Origins, as Oswyn Murray reminds us, do not reveal the nature of that which they originate (p. 426) and while this book started out from separate essays, it is not a “collection” but is instead a coherent whole and, in fact, a splendid monograph. This sense of the whole emerges from the spirit animating the parts. It is throughout curious and humane, so that the reader keeps wishing to learn more about Murray’s subject—the modern writing of history of the Greeks, especially with an eye to Britain—as well as about Murray himself. Both wishes are amply granted. The survey of British historians of Greece is nearly complete for the 18th century; for the 19th and 20th century, the survey is by necessity more selective (and the scope is more European) but one comes out nonetheless with the contours of the growth of the discipline. The figure of the narrator emerges with fascinating detail: to begin with, we mostly see the emeritus professor, hunting for rare books (Murray providing us with the full thrill of the chase). Gradually, we begin to see also the figure of the young student, emulating his master Momigliano. This sense of admiration and love towards Momigliano is the pulsating heart of the book. This book, indeed, is perhaps closest in spirit to Momigliano’s posthumous “Studies in Modern Scholarship” (1994). It is mostly made of a series of character sketches of the protagonists, some chapter-long, some page-long, beginning with the British historians of the 18th century and ending with some of Murray’s peers. It works because, like Momigliano, Murray has a keen sense for how a person’s life, and a person’s work, make a meaningful whole. “Gast … was a member of an enterprising Irish Huguenot community, and he was very interested in the development of civilization through migration” (77); “The unifying theory beneath all the work of Vernant on … l’imaginaire, was his belief in the importance of the ideas of his old comrade in the Resistance, Ignace Meyerson [who pursued a historical psychology along the lines of Vygotski]” (385-6). Murray, like Momigliano, approaches people as individuals. As in the case of Momigliano, this biographical instinct flows from a worldview that centers individual human liberty.
The two main themes of the book, as I see it, are the use of Greek history as a template for reflection on the problems of liberty—and the influence of European thought on British intellectual life. (Both themes, indeed, once again, stemming from Murray’s debt to Momigliano). It is not an accident that both examples cited above—for the very obscure John Gast, an 18th century historian rediscovered by Murray, as well as for the very famous Jean-Pierre Vernant—share the same theme: a Frenchmen, influential in the English-speaking world. Crudely, this book surveys the influence of French, in the 18th century, of Germans, in the 19th century, and of French again, in the 20th century. The implied outline is that it is the business of Europeans to hazard daring, exciting ideas that, through hard work, the British make into dull, evident truths. Since Murray has an equal distaste for both nationalism as well as positivism, the 19th century is one he describes from a greater distance: the only German historian he deeply admires is the Swiss Burckhardt.
It is the great merit of the book that one can easily discover who Murray likes. Indeed, he mostly writes about authors he admires, and this admiration is palpable and infectious—which is why the book is read with so much pleasure. (On the other hand, Murray’s eye for character is such that you start thinking: would less admirable individuals not provide for even more interesting prose? One fondly hopes that Murray keeps a secret dossier on some of our sketchier colleagues…)
What brings the two themes together—Greek history and the problem of liberty; the European influence over Britain—are their contemporary political message. The second is not made explicit by Murray himself, but his repeated praises for intellectual openness beyond borders, for extending a hand to refugees, surely were meant to resonate in today’s Britain, against the ugly din of a xenophobia that keeps rising by the day. As for the first, Murray’s message would seem to be more obvious but is in fact the more complicated. He does not see Athens as a simple model for some kind of universal message of democracy and instead implies, throughout, a tragic view of human liberty: societies, as a whole, are oligarchic and democracies are besieged, transient or illusory. Liberty is to be found, it seems, above all at the individual level.
In this tragic, and ironic, view towards democracy, I think we can sense Murray’s formation in the post-war era, as the issue of liberty—in the West—seemed to have been resolved, so that one could reflect, ironically perhaps, on the extent of democracy in contemporary western liberal societies. It is only very recently that we have come to realize that the democratic values we took for granted for so long are no longer safe. Indeed, the shock of this realization is felt keenly only now, under Trump’s second presidency. But even prior to that, over the last few years, it became clear that liberal and progressive ideals can no longer be taken for granted, not only in society as a whole but also within leftist academia. We have all learned to make fun of “The Whig Conception of History” (as Murray does, too), and we felt safe doing so because we thought we live, safely, in a whig world. But clearly, we do not.
Here, then, is my one critique of Murray’s approach—which is indeed a critique of the standard line taken by most of my colleagues. I do not think we can afford the ironic detachment from liberal, progressive ideals that we took for granted for many decades now. Against a rising tide of fascism it is our duty, as historians, to stand up for the ideals of liberty and progress. Historians of Ancient Greece are well suited for making this stand, because we have the vantage point from which we can describe history as an arc of progress whose foundations are in Athenian democracy.
Is this old-fashioned? Not exactly: as Murray incisively shows, the Enlightenment itself typically preferred Sparta over Athens (chapter 2)—following, more or less verbatim, Plutarch’s biographies of Lycurgus and of Solon—and it was only the Utilitarians who turned to Athens with admiration which, in turn, was largely structured around the specific fight for the franchise of 1832 (chapter 7). With the cascade, ever since then, of nationalism, positivism, irony, alienation and the sheer diminution of the role of antiquity, who even proclaims Athens today as a model? Who, indeed, even proclaims progress towards democracy and prosperity as an ideal? I suggest that we should. Or is the Whig Conception of History simply wrong? This I think is our weakest assumption. There are all sorts of principled arguments against teleology that we can develop. But the sheer fact of progress is one we can’t just ignore. The fact of the matter is that history displays many patterns of directional growth, among other things in human prosperity and liberty. The more we explain, and celebrate this progress, the more we can hope to protect it.
One of the patterns of progress we see, I believe, is in history itself. Once again, this is a matter that Murray—as is generally the case for the scholarship of modern historiography today—simply ignores. But consider the following. I cited Murray for the two Frenchmen he put near the beginning (chapter 3) and end (chapter 18) of his book, John Gast (1715–1788) and Jean-Pierre Vernant (1914–2007). Is it possible to read the two, side by side, and not to conclude that the study of history made tremendous progress through the centuries? From Niebuhr to Braudel, the key influences cited by Murray did not merely bring in their own situated ideological prism but also produced new methodological breakthroughs that were objectively valid. We know much more, now, about how to write history. This is worth celebrating.
It may be, of course, that different generations bring different values to their writing of history. It is remarkable to learn that John Gast’s publication was delayed mostly by the publisher’s concern for Gast’s style and it is evident that, in their construction of sentence and paragraph, the 18th century British historians were far superior to almost all their followers. Gibbon is still being read, for a reason. Murray read the 18th century historians, with deep care, and evidently absorbed some of their style. We can find in this book some of the aphoristic brilliance of the 18th century, the novelistic sense of character of the 19th, the methodological sophistication of the 20th. It is a fitting summa of those centuries of historical writing, and I am deeply grateful to have read it.