Nothing could have been more tragic, and fifteen thousand spectators at the rendering would sit enthralled. Not only were there such tragednes acted in this theater, but crowds roared with laughter over the comedies of Aristophanes witnessed here. It is this poet, who gave us that most freguently quoted of all the descriptions of the Athenian city, as he exclaims affectionately: “Oh thou, our Athens, violet-wreathed, brilliant, most enviable city!" Pindar before him had said similarly, "violet-crowned," "city divine." The encircling mountains, often illumined with the equisite hue indicated, constituted the crown, and the shining Acropolis was the brilliant jewel with which it was set. Such was the impression made upon two poets. Aristophanes, however, is particularly remembered for his comedies with these titles, The Birds, The Frogs, The Clouds. In the last of these he satirized Socrates, who yet was not disturbed. The old philosopher once calmly rose in the theater that the audience might see, he said, the embodiment of the sophist they were hooting on the stage. We sometimes speak of one walking with his head in the clouds, when he is not practical, when he does not amount to much. Aristophanes thus portrayed Socrates, representing him as swinging in a basket among the clouds. He had him lifted to this hazy height in mid air in expression of contempt for his moralizings. But we recognize that from that lofty altitude there came, as from the very sky, the finest and most forceful teachings of classic times. Taking our departure from the theater of such literary and manifold associations, we go in the near vicinity to Mars' Hill. This is a rocky plateau rising to a height of 375 feet, and reached by a flight of fifteen steps roughly hewn in the rock and now in a ruinous condition. On the top of this sat the venerable and dignified Court of Areopagus. We are reminded of the laws of Draco, codified by him 621 B. C., so drastic that they were said to have been written in blood. To this day we speak of statues that are too severe as Draconian. We recall again a revision, a quarter of a century later, in the milder and more beneficent laws of Solon, rightly called one of the seven wise men of Greece, having been to the Athenians what Moses is to the Jews. But the Areopagus derives its greatest and best fame from the incident of Paul having stood there and preached. "Now while Paul waited for them at Athens," says the book of Acts, "his spirit was provoked within him as he beheld the city full of idols." "And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus," and said, "We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man. Here he faced Greek philisophy, encountering, it is said, "the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers," More than three centuries before, Epicurus in his Athenian gardens had taught that the summum bonum, the chief good, was pleasure, which with him was of a more or less refined sort. His followers soon made it to be enjoyment of any kind however gross, and their motto became, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. They to-day are the materialists, who eat and drink, dress and play, and have a good time in general, with no serious aim in life, and without any real principle, and high conscientiousness. Then 310 B. C. and onward Zeno was accustomed to loiter along a sort of marble collonade in Athens, called the Stoa, and he there made disciples, who accordingly were named Stoics. They recognized no God but nature, an endless cycle of things, in which individuals are the helpless cog-wheels, and our only duty is to submit, under force of stern necessity. They were the pantheists of the present, who believe in no personal deity, no prayer, and who yet maintain a high, moral character. There is about them a kind of hard, stoical resignation quite unlike the trustful yielding of the Christian to a tender, overruling providence. Their attitude is reflected in the old lady who was asked by her pastor if she was resting on the promises, and she replied that she was, on that particular one which says, “Grin and bear it." That is Stoicism. Paul encountered not only Epicureans and Stoics, but almost everything that was going along the line of philosophy in Athens, which once had its Plato and Aristotle. These walked and talked in the shady olive groves of the Academy, in Classic shades, about a mile beyond the Dipylum gate on the banks of the Cephissus, where previously Academus had an attractive country estate. He gave his name to the place, as well as to every modern institution called an Academy. The saunterings and teachings of Aristotle were later in the Lyceum among the plane-trees on the Ilissus. He and his followers were designated as Peripatetics, because they instructed as they strolled around. Paul doubtless had in his audience both Peripatetics and Academicians, and he certainly had our Agnostics. He saw in the Grecian capital an altar inscribed, "To an unknown god," and Huxley coined his new word, agnostic, not-knowing, from the Greek for unknown in this very inscription. People now, who profess not to know about eternal verities, are proud to be called agnostics, but they would indignantly refuse to be labeled with the Latin equivalent, ignoramuses. They are like the maiden who flushes with pleasure if she is called a vision, but |