The Life of Greece, page 8:
If now we try to restore this buried culture from the relics that remain–playing Cuvier to the scattered bones of Crete–let us remember that we are engaging upon a hazardous kind of historical television, in which imagination must supply the living continuity in the gaps of static and fragmentary material artificially moving but long since dead.
You know, I read this several years ago, but I’ve recently started a poem almost with that conceit/metaphor–looking at history as television. However, I’m having trouble with the turn in the poem, so it’s languishing on the top pages of the pad in my folder.
It’s good to see a historian offer this perspective on history, although in most of Durant’s work he (and they) is (are) very comfortable with speaking authoritatively where it might not be warranted.
