The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-04-09

| ing the north wind; Sisyphus, rolling
the stone up the hill, only to have the
same thing to do over again; Tantalus,
with fruits above him that he could not
reach; Achilles, with his arrows; lear
us, with his waxen wings, flying too
near the sun; the Centaurs, half man
and half beast; Orpheus, with his
| Tyre; Atlas, with the world on his
back, all these and more have helped
literature, from the graduates speech
on commencement day to Rufus Coates
! eulogium on Daniel Webster at Dart
mouth. Tragedy and comedy were born
! in the festivals of Dionysius at Athens.
The lyric and elegiac and epic poetry
of Greece 500 years before Christ has
its echoes in the Tennysons, Longfel-
lows and BryantS of 1900 and 1900 years
after Christ. There is not an effective
pulpit or editorial chair or professors
room or cultured parlor or intelligent
farm house to-day in America or Eu-
rope that could not appropriately en-
ploy Pauls ejaculation and say: Il am
debtor to the Greeks"
The fact is this, Paul h ad got much
of his oratorical power of expression
their literature was evident, when
standing in the presence of an audience
| of Greek scholars on Mars hill, which
overlOoks Athens, he dared to quote
from one of their own Greek poets,
either Cleanthus or Aratus, de-
claring: LAS certain also of your own
poets have said, for we are also His
offspring" And he made accurate
quotation, CleanthuS, one of the poets,
having written:
For we Thine offspring are All things that
Are but the echo of the voice Divine.
And Aratus, one of their own poets,
had written:
Doth care perpIex ? Is lowering danger nigh /?
We are His offspring, and to JOve we fly.
1t was rather a risky thing for Paul
to attempt to quote extemporaneously
from poem in a language foreign to
his, and before Greek scholars, but
Paul did it without stammering, and
then acknowledged before the most
distinguished audience on the planet
his Indebtedness to the Greeks, crying
out in his grafton: las one of your own
poets has said
Furthermore, all the civilized world,
like Paul, is indebted to the Greeks for
architecture. The world before the
time of the Greeks had built mono
liths, obelis1s, cromlechs, sphinxes and
pyramids, but they were mostly monu-
mental to the dead whom they failed
to memorialize. We are not certain
even of the names of those in whose
commemoration the pyramids were
built. But Greek architure did most
lSy-sr,
precedents, and borrowing nothing
from other nations, Greek architec-
ture carved its own columns, sets its
own pediments, adjusted its own en-
tablatures, rounded its own holdings,
and carried out as never before the
three qualities of right building, called
by an old author ''firmitaS, utilitas,
venustas," namely, firmness, useful
ness, beauty. Although the ParthenOn
on the AcrOpolis of Athens is only a
wreck of the storms and earthquakes
and bombardments of many centuries,
and although Lord Elgin took from one
side of that building, at an expense
of $3.50, 900, two ship loads of sculp-
ture, one ship load going down
in the Mediterranean and the
other ship-1Oad now to be found in the
British museum, the Parthenon, though
in comparative ruins, has been an in
spiratiOn to all architects for
centuries past, and will be an in
spiration all the time from now until
the world itself is a temple ruin. Oh,
that Parthenon! One never gets over
having once seen it. But what must it
have been when it stood as its architects,
Ixitnos and Killilrates, built it out of
Pentellcan marble, white as Mount
Blanc at MONDAY, and as overwhelm-
ing? Height above height. OveFtop-
ping the august and majestic pile, and
rising from its roof was statue of
Pallas Promachus in bronze, so tall and
flashing that sailors far out at sea be-
held the plume of her helmet. With
out the aid of the Eternal God it
never would have been planned, and
without the aid of God the chiSels and
trowelS never could have constructed
it. There is not a fine church building
in all the world, or a properly-con-
structed courthouse, or beautiful art
gallery, or an appropriate auditorium,
or tasteful home, which, because of
that Parthenon, whether its style or
some other style be adopted, is not di-
rectly or indirectly a debtor to the
Greeks.
But there is another art in my mind
the most fascinating, elevating and
inspiring of all arts. and the nearest to
the divine-for which all the world
owes debt to the Hellenes that will
never be paid. / mean sculpture. At
least $50 years before Christ the Greeks
perpetuateG the human face and form
in terra cOtta and marble. What
blessing to the human family that men
and women nightly useful, who
could live only within a century may
be perpetuated for five or six or ten
centuries. How | wish that some
sculptor, contemporaneous with
Christ, could have put His matchless
form in marble! But for every grand
and equisite statue of Martin Luther,
of John Knox, of William Penn, of
Thomas Chalmers, of Wellington, of
Lafayette, of any of the great states
men or emancipators or conquerors
who adorn your parks or fill the inches
of your academies, you are debtors to
the Greeks. They covered the Aero
polls, they glorified the temples, they
adorned the cemetaries with statues,
some in cedar, some in ivory, some in
silver, some in gold, some in size dimin-
utive and some in size colossal. Thanks
to Phidiss, who worked in stone; to
Clearchus, who worked in bronze; to
Dontas, who worked in gold, and to all
ancient chisels of commemoration. Do
you not realize that for many of the
wonders of sculpture we are indebted to
the Greeks?
Veal For the science of medicine,
the great art Of healing. we must thank