"Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries." -- Gilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray (2 January 1866 — 20 May 1957) was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century. He is the basis for the character of Adolphus Cusins in his friend Shaw's play Major Barbara, and also appears as the chorus figure in Tony Harrison's play Fram.
"Be careful in dealing with a man who cares nothing for comfort or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous uncomfortable enemy, because his body, which you can always conquer, gives you little purchase upon his soul.""Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading.""It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived so clearly the truth that literature is a thing that grows and has a history.""Sometimes Aristotle analyses his terms, but very often he takes them for granted; and in the latter case, I think, he is sometimes deceived by them.""The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word.""The fashions of the ages vary in this direction and that, but they vary for the most part from a central road which was struck out by the imagination of Greece.""The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths.""The life and liberty and property and happiness of the common man throughout the world are at the absolute mercy of a few persons whom he has never seen, involved in complicated quarrels that he has never heard of.""Where words can be translated into equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style of Aristotle."
He was born George Gilbert Aimé Murray in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. His father, Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, was a Member of the New South Wales Parliament who died in 1873; his mother, Agnes Ann Murray (née Edwards), ran a girls' school in Sydney for a few years. Then, in 1877, Agnes emigrated with Gilbert to the UK, where she died in 1891.
Gilbert was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford.
In 1889—1899, he was Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow. There was a break in his academic career from 1899 to 1905, when he returned to Oxford; he interested himself in dramatic and political writing. After 1908 he was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford.
From 1925-1926 Murray was the Charles Elliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard University.
Greek drama
Murray is perhaps now best known for his verse translations of Greek drama, which were popular and prominent in their time. As a poet he was generally taken to be a follower of Swinburne; and had little sympathy from the modernist poets of the rising generation. The staging of Athenian drama in English did have its own cultural impact. He had earlier experimented with his own prose dramas, without much success.
Over time he worked through almost the entire canon of Athenian dramas (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides in tragedy; Aristophanes in comedy). From Euripides, the Hippolytus and The Bacchae (together with The Frogs of Aristophanes; first edition, 1902); the Medea, Trojan Women, and Electra (1905—1907); Iphigenia in Tauris (1910); The Rhesus (1913) were presented at the Court Theatre, in London. In the United States Granville Barker and his wife Lillah McCarthy gave outdoor performances of The Trojan Women and Iphigenia in Tauris at various colleges (1915).
The translation of ?dipus Rex was a commission from W. B. Yeats. Until 1912 this could not have been staged for a British audience. Murray was drawn into the public debate on censorship that came to a head in 1907 and was pushed by William Archer, whom he knew well from Glasgow , George Bernard Shaw, and others such as John Galsworthy, J. M. Barrie and Edward Garnett. A petition was taken to Herbert Gladstone, then Home Secretary, early in 1908.
The Ritualists
He was one of the scholars associated with Jane Harrison in the myth-ritual school of mythography. They met first in 1900. He wrote an appendix on the Orphic tablets for her 1903 book Prolegomena; he later contributed to her Themis (1912).
He was a lifelong supporter of the Liberal Party, lining up on the Irish Home Rule and non-imperialist sides of the splits in the party of the late nineneeth century. He supported temperance, and married into a prominent Liberal, aristocratic and temperance family, the Carlisles. He made a number of moves that might have taken him into parliamentary politics, initially by tentative thoughts about standing in elections during the 1890s. In 1901-2 he was in close contact with the Independent Labour Party. But the overall effect of the Second Boer War was to drive him back into the academic career he had put on hold in 1898, resigning his Glasgow chair (effective from April 1899).
He stood five times unsuccessfully for the University constituency of Oxford between 1919 and 1929. He continued support for the Asquith faction of Liberals, after the party was split again by Lloyd George. During the 1930s the Liberals as a party were crushed electorally, but Liberal thinkers continued to write; Murray was one of the signatory Next Five Years Group formed around Clifford Allen.
Activist
As Regius Professor and literary figure, he had a platform to promote his views, which were many-sided but Whig-liberal. In 1912 he wrote an introduction to The Great Analysis: A Plea for a Rational World-Order, by his friend William Archer.During World War I he became a pamphleteer, putting a reasoned war case. He also defended C. K. Ogden against criticism, and took a public interest in conscientious objection. Murray never took a pacifist line himself, and in fact broke an old friendship with Bertrand Russell early in the war.
He was also involved as an internationalist in the League of Nations. He was a Vice President of the League of Nations Society from 1916, and in 1917 wrote influential articles in the Daily News. At the invitation of Jan Smuts he acted in 1921/2 as a League delegate for South Africa.Later he was a major influence in the setting-up of Oxfam and of the Students' International Union (later the Institute for World Affairs).
Involvement with Wells
For a brief period Murray became closely involved with the novelist H. G. Wells. Initially this was in 1917 and connection with groups supporting a future League: Wells promoted a League of Free Nations Association (LFNA), an idea not in fact exclusive to him, since it had been 'up in the air' since Woodrow Wilson had started considering post-war settlements. Wells applied through the British propaganda office with which Murray had been connected since 1914. The two men corresponded from 1917 about League matters. Wells was bullish about pushing ahead with a British LFNA, Murray was involved already in the League of Nations Society (LNS), though not active. The political position was delicate, as Murray understood and Wells may not have: the LNS overlapped with the Union of Democratic Control, which was too far towards the pacifist end of the spectrum of opinion to be effective. Eventually in 1918 the LFNA was set up around Welsh Liberal MP David Davies, and then shortly the LFNA and LNS merged as the League of Nations Union.
Two years later, Wells called on Murray, and Murray's New College colleague Ernest Barker, to lend their names as advisers on his Outline of History. Their names duly appeared on the title page. Murray had to give evidence in the plagiarism case Deeks v. Wells that arose in 1925.
Murray is often identified as a humanist, typically with some qualification ('classical', 'scholarly', 'engaged', 'liberal'). He joined the Rationalist Press Association, and in 1952 attended a major humanist conference. He wrote and broadcast extensively on religion (Greek, Stoic and Christian); and wrote several books dealing with his version of humanism.
A phrase from his 1910 lectures Four Stages of Greek Religion enjoyed public prominence: the "failure of nerve" of the Hellenistic world, of which a turn to irrationalism was symptomatic. His daughter Rosalind (later Rosalind Toynbee), a Catholic convert, attacked his secularism in her book of apologetics, The Good Pagan's Failure (1939).
Murray was baptised as a Roman Catholic; his father was a Catholic, his mother a Protestant. About a month before he died, when he was bedridden, his daughter Rosalind called the local Catholic priest to see him. Rosalind subsequently claimed that Murray was then reconciled to the Catholic Church; other family members, however, contested her version of the events.
He refused a knighthood in 1912, though he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1941. He received honorary degrees from Glasgow, Birmingham, and Oxford.
Gilbert's father was Sir Terence Aubrey Murray and his brother Sir Hubert Murray.
He married Lady Mary Henrietta Howard (1865—1956), daughter of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle. When her mother Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle died in 1921, Castle Howard and a estate in Cumberland were bequeathed to Lady Mary, which she shared with her younger siblings, Castle Howard going to her brother Geoffrey.
Gilbert and Lady Mary had five children, three daughters and two sons, including:
Basil Murray, 1903—1937, who was a well-known and rather louche figure, and friend of Evelyn Waugh.
The writer Venetia Murray (3 January 1932—26 September 2004) was Basil's daughter, as is
Ann Paludan (1928-), the writer on Chinese history.
Mark Jones, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is Ann's son.
Rosalind (1890—1967), a writer, married Arnold J. Toynbee, and was the mother of
Philip Toynbee, the critic, father of
Polly Toynbee, the journalist.
Stephen (February 1908-July 1994) a radical lawyer, married the architect Margaret Gillet and lived at "Greenside" farm, Hallbankgate, Cumbria. He was chairman of Border Rural District Council (1962—66), of Cumberland County Council, of the Lake District Special Planning Board (1977—81) and of Cumbria County Council (1985—87). They were parents of
Gilbert, killed in climbing accident in Fox's Glacier New Zealand in the 1950s
Alexander (Sandy), academic medievalist historian at Oxford University
Robin, academic, economist, Chair of Twin Trading.[1]
Hubert, academic
The four children were evacuated during the second world war from London to the "Sands House Hotel", Brampton, Cumberland, which was converted to temperance status by Lady Rosalind, and run by Mrs and Mrs James Warwick, formerly in her service, with their daughter Charlotte Elizabeth. She became an enduring friend of the boys, and, poignantly, an unfinished letter to her was found on Gilbert's body after the accident.
A text edition of Euripides, Fabulae, in three volumes (OCT. 1901, 1904, 1910)
Euripides: Hippolytus; The Bacchae (1902)
Aristophanes: The Frogs (1902)
Euripides, The Trojan Women (1905)
Electra of Euripides (1905)
Euripides Medea (1910)
Iphigenia in Tauris (1911)
Oedipus King of Thebes (1911)
The Story of Nefrekepta. From a Demotic Papyrus. (1911)
Rhesus of Euripides (1913)
Andromache (1913)
Alcestis (1915)
Agamemnon (1920)
Choephoroe (1923)
Eumenides of Aeschylus (1926)
The Oresteia (1928)
The Suppliant Women (1930)
Seven Against Thebes (1935)
A text edition of Aeschylus, Septem quae supersunt Tragoediae (OCT. 1937. 1955)
The Persians (1939)
Antigone (1941)
The Rape of the Locks: The Perikeiromene of Menander (1942)
Fifteen Greek Plays (1943) with others
The Arbitration: the Epitrepontes of Menander (1945)
Oedipus at Colonus (1948)
The Birds (1950)
Euripides, Ion (1954)
Collected Plays of Euripides (1954)
The Knights (1956)
Classical studies
The Place of Greek in Education (1889) Inaugural Lecture
A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897)
The Rise of the Greek Epic (1907; second edition, 1911) Harvard University lectures
Greek Historical Writing, and Apollo: Two Lectures (1908) with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature (1909) Inaugural Lecture
Ancient Greek Literature (1911)
English Literature and the Classics (1912) section on Tragedy, editor George Stuart Gordon
Four Stages of Greek Religion (1913)
Euripides and his Age (1913) in Home University Library
Hamlet and Orestes: A Study in Traditional Types (1914) Annual Shakespeare Lecture 1914
The Stoic Philosophy (1915) Conway Lecture
Aristophanes and the War Party, A Study in the Contemporary Criticism of the Peloponnesian War (1919) Creighton Lecture 1918, as Our Great War and The Great War of the Ancient Greeks (US, 1920)
Greek Historical Thought: from Homer to the Age of Heraclius (1924) with Arnold J. Toynbee
Five Stages of Greek Religion (1925)
The Classical Tradition in Poetry (1927) Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
Aristophanes: A Study (1933)
Aeschylus: The Creator of Tragedy (1940)
The Wife of Heracles (1947)
Greek Studies (1947)
Hellenism and the Modern World (1953) radio talks
Festschrift:
Greek Poetry and Life, Essays presented to Gilbert Murray on his Seventieth Birthday, 2 January 1936 (1936)
Other
Gobi or Shamo (1889) novel
Carlyon Sahib (1899), play
Liberalism and the Empire: Three Essays (1900) with Francis W. Hirst and John L. Hammond
Thoughts on the War (1914) pamphlet
The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey, 1906—1915 (1915), online text
The International Crisis in Its Ethical and Psychological Aspects (1915) with others
How Can War Ever Be Right? Oxford Pamphlets No 18/Ist Krieg je berechtigt?/La guerre. Peut-elle jamais se justifier? (1915)
Impressions of Scandinavia in War Time (1916) pamphlet, reprint from the Westminster Gazette
The United States and the War (1916) pamphlet
The Way Forward: Three Articles on Liberal Policy (1917) pamphlet
Great Britain's Sea Policy - A Reply to an American Critic (1917) pamphlet, reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly
Faith, War and Policy (1917)
Religio Grammatici: The Religion Of A Man Of Letters (1918) Presidential Address to the Classical Association 8 January 1918.
Foreword to My mission to London 1912—1914 by Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London who had warned Berlin that Britain would fight in August 1914. Cassel & Co. London. (1918)
Satanism and the World Order (1920) Adamson Lecture
The League and Its Guarantees (1920) League of Nations Union pamphlet
Essays and Addresses (1921)
The Problem of Foreign Policy: A Consideration of Present Dangers and the Best Methods for Meeting Them (1921)
Tradition and Progress (1922)
The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (1930) Halley Stewart Lectures 1928
Augustan Book of Poetry (1931) vol. 41
The Intelligent Man's Way To Prevent War (1933) with others
Problems of Peace (Eighth Series) (1933) with others
Then and Now (1935)
Liberality and Civilisation (1938) 1937 Hibbert Lectures
Stoic, Christian and Humanist (1940)
The Deeper Causes of the War and its Issues (1940) with others
World Order Papers, No. 2 (1940) pamphlet, The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Anchor of Civilisation (1942) Philip Maurice Deneke Lecture 1942
A Conversation with Bryce (1943) James Bryce Memorial Lecture, 12 November 1943
Myths And Ethics, or Humanism And The World's Need (1944) Conway Hall lecture
Humanism: Three B.B.C. talks (1944) with Julian Huxley and Joseph Houldsworth Oldham
Victory and After (1945)
From the League to the U.N. (1948)
Spires of Liberty (1948) with others
Andrew Lang: The Poet (1948) Andrew Lang Lecture 1947
The Meaning of Freedom (1956) essays, with others
Humanist Essays (1964) taken from Essays and Addresses, Stoic, Christian and Humanist
