might be generally allowed. There must be a moral
side to all societies, and the Hellenic society, the choicest that the world
has seen, the completest, that is, at once in sensibilities and in energies,
could not but show the excellence of its sensibilities in receiving moral
impressions, the excellence of its energies in achieving moral conduct.
This, however, is no place to discuss at length questions in the history
of ethics. Yet it must be remembered that in the ancient world
departments of thought, and the affairs of men generally, were far less
specialized than in modern times. If the philosophy of Hellas be the
most explicit witness to her ethical development, her poetry is the most
eloquent. And scarcely at any time, scarcely even in Aristotle, did
Hellenic philosophy in any department lose most significant traces of
its poetical ancestry. But enough here if I have succeeded in pointing
out that in the great poet with whom we are concerned there is an

ethical as well as a poetical and historical interest, supplying one more
reason against neglect of his legacy of song.
Yet indeed even now there remains a further question which to the
mind of any one who at present labours in this field of classical
scholarship must recur persistently if not depressingly, and on which it
is natural if not necessary to say a few words. If the selection of Pindar
in particular as a Greek poet with claims to be further popularized
among Englishmen may be defended, there is still a more general count
to which all who make endeavours to attract or retain attention to Greek
literature will in these times be called upon to plead by voices which
command respect. To such pleas this is not the place to give large room,
or to discriminate in detail between the reasonable and unreasonable
elements in the attacks on a system of education in which a preeminent
position is allotted to the literature of antiquity. While fully admitting
that much time and labour are still wasted in efforts to plant the study
of ancient and especially of Greek literature in uncongenial soil, while
admitting also most fully the claims, and the still imperfect recognition
of the claims, of physical science to a rank among the foremost in
modern education, I should yet be abundantly willing that this attempt
to help in facilitating the study of a Greek author should be looked on
as implying adhesion to the protest still sometimes raised, that in the
higher parts of a liberal education no study can claim a more important
place than the study of the history and the literature of Hellas. The
interest which belongs to these is far wider and deeper than any mere
literary interest. To the human mind the most interesting of phenomena
are and ought to be