rapped in the skins of sheep and
goats, wound up the festival with their jokes; lastly, the pipe,
which with suitable strains accompanied and regulated the solemn
as well as the merry dance. Nowhere, perhaps, does the especially
close relationship of the Hellenes and Italians come to light so
clearly as here; and yet in no other direction did the two nations
manifest greater divergence as they became developed. The training
of youth remained in Latium strictly confined to the narrow limits
of domestic education; in Greece the yearning after a varied
yet harmonious training of mind and body created the sciences of
Gymnastics and Paideia, which were cherished by the nation and by
individuals as their highest good. Latium in the poverty of its
artistic development stands almost on a level with uncivilized
peoples; Hellas developed with incredible rapidity out of its
religious conceptions the myth and the worshipped idol, and out of
these that marvellous world of poetry and sculpture, the like of
which history has not again to show. In Latium no other influences
were powerful in public and private life but prudence, riches, and
strength; it was reserved for the Hellenes to feel the blissful
ascendency of beauty, to minister to the fair boy-friend with an
enthusiasm half sensuous, half ideal, and to reanimate their lost
courage with the war-songs of the divine singer.

Thus the two nations in which the civilization of antiquity
culminated stand side by side, as different in development as they
were in origin identical. The points in which the Hellenes excel
the Italians are more universally intelligible and reflect a more
brilliant lustre; but the deep feeling in each individual that he
was only a part of the community, a rare devotedness and power of
self-sacrifice for the common weal, an earnest faith in its own
gods, form the rich treasure of the Italian nation. Both nations
underwent a one-sided, and therefore each a complete, development;
it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will object to the
Athenian that he did not know how to mould his state like the Fabii
and the Valerii, or to the Roman that he did not learn to carve
like Pheidias and to write like Aristophanes. It was in fact the
most peculiar and the best feature in the character of the Greek
people, that rendered it impossible for them to advance from national
to political unity without at the same time exchanging their polity
for despotism. Th