Saturday commute cvii: Baccalaureate advice of our chum

The other day, the estimable

Tim Egan, one of the few col-

umnists condemned to recom-
mendation in our Context,

offered an attitude toward

Commencement speaking - or,

rather - listening, which I

was cheerfully disagreeing

with, to a much more recent

sufferer of the rite than I.

There's no doubt, that Egan

has the better case, that a

capstone occasion to a quad-

rennial opening of minds is

little disserved by indul-

ging a climactic Fool, even

in the guise of an antagon-

ist. Yet, if that's so, I'd

still argue for quality in

this mental bloodsport, and

we know where to find that:

      For two jars stand on Zeus'

      threshold whence he gives of

      his evil gifts, and another

      of the good; and to whom Zeus

      delights in thunder gives a

      mixed portion, to him befalls

      now evil, now good; but to

      whom he gives of the baneful,

      him he scorns, and evil misery

      chases him over the noble earth,

      a wanderer honored neither by

      gods nor by mortals.

Just sayin', Achilles was, as

the Iliad wound to its close;

yet for a fellow much then oc-

cupied by pressing matters, a

not-unsympathetic synopsis of

what's what. Yes, a whiff of

religiosity appears to taint

the offering, but it blows a-

way beneath a gentler breeze,

indifference. Pretty classy.

Homer

Iliad

  xxiv, 527 - 533

Sir Moses Finley

  translation and criticism

The World of Odysseus

op. cit.

NB: Professor Finley (1912 - 1986)

was a more than ordinarily distin-

guished teacher and Classicist, of

of luminous standing in American

academia, until subpoenaed in 1952

by the Republican-controlled Senate

Sub-Committee on Internal Security,

and commanded to state whether he

had ever been a member of a Com-

munist Party. He declined to answer

and the Trustees of his University

summarily expelled him. Immediate-

ly, at Oxford, Hugh Trevor-Roper,

future Regius Professor, agitated for

his appointment at Christ Church; 

but Cambridge was faster to act,

and Finley's career at that Univer-

sity found him flourishing among

peers then and to this very day in

opened, grateful minds. He was

knighted by the Queen in 1979;

and only last month, a teacher of

my own baccalaureate years, was

recommending him to me anew.

This posting is for such keepers.