To the editor:

Roughly 500 years before Christ, in Athens, the Greek mind reached its zenith, which so shaped the Western thought that our mind and spirit are wholly different today. What it produced in philosophy, art, science and politics, and the quality of men it bore, has not been surpassed.

What is uniquely Greek is the model of human spirit it envisioned. The ancient Greeks knew the shortness and hardships of life all too well; theirs was a mind devoid of excesses of Romantic notions and expression.

Consider for example, the grisliness of these lines in “Iliad,” where an Achaean named Meges attacks the Trojan fighter Pedaeus:

Meges’ spear hit the back of his neck, then cut

right through his jaw, and sliced off his tongue at the root.

He fell in the dirt, and his teeth closed around the cold bronze.

And yet, their response to this hard life was a spirit that remained in contest with its challenges. Whether guided by the notion of the immortality of the soul or the quest of everlasting glory, their lived philosophy was one of heroic struggle.

Andromache, having lost her father and all of her seven brothers to the Trojan war, and her mother to illness soon after, begs her husband Hector to remain with her rather than head into battle:

You, Hector — you are my father now, my noble mother,

a brother too, you are my husband, young and warm and strong!

Pity me, please! Take your stand on the rampart here,

before you orphan your son and make your wife a widow.

Faced with this moving appeal, and possessing the premonition of his impending death, Hector nevertheless refuses to be moved:

All this weighs on my mind too, dear woman.

But I would die of shame to face the men of Troy

and the Trojan women trailing their long robes

if I would shrink from battle now, a coward.

Nor does the spirit urge me on that way.

I’ve learned it all too well. To stand up bravely,

always to fight in the front ranks of Trojan soldiers.

winning my father great glory, glory for myself.

The remarkable line here is: “Nor does the spirit urge me on that way.”

The modern man, being the man of science, no longer believes in the immortality of the soul — based on evidence, or lack thereof, he is likely not in error. Nor does he wish for glory, beholden to the belief, that his thoughts and deeds do not reverberate long enough to matter — here he is entirely in error. He subscribes to the notion Shelley expressed in his poem, about all achievement decaying to nothingness in the end:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

And thus, the world we find ourselves in.

Farewell,

Nandan Pai

Plattsburgh