win something out of all eventualities, even war, if Kama and the
Cycles permit. In a non-political sense the Persian Wars bore
huge harvest for Greece; the Law used them to that end. The
great effort brought out all the latent resources of the Athenian
mind: the successes heightened Greek racial feeling to a pitch.
--What! we could stand against huge Persia?--then we are not
unworthy of the men that fought at Ilion, our fathers; the race
and spirit of _anax andron Agamemnon_ is not dead! Ha, we can do
anything; there are no victories we may not win! And here is the
dead weight and terror of the war lifted from us; and there is
no anxiety now to hold our minds. We may go forth conquering and
to conquer; we may launch our triremes on immaterial seas, and
subdue unknown empires of the spirit!--And here is Athens the
quick-witted, hegemon of Greece; her ships everywhere on the
wine-dark seas; her citizens everywhere; her natural genius
swelled by an enormous sense of achievement; her soul, grown
great under a great stress, now freed from the stress and at
leisure to explore:--in contact with opposite-minded Sparta; in
contact with conservative and somewhat luxuriously-living slow
Thebes;--with a hundred other cities;--in contact with proud
Persia; with Egypt, fallen, but retaining a measure of her old
profound sense of the Mysteries and the reality of the Unseen;
--from all these contacts and sources a spirit is born in Athens
that is to astonish and illumine the world. And Egypt is now in
revolt from the Persian; and intercourse with her is easier than
ever before in historical times; and the triremes, besides what
spiritual cargoes they may be bringing in from her, are bringing
in cargoes of honest material papyrus to tempt men to write down
their thoughts.--So the flowering of Greece became inevitable;
the Law intended it, and brought about all the conditions.