Now we must leave behind what has been said explicitly about life's brevity by the lyric poets. The terrain traversed was existentially difficult, though likely not unfamiliar to the reader. It would be unfair to leave such a morbid impression of the Greeks. We might be mistaken that they were a rather doldrum bunch who passed the hours reflecting on mortality like a medieval monk. That could not be further from the truth. This recognition of life's brevity seems to have made them creatures of the moment. They approach life with a certain vivacity that will not be content to wait for some promised day of glory. Whatever is to be experienced must be seized.

Herodotus may write unobjective–and occasionally outright bad–history, but one would never accuse him of being disinterested. Homer does not care to write the annals of the Trojan War. He writes a very human story. It simply happened to take place during the Trojan War. Even Hesiod, the seasoned farmer who is rough around the edges, passes on instruction for this life and not the next. Greek art is not cold and distant like what you might find in the empires of their contemporaries. It is alive with movement: an athlete poised to throw a discus, a warrior collapsed with a fatal wound, two heroes playing a board game. The agora, the amphitheater, and even the government were not distant pleasures of the nobility, but crucial forums where all were expected to engage with the difficulties of existence. This was Greece at its best.

It seems fitting then to end not with their morbid reflections on old age and death, but with an example of someone being captured by the moment. For this we can turn to Sappho who is the most skilled Greek hand at absorbing a reader in an experience. Here she ironically uses the all encompassing experience of illness to illustrate the pangs of love. This is where the Greeks find eternity: not in the afterlife, but in the moment. I will leave the poem as my conclusion so that the reader might live in Sappho's words for as long as their experience will allow:

"He seems to me equal to the gods,

that man who sits across from you

and listens close at hand

to your sweet voice

and lovely laughter. Truly it sets

my heart to pounding in my breast,

for the moment I glance at you, I can

no longer speak;

my tongue grows numb; at once a subtle

fire runs stealthily beneath my skin;

my eyes see nothing, my ears

ring and buzz,

the sweat pours down, a trembling

seizes the whole of me, I turn paler

than grass, and I seem to myself

not far from dying.

But everything can be endured, because..."

(Sappho Fr. 31)