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Introduction INTRODUCTION Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It means giving votes to that remotest and obscurest of classes, our ancestors. It refuses to submit to the arrogant oligarchy of those who simply happen to be walking around. (G.K. Chesterton) Quandoque ista gens suas litteras dabit, omnia corrumpet. (Cato Maior) Les grecs n'enveniment rien. (Albert Camus) In order to understand the present state of classical studies, one has to remember that the awareness of the study of classical antiquity being essentially a historical discipline first developed as the by-product of the wish to vindicate the prestige of the classical authors against the claims of the so-called 'modems' - who considered contemporary civilization superior to what their ancestors had seen as the perfect and unattainable models for all times. It was in order to safeguard Homer from modem contempt that, for instance, Anne Dacier advo­ cated judging his work by the standards of his own time and society - thus consciously adding a historical dimension to the appreciation of Homeric poetry. It seems to me that classical scholarship up to the present day has not succeeded in freeing itself from the concerns of those who watched and welcomed the first beginnings of its flourishing period. It may seem, at first sight, that we are entitled to look down, for instance, on Antoine Houdar de la Motte's 1713 "translation" of the Iliad as an irresponsible attempt to adapt a 'primitive' Homer to the taste of the age of Louis l,e Grand. But his removing from the Iliad what he con­ sidered superfluous and rearranging the remainder into twelve books of neat alexandrines, is, perhaps, not all that different from arguing, as Wilamowitz did, that Homer's original Iliad must have ended with the death of Achilles, because that would result in a finale he con­ sidered more satisfactory than the one we find in our text. In short, the impressive results of classical scholarship should not make us blind to the fact that many scholars who contributed to them were (and still are) motivated by the wish to enhance the prestige and continuing relevance of the authors they are studying - and in the process to stress their own merit as creative readers and indispensable mediators. 2 INTRODUCTION So one may ask oneself whether, from a purely scientific point of view, the drawbacks of standing in a long and in many respects distin­ guished tradition do not, perhaps, outweigh its positive effects. Classi­ cists see it as their duty to prove the lasting significance of the ancient authors, rightly claiming that it is worthwhile to read Homer, Sopho­ cles e tutti quanti because, apart from the intrinsic value of what they have written, getting to know them can help us to understand the tra­ dition we stand in as well as ourselves. This makes many interpreters inclined to make the authors say what their modern readership (or the interpreter himself) wants to hear from them, or to make them 'anti­ cipate' later developments by foisting upon them ideas they themselves could not even begin to imagine - instead of sticking to the exacting task of removing the difficulties we have in understanding messages that, after all, were never meant to be heard by us. The history of the interpretation of the classics is, to put it in Gadamer's terms, a history of the 'application' of the texts almost as much as of the advancement of their understanding - some classicists tending to behave like clergy­ men whose wish to increase the number of churchgoers makes them prone to the temptation of ramming home the vital significance of the Bible at the cost of tampering with or even playing down the less palatable aspects of the message they are to preach. Yet, the 'exegesis' - or the application - of a sacred text for the benefit of believers is, or at least should be, something fundamentally different from respon­ sibly explaining and interpreting the texts from a period that belongs to the past. In recent years, the cultural environment in which the classicist has to find himself a 'niche' has become particularly threatening to the standards of the profession, especially in the United States, where the so-called 'literary canon' is discussed in a way that is more like a battle than anything that can be seen in previous periods. Let me quote L. Lindsay's review (BHR 59, 1997, 116-7) of John Guillory's Cultural Capital: 1he Probkms ef Literary Canon Formation (Un. of Chicago Press 1995): "What it all comes down to is a combination of a search for identity and sheer greed: each group wants to be represented in the canon because that 'validates' it (as the modern jargon goes) and, more importantly in the fierce struggle of politics in this age of 'en­ titlements', everyone wants not just a slice of the pie but more than they deserve, to win the battle to get the most credits or 'goodies'( ... ) All this involves some fierce infighting and sabotage, guerilla tactics, terrorism, and all other ungentlemanly aspects of modern war, which .
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