This idea the Greeks had of him is best summed up not by a poet, but by a philosopher, Plato: “Love – Eros – makes his home in men’s hearts, but not in every heart, for where there is hardness he departs. His greatest glory is that he cannot do wrong nor allow it; force never comes near him. For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness.

Very different conditions of life confronted them from those we face, but it is ever to be borne in mind that though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience.

The fundamental facts about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priest had said, “Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought.” The Greeks said, All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.

Tell him, too,” she said, “never to pluck flowers, and to think every bush may be a goddess in disguise.

I take courage,” Aeneas said. “Here too there are tears for things, and hearts are touched by the fate of all that is mortal.

A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.

THE Greeks did not believe that the gods created the universe. It was the other way about: the universe created the gods. Before there were gods heaven and earth had been formed. They were the first parents. The Titans were their children, and the gods were their grandchildren.

Convention, so often a mask for injustice...

The spiritual world was not to them another world from the natural world. It was the same world as that known to the mind. Beauty and rationality were both manifested in it. They did not see the conclusions reached by the spirit and those reached by the mind as opposed to each other. Reason and feeling were not antagonistic. The truth of poetry and the truth of science were both true. It.

When she came into Venus’ presence the goddess laughed aloud and asked her scornfully if she was seeking a husband since the one she had had would have nothing to do with her because he had almost died of the burning wound she had given him.