And So to Rome?

Extract

The B.B.C.'s recent series of programmes on the Greeks, introduced by an attractively illustrated booklet, was an enterprising essay in popular education. More might perhaps have been done to bring home to non-specialists the ‘strangeness of the Greeks’, their remoteness from us in racial make-up, language, and religion, and the peculiar character of life in a city-state. On some matters, such as the migrations and the development of the language, speakers tended to repeat the current doctrine without noting that it did not make sense; but the existence of unsolved problems was acknowledged, and the series as a whole summed up plainly the present state of knowledge, or opinion, about the Greeks, and properly drew attention to the revolutionary advances in Greek studies in the present century, and even in the last decade. It ended by offering a hope of still more discoveries, and by stressing the need of every generation for new interpretations of what is already known. No stagnation here; and, since the Greeks were pioneers in so many fields, little that was irrelevant to twentieth-century life.