OR he will try to submerge them in the mass by arguing that they were not so great after all. This necessity may partly account for the sans-culottism* of a certain type of historian, who is always attempting to deflate the majestic reputations of history, and to reduce the great figures of the past to a drab level of mediocrity.
Partly, no doubt, these essays in belittlement are the result of what is called in the jargon of to-day an ‘inferiority complex,’ the jealousy of small minds perturbed by the spectacle of something beyond their compass. They see a chance of winning an easy notoriety. An old Cambridge friend of mine had a simile for such people; he said that they were like some Greek of the decadence* who broke the nose of an Apollo of Pheidias* in order to make the Goths laugh. But, for the honour of human nature, I like to think it is partly the desire of the embarrassed scientist to have less truculent material to work with.
The ‘sans-culottes’ (French for ‘without breeches’, the fashionable silk leggings of the wealthy as opposed to workaday trousers) were far-left political activists from the lower classes in the last years of the French monarchy, which was overthrown at the Revolution of 1789. They wanted to use State power to abolish social distinctions, to control prices and the economy, and to set up a network of informers to silence opponents.
The ‘decadence’ here refers to the decline of the Roman Empire prior to its fall in AD 410, when Alaric the Goth besieged and ransacked the city. Ancient authors were inclined to attribute it to the spread of indiscipline and luxury from the East, going back to the days of Emperor Augustus himself.
Pheidias (?480–430 BC) made the statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and as a friend of Pericles helped build the Parthenon in Athens. He was cited by Mantó Mavrogénous as one of the reasons for English ladies to support the Greek Revolution of 1821: see An Appeal to the Ladies of England.