known.

The idea of the past, discovered by means of the new visual 
chronology as an area of peace in a distant perspective was, 
indeed, a novelty. It would have been impossible save by 
phonetic literacy, and it is a vision which is quite difficult for us 
to imagine today as ever being accessible again. Van 
Groningen’s analysis of the reasons for the Greek obsession 
with the past, as scientific and as psychological security, helps 
to explain the natural literary bias of all humanist ages in favor 
of ruins. For nowhere does the past speak so eloquently to the 
solitary musings of the scholar as from the midst of ruins. 
There is another feature of the time which bridges from the 
Greek present into the past: “The time discussed is clearly 
homogeneous. It bears the character of an uninterrupted 
sequence of occurrences in which everything is in its right