The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [97]
114
My fugitive years are hasting away:
Soon I must lie with the turf on my breast.
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man
I went back to those favourite fields
Where I played in childhood;
To the bank of the river where I sat and dreamt;
And found all changed.
The poplars were felled that shaded me then;
No more could I hear the rustle of their leaves,
Or see their image tremble in the river,
Or sit in their shade to rest;
No more could the blackbird find there retreat
From which to offer his sweet-flowing song.
Long since they were turned to smoke,
As the years turn to smoke.
Long since the fugitive years have hastened them away,
And my years with them.
Histories
Chapter 1
1. These are the records of the historian, offered to preserve remembrance of what mankind has experienced,
2. And to give account of the great war between East and West, on which the hinge of history turned;
3. Of how the West defended its birth from the assault of the East,
4. For the East, in its power and sway, and its indifference to liberty, would by victory have turned the course of the world into different paths.
5. Whereas the free hearts of the fathers of the West, smaller in number, weaker in power,
6. Yet stronger in resolve and greater in genius, kept the infant civilisation free.
7. Experience is our first guide; how much better we fare when we recall examples of our ancestors and their deeds,
8. Not least those that instruct and illuminate our way, placing our steps in the path of understanding;
9. Nor should we forget our beginnings, nor those few to whom we, who are now as multitudinous as stars, owe so much.
Chapter 2
1. When the East was Persia, and had already begun to wax great,
2. And the West was Greece, yet an infant in comparison of numbers and wealth,
3. The relation between them was that of a centre to its margins.
4. For the world was Asia, and the small Greek states from the Aegean islands to Italy’s foot were mere villages on its distant shore.
5. The Easterners trace to stories of Troy the reason of their first enmity towards the Greeks;
6. But in truth the seeds of conflict lay in the growth of Eastern power,
7. When Croesus, son of Alyattes, a Lydian by birth, extended his dominion over all the nations west of the River Halys.
8. He was the first of the barbarian kings to have dealings with Greeks, forcing some to become his tributaries, and making allies among others.
9. He conquered the Greeks of Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, the Aeolians, Dorians and Ionians, who up to that time had been free.
10. The first Greek city captured by Croesus was Ephesus; thereafter he took all the Greek cities of that region,
11. And even planned a fleet to attack the islands, but his advisers stopped him;
12. For the Greeks were masters of the waves, and Croesus would have ventured too far in challenging them there.
13. When Croesus had brought under his dominion all the nations west of the Halys – Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians,
14. Chalybians, Paphlagonians, Thynian and Bithynian Thracians,
15. Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Pamphylians – and his power was at its height, he was visited by Solon the Athenian.
16. Now Solon was deemed the wisest man in Athens by his fellow citizens, so they had asked him to devise laws for them,
17. To quell arguments and divisions in the city, thus helping its citizens live a peaceful and prosperous life together.
18. Solon agreed, saying, ‘I do this on condition that none of my laws shall be changed for ten years, to give them time to take effect.’
19. And when he had done his work he left the city and travelled abroad, so that his fellow-citizens could not plead with him to revoke his laws,
20. But more to see new things and gain new knowledge, for this he loved beyond all else.
Chapter 3
1. After travelling in Egypt and the regions of the near East, Solon went to the court of Croesus in Sardis.
2. He knew that this king was the richest and until then the most fortunate of the world