Richard Livingstone

Sir Richard Winn Livingstone (23 January 1880 – 26 December 1960) was a British classical scholar and educationist. In 1931 he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1948 he was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society. He also received honorary doctorates from ten universities.

Quotes

Europe has nearly four million square miles ; Lancashire has 1,700 ; Attica has 700. Yet this tiny country has given us an art which we, with it and all that the world has done since it for our models, have equalled perhaps, but not surpassed. It has given us the staple of our vocabulary in every domain of thought and knowledge. Politics, tyranny, democracy, anarchism, philosophy, physiology, geology, history—these are all Greek words. It has seized and up to the present day kept hold of our higher education. It has exercised an unfailing fascination, even on minds alien or hostile. Rome took her culture thence. Young Romans completed their education in the Greek schools. Roman orators learnt their trade from Greek rhetoricians. Roman proconsuls on their way to the East stopped to spend a few days talking to the successors of Plato and Aristotle in the Academy and Lyceum. Roman aristocrats imported Greek philosophers to live in their families.
- "Introduction". The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to Us. Clarendon Press. 1912. pp. 11–22. (quote from p. 11; text at archive.org)

A man walking down Shaftesbury Avenue from Piccadilly to Charing Cross Road passes the Lyric Theatre. If it is the evening, a dramatic performance is probably taking place inside. It may be a tragedy, or some form of comedy. If it is a musical comedy and he enters, he will see elaborate scenery and a play which may open with a prologue and which is partly composed of dialogue between the various characters, partly of songs in various metres sung by a chorus to the accompaniment of an orchestra. As the words in italics indicate, our imaginary passer-by will have seen, though he may not have suspected it, a symbol of the indelible mark which the Greeks have set on the aesthetic and intellectual life of Europe, and of the living presence of Greece in the twentieth century. An ancient Athenian might be startled at the sight of a musical comedy and its chorus, but he would be looking at his own child, a descendant, however distant, degenerate, and hard to recognize, of that chorus which with dance and song moved round the altar of Dionysus in the theatre of his home.
- "Introduction by R. W. Livingstone". The Pageant of Greece. Clarendon Press. 1924. pp. 1–14. (quote from pp. 1–2; selections chosen and edited by R. W. Livingstone; 1st edition 1923; text at archive.org)

Ages are not taken at their own valuation by posterity, and the achievements which they view with most complacency often appear to their successors negligible or even ridiculous. It was so in Greece. Aeschylus expected to be remembered not as a poet, but as a combatant at Marathon. Isocrates speaks as if the greatness of Athens lay in its empire. Much of which it is proud is forgotten by its successors. Much of which it is proud is forgotten by its successors. Whole epochs which were well satisfied with themselves are found in the sequel to matter nothing to the world, and to have made no contribution to its progress. Two hundred years hence our own age may be regarded as one that possessed, for its time, considerable material civilization but very little else, a substantial body and a soul which died from fatty degeneration,
- Greek Ideals and Modern Life. Volume 5 of Martin classical lectures. Biblo & Tannen Publishers. 1969. pp. 1–2. ISBN 0819602450. (175 pages; reprint of 1st edition, Clarendon Press, 1935)