[The following paper was written originally for the last Hellenic Tour of 1939. It was delivered to an audience interested but not in the main learned, who wanted to be informed or reminded about the associations of places they were about to visit. To-day, when peaceful travel is denied to us, it may serve perhaps to recall a few pleasant memories and to awaken hopes of happier days to come.]

The patriotism of Propertius' line is more evident than its truth, especially to the schoolboy. He can read the second, fourth, and sixth books of the Aeneid with enjoyment, and some consciousness of their greatness, and will patronize the fifth with his interest, though the footrace is unfair, the boxing grotesque, and the archery miraculous. But the later books have no appeal. The last Sixth Form with whom I read Aeneid x–xii for Higher Certificate were unmoved, and thought they knew why. It was but adulterated Homer. Incidents which are telling in the Iliad are reproduced and embellished with a care that shows that Virgil's direct inspiration had run dry.

In the May number of Greece and Rome Mr. R. S. Stanier, in a stimulating and provocative article, contended that, if only one ancient language can be taught in our schools, that language should be Greek rather than Latin, because of the greater variety, interest, and value of Greek literature.

Thucydides in the first book of his history, before enumerating the different αἰτίαι which were the prelude to the outbreak of hostilities, says: ‘but the true reason (ἰληθεστάτη πρόφασις), though it was never mentioned, was Sparta's fear of Athens' growth to power.’ The statement is repeated in other parts of this book, and we must assume that when it was written it represented Thucydides' considered judgement. These passages belong to the latest stratum of his work, and date from the time when he had formed a unified conception of what had previously seemed to him isolated events, namely the Archidamian War, the Sicilian Expedition, and the Decelean War. As he looked back after 404 they seemed parts of a whole, a Peloponnesian War, and what gave them unity was a single purpose behind them, the Spartan determination to remove from Greece the dangerous power of Athens, which she regarded as a threat to her own security. Judgements as to causes when the results are complete may in human affairs be as dangerous as illuminating, since reason insists on arranging things according to a pattern; it is our duty therefore to inquire whether Thucydides' interpretation corresponds with the facts, whether the unity which he has given to these three events is real or imaginary.

Readers of Professor E. S. Forster's paper in Greece and Rome, x, 1941, pp. 114–17, may be interested in some of the passages which he does not quote or mention. He refers to Aelian, Varia Historia, xiv. 46, but not to Pollux, v. 47, who speaks of Paeonians as well as Magnesians: Μάγνητας μὲντοὺςἐπὶ Μαιάνλρῳ τρέΦειν φασὶ κύνας πολέμῳ ύπασπιστάς τοιοũτοι Δ̕ἦσαν καὶ Παίοσιν οἱ σύνθηροι κύνες. We hear of a Paeonian and a Perinthian dog in Herodotus, v. I μουνομαχίη τριφασίη έκπροκλήσιός σφι έγένετο καί γάρ άνΔρα ἀνΔρὶ καὶ ἵππον ἵππῳ συνέβαλον καὶ κύνα κυνί.

Milton was obviously well versed, by the standards of his time, in the Greek Tragedians, but more in Euripides than in the other two. ‘Sad Electra's poet’ in Sonnet 8 refers to Euripides, not Sophocles.

You would do well to make a special thing of Homer. Read it in large lumps and get up Monro's ‘Homeric Grammar’ afterwards. I have been reading the Odyssey at the rate of four books a day since I came here. It is the only secret. It is so much easier to pick up the theories of modern scholars, so far as they are worth picking up, when you have a large first-hand acquaintance with the actual literature. That is the primary fact we have to deal with, and all the rest is ‘trimmings’. I never knew what scholarship meant till one lucky summer when I was inspired to read Plato from cover to cover.