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From, R. W. Livingstone, Literature,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 4
I have tried to give a summary answer to the question, What did the Greeks achieve? They invented every literary genre which we know, they laid the lines which European literature has followed, they created a body of prose and poetry which has won the homage of the world. The further question, What can the world still learn from them, is less easy to answer. The answer lies in Greek literature, and the essence of a literature cannot be extracted and bottled in a number of abstract formulae. No literature is great in virtue of its qualities, which are always something less than the literature itself, but only in so far as it expands to the breadth of the universe and climbs to its height. This is the final test which must be applied. How far Greek literature satisfies it, can be judged from the testimonies which have been quoted above.
Remembering this let us deliberately narrow our view and talk of qualities: and here, narrowing it again, let us confine the discussion to certain qualities, which are found indeed in all literatures, but are elsewhere neither so universal nor carried to so high a power. No one can think of Greek literature without thinking of them; they live on the lips of its admirers, and in them the inspiration of Greek literature is chiefly enshrined. These essential qualities are Simplicity, Perfection of Form, Truth and Beauty. Greek literature is much more than these qualities. The Agamemnon, the Oedipus, the Bacchae are not to be explained wholly by them. The greatness of these plays is partly something individual, and partly it is what makes King Lear or Faust or Brand great: and that is neither entirely nor mainly simplicity or beauty or truth or form. But my object is to emphasize qualities for which Greek is exceptional, and though some critics may have talked of the beauty of Greek literature till beauty was absurdly supposed to be its chief or only quality, they were right to recognize the prominence of beauty there, and though truth is a mark of the greatest writing in all languages, it is more universal in Greek than in any other literature.
Cf. Elpenor's Bilingual Anthology of Greek Literature * Greek History Resources
A History of Greek Philosophy * A Sketch of the history of Greek literature
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/livingstone-greek-literature.asp?pg=4
