Culture

Fortitude is the cardinal virtue of courage: the firm strength to do what is good even when it is hard, dangerous, or frightening. It is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear in the service of what is right. Its opposite vices are cowardice (fleeing the good out of fear) and, on the other side, recklessness (charging into danger without prudence). In 480 BC, three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas, with a few thousand allies, held the narrow pass of Thermopylae against the vast Persian army of Xerxes. They knew they would likely die, and they did, but their stand bought time for Greece and became the West's enduring image of disciplined courage. We will study that war next week. Scripture commands this virtue often: 'Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened... for the Lord your God is with you' (Joshua 1:9). Christian fortitude is even greater than the soldier's, because it endures not only in battle but in daily faithfulness, in standing for truth, in carrying a cross.

England came late to the Americas. Its first try, Roanoke Island (off North Carolina), was sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s. When a supply ship finally returned in 1590, the settlers had vanished, leaving only the carved word 'CROATOAN.' To this day no one knows what happened to the 'Lost Colony.'

England's first lasting colony came in 1607, when the Virginia Company, a group of investors hoping for profit, landed about 100 men at Jamestown, Virginia. The site was swampy and the settlers were unprepared. Disease, hunger, and conflict with the Powhatan people nearly destroyed them. The winter of 1609-1610, called the 'starving time,' killed most of the colony. Captain John Smith's tough leadership ('He that will not work shall not eat') helped early on, and a fragile peace was sealed when the Powhatan chief's daughter, Pocahontas, married the colonist John Rolfe. Rolfe's other gift saved the colony: a sweet strain of tobacco that Europe craved. Tobacco became Virginia's cash crop and reason to survive.

The year 1619 brought two events that shaped America. The colonists elected the House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in English America, a seed of self-government. That same year, an English ship sold about 20 captive Africans to Virginia colonists, the first recorded Africans brought to English America, the grim beginning of slavery here.

Key facts: - Roanoke: the 'Lost Colony,' 1580s, vanished, 'CROATOAN' - Jamestown, Virginia: 1607, first permanent English colony - Virginia Company: investors seeking profit - Captain John Smith; the 'starving time' (1609-10) - John Rolfe + tobacco; Pocahontas and the Powhatan - House of Burgesses, 1619: first representative assembly - 1619: first enslaved Africans arrive in English America

Greek art tells the same story as Greek history: a steady move toward freedom, balance, and the celebration of the human form. In the Archaic period (c. 700-480 BC), sculptors carved the kouros, a standing young man, stiff and frontal, one foot forward, with a mysterious 'Archaic smile,' clearly influenced by Egyptian statues. But the Greeks could not stay still. By the Classical period (c. 480-323 BC), sculptors had learned contrapposto, the natural shift of weight onto one leg that makes a figure look alive and at ease. Painted pottery shows the same growth: black-figure pottery (dark silhouettes on red clay) gave way to red-figure pottery (the reverse), which let artists draw muscle, drapery, and emotion in fine detail. The crown of it all is the Parthenon, the temple of Athena built atop the Athenian Acropolis (447-432 BC) under Pericles. Its architects used subtle optical refinements, columns that bulge slightly and lean inward, so that the eye reads it as perfectly straight and harmonious. To the Greeks, beauty was not mere decoration; it reflected order, proportion, and the divine. This conviction, that beauty points beyond itself, would later flow into Christian art and architecture.

Add today's vocabulary to your glossary. Then write one sentence: 'What did Athens value that Sparta did not, and how can I see that difference in their art?'