Professor Wright's Lecture.

Yesterday afternoon in Sever 11 Professor Wright gave the first of two lectures upon "Homer." These lectures are open to the public, but they are designed especially to benefit students taking either Greek B or Greek C. Professor Wright had the close attention of his audience throughout, and the help gained from his lecture by those students about to take up the study of Homer cannot fail to be great.

The lecturer said in brief that the ancient world has passed away, but its arts and literature still remain, and from these we can bring everything before as connected with the life of the races which lived and flourished centuries ago. In all these traditional and historical remembrances, Homer is seen as a central figure. In the Greek world long ago he was the same glorious power that he is to us today. Seven hundred years before Christ, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey marked the beginning of the literature of all Europe, and through all the ages since they have been the same living poems that they are to us now. It is almost impossible for us to conceive the influence which the poems of Homer has upon the minds and hearts of the Greeks. At first it was their privilege to learn these poems only from recitals. Not on this account, however, was there any lack of opportunity to gain a knowledge of the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey. On every occasion possible- at games, at feasts, at public and private assemblies- the bard or rhapsode was given the place of honor, and it was his part to recite again and again to the eager listeners the story of Achilles, Ajax, or Odysseus. In this way the people in every part of Greece became familiar with the great poems which were finally transcribed and carefully handed down from generation to generation. In the schools children had to learn the poems by heart, not for the intellectual good which would result from this practice, but to gain an idea of the moral truths which Homer propounded, and to learn from the lives of his heroes what was the way of life which it should be their duty to follow. It will be seen that from their customs, by every one of which the mind was trained to look up to Homer as a master, there could be no other result than that the Greeks should come to look upon him as one far above the professional teacher of ethics and morality. They thought of him as the fountain head of all virtue and goodness, and they therefore defied and worshipped him. Through all the ages Homer's place in literature has received as little injury from the hands of assailants as his statue in the temple at Delphi received at the hands of Xerxes' invading soldiers, and today we feel a reverence for him as true if not as humble as that of the Greeks.