Education: Greek Is Greater

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A Brisk Walk. Today Octogenarian Murray is still a busy man. He is at work in his book-lined study every morning by 10, reading, writing, annotating. Like his old friend Bernard Shaw, he is a vegetarian and teetotaler, enjoys a brisk daily walk on the heath which borders his comfortable white house on Boar's Hill near Oxford, sometimes wanders down to the university to give a lecture or address the Oxford Liberal Club. He frequently takes the train to London to attend meetings, supervise a BBC production of one of his translations, or discuss the publication of a political article. This winter he and his wife Mary quietly celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with their two surviving children of five: Stephen, a Laborite barrister, and Rosalind, whose marriage to Historian Arnold Toynbee was dissolved in 1946.

Last week, as proof that he was not resting on his oars, Gilbert Murray brought out his 23rd translation from Greek drama: Aristophanes' extravagant and rowdy comedy, The Birds.*He was thinking now about starting his autobiography. "The trouble is," said Murray, "I've had such a long life. It's going to be an awful lot of work."