ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts a reading of the interrelated histories of Hellenism and Philhellenism in nineteenth-century Britain that will take seriously into account this oscillation of British perceptions of Greece between Europe and the nation. It will start with a few remarks on the 1820s and then concentrate on long-term developments up to the turn of the century. Two path-breaking critical essays on Mitford were published in the British periodical press at the height of the Philhellenic movement, in 1824 and 1826 respectively. The construction of Grote's ideal rested upon important interpretative innovations concerning the internal evolution of the Athenian polity, See Grote's defence of ostracism, his rehabilitation of Cleon, and his substitution of Kleisthenes for Solon as the originator of the Athenian political system. The ancient Greek historical paradigm, in its mid-nineteenth-century classicized and highly politicized form, encouraged rather than inhibited the figurative interplay between ancient and modern politics.
