To a young promising poet from Crete

"Poetry was the basis of their education the guide and commentary of their practice, the inspiration of their speculative thought. [...] their national epics were to them what the Bible was to the Puritans". 
Plato:"When the boy has learned his letters and is beginning to understand what is written, as he understood only what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of great poets, which he reads at school; in these are contained many admonitions, and many tales, and praises, and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in order that he may imitate or emulate them and desire to become like them".

The Greek view of life

Only yesterday I received a present that I was so looking for: The 7th edition of the Greek view of life by G. Lowes Dickinson (1909). The first edition was published in 1896 and I would like to share with you, my dear friends, some parts. 

Chapter IV

The Greek view of Art [Aesthetics and Ethics] 

In approaching the subject of the Art of the Greeks we come to what [...] may be regarded as the central point of their scheme of life. [...] The truer account of the impulse that urged them to create is that given by Plato, in which he describes it as a "madness of those who are possessed by the Muses. 

The Greeks were by nature, artists. They created works of art more purely beautiful than those of any other age or people. [...] The most beautiful work of art, in the Greek sense of the term, as that which made the finest and most harmonious appeal not only to the physical but to the moral sense, and while communicating the highest and most perfect pleasure to the eye or the ear, had also the power to touch and inform the soul with the grace which was her moral excellence.