Charles Reinhardt is neither a psychologist nor a philosopher nor a historian nor a poet - despite his knowledge in these specific fields and his sensitivity, he always remains a philologist of great caliber in the most essential sense of the word. It is as a philologist that he deals with issues of poetry, philosophy, and history, as they revolve around the axis of psychology. Plato, Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides - the four pillars of the essays in this volume - were, in this respect, primarily psycho-messengers, creators, and shapers of entire worlds, listeners, and expressers of the soul's discourse. "What is this soul? No science, no claim of virtue covers it, it is neither a psychological nor a theological nor a metaphysical concept: it is the essence of the struggle, the wick that ignites the battle. It has its old destinies and its new needs, within it lie dormant greatnesses that one can barely imagine while it also runs the risk of losing them; at times it has faced great things, but behind it, it also has great fears... it is the ancient, spiritually reborn soul of Hellenism." [Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]