Plato’s Cave, Narnia’s Wardrobe: How to Escape the Zeitgeist

The Classics matter, and History matters, not just because ancient texts are curious and interesting to read, but because they allow us to revisit the past and to understand a world and a culture that is different from our own. The past is another country (as L.P. Hartley famously remarked) and the historian a traveller. As we are enriched by foreign travel in this world, so too we can appreciate and learn from the successes and mistakes of another age in time.

 Sometimes we will find that ideas we thought were new are in fact old, that what seems sensible has already proved erroneous, and that some things, which were known long ago, should not have been forgotten. Most important, the cosmopolitan historian does not need to accept the parochial customs of his own era, any more than that of any other, but can pick and choose according to taste. It is thus that most of the modern world’s population chooses to be guided by texts composed in the ancient: whether that be the Bible, the Koran or the teachings of Confucius.  

In practice, knowing about the Greeks and Romans is not more fulfilling than learning about anywhere else: the main thing is simply to know other languages and other cultures. But Classics has traditionally been important because, for whatever reason (and there are many), Ancient Greece and Rome has in all subsequent ages proved an especially popular and attractive destination for time-travellers.

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