Volume 11, Number 9 · November 21, 1968
Et tu, Teddy White
By M.I. Finley
Caesar at the Rubicon
by Theodore H. White
Atheneum, 174 pp., $5.00
The Authoress of the Odyssey
by Samuel Butler
Chicago, 277 pp., $7.50
The fundamental difference between the good professional historian and even the best amateur historian is that the latter, sooner or later, decides that there is nothing new under the sun. Theodore White tells us in his prologue that Caesar was 'oddly modern and romantic,' that he was 'perhaps more a man of our time than of any other time but his own.' And he means that; the assertion that Caesar was also 'so naturally barbarian' and all the archaisms, the little pedantries which pepper the play, prove to be stage props, serving to show off the author's knowledge of the antique without seriously impinging upon the argument. As for Samuel Butler, he didn't bother with explanations, he simply took it for granted that not only was the author (ess) of the Odyssey a Victorian novelist, but that the values and emotions of the characters in the poem were identical with those of his time, as he judged them.
Review, 2439 words
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