Greeks and the Greeks

Abstract

To make generalisations, whether in speech or in print, is always a dangerous thing to do – dangerous not only in everyday affairs but also in scholarly research. All too frequently we are inclined to draw general conclusions from a larger or smaller number of special cases. Because the living voice of an age long past is no longer there to put us right, this inclination has become, from a danger, a positive menace in the study of history; and not least is it present in modern scholarship as concerned with ancient Greece.