Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/45

 n] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 27 he found himself in. And as his strenuous insistence on his own great distinctive qualities and loves was passing from him, there was no reason why he should not adapt himself to circumstances, and also adopt whatever element or view of life seemed agreeable or expedient. His mind was open to novelty, his taste was less exclusive, his reason less exacting. So he accepted the East — many of its ways of thought or foolishness, and whatever of its emotion and ecstasy he could bring himself to feel or imagine. He amused himself with hoary dreams in Egypt, with more luxu- rious emotion in Syria, and with Phrygian orgies All this told upon Greek character ; and was to give an oriental color to Greek thought of the coming centu- ries. It naturally affected the Greek influence on Rome, whose expanding rule was also bringing many Greek-enlightened Romans to the East. The modifications of the Greek and Roman char- acters already mentioned appear as distinctly intel- lectual. But during the last centuries before Christ another change had been going on, first among Greeks and then with greater fulness of promise among the Romans. This was the development of the emotional side of the human spirit. The Greeks of Homer had ready emotions, and of many kinds, — a full and fair foundation for a catholic growth of the human soul. Emotions intensify with the lyric poets ; each lyrist represents some form of feeling more intensely, or at least in clearer consciousness, than in the Epics. Archilochus' poems most consciously breathe hatred ; those of Alcaeus, the ardor of high-bom defiance of the crowd ; Mimnermus and Theognis are filled with