Is the Labour leadership hopeful Owen Smith, who longs to reverse the obviously undemocratic outcome of the recent referendum, aware of the company he is keeping — artists, writers, pop singers and other riffraff? Plutarch would not have rated these know-alls as especially useful allies.
Plutarch (c. AD 100) mused on whether classical Athens gained its reputation more from its military or cultural achievements. He agreed that Athens was the ‘mother and well-disposed nurse’ of many arts, inventing some and burnishing others. But it was all a matter of priorities. Take historians and painters: since they lifted their subject matter from military leaders’ famous victories, they had little to add. And tragedians? ‘For all the cleverness of Euripides, the eloquence of Sophocles, or grandeur of Aeschylus, tragedy never dealt with any of Athens’ difficulties or gained it any magnificent successes to compare with its memorials to heroism.’
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