Classical Bearings: Interpreting Ancient History and Culture

by Peter Green

In this collection of sixteen literary and historical essays, Peter Green informs, entertains, and stimulates. He covers a wide range of subjects, from Greek attitudes toward death to the mysteries of the Delphic Oracle, from Tutankhamun and the gold of Egypt to sex in ancient literature, from the island of Lesbos (where he once lived) to the challenges of translating Ovid's wit and elegant eroticism into present-day English verse, from Victorian pederastic aesthetics to Marxism's losing battle with ancient history. This third volume of Green's essays (several previously unpublished) reveals throughout his serious concern that we are, in a very real sense, losing the legacy of antiquity through the corrosive methodologies of modern academic criticism.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Greece, Literary Criticism

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

There is more than one author by this name in the database.

Peter Morris Green was a British classical scholar and novelist noted for his works on the Greco-Persian Wars, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age of ancient history, generally regarded as spanning the era from the death of Alexander in 323 BC up to either the date of the Battle of Actium or the death of Augustus in 14 AD.

Reviews

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Thomas Gaisford, professor of Greek at Oxford in the early nineteenth century, is reported to have declared - during a Good Friday sermon! - that 'the advantages of a classical education are twofold - it enables us to look down with contempt on those who have not shared its advantages, and also fits us for places of emolument not only in this world but also in that which is to come.''

Peter Green's Classical Bearings is a florilegium of essays and book reviews touching on various points of classical history. His opening chapter on the state of classical education was of particular interest. The classics, as they were transmitted through history, were fixed in their Hellenistic phase: a period when the demos had been stripped of their political rights and Alexandrian generals were worshipped as living Gods; the fixed and eternal order of the Stoics became in Medieval hands the 'Chain of Being' (C.S. Lewis' 'Discarded Image'), with its strict hierarchy of planets, elements, animals and political classes. Thus it should be no surprise, Green argues, that so many classical scholars are reactionaries: c'est leur métier.

After the American and French Revolutions, the politics enshrined in this Hellenised tradition became increasingly unpalatable and detached from prevailing winds. The Industrial Revolution only served to confirm the general suspicion: we were better than the ancients. What point then, in studying them? The response of scholars - much to Green's chagrin - was to burrow further into obsolescence. Indeed, obsolescence was entirely the appeal of the classics. They were untainted by the banausic grime of vocational use. (A slur which Aristotle even applies to the labour required to learn a musical instrument). As the 20th century progressed, higher education became increasingly vocational. The postmodernist trend made historical short-sightedness the height of intellectual rigour.

Green dismisses the idea that classics should be justified in such terms, but so too does he lament its retreat into the shaded stoas of privileged ataraxia. A case for the study Graeco-Roman culture and history has to be made, but one which avoids both extremes. The argument which Green seems to settle on is a version of the old axiom: 'those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.' A democracy which does not know good prose from bad, which cannot distinguish between wisdom and charlatanism, substance and mere rhetoric, will be easy prey. (In fact one has seen this argument cropping up recently, the idea that Postmodern critique of objective truth has paved the way for 'fake news'). Study of the classics thus becomes 'a vital and, yes, entirely practical element in the never-ending struggle to hold off barbarous recidivism and the gut-law of the jungle. Neither ancient nor modern democracy has been so successful that we can afford to be complacent about their ultimate survival.'

The Tower of Babel's ultimate legacy is parochialism, temporal and cultural. Those who are blinkered are easily led.

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Green, now well into his eighties, has been a noted classicist nearly all his life, having been educated in the old classics tradition at Charterhouse and then taking a Double First at Trinity, Cambridge, followed by a professorial career in universities on both sides of the Atlantic. He became a recognized expert on Hellenistic Greece and on Juvenal and Catullus. And while he never evolved into a “pop” historian, he nevertheless became known to the better-read sector of the public through his essays and extended book reviews in various venues, and a number of those are collected in this second volume of his miscellaneous work. Of course, some of these sixteen pieces interested me considerably more than others. “Victorian Hellas” considers the 19th-century upper-class Briton’s near-worship of the Greek and Roman world -- a tradition in which he himself was raised, though at a later date. “On the Thanatos Trail” is a very enlightening investigation of the Greek attitudes toward death. “The Treasures of Egypt” was written on the occasion of the traveling Tutankhamen exhibition in the U.S. in the 1970s (I still have my full-color exhibition guide) and has some very pointed things to say about the many modern misinterpretations of ancient Egypt. “Delphic Responses,” a critical book review, talks at length about the practical place oracular pronouncements had in forming public policy in classical Greece -- something I had simply taken for granted back when I was wading through Greek & Roman myself. A fascinating chapter. “After Alexander,” on the other hand, considers the historiography of Hellenistic Greece and requires you to pay close attention, but it’s worth the effort. On the third hand, “Juvenal Revisited” is a very funny memoir about Green’s introduction to the great satirist as an adolescent student as he and his classmates perhaps learned more Latin while trying, on their own time, to chase down all the carefully obfuscated dirty parts than they ever acquired in the classroom. Green’s style is not deliberately dense, but he assumes you’re familiar with the history and literature of the ancient world. If not, you will occasionally be wading through deep water, but if you have the background, there’s a great deal here worth reading.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in July 1998.

Classical Bearings is a collection of (independently written) essays on classical history and literature arranged more or less chronologically by subject. The range of subjects within these fields is quite large, from Mycenean history and Homeric literature to the early Roman Empire.

Although now a senior academic, Peter Green first made his name by a strong attack on the parochial world of the classics scholar, and his work is still extremely critical of the academic fashion. His views are always original and based on an understanding of not only the particular issue at hand but of the whole of the Greek and Roman scene - though particularly the Greek.

Every article is worth reading, and all contain interesting insights. This is partly because of the vast range of knowledge which Green has, and which is a consequence of the way in which classics used to be taught

[Ben Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

You probably wouldn’t be reading this review unless you were already intensely interested in the classical world, and already had experience with Peter Green’s works, so as a reviewer there is not much for me to say to such an audience— go ahead and read this book.

This is a collection of Green’s essays on various topics, and as such the quality of the work, in terms of reader interest, is truly in the eye of the beholder. For example his history of Chios and his investigation of of Ovid’s exile I found fascinating, but his study of how classical literature was received in Victorian England bored me to tears, and its place as the second essay of the book had me strongly considering if I wanted to finish the book.

Green is not limited here by any desire to appeal to a non academic reader, and so is at his most free and occasionally his most impenetrable. He is going to often be referencing specific works by specific authors that you’ve never heard of, and switching back and forth between the multitude of languages that he knows as he does so, freely mixing Italian proverbs, Latin and Greek source quotes, French sayings, and German terms. It makes your head spin, but you get a much improved vocabulary and the smug satisfaction of being one of those people that reads books with different languages casually thrown in.

Holding the entire book together is Green’s remarkable reasonableness and his dry English wit. Though he is addressing topics that 99.9% of people have never heard of or thought about, his conversational style is enjoyable enough that you are willing to learn more or muddle through just to stay with him, like listening to a close friend or child talk about their passions, jargon and all.

Green’s approach is also refreshingly anti-ideologue. While he openly admits that he doesn’t buy into a Marxist framework, he also throws some shots across the bow at the prudish approach by many more conservative translations of the classics. His immense amount of knowledge produced an imminent measuredness that reeks of scholarly responsibility, producing a much more appetizing course than using history as a vehicle for advocacy of one cause or another.

Overall, an enjoyable, if dense, read that was taken over the course of several months.

[Aleksandar Todorovski · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptionally reader friendly, authorarive style manifesting a glittering erudition without the typical arrogance of Academia vernacular. Do not be fooled by the last sentence, he writes in the Kings and I was able to vocalise the author without ever listening any lecture of his. Highly enjoyable.