In 2013 Boris Johnson took the stage at the Melbourne Writers Festival and broke into an impromptu two-and-half-minute recitation of Homer’s Iliad in the original Greek. The audience reaction – laughter, clapping, rousing cheers – was clearly exactly what the then Mayor of London had expected. In videos from the event you can watch him bask in the applause and see on his face the expression of a man who knows he’s just achieved something hugely impressive.
But had he? Leaving aside the fact that Johnson’s Homeric monologue was littered with errors, many of us would probably be able to recite a speech or poem we learned at school. Even those who can’t could manage a song. Learning things by rote isn’t difficult, and even memorising lines in another language is fairly straightforward if it’s drummed into you over and over again. But Johnson was declaiming in ancient Greek – a magical, arcane tongue which, along with Latin, somehow has the power to render the speaker a genius in the eyes of people who, had they had the opportunity to study classics, would be able to do exactly the same.
