Gilbert Murray on the need for everyday art and beauty

    Gilbert Murray tells how it was in the Greek world:

To take a contrast with Rome: if you dig about the Roman Wall in Cumberland you will find quantities of objects, altars, inscriptions, figurines, weapons, boots and shoes, which are full of historic interest but are not much more beautiful than the contents of a modern rubbish heap. And the same is true of most excavations all over the world. But if you dig at any classical or sub-classical site in the Greek world, however unimportant historically, practically every object you find will be beautiful; the inscriptions will be beautifully cut; the figurines, however cheap and simple, may have some intentional grotesques among them, but the rest will have a special truthfulness and grace; and vases will be of good shapes and the patterns will be beautiful patterns.

    (Quoted from “The Value of Greece to the Future of the World,” by Gilbert Murray -- page 8 in The Legacy of Greece, edited by R. W. Livingstone. Oxford University Press, 1921 and 1969.)
    For a brief autobiography of Gilbert Murray, click here. For a brief biography of Richard Livingstone, click here.