Author Description

The classical scholar J. P. Mahaffy (1839-1919) is known equally for his work on Greek texts and Egyptian papyri (his edition of The Flinders Petrie Papyri is reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin and spent the rest of his working life there, as a fellow, and ultimately as provost from 1914 until his death. This work, in which Mahaffy records his impressions of his first visit to Greece, was published in 1876. Though it is not uncritical ('Nothing is more melancholy and more disappointing than the first view of the Athenian museums'), his account of the famous Greek sites of Attica, Thebes, Delphi and the Peloponnese is lively and observant, and his preface strongly argues that Greece, at a time of turmoil in Europe, was deserving of greater support from the western powers. The book will be of interest to scholars and travellers alike.