of Greece. We have found in each of them pagan elements partly
bequeathed by that earlier and lower earth-bound worship which preceded
the Olympians, partly added in decadent days when the mind of man was
turned from the heights and grovelling again. But we have seen a deeper
meaning in them, far further-reaching than any story of days and nights
or of years and seasons. It is a story of the aspiring spirit which is
ever wistful here on the green earth (although that indeed is pleasant),
and which finds its home among high thoughts, and ideas which dwell in
heaven. We shall see many aspects of the same twofold thought and life,
as we move about from point to point among the literature of later days.
Yet we shall seldom find any phase of the conflict which has not been
prophesied, or at least foreshadowed, in these legends of the dawn. The
link that binds the earliest to the latest page of literature is just
that human nature which, through all changes of country and of time,
remains essentially the same. It is this which lends to our subject its
individual as well as its historical interest. The battle is for each of
us our own battle, and its victories and defeats are our own.




LECTURE II

MARIUS THE EPICUREAN


Much has been written, before and after the day of Walter Pater,
concerning that singularly pure and yet singularly disappointing
character, Marcus Aurelius, and his times. The ethical and religious
ferment of the period has been described with great fullness and