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Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life by Orison Swett Marden
page 10 of 193 (05%)





THE GREEK SLAVE WHO WON THE OLIVE CROWN


The teeming life of the streets has vanished; the voices of the
children have died away into silence; the artisan has dropped his
tools, the artist has laid aside his brush, the sculptor his
chisel. Night has spread her wings over the scene. The queen city
of Greece is wrapped in slumber.

But, in the midst of that hushed life, there is one who sleeps
not, a worshiper at the shrine of art, who feels neither fatigue
nor hardship, and fears not death itself in the pursuit of his
object. With the fire of genius burning in his dark eyes, a youth
works with feverish haste on a group of wondrous beauty.

But why is this master artist at work, in secret, in a cellar
where the sun never shone, the daylight never entered? I will tell
you. Creon, the inspired worker, the son of genius, is a slave,
and the penalty of pursuing his art is death.

When the Athenian law debarring all but freemen from the exercise
of art was enacted, Creon was at work trying to realize in marble
the vision his soul had created. The beautiful group was growing
into life under his magic touch when the cruel edict struck the
chisel from his fingers.
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