Studies on the Reception of Plato and Greek Political Thought in Victorian Britain

This collection of essays provides a revealing map of nineteenth- century classical scholarship, as it reconstructs an immensely important section of the Victorian Study of the Greek heritage - an arena of thoroughly engaged scholarship and writing. As vehicles for contemporary emulation or allies of particular moral and political ideologies, interpretations of ancient life and thought have mirrored the anxieties and controversies of their times. The history of Greece and Platonic interpretation were typically enveloped within the spirit of the age, the secularist perspective of Victorian utilitarianism, radical ideas and conservative responses. And yet, Victorian scholars' research into the inexhaustible mine of classical antiquity yielded new and valuable insights into Greek life and civilization. Thus conventional ideas of Socratic philosophy and the sophistic movement were questioned; traditional dogmatic Platonism was fundamentally challenged and Athenian democracy and constitutional arrangements were for the first time evaluated in light of their contribution to political liberty and intellectual progress. George Grote's studies of ancient Greece, informed by the rational outlook of a philosophical radical, were a fertilizing influence and are still used as part of the ongoing attempts by philosophers and classicists to come to terms with numerous problems in interpreting the classical past.