William Gladstone and the Homeric Constitution

Abstract

Between 1858 and 1890 the British statesman William Ewart Gladstone produced five major works on the Greek poet Homer, in addition to a number of smaller articles and pamphlets on related subjects. Although these studies examined all aspects of the Homeric world in the minutest detail, the most enduring analysis concerned the politics of the poems. He considered Homer to stand at the fountainhead of the Western political tradition and therefore to be of the utmost importance for students of politics. Examining the tripartite division of the Homeric constitution between king, council and assembly, he went so far as to discern the distant ‘germ’ of the English constitution. Despite minor modulations, his political reading of Homer remained remarkably constant throughout his life, despite his own party-political evolution from Tory to Peelite to Liberal. This article considers his reading of the Homeric polity and suggests that this continuity of analysis reflects a far greater and deeper constancy and stability in his own thought than many scholars have allowed for.

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ORCID for Alastair Paynter: orcid.org/0000-0002-4943-5385

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