But no "repentance" or contrition.


140

The incarnate appearance of gods, as in Sappho's invocation to
Aphrodite, must not be taken as poetic licence · they are frequently
hallucinations. We conceive of a great many things, including the will
to die, too superficially as rhetorical.


141

The "martyr" is Hellenic: Prometheus, Hercules. The hero-myth became
pan-Hellenic: a poet must have had a hand in that!


142

How _realistic_ the Greeks were even in the domain of pure inventions!
They poetised reality, not yearning to lift themselves out of it. The
raising of the present into the colossal and eternal, _e.g._, by Pindar.


143

What condition do the Greeks premise as the model of their life in
Hades? Anæmic, dreamlike, weak . it is the continuous accentuation of
old age, when the memory gradually becomes weaker and weaker, and the
body still more so. The senility of senility . this would be our state