Goldsworthy on narrative and understanding

Yesterday I started reading Adrian Goldsworthy’s latest, Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry that Shaped Ancient Greece. Here are two good passages from the prologue and introduction on Goldsworthy’s approach and the purpose behind history:

First, on presenting history as a narrative:

This is a narrative history because this is the best way to understand a period and also because it is how all people live their lives, however confusing each person’s personal story may feel. Events occur and follow each other, and a thematic approach all too easily forgets this, turning people into bland groups or categories rather than lots of individuals.

When I explain my lecture approach on the first day of classes each semester, I make a similar argument, which I’ve explained here before (see the last link below): If I were to ask a student How did you get here this morning? or How’s your favorite football team doing? they would reply with a cause-and-effect narrative. It’s fundamental to us and our understanding.

Speaking of which, second, on seeking to understand the past as the basic historical act:

History must begin with the effort to understand societies that no longer exist and complex events that happened long ago. Only after this is done to the best of our ability can lessons be learned, let alone judgements passed; this book will do little of the first and none of the second, for the task of understanding is big and important enough in itself.

Hear hear. And having established understanding—not acceptance or endorsement—as the purpose, Goldsworthy tackles the question of relevance from a refreshing angle:

Our aim is to glimpse the lives of human beings living in these societies and see how they behaved as individuals and groups, for this helps us better understand ourselves. While much may appear alien to us at first, for instance the ready acceptance of slavery, the frequency of war, the open and unashamed celebration of victory, and the satisfaction of destroying enemies, the Greeks, Persians, and others in this world were not fundamentally different from us. Indeed, even where attitudes and assumptions seem very different, it is often more a matter of degree than anything more profound, and much that we take for granted may be more recent and less fixed in our own societies than we are inclined to think.

Per CS Lewis, we also live in a period. And as an example of the “matter of degree,” when teaching the Romans I often tell my students not to be too quick to condemn them for enjoying gladiatorial combat since so many professional athletes today die for our entertainment—just offstage, once we’ve used them up.

Athens and Sparta is very good so far. Goldsworthy has positioned it as a prequel of sorts to his Philip and Alexander and the two together should make an excellent history of ancient Greece up to the Hellenistic Age. I certainly recommend the latter and I’ll probably recommend this as well.

Goldsworthy’s remarks put succinctly some of my own priorities and jibe well with the quotations on historical philosophy I collected and posted here earlier this summer. Check that out if you haven’t, and check out this post on Goldsworthy’s interview with Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from May. And for another good meditation on the necessity of story in history, see this post quoting Wilfred McClay from several years ago.