r losing its prominence in certain lines of culture,
was dominated by the greater Alexandria.

_The Age of Pericles_.--In considering all phases of life the splendors
of Greece culminated in a period of 50 years immediately following the
close of the Persian wars. This period is known as the Age of
Pericles. Although the rule of Pericles was about thirty years
(466-429), his influence extended long after. The important part
Athens performed in the Persian wars gave her the political ascendancy
in Greece and enabled her to assume the beginning of the states; in
fact, enabled her to establish an empire. Pericles rebuilt Athens
after the destructive work of the Persians. The public buildings, the
Parthenon and the Acropolis, were among the noted structures of the
world. A symmetrical city was planned on a magnificent scale hitherto
unknown. Pericles gathered about him architects, sculptors, poets,
dramatists, teachers, and philosophers.

The age represents a galaxy of great men: Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Herodotus, Socrates, Thucydides, Phidias, Ictinus, and
others. Greek government reached its culmination and society had its
fullest life in this age. The glory of the period extended on through
the Peloponnesian war, and after the Macedonian conquest it gradually
waned and the splendor gradually passed from Athens to Alexandria.

_Contributions of Greece to Civilization_.--It is difficult to
enumerate all of the influences of Greece on modern civilization.
First of all, we might mention the language of Greece, which became so
powerful in the development of the Roman literature and Roman
civilization and, in the later Renaissance, a powerful engine of
progress. Associated with the language is the literature of the
Greeks. The epic poems of Homer, the later lyrics, the drama, the
history, and the polemic, all had their highest types presented in the
Greek literature. Latin and modern German, English and French owe to
these great originators a debt of gratitude for every form of modern
literature. The architecture of Greece was broad enough to lay the
foundation of the future, and so we find, even in our {248} modern
life, the Grecian elements combined in all of our great buildings.

Painting and frescoing were well established in principle, though not
carried to a high state until the mediaeval period; but in sculpture
nothing yet has exceeded the perfection of the Greek art. It stands a
monument of