Volume 25, Number 5 · April 6, 1978
A Daemon at Oxford
By Stuart Hampshire
Missing Persons: An Autobiography
by E.R. Dodds
Oxford University Press, 216 pp., $13.50
Before the last world war it was not unusual for English schoolboys from prosperous families to be sent to a private boarding school, called preparatory, at the age of eight and to begin to learn Greek in their first term there, as I did. I think it is rather less usual now, although it certainly still happens. The study of classical Greek, and of much of the literature of ancient Greece, could become a large part of one's syllabus over a dozen years at school and university, and Greek seemed to have much more influence on later tastes and habits than the study of Latin or the desultory study of modern European languages. In the 1920s, as also now, there was much argument about the continuing value of classical studies, and Stanley Baldwin, prime minister at the time, gave a conventional but heart-felt address on that topic to the Classical Association.
Review, 1331 words
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