Men and Women

“Cleon” expresses the approach of Greek thought at the time of Christ towards the idea of immortality as made known by Cleon, a Greek poet writing in reply to a Greek patron whose princely gifts and letter asking comment on the philosophical significance of death have just reached him.  The important conclusions reached by Cleon in his answer are that the composite mind is greater than the minds of the past, because it is capable of accomplishing much in many lines of activity, and of sympathizing with each of those simple great minds that had reached the highest possible perfection “at one point.”  It is, indeed, the necessary next step in development, though all classes of mind fit into the perfected mosaic of life, no one achievement blotting out any other.  This soul and mind development he deduces from the physical development he sees about him.  But since with the growth of human consciousness and the increase of knowledge comes greater capability to the soul for joy while the failure of physical powers shuts off the possibility of realizing joy, it would have been better had man been left with nothing higher than mere sense like the brutes.  Dismissing the idea of immortality through one’s works as unsatisfactory to the individual, he finally concludes that a long and happy life is all there is to be hoped for, since, had the future life which he has sometimes dared to hope for been possible, Zeus would long before have revealed it.  He dismisses the preaching of one Paulus as untenable.

“As certain also of your own poets have said”:  this motto hints that Paul’s speech at Athens (Acts 17.22-28) suggests and justifies Browning’s conception of such Greek poets as Cleon seeking “the Lord, if haply they might feel after him.”  Paul’s quotation, “For we are also his offspring,” is from the “Phoenomena” by Aratus, a Greek poet of his own town of Tarsus.

1.  Sprinkled isles:  probably the Sporades, so named because they were scattered, and in opposition to the Cyclades, which formed a circle around Delos.

51.  Phare:  light-house.  The French authority, Allard, says that though there is no mention in classical writings of any light-house in Greece proper, it is probable that there was one at the port of Athens as well as at other points in Greece.  There were certainly several along both shores of the Hellespont, besides the famous father of all light-houses, on the island of Pharos, near Alexandria.  Hence the French name for light-house, phare.

53.  Poecile:  the portico at Athens painted with battle pictures by Polygnotus the Thasian.

60.  Combined the moods:  in Greek music the scales were called moods or modes, and were subject to great variation in the arrangement of tones and semitones.

83.  Rhomb . . . lozenge . . . trapezoid:  all four-sided forms, but differing as to the parallel arrangement of their sides and the obliquity of their angles.

140.  Terpander:  musician of Lesbos (about 650 B. C.), who added three strings to the four-stringed Greek lyre.

141.  Phidias:  the Athenian sculptor (about 430 B. C.) —­and his friend:  Pericles, ruler of Athens (444-429 B.C.).  Plutarch speaks of their friendship in his Life of Pericles.

304.  Sappho:  poet of Lesbos, supreme among lyricists (about 600 B. C.).  Only fragments of her verse remain.

305.  AEschylus:  oldest of the three great Athenian dramatists (525-472 B. C.).

340.  Paulus; we have have heard his fame:  Paul’s mission to the Gentiles carried him to many of the islands in the AEgean Sea as well as to Athens and Corinth (Acts 13-21).