The Greek Outlook: What's That?

A site dedicated to the Greek aesthetics, experiences, ideals and general mentality on life. Even in times of trouble, a beautiful & heroic one...

"The essence of the heroic outlook is the pursuit of honour through action. The great man is he who, being endowed with superior qualities of body and mind, uses them to the utmost and wins the applause of his fellows because he spares no effort and shirks no risk in his desire to make the most of his gifts. His honour is the centre of his being, and any affront to it calls for immediate amends. By prowess and renown he gains an enlarged sense of personality and well-being; through them he has a second existence on the lips of men, which assures him that he has not failed in what matters most. This outlook runs through Greek history from Homer’s Achilles to the historical Alexander. It is countered and modified and altered, but it persists and even extends its field from an individual to a national outlook. It is a creed suited to men of action, and through it the Greeks justified their passionate desire to vary the pattern of their lives by resourceful and unflagging enterprise."

C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience, (New York: Praeger, 1957), pp.20-21, 40-41.