6 Dante touches Europe’s collection of cultures today, seven centuries after writing “The Divine Comedy”. He himself indirectly drew the memory power of his poem from the Greek Simonides 18 centuries before. We can see how the cultural fabric of Europe extends over 25 centuries.
Following the course of a poetic metaphor down the centuries, across borders and between languages is another marvel of European culture. The same Simonides of Ceos writes: “For the soldiers who died at Thermopylae…hymns rather than tears, odes rather than wailing: a monument which neither rust nor devouring time could destroy”.