Connop Thirlwall

Connop Thirlwall (11 January 1797 – 27 July 1875) was an English churchman, who served as Bishop of St David's in Wales from 1840 to 1874. A noted scholar of history and literature, he is known for pioneering the concept of dramatic irony in the context of studying the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles.

Quotes

• In a comparatively late period – that which followed the rise of historical literature among the Greeks – we find a belief generally prevalent, both in the people and among the learned, that in ages of very remote antiquity, before the name and dominion of the Pelasgians had given way to that of the Hellenic race, foreigners had been led by various causes to the shores of Greece and there had planted colonies, founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced useful arts and social institutions, before unknown to the ruder natives. The same belief has been almost universally adopted by the learned of modern times … It required no little boldness to venture even to throw out a doubt as to the truth of an opinion sanctioned by such authority and by prescription of such a long and undisputed possession of the public mind, and perhaps it might never have been questioned, if the inferences drawn from it had not provoked a jealous enquiry into the grounds on which it rests,
  • Connop Thirlwall, in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Vol. I, published in 1987, by Martin Bernal

• When, however, this spirit once awakened, it was perceived that the current stories of these ancient settlements afforded great room for reasonable distrust, not merely in the marvellous features they exhibit but in the still more suspicious fact that with the lapse of time their number seems to increase...
  • Connop Thirlwall, in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Vol. I, published in 1987, by Martin Bernal

• It seems possible and even necessary to take a middle course between the old and the new opinions.
  • Connop Thirlwall, in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Vol. I, published in 1987, by Martin Bernal

• Settlers of purely Egyptian blood, crossing the Aegean and founding maritime cities, appears inconsistent with everything we know about national characters.
  • Connop Thirlwall, in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Vol. I, published in 1987, by Martin Bernal