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* Murray:   Ancient Greek Literature:—­whence all this as to
Plato’s youth.
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But note what a change had taken place with the ending of the fifth century.  Hitherto all the great Athenians had been great Athenians.  Aeschylus, witness of eternity, had cried his message down to Athens and to his fellow-citizens; he had poured the waters of eternity into the vial of his own age and place.  I speak not of Sophocles, who was well enough rewarded with the prizes Athens had to give him.  Euripides again was profoundly concerned with his Athens; and though he was contemned by and held aloof from her, it was the problems of Athens and the time that ate into his soul.  Socrates came to save Athens; he did not seek political advancement, but would hold office when it came his way; was enough concerned in politics to be considered a moderate-one cause of his condemnation; but above all devoted himself to raising the moral tone of the Athenian youth and clearing their minds of falsity.  Finally, he gave loyalty to his city and its laws as one reason for rejecting Crito’s plan for his escape.  What he hoped and lived for was, to save Athens; and he was the more content to die, when he saw that this was no longer possible.

But Plato had no part nor lot in Athens.  He loathed her doctrine of democracy, as knowing it could come to no good.  He had affiliations, like Aeschylus, in Sicily, whither he made certain journeys; and might have stayed there among his fellow Pythagoreans, but for the irascible temper of Dionysius.  But much more, and most of all, his affiliations were in the wide Cosmos and all time:  as if he foresaw that on him mainly would devolve the task of upholding spiritual ideas in Europe through the millenniums to come.  He dwelt apart, and taught in the Groves of Academe outside the walls.  Let Athens’ foolish politics go forward as they might, or backward—­he would meddle with nothing.  It has been brought against him that he did nothing to help his city ‘in her old age and dotage’; well, he had the business of thousands of coming years and peoples to attend to, and had no time to be accused, condemned, and executed by a parcel of obstreperous cobblers and tinkers hot-headed over the petty politics of their day.  The Gods had done with Athens, and were to think now of the great age of darkness that was to come.  He was mindful of a light that should arise in Egypt, after some five hundred years; and must prepare wick and oil for the Neo-Platonists.  He was mindful that there should be a thing called the Renaissance in Italy; and must attend to what claims Pico di Mirandola and others should make on him for spiritual food.  He must consider Holland of the seventeenth century, and England:  the Platonists of Cambridge and Amsterdam;—­must think of Van Helmont; and of a Vaughan who ‘saw eternity the other night’; of a Traherne, who should never enjoy the world aright without some illumination from his star; of a young Milton, penseroso, out watching the Bear in some high lonely tower with thrice-great Hermes, who should unsphere his spirit,