y
city of the Empire, paying homage to an emperor who by some divine
grace happened to prefer to be honoured by marble in Athens rather
than to have gold sent to him in Rome. How different is the Parthenon,
still, after six hundred years, the embodiment of a common impulse
of a free people! Try as Hadrian would, he could not restore the art
of the past."

Atticus looked at the Romans among the company and his voice became
golden and persuasive as he continued:

"I have come to feel, my friends, that the restoration of an art that
is not the outcome of a genuine national life is a futile thing. Rome
cannot restore the glory of old Athens. She can only learn from Greece
how to create a glory of her own. She must so govern her life, so
train her sons, that out of their own impulses a new poetry, a new
art will grow. Divine influences from the past, yes, they exist. In
your own most creative times Cicero and Lucretius, Virgil and Horace,
did more than restore. Seeking aliment from Greece, they nurtured
their own genius. But you, what are you and your friends doing? Why
are you over here? Tell me that. Are you here to learn to be better
Romans, carrying on your own national life, creating at last out of
the forces of your own time an architecture and sculpture, a painting
and poetry commensurate with your powers? Sometimes I fear you make
a cult of Athens, lose yourselves in remembering her as she once was.
You seem to spend your lives, as I have sometimes spent wakeful nights
at Marathon, my birthplace, listening for the feet of heroes and the
neighing of horses on the field where a great battle was once fought.
That may do for the night seasons, but with the sun are there not
new conquests, and new shields?

"You scorn your own Romans who come over here and put up their names
on old statues of Themistocles and Miltiades. You admire Cicero who,
although he loved Athens and wished that he might leave here some
gift from himself, scorned to pervert an ancient statue. And yet,
I tell you, Cicero was a Roman first, a lover of Greek culture second.
All that he learned here he dedicated to the Republic. He studied
Isocrates and Demosthenes in order that by his voice he might free
Rome from traitors and persuade Justice to 'walk down her broad
highways as Warder.' He read Plato that philosophy might soften the
harsher temper of his own people. He partook of our refinement that
the vigour of Rome might be used in the service of