EDITORIAL

Author(s): J. P. S.
Source: Arethusa, Vol. 8, No. 1, MARXISM AND THE CLASSICS (Spring 1975), pp. 5-6
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26307439
Accessed: 05-03-2019 20:28 UTC

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 EDITORIAL

With this issue of Arethusa, ray work as Editor comes to an end and my
successor, John J. Peradotto, takes over the publication of the journal
for the next three years. It is his intention to continue the policy
which I have adopted of producing thematic issues at regular intervals.
The first of these will be Population Policy in Plato and Aristotle.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many contribu
tors to those thematic issues that I have edited for their hard work in
making them a success. Of the three so far produced, Literature and
Politics in Augustan Rome, Women in Antiquity, and Psychoanalysis
and the Classics, the most successful in terms of individual sales was
Women in Antiquity, which seems to me to indicate that the Classical
world is more receptive to fresh, even unorthodox, perspectives on its
traditional subject matter. This brings me to the present issue, Marxism
and the Classics. The perspectives which Marxism has to offer, both
for literature and history, have been available for a long time. But in
both England and America classical scholars have, deliberately or
inadvertently, failed to take account of them. Even the insights of
Freud and his followers have been used more consistently and more
fruitfully in, say, the study of mythology and literature than has the
work of Marx and Engels in historical research, even though their
corpus antedates considerably the major work of the psychoanalytical
movement. There are obviously ideological reasons for this, quite
apart from the philological traditionalism that has been the bane of
Classical studies until fairly recently. Another reason may be the
narrowness of our approach to our subject. It is hard enough work to
master the two basic languages and the ancillary languages which
are almost as necessary: to master another major discipline or another
interdisciplinary approach, whether it be Marxian dialectic, or psy
choanalytical technique, seems to many of us an intolerable imposition,
particularly since the literature in both fields is immense. This of
course has not been the case in other countries. Whereas, with a few
honorable exceptions such as George Thomson, Marxist thought has

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rarely been brought to bear on Greek and Roman history in the English
speaking countries, in France, for example, a great deal of important
and enlightening work has been produced in the last few decades (for
a selection of this, see the Bibliography, pp,199ff.). It is surely time
that our students had available to them in English some slight guidance
in this important area. I hope that this issue of Arethusa will contribute
in some small way to that end.
Of course it will be objected by many that the very ideological
nature of Marxist thought brings with it an ingrained prejudice which
is alien to the so-called objectivity of our studies. I have heard much
the same criticisms voiced of the journal of which I was formerly an
editor, Arion: then it was charged that the essays and articles that
appeared in its pages were "subjective"; that literary criticism of
whatever sort is unmethodical, unscholarly, and therefore dangerous
to our studies, just as translation was only suitable for the amateur,
not the scholar. But just as we argued then that in dealing with litera
ture and literary history there is no such thing as a non-critical view
point, since the very choice of subject and method entailed a degree
of unconscious criticism, so, too, with the application of Marxist
methods to Greek and Roman history, in particular, one must state
categorically there can be no un-ideological writing of history. The
question is whether the historian is consciously aware of his approach
and perspective. What need not, and what must not, be sacrificed is a
respect for the facts, a regard for logical argument, and the closest
scrutiny of the evidence. Whether one is a Mommsen dealing with the
phenomenon of Caesar or a Syme dealing with the Roman Revolution,
this must be the first and fundamental criterion for the soundness of
scholarly work in history, literature, or indeed anywhere else. Since
mankind is fallible, I would have to agree with E. R. Dodds who said,
in another context, that the errors of today are preferable to the errors
of yesterday. Time and patience will take care of the mistakes, should
a new perspective distort the facts or the evidence. But without a
perspective we cannot see or order the facts at all. It is in this spirit
that I put before our readers this issue of Arethusa on Marxism and
the Classics.

J.P.S.

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