The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time

Nor does it matter that these ancient epics are not complex in art or thought; they were addressed to the ear, not to the mind, and to the people, not to subtle lords; they had to be understood as soon as heard, and they had to be carried onward with vigorous action. Today we lead intricate and often introverted lives, in which action as the Greeks knew it is a rare exception, found chiefly in the press and gathered from afar; man is now an animal that stops and thinks. Therefore our literature is an analysis of motives and thought; it is in mental conflict that we find the profoundest wars and the darkest tragedies. But in Homer’s day life was action, and Homer was action’s prophet. His verse and style are almost dictated by action; through his turbulent hexameters the story runs like some broad and powerful stream; so that (when at last we have learned the genealogy of the heroes and the gods) we are caught and held by the poem as by some swift Niagara. And yet, in the midst of the battles, comes such quiet poetry as this, fair even in our lame rendition:

Thus made harangue to them Hector; and roaring the Trojans applauded;

Then from the yoke loos’d their war-steeds sweating, and each by his chariot

Tethered his horses with thongs.And then they brought from the city,

Hastily, oxen and goodly sheep, and wine honey-hearted….

Firewood they gathered withal; and then from the plain to the heavens

Rose on the winds the sweet savor.And these by the highways of battle

Hopeful sat through the night, and many their watch-fires burning.

Even as when, in the sky, the stars shine out round the night-orb,

Wondrous to see, and the winds are laid, and the peaks and the headlands

Tower to the view, and the glades come out, and the glorious heaven

Stretches itself to its widest, and sparkle the stars multitudinous,

Gladdening the heart of the toil-wearied shepherd—even as countless,

’Twixt the black ships and the river of Xanthus, glittered the watch-fires

Built by the horse-taming Trojans at Ilium…. Meanwhile the war-wearied horses, champing spelt and white barley,

Close by their chariots,waited the coming of gold-throned dawn.

(VIII, end.)

2. “DAVID” I name “the Psalmist” next. Who he was we do not know, except that he was not David. David was a fascinating brigand who made himself rich with robbery, usurped the throne of Saul, stole other men’s wives, broke every commandment, and is honored by posterity as the pious author of the Psalms. But these “Songs of Praise” were composed by many hands, and any hand but David’s; they were accumulated through centuries by the priests of the Temple at Jerusalem; and they were brought together only 150 years before Christ, nearly a millennium after David had ceased to be.

No matter who wrote them, or when; there they are, the profoundest lyrics in literature, so vivid with ecstasy that even those who doubt all dogmas feel in the blood a strange response to their music still. It is true that they complain too much; that they echo or anticipate Job’s wonder why the just should suffer so while the ruthless prosper; that they conceive the deity in a narrow and nationalistic sense; that they beg too pugnaciously for the punishment of enemies; that they coax Jehovah with fulsome praise, reproach him for negligence (X, 1; XLIV), and in general picture the God of the Jews and the Pilgrims as a Commander-in-Chief mighty and terrible in war (XII, 3; XVIII, 8, 34, 40; LXIV, 7 ).

And yet, amid these songs of battle, what tender lyrics of humility and sorrow:

As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower in the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.