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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: Do you think that they were an artistic people? Take them even at
the time of their highest artistic development, the latter part of
the fifth century before Christ, when they had the greatest poets
and the greatest artists of the antique world, when the Parthenon
rose in loveliness at the bidding of a Phidias, and the philosopher
spake of wisdom in the shadow of the painted portico, and tragedy
swept in the perfection of pageant and pathos across the marble of
the stage. Were they an artistic people then? Not a bit of it.
What is an artistic people but a people who love their artists and
understand their art? The Athenians could do neither.
How did they treat Phidias? To Phidias we owe the great era, not
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