Sphinx

I believe there’s now something of a vogue for schematic accounts of world-historical development, built around some sort of organising trope like ‘killer apps’, with far-reaching, if tendentious, contemporary implications. However, so far these seem to be mostly focused on technology and institutions, or built around grand assertions about human psychology, and inexplicably they deal with classical culture only as the/a beginning of a long process rather than as the fundamental cultural theme it clearly is in reality. It’s time to redress the balance. Yes, this is just a short blog post, but editors and publishers can be assured that I can easily turn this into a polemical op ed or trade book just by adding some striking examples, without inflicting any unhelpful nuance on the core thesis. And of course it’s just about Europe and the West; what are you, some kind of cultural Marxist?

Root Position. C6 BCE to C15 CE. Greek and Latin as the languages of government, law, philosophy, culture etc. Greek and Latin studied by anyone intending to participate in pretty well any area of public life. Values of Greco-Roman culture questioned only from within, with no serious contemplation of possible obsolescence. Metaphors: health, energy, authenticity, originality. Key names: too many to mention.

First Inversion. C15 to C19. Classical culture revived as the guiding spirit of government, law, philosophy, culture etc. Greek and Latin studied by those intending to take their place at the top of society, and those seeking to understand and perpetuate Greco-Roman culture to serve society. Values of Greco-Roman culture now known to be contingent and temporary, to be defended against, attacked on behalf of, or reconciled with rivals (such as modern science). Metaphors: inspiration, rebirth, revival, epigone. Key names: Erasmus, Milton, Winckelmann.

Second Inversion. C19 to present. Classical culture identified as pervasive influence in government, law, philosophy, culture etc., in the bad way (ideological, elitist, self-serving, self-deluding etc.); if not so much in the present, then in recent centuries that continue to inform the present. Greek and Latin studied by a few as cultural capital, and otherwise either from force of habit or as means to develop the critique of classical influences. Values of Greco-Roman culture seen as harmful and dangerous – though that doesn’t stop us eagerly seizing on examples of other people still taking them seriously, as material for ongoing project of critique. Metaphors: spectre, zombie, vampire, ideology. Key names: Marx, Nietzsche, Hardwick.

And now? Now the organising trope breaks down, because Third Inversion takes us back to root position, and – leaving aside the bizarre fantasies of certain US-based authors that the culturally enlightened will retreat into new monasteries to wait out the coming cultural apocalypse and then revive True Culture – that ain’t gonna happen. Rather, we’re left with paradoxes: that the study of classical reception and critique of classical influence should be working towards its own obsolescence as an intellectual project, but is actually heavily invested in the perpetuation of that influence while decrying its impact; that we lament the role of classical language learning as cultural capital while trying to find new markets for it; that we see Greco-Roman culture as historically embedded while still implicitly presenting it as timeless.

Perhaps the dominant metaphor is now parasitism: we need Johnson and Cummings to keep citing ancient authors, and alt-right types to keep appropriating the Spartans and Decline & Fall, and foreign policy types to keep coining Thucydides-based theories of global politics, and journalists to keep making crass Trump/Caligula analogies, so we have stuff to denounce. We also need Kate Tempest and Anne Carson and the like to keep producing stuff we can celebrate – but that’s less important, or more obviously self-serving…