Hugh Lloyd-Jones

It is natural to contrast this book with The Victorians and Ancient Greece, by Richard Jenkyns, reviewed by me in the issue of this journal for 21 August-3 September 1980 (Vol. 2, No 16). Mr Jenkyns is a Classical scholar and a smooth and polished writer; I wrote that he ‘offers a great deal of information, clearly and pleasingly’. Professor Turner is a historian, the author of a study of the impact of scientific naturalism on Victorian England; he describes Macaulay’s style as ‘elegant’, and though he writes clearly enough, the adjective is not one that fits his own. He makes some mistakes which Mr Jenkyns would never have made; he cannot spell the names of Wilamowitz or de Quincey, or the word ‘Nicomachean’; he thinks Pindar was Athenian; he imagines that Frazer’s commentary on Pausanias, with its wealth of artistic, religious and historical detail, is a work similar to a critical edition of a text by Porson; and the knowledge that Exeter College, Oxford has a dining-hall, in which William Sewell once publicly burned a copy of Froude’s Nemesis of Faith, has led him to refer to it by the name of Exeter Hall, a building in London where Elderess Polly, Elderess Antoinette and other Nonconformist orators dear to Matthew Arnold used to edify the public. But where Mr Jenkyns is trivial, superficial and patronising, Professor Turner is serious, thorough and understanding. He is extremely well-informed, and, where necessary, well able to take account of Continental influences; and he knows how to detect and to delineate general tendencies. Jenkyns’s book is a pleasant entertainment for the casual reader, but Turner’s is an intelligent critical study of great value. It is handsomely printed, and the numerous misprints do not seriously impede the reader; and it is well illustrated, though I hope no future author will reproduce the ghastly portrait of Gilbert Murray by a relation which the National Portrait Gallery foolishly accepted.

Until a comparatively short time ago most books purporting to deal with Greek mythology were content only to relate the myths, fighting shy of any attempt to explain that part of their significance which is not apparent on the surface. The proliferation of theories of myth which started about 1830 and finished, roughly speaking, at the beginning of the First World War was followed by a positivist reaction. One of the main causes of this reaction was the insistence of most of the proponents of theories about myth that their theory alone explained all myths, or at least most of them, Some of the theories could be made to explain almost anything: for example, an American scholar could use the theory, widely canvassed during the 19th century, that all myths originated as nature myths to prove that its advocate, Max Muller, was himself a sun-myth. The members of the ‘Cambridge’ school, who did valuable pioneering work on the use of anthropological methods, made the mistake of insisting too strongly that myth originated from ritual. This provoked a strong adverse reaction.

The vast number of books and articles devoted to Sophocles since the Second World War shows he arouses great interest, but, though we now have an English translation of Karl Reinhardt’s famous book about him, which first appeared in 1933, we have so far had no general study of the seven complete plays that was of high quality throughout. Professor Winnington-Ingram has brought out many excellent interpretations of Greek tragedy: now he offers us a study of Sophocles that is not likely to be improved upon for many years.

Until the 18th century modern Europe had in the main seen Ancient Greece through Latin spectacles. Important advances in Greek studies had been made, but their effect had been restricted, since few were able to read the language easily – in particular, the difficult language of the greatest writers. The first country in which serious efforts were made to see Ancient Greece directly was Germany. The efforts would hardly have been possible without the work of scholars, some of whom were able both to advance the knowledge of the Ancient world and to communicate their learning and enthusiasm to others, but the spreading of enthusiasm was to a greater extent the work of creative writers, among whom Lessing, Goethe and Schiller played a leading part. These men assumed that Ancient literature, as well as Ancient art, were directly accessible to modern minds, and produced masterpieces to which their study of Ancient masterpieces made an obvious contribution. Greek art and literature inspired in them an enthusiasm comparable with that which the men of the Italian Renaissance had felt for Roman art and literature, or for Greco-Roman culture in general, and their approach to it was not yet conditioned by the historical sense which succeeding generations were to develop.

Professor Stanford, who this year retires from the Regius Chair of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin after 40 years in office, feels that ‘creative literature is being used more and more as material for history or archaeology or psychology.’ He therefore sets out to defend the poetic element in literature against disparagement and neglect. He cites much modern as well as ancient literature, and seems to wish his book to be relevant to modern as well as ancient poetry, but much of what he says seems principally concerned with the case of Greek studies.