Reviews

Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom

Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath (New York: Free Press, 1998) 290 pp., $25

In raising the question “Who Killed Homer?” Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath have more in mind than the fate of the man whom Plato called the “greatest of poets.” For them Homer represents the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome, and his murder, attributed to the decline of classical education, has led to a greater crime: modern America’s ignorance of the values of these ancient cultures.

In tracking Homer’s killer, the authors indict several villains. Those most familiar with the victim—that is, classicists—are charged with sacrificing teaching to the pursuit of highly specialized research. The current state of American education and the pursuit of elite careerism are also to blame. The confluence of these factors, according to the authors, has resulted in a world in which “there is really no interest in the Greeks in or out of the university.”