The Wasps of Aristophanes; With Notes Critical and Explanatory (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 Excerpt: ... a a Kijpos devolved. The word emicr)pos, in one of its most distinctive features, throws us back not only upon the East, but upon that part of the East, to which our most serious thoughts are bound to turn. Unwilling as I am to lessen the sanctity of our Holy Writings by referring to them unnecessarily, or to weaken their efficacy by ascribing to them causes, which do not appear legitimately to flow from them; yet I cannot help expressing my own conviction that the disposition in eastern countries to separate themselves into distinct branches, and carry a spirit of caste into families as well as into public life, grew out of the traditional knowledge, that a time would come, when out of some one family a Being would appear upon the stage of life in a far more exalted character than any other of human race, and a consequent desire that the family should be distinctly marked out and separated, who were to share in the honour of having so distinguished a b member of it. But whatever the cause, the principle is certain: sameness of blood, preservation of a family-house, and the continuance of a name, were predilections innate in all eastern countries. They are predilections (and looking to her connexion with Egypt and the East, there can be no surprise at it) strongly marked also in the customs and institutions of Athens, where the private feeling, however, must from political causes have gradually merged into a public one: the necessities of the state requiring, that the native Attic population should be kept up to its fullest amount, and that those family-stocks should more particularly be preserved, on whom fell the duty of the liturgies, or state-services. Hence the extreme value of the fWicXn/jos in the eyes of Athenian legislation. Rich or poor, she came...