BREVIARY TREASURES pdf download

Breviary treasures by Dole, Nathan Haskell

BREVIARY TREASURES

From the Book

With the Greeks, on the other hand, wit and humor were spontaneous and indigenous. It begins with Homer.

Aristophanes is full of quotable passages. There are hundreds of witty sayings that have come down to our day and passed current in every age and still go from hand to hand. The whole field of Greek literature is rich in epigrammatic sentences.

The present volume is devoted almost wholly to brief selected passages from Aristophanes and Lucian. Aristophanes’ life covered the last half of the fourth century b. c, and he died in 388. Lucian was born in Syria and lived from 125 until 180 a. d.

 In their treatment of the Gods, they are surprisingly similar. The skeptical insolence of their arraignment is only equaled by the keenness of their satire. Both of them wonderfully combine wit and humor.

here is the flash and also the radiance. Consequently, even under the veil of a translation, much of what they wrote is as perennially young and as modern as if written for the men of our day. A few of the best epigrams of Martial, a Spaniard, whose life covered the last half of the first century of our era, are added.

These three authors, thus brought into comparison, show Greek and classic wit and humour to the highest advantage.