One of the less expected treatises included in Plutarch's Moralia consists of the nine books of ‘Table-talk’ or topics suitable for discussion by the participants at the strictly male and private drinking party or symposium (612Cff.) But even when the association of symposium and the erotic is acknowledged or we note the interest of ancient philosophers in the general area of eugenics (e.g., Arist. Pol. 1334b29 ff. and Plutarch on the Spartan marriage, Lye. 15.3–9) or we identify the type of prejudice which later led Christians to believe that a child conceived on a Sunday will be a leper or epileptic, the sixth question analysed in Book 3, ‘the right time to make love’ (653Bff), is perhaps considerably more surprising. The conclusion eventually reached, however, will occasion no alarm: the right time for men and women to sleep together would appear to be at night when it is dark (cf. 654D–E) – after all, we are busy and preoccupied throughout the day and are not animals like the cock eager for sex first thing in the morning. But in the evening we are relaxed and at our ease, and so the time is right provided, of course, we have neither eaten nor drunk to excess. This is hardly a conclusion, however, to be warmly welcomed by the sexually liberated for whom intercourse is there to be enjoyed wherever, and at whatever time of night or day, excitement mounts. But when it comes to sex, Plutarch is no revolutionary keen to experiment.

I believe that studies by social anthropologists working in mainly rural communities located in present-day Greece may help to deepen our understanding of the Greeks of antiquity, and this is a belief that I have held for more than twenty years. It is a belief, moreover, which is steadily winning a general acceptance. To put it succinctly, ancient and modern Greeks can be shown to share values in common and, thus, one enables us to understand the other more clearly. But why should values have persisted, from Homer to the twentieth century? It is not, let me stress, because of ethnic continuity, but rather because both groups comprise small-scale subsistence agriculturists, working the land as a family unit; in other words, both groups represent what a social anthropologist would classify as peasant society, and communities of this type, however widely separated in time and in geographical situation, share common values and Mediterranean peasants perhaps to an especially great extent, though this is not a point I would wish to press. Greece, of course, has changed dramatically in recent years as the drift from countryside to city has intensified. But have the fundamentals of life also changed so very much? Not according to Renee Hirschon who speaks as follows of the preoccupations of those ‘heirs of the Greek catastrophe’, that is, Greeks expelled from Asia Minor in the early twenties and now settled in the Kokkinia district of the Piraeus: ‘In Kokkinia social live revolves around the division of the sexes and their complementray roles, while family reputation and prestige were principal concerns.

I read Greek for two reasons, firstly for professional purposes and secondly for personal pleasure. When it comes to pleasure, I constantly turn to the ‘old’ favourites, to Homer, Herodotus, tragedy and, more surprisingly perhaps, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. A continuing interest in Hesiod is easily explained: it so happened that when I went up to University College London in the Fall of 1949, I commenced my studies by attending a course of lectures on Hesiod's Works and Days and these were delivered by the most exciting teacher in the Classics Department, T.B.L. – Tom – Webster. The impression made by the lectures was so great that I found myself, and still find myself, enthralled by the poet from Boeotia. An enthusiasm for the Homeric Hymns came later; it is not the fact that I enjoy the hymns that others seem to regard as a little eccentric but my strong preference for the Hymn to Aphrodite. Is this, I can feel colleagues wondering, a consequence of the contemporary craze for ‘Women's Studies’ even among – or is it especially among – classicists? Let me hastily assure you that it is not: I enjoy the Hymn to Aphrodite because of what I believe to be its outstanding literary qualities, and these are qualities that have been increasingly acknowledged in the last dozen or so years.

In the eighth and ninth books of the Republic Plato describes the four inferior or corrupt types of government – timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny – and the four related types of human personality – the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical man (544dff.). Closest to the ideal, and first therefore in sequence of decline, is the timocratic state, the term timocracy being employed not in the Aristotelian sense of a polity demanding a property qualification of its ruling class but with ‘the peculiar meaning of government by the principle of honour (τιμ). The timocratic state, it is claimed (545cff.), develops when its members no longer live in harmony but come into conflict as the guardians join brides and bridegrooms ‘inopportunely’ (παρ καιρν, 546d), so that their offspring are neither well-born nor blessed by fortune. The result is a form of government which retains some of the features of its good predecessor, anticipates some of the features of its worse successor, and also boasts some features unique to itself, such as a preference for the ‘spirited’, men better suited for war than for peace. Above all else such a state will be distinguished by a cultivation of competition and a passion for honour: διαϕανστατον δ’ ναὐστν τι μνον… ϕιλονκαι κα ϕιλοτμαι (548c).

L. J. D. Richardson, the historian of the Classical Association, has recorded how at a general meeting held on 3 January 1930 a resolution was passed requesting the Council of the Association ‘to consider the possibilities of instituting, and, if possible, to institute, a New Journal suited primarily to the needs of the Schools’. If any individual was responsible for the birth of Greece & Rome, that person was R. H. Barrow, who introduced the discussion leading to this resolution, and who served for many years as the chairman of the Board of Management subsequently established. The purpose of the journal was indicated by the inclusion on the Board of Management of representatives drawn from each of the four School Teachers' Associations and by the appointment as joint editors of the Rev. C. J. Ellingham from City of London School and A. G. Russell of St Olave's.