The Duke of Sparta and me

There is a tradition at the British School at Athens that its annual London meeting is chaired by an interested outsider. This fortunate guest - the TLS editor temporarily raised on Tuesday to this place of  archaeological eminence - is allowed to speak on ancient Greek topics for about ten minutes before introducing the School's Director and the lecturer for the night.

So what was I to say? We were at King's College London, currently the centre of an increasingly public row about money between academics and government. The study of palaeography at King's and in Britain seems sorely tested and may cease - as even listeners to Radio Four's Today show learnt this week. But was the Saturnalian chairman supposed to enter these lists? It seemed less than festive to do so.

The dire economic state of Greece was more tempting. Those of us who once argued so long and hard about the dangers of the Euro might reasonably feel satisfaction at the theatre of absurdity now playing nightly in Athens, Paris and Berlin. I might have recalled that the central problem of the Euro in places beloved of fantasy was never going to be economic alone: a single currency without a single politics was always set to produce real political hatreds and betrayals whenever the Euro-play was judged over, the precise opposite of the outcome its proponents claimed to want. But that did not seen a very suitable theme for the night either. I have long been retired from this battle - and very happily so.

The history of the Saturnalian chairmanship itself seemed an attractive topic. For example, before reading the Times accounts of these meetings from the 1890s, I had no idea (shame on me, I'm sure) that there had ever been a living man called the Duke of Sparta. If asked, I might have placed him as a character in some disputed Elizabethan prototype of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It turns out, after brief research that the Duke, whose attendance so delighted the School's London supporters in 1895, held the title reserved, though not in everyone's opinion rightly so, for the heir to the Greek throne. And there were other curiosities too.

In the 1890s our predecessors talked about the benign power of Hellenism to improve the world - and why we should give the school more money to keep the Germans from getting all the best sites. I rather wish that I had taken that same road. But it is no part of the temporary chairman's job to cause trouble for a wonderful British institution for which, after hearing Catherine Morgan's report from the Director's desk and Margaret Kenna's lecture on Anafi' tourists, nuns, viticulturalists, icons and a unique epithet for Apollo, I felt extraordinarily proud. Good luck to my admired friend and TLS contributor, Malcolm Schofield, for his new tenure in the real chair.

Comments

[Patricia Wilson]

Everyone was so eager to get the EU going not with 10-15 countries but with 25+. That I think was a problem that no one wanted to accept. The profits were looking good, cheap labor is so much better from some place else and all had to have 3.4% profits annually. EU will never have a recession. Oh! sure!! Most countries east of Germany(usually those that were part of the USSR satellite group)were not ready then and most are not ready now to hold up their part of the bargain. Since EU includes UK why is the UK not involved in Greece's problem? No one can change the pound to euros??? Also, if the EU is supposed to work together, then why can't they work together now to get Greece and most likely Romania and Hungary out of holes inwhich both their governments and yours got them ?? Why is Germany the only one leaned on to help Greece out?? Why does Belgium not force everyone to get together and solve this problem?? You are starting to sound like my US Congress's Republicans in telling everyone "NO" we won't help you, we don't like you nor Mr. Obama. Such a lovely situation??!!

Why haven't I received timeonline since 17th of January, 2010 nor find TLS on Google--they tell me no server--or on Microsoft except as pre school books or an advertisement on Amazon?? I already have an annual subscription which seldom shows up in the mail. Fulco Co in New Jersey is not fulfilling its contract to mail out all necessary issue. Please work to change that or I am GONE!!! and so will others.

[Terence Hale]

Hi.
traveler if you come to Sparta think of those befor you.
Regards Dr. Terence Hale

[John Yohalem]

The Duke of Sparta was a favorite nephew of Queen Alexandra and he married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, the Kaiser's sister Sophie - whom the Kaiser expelled from the House of Hohenzollern when she defied him to convert to Orthodoxy. The Duke became King Constantine I, Lloyd-George's bete noire. And his nephew, of course, married Elizabeth II.