©he of pientg beacon Published Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY,, APRIL 23rd, 1941. MOUNT OLYMPUS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 297, 23 April 1941, Page 4

©he of pientg beacon Published Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY,, APRIL 23rd, 1941. MOUNT OLYMPUS

THE Australians and New Zealanders are still fighting within sight of Mount Olympus, a mountain of grandeur which is honoured by all men who appreciate the debt which modern civilisation owes to ancient Greece. Mount Olympus is a lofty which is situated on the borders of Thessalv and Macedonia. It rises to a height of nearly ten thousand feet above sea level. At its base the warm Mediterranean climate prevails, and on the lower slopes grow oak, chestnut, beech and plane trees, but at higher levels pine trees darken the landscape. Higher up still the mountain side grows bare, low-lying clouds enfold its breast, and for the greater part of the year snow caps the summit. Beside Olympus is Mount Ossa, separated by the great gorge of Tc-mpe. Greek story proclaims that the two mountains were severed by a severe earthquake. Olympus, by reason of its grandeur, its massive appearance, rising precipitous to the sky, has captured the imagination of men from the .beginning of time. The inhabitants of the surrounding country looked up to the great mass which pierced the sky, and hearing the rumblings of thunder on its breast and seeing the play of lightning round its head, concluded that Isome great powerful spirits were waging war with cach ot/her up there in the higher regions. There was nothing incongruous iin a primitive people picturing their gods as men, for anthoropomorphism is not yet passed. It is said that an Englishman's idea of God is that of an Englishman ten feet tall. Nor is it surprising that these early Mediterranean folk should have localised their gods. This practice, too, has not died .out, and many proclaimed "holy places" of to-day have very much less to commend them than has the summit of Mount Olympus. "When Homer smote his bloomin' lyre," as Kipling has remarked, he took the stories current among the fisher folk and others, and they are now to be found embodied in the Iliad and the Odyssey, for that is how early literature always started. The history of the writings of Homer is an interesting study for archeologists and classical scholars, but it is now established, through the, researches of the late Sir Arthur Evans, that pre-Homeric writings existed. But how the Homeric writings came to be preserved is not known,, and there appears to be as many theories as critics. When the Athenians took up the Homeric legends they distorted them with their own, eventually the .Romans took up these distorted legends and handed them on to the romancers of the Middle Ages, and then to England's Chaucer, from whom Shakespeare borrowed when he wrote Troilus and Cressida, buttressing that play by recourse to the Iliad itself. And so to-day the heirs of Shakespeare have returned to the land of original inspiration. They will hear again the thunder of the gods upon Olympus, and they will hear, too, the thunder of yet another conflict, a conflict that is new and yet as old as time itself. The conflict which goes on and which must go on in the soul of man, the eternal conflict between light and darkness. It is to be hoped that as the Greek warriors and their Allies turn their gaze to Mount Olympus they will feel their spirits renewed by this ancient font, which has flowed freely with inspiration for nearly thirty centuries of time.