Echoes of Two Cultures
Echoes of Two Cultures
Arthur M. Young
Copyright Date: 1964
Published by: University of Pittsburgh Press
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv
Pages: 160
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wrdzv
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Book Info
Echoes of Two Cultures
Book Description:

The theme of Echoes of Two Cultures is the transmission of two cultures through legend, how the ideals and moralities of ancient Greece and Rome have inspired and informed successive civilizations to the present day.The legends of Cyrus the Great, from the early Greek world, and Lucretia, of early Rome, recount stories of transgression of rights; the first against a people, the second against an individual. The Greeks of the time of Cyrus, in the 5th century BC, believed that history taught them about an inexorable and divinely ordained law of ethics meant to punish the overweening transgressor. The citizens of Lucretia's Rome were motivated by a solemn respect for the sanctity of women and of the home. In both legends, it is an individual woman's courage and determination that brings the offender to his rightful doom, although, in the process of this retribution, both women suffer great loss.Young shows how the telling of these great legends, which have gathered strength and beauty from each retelling, echo down through the centuries and throughout the Western World, influencing and enlightening societies and individuals.

eISBN: 978-0-8229-7401-7
Subjects: Language & Literature
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Table of Contents
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.1
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-x)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.2
  3. PROLOGUE
    PROLOGUE (pp. xi-xiv)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.3

    The theme of this book is the transmission of two cultures through legends. The process of transmission is not the handing of a corpse from one age to another, but the dynamic relay of an echo through the canyons and recesses of Western annals. For airwaves of culture die only in a sterile setting. Alive, they pick up their own sounds in the social cultures they strike, and reverberate on and on.

    Forward steps in art … are the result of the imitation of and admiration for beloved predecessors.

    Pasternak,Doctor Zhivago

    The carriers in the ancient legends selected as...

  4. The Story of Cyrus the Great
    The Story of Cyrus the Great (pp. 1-58)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.4

    Cyrus the Great (ca. 598–528 b.c.), king of Persia, magnetizes the first book of Herodotus’Historyinto unity. The rise and fall of Cyrus is the large epic theme of the book, validating in part the adjectiveHomerikotatos(most Homeric), applied to him by the literary critic Longinus (13.3). Herodotus inquired into the cause of the struggle between Greeks and “barbarians,” (i.e., non-Greeks). The Persian chroniclers laid it to the Phoenician abduction of Io from Argos. Similar reprisals followed on both sides in this perennial outdoor game of men. Herodotus pronounces those who engage in it as being either...

  5. [Illustrations]
    [Illustrations] (pp. None)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.5
  6. The Story of Lucretia
    The Story of Lucretia (pp. 59-126)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.6

    The first version of the story of Lucretia told with imaginative skill in Latin is found in Livy’sHistory of Rome(1.57-60), composed around the beginning of the Christian era a half millennium after the event is reported to have happened. Cicero’s brief references to the story (Republic2.25.46 andDe Finibus2.20.66) are not to be compared in literary quality with Livy’s version.

    The Rutulian town of Ardea, some 20 miles south of Rome, had been placed under siege by the Etruscan king, Tarquin the Proud. During a carousal of the young nobles in the Roman encampment the conversation...

  7. [Illustrations]
    [Illustrations] (pp. None)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.7
  8. Notes
    Notes (pp. 127-136)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.8
  9. Index
    Index (pp. 137-142)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wrdzv.9