Hellenic Civilization: An Historical Survey

Lasting Value of Greek Civilization. --Thus this summary survey of Greek civilization comes to an end. And now that we have passed over the entire scene in review, how does it behoove us to judge it as a whole? A purely individual appreciation would have little value here. it is to history that we must refer. Let us ask ourselves, therefore, what influence this civilization has exerted upon the evolution of humanity. The facts consulted will speak for themselves, and we shall have only to collect their testimony. At first sight, however, it appears that something of Hellenic civilization is visible in almost all the civilizations that have succeeded it. We find it present and active in Imperial Rome and at Byzantium, then, across the Middle Ages, in the epoch of the Renaissance, and in modern times. What thus endures necessarily has in itself a virtue which can not be contested; and the best means of determining it, no doubt, is to note its effect where it makes itself felt most strongly.

It is a commonplace but an incontestable truth that Rome, in order to achieve its intellectual and moral education, had to go to school in Greece. The Romans themselves were the first to recognize this, and they were proud of it. There is no doubt that this acceptance of a foreign

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