And from out of the plain where 'Mars loved to dance,' rises the
Muses' haunt, Helicon, by whose silver streams Corinna and Hesiod
sang; while far away under the white aegis of those snow-capped
mountains lies Chaeronea and the Lion plain where with vain
chivalry the Greeks strove to check Macedon first and afterwards
Rome; Chaeronea, where in the Martinmas summer of Greek
civilisation Plutarch rose from the drear waste of a dying religion
as the aftermath rises when the mowers think they have left the
field bare.
Greek philosophy began and ended in scepticism: the first and the
last word of Greek history was Faith.
Splendid thus in its death, like winter sunsets, the Greek religion
passed away into the horror of night. For the Cimmerian darkness
was at hand, and when the schools of Athens were closed and the
statue of Athena broken, the Greek spirit passed from the gods and
the history of its own land to the subtleties of defining the
doctrine of the Trinity and the mystical attempts to bring Plato
into harmony with Christ and to reconcile Gethsemane and the Sermon
on the Mount with the Athenian prison and the discussion in the
woods of Colonus.
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