CLASSICS AND LIFE
SIR,—Has the value to the modern world of the study of the classics ever been put more convincingly than it was just over a century ago by Dr. Arnold? After referring to " what is miscalled ancient history," " the really modern history of the civilisation of Greece and Rome," he concludes with the hope that his edition of Thucydides may " contribute to the conviction that history is to be studied as a whole and according to its philosophical divisions, not such as are merely geographical and chronological, and that the history of Greece and Rome is not an idle enquiry about remote ages and forgotten institutions, but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much for the curiosity of the scholar, as for the instruction of the statesman and the citizen" (History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, VoL 3, preface, p. xxiv).—Yours
Trevabyn, Paignton.
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