Podcast Summary

Overview

Episode Title:
Oswyn Murray, "The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Date: September 3, 2025
Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Gregory McNiff
Guest: Oswyn Murray, Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, University of Oxford

This episode dives deep into Oswyn Murray’s sweeping new book The Muse of History, which traces how the history of Ancient Greece has been interpreted, debated, and reimagined from the Enlightenment to the present. The conversation explores not only the shifting preoccupations of historians but also the philosophical and cultural currents that have shaped our understanding of the Greeks—and, by extension, the values of Western society itself.

Main Themes & Purpose

• Examination of why historians study history and how interpretations change over time
• Exploration of the enduring fascination with Ancient Greece in Western culture
• Analysis of how each age projects its contemporary anxieties and ideals onto the Greek past
• Profiles of key historians whose works reflect shifting historiographical priorities
• Reflection on the “Republic of Letters”—the transnational community of scholars and its survival in the digital age
• Consideration of the ultimate purpose of writing history

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Write History? Who is it For?

[03:22] – [10:48]

• Oswyn Murray recounts his driving question: “What is history? Or what do historians think history is? Why do we do it? Having spent 50 years as a historian, I was still puzzled by this question.” (03:23)
• The book is both a personal “end of life experience” and an “invitation...to think about the practice of history.”
• The Muse of History is “ironical...written against my own training...I wanted to see what would happen if I thought about the people who had influenced me to stop being a straightforward historian, be a complex historian interested in new problems.” (03:22)
• The structure and title are inspired by Ruth Padel’s poem and Vermeer’s painting depicting Clio, Muse of History, symbolizing multiplicity of perspectives and the shimmering, elusive nature of historical truth.

“All history is contemporary history. It reflects what we think is important in the past. Unlike Alice in Through the Looking Glass, we look into a mirror and what we see is ourselves.” – Oswyn Murray (09:45)

2. The Relativity of Historical Narrative & The “Theory of Human Society”

[10:48] – [12:12]

• Murray disputes the “naive belief that history teaches us lessons,” because “the questions we ask [history] are the questions that preoccupy us now, not the questions that preoccupied them in the past.” (11:17)
• This leads to the paradox: “When we try and construct a theory of history, we're even more imprisoned in the present.”

3. The Rise of Greece: Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romantic Fascinations

[12:02] – [15:22]

• Obsession with Greece becomes prominent only in the Enlightenment (18th century), as their institutions provided models for modern questions about democracy, religion, and the possibility of historical change.
• Greek literature becomes prized as "superior...to us in literature, in art, and perhaps in historical thought." (13:00)

4. Athens vs. Sparta: Cultural Mirrors, Enlightenment Debates

[15:22] – [16:47]

• Scottish and French Enlightenment thinkers admired Sparta for its aristocratic rigidity; English thinkers were more indifferent.
• This reflected “contemporary views that democracy [was] a rather bad idea. It was much better to have something approaching aristocracy...That was presented more vividly by Sparta.” (15:24)
• Classical admiration of Sparta in texts (Thucydides, Plato) reinforced this early tendency.

5. The Case of John Gast: Forgotten Historians & Critical Voices

[16:47] – [22:25]

• Murray resurrects John Gast, “the first critical Greek historian, a generation before anyone else.” (17:21)
• Gast’s unique, rational approach—derived from Montesquieu—made his work “far in advance of people at the time.” (19:38)
• His obscurity owed to his inability to finish projects—“He was probably the most unsuccessful author that has ever been.” (20:56)
• Murray owns first editions, some with striking provenance (Erasmus Darwin).

6. Key Figures and Battles: John Stuart Mill & the Battle of Marathon

[22:25] – [23:28]

• Mill called Marathon “the most important battle in English history”, radically linking Greek history to British national identity.

7. History as “Science of Progress”: The 19th Century Transition

[23:28] – [28:14]

• The 19th century saw history shift from “a series of moral examples [to] a science of progress”, partly due to the French Revolution and Darwin.
• Each historical era “deifies” its own discipline; in the 18th it was philosophy, in the 19th, history (rooted in difference and national identity, inspired by evolutionary theory).

8. Athenian Democracy & Modern Models: Grote and the Democratic Ideal

[28:14] – [33:51]

• Athens eclipsed Sparta in ideological importance; Athens became “the model for all forms of revolutionary society” (28:44)
• George Grote’s History of Greece recast the Greeks as utilitarian democrats, using historical research to argue for contemporary reform.
• Grote favored Cleisthenes over Solon as the founder of democracy—a theory confirmed by 20th-century archaeology.
• Grote’s insight: contemporary historical questions could illuminate what ancient reforms actually accomplished.

9. Burkhardt, Hegel, Nietzsche: History, Culture, and the Struggle with Meaning

[33:51] – [39:50]

• Burkhardt posited history as an interplay among state, religion, and culture; history is best understood as “the realm of the free.”
• Fascinatingly, Nietzsche turned against Burkhardt, seeing him as an obstacle to using history for active transformation.

“Nietzsche wanted to use history to change the future. And so Burkhardt became the enemy.” – Oswyn Murray (39:10)

10. The Puzzle of Socrates: Biography and the Multiplicity of Sources

[39:50] – [43:58]

• Socrates is paradoxically both the “first and only Greek about whom it is possible to write a biography,” yet impossibly elusive due to mutually credible but conflicting sources: “Is he the Socrates of Plato?...of Aristophanes?...of Xenophon?” (40:33)
• Socrates “never told you what to think, but only questioned your beliefs...there is this Socrates is a figure that changes all the time.” (41:30)
• This leads to a meditation on the limits of ancient biography and how identities are constructed by later generations.

11. The Republic of Letters: Community Over Politics

[43:58] – [47:16]

• The Republic of Letters began as a way for scholars to communicate across religious and national lines—transcending politics for intellectual inquiry.
• Murray celebrates the global reach of his book (“the first translations are into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian...a sort of Samizdat Russian” – 46:10), seeing it as “the underlying message...that scholarship...is more important than any political argument.” (47:10)

12. Arnaldo Momigliano: Scholar, Mentor, and the Philosophy of History

[47:16] – [56:32]

• Murray fondly discusses his mentor, Arnaldo Momigliano—“the most learned man that I knew in Europe or Americas” (48:44)—whose breadth set a standard for intellectual inquiry and who profoundly influenced Murray’s approach.
• Momigliano’s emphasis on studying “historians across the ages” shapes Murray’s own homage in The Muse of History.
• The interplay of liberty and peace—from Greeks to Romans to Christianity—was one of Momigliano’s most profound contributions.

13. Why Do We Write History? Final Reflections

[56:32] – [59:44]

• Multiple reasons: “We write history in order to discover the truth about the past...to understand the present...to influence the present as sort of propaganda...to live in the past...to protect ourselves from the future.” (57:04)
• An ironic take: “the lesson of history is possibly that things can only get worse. That's history, said the bus driver to the drunkard—how do you know what's true? And he replied, that's history. Things only get worse.” (58:59)
• Murray suggests hope persists: “Something, somewhere will survive and that new life will need the past to reconstruct, to reinvent itself.” (59:27)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “All history is contemporary history. It reflects what we think is important in the past.” — Oswyn Murray (09:45)
• “When we try and construct a theory of history, we're always even more imprisoned in the present than we are when we try and describe the past.” — Oswyn Murray (11:25)
• “Burkhardt was a dilettante. He just wanted to sit and contemplate different periods of the past. Nietzsche wanted to use history to change the future.” — Oswyn Murray (39:10)
• “The underlying message of my book is that scholarship of whatever sort, is more important than any political argument.” — Oswyn Murray (47:10)
• “We write history to understand the present; to influence the present as sort of propaganda...to live in the past...to protect ourselves from the future.” — Oswyn Murray (57:04)
• “Something, somewhere will survive and that new life will need the past to reconstruct, to reinvent itself.” — Oswyn Murray (59:27)

Key Timestamps

• 03:22 — Murray on why he wrote The Muse of History
• 11:16 — On the impossibility of objective lessons from history
• 12:12 — Why Western societies are obsessed with the Greeks
• 15:22 — The Enlightenment debate: Athens vs. Sparta
• 17:20 — Rediscovering John Gast, the forgotten historian
• 22:55 — John Stuart Mill and the significance of Marathon
• 24:14 — 19th-century shift: morality to science of progress
• 28:44 — Grote, democracy, and Athens as utopia
• 31:23 — Why Grote favored Cleisthenes over Solon
• 34:07 — Burkhardt, Hegel, Nietzsche, and the three great powers approach to history
• 40:33 — The Socratic paradox: reliable sources, elusive subject
• 44:10 — “The Republic of Letters” and today’s digital scholarship
• 47:47 — Influence of Arnaldo Momigliano
• 57:04 — The layered motivations for writing history
• 59:27 — Hopeful closing reflection

Tone & Final Impressions

The tone throughout is scholarly yet intimate, with Murray’s deep erudition balanced by wit and irony. The conversation is both accessible and profound, offering a sweeping view of Western intellectual history through the “mirror” of our ongoing fascination with Greece and those who interpret it for us. The episode is as much about the challenges and joys of the historian’s craft as it is about the Greeks themselves.

The conversation closes on a note of cautious optimism—history may warn us that “things only get worse,” but its preservation still carries hope for the renewal and reinvention needed by future generations.