Cruises of the Athena in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, 1910 . uman. Nor were they idledisplays of valor, but heroic deeds in defense ofthe civilization of which we are a part. AsGreece to the sympathetic eye is the steppingstone twixt reality and dreamland, so Greekhistory is the borderland between history andromance. Every bay and headland, every moun-tain and valley, has its memories of men whowere heroes and held converse with gods. Better yet, but farther from our westernthought, is the Greek legacy of culture. Venicehas given us painting, Germany music, Englandhas her gardens, Fra
Cruises of the Athena in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, 1910 . uman. Nor were they idledisplays of valor, but heroic deeds in defense ofthe civilization of which we are a part. AsGreece to the sympathetic eye is the steppingstone twixt reality and dreamland, so Greekhistory is the borderland between history andromance. Every bay and headland, every moun-tain and valley, has its memories of men whowere heroes and held converse with gods. Better yet, but farther from our westernthought, is the Greek legacy of culture. Venicehas given us painting, Germany music, Englandhas her gardens, France her cathedrals; eachpeople makes its one-sided contribution to themany-faceted gem of art. Which art did notGreece make hers? Have we any temples likethe Parthenon; any trio of dramatists like (Es-chylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; any voice forour poetized historic consciousness like Homer?Which of our philosophers surpasses Plato?What orator rivals Pericles? Was not Apellestheir Raphael? And whom shall we set overagainst Praxiteles and Scopas and Lysippus, not. The Walls of Tiryns to mention Phidias, the name that is above everyname? Elsewhere art grows up one-sided andaskew; in Greece it grew up symmetrical andcomplete. Elsewhere culture grows old and rot-ten; in Greece alone it grew ripe. And all this is in the line of our own spiritualancestry. The civilization of Egypt was a mem-orable one, but it has made no connection withour own. We dig it up as a thing strange anddead. The civilization of Greece has neverdied. It is more as patriots than as cosmopoli-tans that we turn our faces toward this birth-place of our ideals. The glories of Greece, however, are not theonly attraction of the cruise. Recent discoveriesin Crete have electrified the world as nothing hasdone since Schliemann telegraphed to the king ofGreece that he had found the grave of Agamem-non. Knossos is second in interest only toAthens. Sicily, visited in all its extent for thefirst time in 1909, is a seco
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