Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/20

xii. Scenes from the Birds and the Frogs of Aristophanes, the two most important of the plays of this writer, in Frere's paraphrases, show the reader Greek comedy at its best.

Greek classical prose, on the other hand, is represented, first, by short extracts from the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and from Xenophon, the essayist and bright story-teller, with a few scenes from the pages of Plato, poet and philosopher in one, Jowett's classic versions being used for Thucydides and Plato. Several of these passages from Xenophon and Plato have reference to that most unique and striking personality in ancient thought, the Athenian Socrates. Then follows, in Lord Brougham's spirited rendering, a brief extract from the speech of Demosthenes On the Crown, a speech of which David Hume said "that it is the most perfect production of the human intellect." The poetry of the post-classical age is represented by three of the Idyls of Theocritus, and by eight or ten of the little pieces which have been, though incorrectly, ascribed to Anacreon. The book closes with three selections from Lucian, a prose writer of the second century of our era, who, in his satirical Dialogues, marks a new departure in literature and seems in many ways to link together the ancient and the modern world. This volume and other books like it will appeal to readers of various classes. We may read literature for the information on matters of fact that it affords, or for the esthetic pleasure and quickening that it yields, or for the new light it casts on human life, or for its effect upon our manner of thinking and upon our expression of thought; we may read it also as students