a week or two in revels. No chance
of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen
watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were
hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego
his _tete-a-tete_. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the
cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim
seemed to be to have a jolly time of it.

Man tanzt, man schwaetzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt:
Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?

might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the
gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for
he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and
his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one;
and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to
his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been
no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of
exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had
higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind:
witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylae and the fields of
Marathon and Plataea. But when the serious business of life gave time,
wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and
from him, then, what greeting so natural as [Greek: Chaire!] ("Rejoice!"
"Be happy!")?

As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to
the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do
not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of

Non possum ferre, Quirites,
Graecam Urbem,

Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,

Non est Romano cuiquam locus hic, ubi regnat
Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,

although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler
antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman--when the
spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which
used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of
the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by
turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless
adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law,
mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded
sanctions--who, brought nea