Socrates is murdered with the creed of immortality on his very lips; hardly had he spoken the wonderful words recorded in the _Phaedo_ when the fatal poison sent its deathly chill through his limbs; the Greeks are gone, yet the Hermes of Olympia remains, mutilated and maimed, indeed, but faultless still, and still supreme.

The very name of Homer is grown wellnigh as mythic as his blindness.

There are those to-day who, standing by the grave of William Shakespeare, say boldly that he was not the creator of the works that bear his name.

And still, through the centuries, Achilles wanders lonely by the shore of the sounding sea; Paris loves, and Helen is false; Ajax raves, and Odysseus steers his sinking ship through the raging storm.

Still, Hamlet the Avenger swears, hesitates, kills at last, and then himself is slain; Romeo sighs in the ivory moonlight, and love-bound Juliet hears the triumphant lark carolling his ringing hymn high in the cool morning air, and says it is the nightingale--Immortals all, the marble god, the Greek, the Dane, the love-sick boy, the maiden foredoomed to death.