The Greek Tragedy Is the Wisdom of Selenus, the Awful, Terrible Truth, the Terror of Reality

Nica says the same impulse which calls art into being as the complement and consummation of existence, seducing one to a continuation of life, was also the cause of the olympian world. Thus do the gods justify the life of man? They themselves live it. The only satisfactory theodice existence under the bright sunshine of such gods is regarded as desirable in itself. And the real pain of homeric men is caused by parting from it, especially by early parting. So that, now, reversing the wisdom of selenus, we might say of the greeks that to die soon is the worst of all for them, the next worst to die at all. Once