FOR a modern sense of history, vivid glimpses of the “serene greatness” of Laocoön or the golden glitter of Agamemnon’s mask were not enough. Another dimension was needed, what I will call the latitudes of time, vistas of contemporaneity, a sense of what was going on all over the world at the same time. This was a much more sophisticated discovery, to be reached only by devious and surprising paths.
