John Stuart Mill on the Utility of Classical Greece
What was the state of classical Greek studies in early Victorian Britain? The anonymous author of a series of Platonic translations-with-commentaries has this to say in the February 1834 issue of the Monthly Repository: Considering the almost boundless reputation of the writings of Plato, not only among scholars, but (upon their authority) among nearly all who have any tincture of letters, it is a remarkable fact that, of the great writers of antiquity, there is scarcely one who, in this country at least, is not merely so little understood, but so little read. Our two great ‘seats of learning’ of which no real lover of learning can ever speak but in terms of indignant disgust, bestow attention upon the various branches of classical acquirement in exactly the reverse order to that which would be observed by persons who valued the ancient authors for what is valuable in them: … with the exception of the two dialogues edited by Dr. Routh, we are aware of nothing to facilitate the study of the most gifted of Greek writers which has ever emanated from either of the two impostor-universities of England; and of die young men who have obtained university honours during the past ten years, we are much misinformed if there be six who had even looked into his writings. There are, probably, in this kingdom, not so many as a hundred persons who ever have read Plato, and not so many as twenty who ever do.’
The History of British India
Book VI. From the Establishment of the New Constitution for the Government of India, Ao. 1784, to the Termination of the War with the Mahrattas, Ao. 1805: 1. Administration of Mr. Macpherson 2. The trial of Mr. Hastings 3. Arrangement about troops and money with the Nabob of Oude 4. Cornwallis takes the command 5. Lord Cornwallis's financial and judicial reforms 6. Result of Lord Cornwallis's financial and judicial reforms 7. Proceedings in parliament relative to the renewal of the Company's charter in 1793 8. Lord Mornington Governor-General 9. Situation of Oude, as left by Lord Teignmouth, highly satisfactory to the Home Authorities 10. The Nabob of Surat deposed 11. Two sets of princes, connected with the English 12. Objects to which the operations of the army in the north were to be directed 13. Necessity inferred of curbing Holkar Index.
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.