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There was another teacher who knew of my interest in philosophy. He told me that he wondered whether this might undermine my religious beliefs. In the conversation, he also said ‘I bet that no-one would notice if you read the morning lesson in the original Greek.’ There was a morning service each day in our school, in which the lesson was read by a School Prefect. So, when it next came to my turn to read a short lesson (from a letter of St Paul, I think), I read it in Greek. No-one seemed to notice, at first. But after a bit, there were signs of surprise among the boys. Later, I crossed paths with our Headmaster, who said ‘Rather silly, Moore, wasn’t it?’, and walked on.
I respected the Head. He was another who taught us Greek. I remember being required by him to learn by heart a good chunk of the famous ‘Funeral Speech’ of Pericles as reported by Thucydides, in Greek, and I still remember some of it, over fifty years later. But this caught me out a bit later, when I was interviewed at the age of 17 f or a place at Balliol College, Oxford.
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