Plenty of excitement was provided by poetical and oratorical displays--not by athletic sports, as in ancient Greece and modern England. Here rival poets declaimed their verses and submitted them to the judgment of an acknowledged master. Nowhere else had rising talents such an opportunity of gaining wide reputation: what ‘Ukáẓ said to-day all Arabia would repeat to-morrow. At ‘Ukáẓ, we are told, the youthful Muḥammad listened, as though spellbound, to the persuasive eloquence of Quss b. Sá‘ida, Bishop of Najrán; and he may have contrasted the discourse of the Christian preacher with the brilliant odes chanted by heathen bards. The Bedouin view of life was thoroughly hedonistic. Love, wine, gambling, hunting, the pleasures of song and romance, the brief, pointed, and elegant expression of wit and wisdom--these things he knew to be good. Beyond them he saw only the grave. "Roast meat and wine: the swinging ride On a camel sure and tried, Which her master speeds amain O'er low dale and level plain: Women marble-white and fair Trailing gold-fringed raiment rare: Opulence, luxurious ease, With the lute's soft melodies-- Such delights hath our brief span; Time is Change, Time's fool is Man. Wealth or want, great store or small, All is one since Death's are all."[264] It would be a mistake to suppose that these men always, or even generally, passed their lives in the aimless pursuit of pleasure. Some goal they had--earthly, no doubt--such as the accumulation of wealth or the winning of glory or the fulfilment of blood-revenge. "_God forbid_" says one, "_that I should die while a grievous longing, as it were a mountain, weighs on my breast!_"[265] A deeper chord is touched by Imru’u ’l-Qays: "_If I strove for a bare livelihood, scanty means would suffice me and I would seek no more. But I strive for lasting renown, and 'tis men like me that sometimes attain lasting renown. Never, while life endures, does a man reach the summit of his ambition or cease from toil._"[266] [Sidenote: Judaism and Christianity in Arabia.] [Sidenote: The ‘Ibád of Ḥíra.] [Sidenote: ‘Adí b. Zayd.]