The Origins Of Scholarship

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, those interested in the history of classical scholarship have had to turn first to the monumental work of J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship (1903-1908). This book, informative and well written though it is, suffers from three defects. First, it is based for the most part on the research of others rather than on direct study of the sources and even as a compilation it was not accurate or complete by the standards of the time when it was written. Second, it is not a historical work except in the sense that it is chronologically organized. It shows, as Rudolf Pfeiffer has written, leading idea, no coherent structure, no sober discrimination between the transient and the perennial. Nor does it analyze the changes in the wide social, cultural, and political environment within which scholars must work, or the effects of that environment on their methods and their interests. Third, it is not a history of scholarship but a history of scholars.