242 NOTICES OF BOOKS
considerable scale was impossible or at least incompatible with
the maintenance of the established democratic institutions,
since these absorbed a large part of the ordinary revenues
(though not as large a part as is sometimes suggested, as J. has
shown in an article in Past and Present 1, 1952), with peacetime
expenditure on defence forming another big item. These were
the facts that Demosthenes failed to face—until it was too late
(which is not to say that earlier recognition of them would
necessarily have made it any easier for him to organise successful
resistance to Philip).
It is to be hoped that publication of this salutary lecture will
stimulate further study of Athens and the Greek world in the
fourth century, a period which has long been unduly neglected
by British scholars (though Cambridge has furnished some
exceptions). As this lecture shows, there is much that needs
to be reconsidered in older work on this period.
C. RODEWALD.
Greek Philosophy: The Hub and the Spokes. By
W. K. C. GUTHRIE. Pp. 29. Cambridge: University
Press, 1953. $s.
In the first part of his inaugural lecture Professor Guthrie
speaks in defence of the classical scholar's approach to ancient
philosophy. It is his purpose to get to know the ancient thinkers
as individuals, rather than to single out what seems true and
important in the light of later experience; and he will view the
philosophy of the Greeks in connexion with their language and
literature, religion and art (or, if he prefers, in connexion with
some larger cultural unit), rather than with later doctrines,
even those inspired by Greek precedents, or with the philosophy
of the present day.
Here the reader may, I think, be inclined to ask, why not
both? Is it beyond the capacity of the scholarly mind to
view Greek philosophy in relation to the culture from which
it sprang, and at the same time to appreciate the historical
significance of the texts, and their indelible value as patterns
of philosophical method? This has surely been done in the
past by the best scholars in their more enlightened moments;
what has happened to render it impossible?
Presumably the classical scholar and the historically minded
philosopher have one aim in common—to discover what an
ancient thinker really meant—but the latter has an additional
purpose, for he wishes to understand the influence which a
doctrine has exercised, and also to judge whether it is in fact
true. Now it is clear, and experience confirms, that each
approach, pursued to the exclusion of the other, has its risks.
The philosophical writer too often claims to be exempt from
the labour of interpretation, and to know intuitively what an
ancient thinker must be trying to say. But the classical scholar,
on his side, may tend to paint in the background so minutely
that it begins to appear that the thinker was bound to say what
he did say. The reasons from which he supposed his own
doctrines to follow, and which he recommends to the accept-
ance of others, will then lose their force, and philosophy will
be eliminated; which is a pity if the philosophy happens to be
that of Plato or Aristotle. The moral of this is that, while
industry and imagination are the first requisites if one intends
to understand ancient philosophical texts, they alone are not
enough; they need to be balanced by some reflections on the
problems themselves. And in a comparison of methods, such
as is here attempted, there might at least have been some
allusion to this danger inherent in the ' classical' approach.
The examples and illustrations which Professor Guthrie has
given—the ' spokes' of the wheel—seem to be somewhat
loosely connected with one another and with the methodical
disquisition in the first part of the lecture. I should like to
comment upon one of them. Referring to ' the Islamic achieve-
ment in preserving the Greek philosophical heritage ', Professor
Guthrie says that, as far as can be seen at present, the Arabic
writings must be viewed as an independent continuation of
Greek philosophy in itsfinalphase, not simply as a quarry from
which lost Greek masterpieces may be recovered. The warning
is useful, but I think it should be added that it fell to Western
philosphers, in the thirteenth century, to reassert the Hellenic
heritage in face of developments whereby the sense of human
individuality would have been lost.
D. J. ALLAN.
La Religione aella Grecia antica flno ad Alessandro.
By RAFFAELE PETTAZZONI. Pp. 282, 14 pll. Turin:
Einaudi, 1953. L. 2500.
This is not a new book, but a reissue with slight changes and
a new introduction of an old one; the first edition came out
at Bologna in 1921. It is therefore not necessary nor indeed
fair to criticise it in full detail; there are statements here and
there which if the author were now making them for the first
time would call for comment, but these are not many, for
fundamentally sane views concerning the religion of Greece
have not altered much since the twenties of this century. One
or two little slips on matters of fact (as p. 199; Hagnon, being
still alive when Brasidas took Amphipolis, could not yet have
had a hero-cult there) might have been corrected with advan-
tage, however. One misstatement, or misprint, is not the
author's but the printer's or publisher's, and is not in the text
but in the ' b l u r b ' ; Professor Pettazzoni was born in 1883,
not 1893.
The introduction, I understand, is to appear separately in
an English version in a volume of opuscula to be published
before long. It handles, with moderation, sound judgement,
and wide knowledge of the facts, the matter of the historical
origins of Greek religion. The general framework is of course,
as it must be, the story of how two cultures, that of the invaders
and that of the pre-Achaian inhabitants of Greece, met and
mingled. But little is left of the exaggerations which used to
distort the picture. The author is well aware that if he calls
the ' Pelasgian ' culture matriarchal, he is using a conventional
term (p. 12, n. 7; I would almost say that the term is now
devoid of content). He also knows (p. 13) how restricted our
knowledge is of anything that might be called primitive Indo-
European culture. Furthermore, he recognises (p. 14) that
the result of the process was, to use chemical terms, a compound
and not a mechanical mixture. With these wise and com-
mendable limitations, he yet endeavours to analyse the com-
pound and tries, with a considerable measure of success, to
assign to each element those features which are its own. I
find things which I personally would have stated otherwise,
but very little which I consider fundamentally mistaken.
H. J. ROSE.
La Mythologie grecque. By PIERRE GRIMAL. Pp. 125.
Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953. Price not
stated.
This is No. 582 of a series called Que sais-je? which rapidly
pours out popularised information on subjects as varied as jazz
and geology, bull-fighting and the early days of Christianity.
The small size of the volumes forbids any full discussion of the
views of their authors on disputable points, as also the addition
of anything like the apparatus of foot-notes and citations which
a larger work would call for. Hence the unlearned reader is
left with no means of correcting the slips into which even the
most accurate writer sometimes falls. In this work, p. 5 makes
the too sweeping statement that all peoples have legends; the
fact is that some appear to have none at all and others very
few. The next page commits the author to the very improbable
position that the legend, if we may call it one, of Horatius
Codes originated in a statue of a one-eyed daimon on the
banks of the Tiber. A great deal of proof would be needed to
convince the present reviewer that any Greek ' oracles'
existed or were for a moment supposed to exist (see p. 7) de
toute etemite; rather do the iioTpcn of individuals or com-
munities seem to be the result of decisions taken by the gods
from time to time. P. 12 : since the cult of Asklepios as a god
cannot be shown to exist earlier than about 500 B.C. (Edelstein,
Asclepius ii, p. 98), it is idle to dream of a prehistoric population
bringing it from Thessaly to Epidauros. P. 15: it is not quite
accurate to speak of Ovid publishing the Metamorphoses, cf.
Trist. iii, 14, 19-24. On the same page: it is very far from
beyond doubt that Apollodoros the mythographer is an epitome
of anything by Apollodoros of Athens. P. 57 makes the old mis-
take, put right by Nilsson, of supposing that it is at sowing time
that Kore departs for the lower world. P. 60: while it is true
that there is ' une legende cohe>ente et comme une " bio-
graphie" de Dionysos', this is no proof that he brought with
him any considerable body of myth. A comparative late-
comer, he was fitted into what was already rapidly becoming a
system of mythology. On p. 109 the highly doubtful statement
is made that Prometheus, in Aeschylus, becomes ' un redemp-
teur universel', and that the trilogy (in the existence of which
G. believes; I do not) was a sort of Gospel.
But these are details. The main business of such a book is
to tell a selection of the myths and sagas, which is done clearly
and well, the only weak point being that occasionally a late or
aberrant detail is introduced without warning, and to say
something of the way in which they were modified by literary
influences (p. 112 is especially good on this point) and by
systematisation (pp. 101 f.). On p. 103 the author correctly
points out the contribution to the legends as we know them
made by elements folkloriqucs, i.e. md'rcAm-themes. A short final
chapter gives some account of modern mythological studies;
it is for the most part good, but the vagaries of Dumezil are
taken much too seriously.
H. J. ROSE.