Dionysiac festivals.

Still further proof is furnished by the exquisite literary perfection
of Greek writings. One of the common arguments in favour of the study
of Greek at the present day is based upon the opinion that in the best
works extant in that language the art of literary expression has reached
wellnigh absolute perfection. I fully concur in this opinion, so far
as to doubt if even the greatest modern writers, even a Pascal or a
Voltaire, can fairly sustain a comparison with such Athenians as Plato
or Lysias. This excellence of the ancient books is in part immediately
due to the fact that they were not written in a hurry, or amid the
anxieties of an over-busy existence; but it is in greater part due to
the indirect consequences of a leisurely life. These books were written
for a public which knew well how to appreciate the finer beauties of
expression; and, what is still more to the point, their authors lived
in a community where an elegant style was habitual. Before a matchless
style can be written, there must be a good style "in the air," as the
French say. Probably the most finished talking and writing of modern
times has been done in and about the French court in the seventeenth
century; and it is accordingly there that we find men like Pascal and
Bossuet writing a prose which for precision, purity, and dignity has
never since been surpassed. It is thus that the unapproachable literary
excellence of ancient Greek books speaks for the genuine culture of the
people who were expected to read them, or to hear them read. For one of
the surest indices of true culture, whether professedly literary or not,
is the power to express one's self in precise, rhythmical, and dignified
language. We hardly need a better evidence than this of the superiority
of the ancient community in the general elevation of its tastes and
perceptions. Recollecting how Herodotos read his history at the Olympic
games, let us try to imagine even so picturesque a writer as Mr. Parkman
reading a few chapters of his "Jesuits in North America" before the
spectators assembled at the Jerome Park races, and we shall the better
realize how deep-seated was Hellenic culture.

As yet, however, I have referred to but one side of Athenian life.
Though "seekers after wisdom," the cultivated people of Athens did not
spend all their valuable leisure in dialectics or in connoisseurship.
They were not a set of dilettanti or dreamy philosophers, and they wer