My Greeks were neither sophisticated layabouts nor pious fatalists, and least of all were they portentous gurus brooding on the lost Secrets of the Ancients. They were resilient, sceptical, cheeky people, whose distinctive contribution to our history was to combine a readiness to ask 'Why?' and 'Why not?' with a conviction that only sane, reasoned, and clearly expounded answers to those questions were worth listening to.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
Pages
▼
Monday, September 05, 2022
My Greeks
Kenneth Dover, The Greeks, 3rd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), p. 133: