Talk:Ronald Syme

Schools
I don't know if this is a mistake or not: it currently reads that Syme attended the School of Lit. Hum. Is that a very old-fashioned expression, or was it written by somebody not familiar with Oxonian terminology? A School at Oxford is your course of study and more specifically the set of examinations taken at the end of that course (today "Finals" is taking over in common usage, but traditionalists and a slightly older generation say "Schools"). Thus one might say, "John got an Upper-second in Schools". However, I assume that what Syme read was actually Greats. It might be better to say, "Syme then went up to Oriel, where he took a First in Greats", or "He read for the Final Honour School of Lit. Hum." (if they called them Final Honour Schools in those days). But as I said, I shan't change it because maybe back in Syme's day this was actually an expression, e.g. "John's at Oxford attending the School of Modern History"; "Jane attended the English School". However, it does rather sound like the original writer imagined that there was a department at Oxford called the "School of Lit. Hum.", rather like other universities might have a School, Department, or Faculty of Classics etc. In modern usage, one reads a School or takes a School, but I've never heard of attending a School.--Oxonian2006 10:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that the classics faculty now refers to itself as 'Classics' rather than 'Lit Hum' as it did in my day. A couple of questions: a) I thought Greats was informal rather than the actual name of the degree? b) What does the grey book now say?. 84.9.161.17 16:05, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, well it may be that they do call themselves Classics, but when this year's results were posted at the Exam Schools I'm pretty sure the list said "Literae Humaniores", together with "Final Honour School" or "Second Public Examination". The main point is, was it ever correct to say that somebody attended the School that he or she read? If somebody asked, "What did you read at university?", would it be correct to reply, "I attended the Honour School of XYZ"? I don't think so. You would say, "I read..." or "I took..." or "I sat..." "...the Honour School of XYZ". (Or even just, "I did XYZ"). So I was checking whether the article should be changed in this respect.--Oxonian2006 16:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I changed the opening line from "the preeminent classicist of the 20th century" to "an eminent classicist of the 20th century." Syme was certainly one of the most notable classicists of the last century, but the preeminent? Fraenkel, Housman, Page, Shackleton Bailey, Charles Segal, Roger Mynors, and many others come to mind. Perhaps "the preeminent New Zealand classicist of the 20th century" would be better.--Cassian 15:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a point that needs clarification: the text says Syme served in the Belgrade Embassy DURING WWII. As Belgrade was occupied by the Germans in April 1941, the Embassy was evacuated and the Yugoslav king went into exile to London. So Syme could have served only from 1939 to 1941, not DURING the whole war. Somebody please investigate the exact chronology. Did he go to Istanbul (which was neutral) immediately after Belgrade?

"During" is ok. It doesn't mean" "throughout". Syme was a magnificent prosopographer, he knew who everyone in his period was, even if hardly mentioned at all.   Esedowns (talk) 16:08, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Syme's view of Augustus and his regime
The article states that Syme made a major change to the way historians viewed Augustus, by showing that his formal "return to the republic", its values and its political paraphernalia (consulships, senate etc) was just a careful, thin veneer to hide an essential autocracy and defuse the issues caused by Julius Caesar (educated Romans hated the idea of kingship in any form). This is the modern consensus on how Augustus changed the game, but surely it is considerably older than Syme's book. I think this kind of analysis goes back well into the 19th century or even before. Even Tacitus was perfectly aware that the outward forms of a republic were no more than a shell and that Augustus had navigated his way to get rid of the many outdated elements of the republican system without stirring up a new civil war or loosening his grip on power. - The distance between the formal framework and the brute realities of monarchic power and control of the city of Rome is also a major theme of Robert Graves' Claudius novels, which preceded Syme's The Roman Revolution by a couple of years. Strausszek (talk) 23:16, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

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