to which wise men pay homage, and which is "a higher power than Jove." Prometheus defies the lightning, but he bows to Destiny, as the gladiators bowed to the autocrat in the imperial box, with their chant of morituri te salutant, knowing themselves to be doomed men, but dying with a good grace, and scorning to ask for quarter.
Gradually the Greek mind expanded. The seas were opened, commerce increased, men travelled far and saw much; and thus the same stimulus was given to national thought and feeling by maritime enterprise as to the Jews under Solomon, and to the English under Elizabeth.[1] And as the Athenians grew adventurous, so they grew self-reliant. They doubted and questioned where they had before been content to shudder and believe. They attributed more to themselves and less to the blind agency of Destiny; and thus, in this progress of rationalism, there ensued that momentous change in thought represented by the transition in history from Herodotus to Thucydides, and in poetry from Æschylus to Sophocles.
With this new generation, man is no longer bound hand and foot, powerless to move against his inevitable doom. He has liberty of choice in action, and by his knowledge or his ignorance, by his virtues or his vices, has made himself what he is. It is not so much a malignant power tormenting men in sheer envy at their wealth or happiness; but it is men themselves, who "play the fool with the times, while the spirits of
- ↑ See Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii. 185; Froude's History of England, viii. 426.
