Thomas Gray Manuscripts : Thomas Gray, Greek notes

Gray, Thomas (1716-1771), Walpole, Horace (1717-1797)

Thomas Gray Manuscripts

Alongside his annotated books, pocket books, and Commonplace Book, Gray made notes on his reading and observations on loose leaves of paper. He usually used these at an earlier stage in his studies of a particular topic, or to organise information as he collated it from multiple sources. Like many other items in this collection, this example of Gray’s loose notes relates chiefly to his classical studies, in this case the study of the history and chronology of Ancient Greece. It is unusually unmethodical among Gray manuscripts and was used for doodling and rough work of many kinds, not only by Gray. Gray’s occasional notes listing Greek authors or outlining biographical dates for Greek philosophers meander haphazardly across both sides of the single sheet, interspersed with mathematical workings in his own hand – sums calculating that 91 x 4 = 364 and 94 x 4 = 376, for example – and a repeated signature-cum-exhortation in Horace Walpole’s hand: ‘Free HorWalpole’, or sometimes just ‘Free HorW’ or ‘Free’. Clearly both friends felt free to use this sheet for any and all casual purposes, and probably would not have expected it to be preserved.Gray’s classical notes largely focus on biographical chronologies. There is a brief outline of key events in the life of Epicurus with dates given in Olympiads tallied to Epicurus’s age at each stage, followed by even briefer notes on Hermarchus (‘Hermachus’) succeeding Epicurus as head of the Epicurean School and another disciple who pre-deceased Epicurus, Metrodorus of Lampsacus. There are similar notes indicating the date and age for Polemon of Athens (‘Polemo’) succeeding Xenocrates (i.e. as head of the Platonic Academy), and another outline of key events in the life of the orator Andocides, which tracks his age and the dates in Olympiads each time he was imprisoned or escaped in Athens or Cyprus. On the verso of the sheet there are unexplained jottings noting date ranges in Olympiads, attempts to work out the biographical dates of Empedocles according to his supposed instruction by Pythagoras and political events in his home, Arigentum, brief biographical notes on other philosophers such as Xenophanes and Arcesilaus that often focus on tracing lines of succession in the leadership of various philosophic schools, a longer attempt to date the putative sojourn in Egypt of Eudoxus with Plato, and a list (without dates) of Ancient Greek and early Christian authors and orators. All these notes may have been random memoranda made by Gray in the course of reading books on classical chronology, which was a topic of sustained interest to him, or they may represent more targeted work towards the tables of Greek chronology he was compiling in the mid-1740s after his friendship with Walpole had been restored (‘The Chronology is growing daily’, he told Thomas Wharton in 1747). Unfortunately the chronology itself has survived only in fragments, but what we know of it is congruent in purpose and method with these notes, and provides the most plausible framework for their interpretation.Like other items in this collection, such as the extensive classical entries throughout the Commonplace Book and the many other notes and compositions in Greek and Latin Gray recorded on loose sheets, this manuscript also sheds a more general light on his skills and interests as a classical scholar. As an instance of rough preliminary work in this field, it rewards particular comparison with the loose sheets on which he sketched out a genealogy of the Roman Emperors and made notes on Herodotus under the title ‘Melpomene. Difficulties’, both also published in this collection (GBR/1058/GRA/4/7 and GBR/1058/GRA/4/8). But it stands out for its mess and caprices, revealing an uncharacteristically rough style of scholarly note-taking for Gray in which sporadic notes on the chronology of classical philosophy jostle informally against sums and his friend’s doodles – an instance of the combination of seriousness with humour and system with promiscuity that Charlotte Roberts identifies in his early antiquarianism. It was published in this digital edition in September 2025, with editorial and bibliographical metadata by Ruth Abbott, and images courtesy of The Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge.Ruth Abbott University of Cambridge <a href='/collections/thomasgray'>https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/thomasgray</a> How to cite: Thomas Gray, ‘Greek notes (GBR/1058/GRA/4/10)’, ed. Ruth Abbott, in Thomas Gray Manuscripts, ed. Ruth Abbott, assoc. ed. Ephraim Levinson, <a href='/collections/thomasgray'>https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/thomasgray</a>