The Ascent of Olympus (Classic Reprint)

Download or read book The Ascent of Olympus (Classic Reprint) written by Rendel Harris and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-11-25 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Ascent of Olympus His volume contains four lectures which were delivered in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, during the years l9 5 and 1916, and which appeared at intervals in the Library Bulletins. They are reproduced as nearly as possible in their original form, with a few.necessary corrections and expansions and justifications. It would have been easy to spread them over a much larger area but perhaps they may suffice for the presentation of ideas which are to some extent novel, and, almost as certainly, to some persons distasteful. On the one hand, I have to meet the criticism of my wise friend, and inspiring leader, who is priest of the mythological Nemi and guardian of its Golden Bough, until someone catches him unawares and dispossesses him. He tells me that he despairs of the solution of the riddle of the Greek Mythology, he who does not despair (and with better right than Haeclrel) of the solution of the riddle of the Universe 1 On the other hand, there are those who, having unfortunately been familiar with the Greek gods from their earliest years, and never really detached from traditional faith in them, cannot avoid contemplat ing the author of these lectures as an lconoclast, and put upon him the task, under which Socrates as well as the early Christians alike laboured, of proving to a suspicious bench of magistrates that they were really not atheists. So far from this being the case, it may be hoped that when one succeeds, if one does succeed, in evolving Artemis out of a wayside weed, or Aphrodite out of a cabbage, and, in general, all things lovely out of things that are not at first sight beautiful, one may claim to belong to the brotherhood, whatever its name may be, that has the vision of That far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.