Tudor monarchy, and it emerged out of an early sixteenth-century ‘‘culture
war’’ over the study of Greek. The Dutch humanist Erasmus had gathered
around himself a circle of English scholars—More among them—who be-
came theWrst men in England to learn the Greek language. One of their
immediate priorities was to direct their new philological skills to the task of
correcting the Vulgate New Testament, a project which culminated in Eras-
mus’sNovum Instrumentumof 1516. This enterprise was met with charges of
heresy, and anti-Greek sentiment reached such a fever pitch at Oxford that
bands of students calling themselves ‘‘Trojans’’ rampaged through the streets
accosting classmates who were studying Greek (Saladin 2000 ; Nelson 2001 ,
897 – 8 ; Goldhill 2002 ). The Erasmians responded to this wave of hostility by
asserting the superiority of Greece over Rome, of Hellenism over Latinity,
and, most notably, of Greek philosophy over its Roman counterpart. More’s
friend Richard Pace wrote in one polemical pamphlet that ‘‘philosophy
among the Romans was so feeble that nothing could seem more stupid to
learned ears than to compare Roman philosophers to the Greeks’’ (Pace 1967 ,
128 ), and More himself agreed that, in philosophy, ‘‘the Romans wrote next to
nothing’’ (More 1986 , 220 ).Utopiais an elaborate and ingenious expression
of this argument, and is designed to champion a wholly diVerent set
of political values drawn from the primary sources of Greek moral and
political philosophy.
The dichotomy between Greece and Rome is made explicit from the very
outset of the text. More places his description of Utopia in the mouth of
Raphael Hythloday, a mysterious mariner who, we are told, is not ignorant of
Latin, but is extremely learned in Greek. His main interest is philosophy, and
‘‘he recognized that, on that subject, nothing very valuable exists in Latin
except for certain works of Seneca and Cicero’’ (More 1995 , 45 ). When
Hythloday later recommends books to the Utopians, his rejection of
Roman philosophy extends even further. Echoing More himself, Hythloday
observes that ‘‘except for the historians and poets, there was nothing in Latin
that they would value’’ (More 1995 , 181 ). Accordingly, Hythloday gives the
Utopians most of Plato’s works, and some of Aristotle’s—none of Cicero’s or
Seneca’s—and continues by noting that the Utopian language is related to
Greek. More ampliWes this Greek commitment throughout the text with his
skillful use of Greek nomenclature. ‘‘Utopia’’ itself is a Greek coinage, mean-
ing ‘‘no place,’’ and the island’s cities, rivers, and government oYcials are all
given Greek names.
204 eric nelson