Augustus Taber Murray

Augustus Taber Murray (1866–1940) was an American classical philologist and translator and a Quaker minister. He was Professor of Greek at Stanford University for forty years.

Quotes

• He who would know Homer must approach him with an open mind and lend himself to the guidance of the poet himself. He must not come to the study of the poems with a preconceived notion of the processes by which they have come into being, or of philological or archaeological criteria for determining the relative age of this episode or of that. The reconstructed Iliads are all figments of the imagination; the existent poem is a tangible fact. To this extent the unbiassed student starts as a “unitarian.” If he but yields himself to the spell of the poem, he will become the more confirmed in his faith; and though he may find much of the learning of the world arrayed against him, yet he will none the less be standing in a goodly company of those whom the Muse has loved, and will himself have heard the voice of the goddess and looked upon her face.
  • From the Introduction to The Iliad, vol. 1, LCL 39 (1924), pp. xiv–xv