Pictures of Hellas: Five Tales of Ancient Greece

Pictures of Hellas: Five Tales of Ancient Greece

Nearly all the more recent romances and dramas, whose scene is laid in classic times, depict the period of the great rupture between Paganism and Christianity. This is true of Hypatia, Fabiola, The Last Days of Pompeii, The Epicureans, The Emperor and The Galilean, The Last Athenian, and many other works. The cause of this coincidence is not difficult to understand; for a period containing such strong contrasts invites sthetic treatment. The present tales derive their material from a different, but no less interesting epoch. They give pictures of the flowering of Hellas, the distant centuries whose marvellous culture rested solely on the purely human elements of character as developed beneath a mild and radiant sky. Yet it required a certain degree of persistence to procure this material. When we examine the Greek writers to find descriptions of the men of those times or the special characteristics of the social life of the period, Greek literature, so rich in accounts of historical events, becomes strangely laconic, nay almost silent. How entirely different is the situation of a personii who desires to sketch a picture of the Frenchmen of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. The whole collection of memoirs is at his disposal. In these writings the author discourses familiarly with the reader, gives him lifelike portraits of the ladies and gentlemen of the court, and tells him the most minute anecdotes of the society of that day. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56929
Author: Mariager, Peder
Release Date: Apr 6, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Safford, Mary J.