Bernard Knox dead at 95

NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/books/17knox.html?_r=1&hpw

RIP. I have to say though that I am often a bit envious of these earlier generations of scholars who led such rich and interesting lives.

Go do it.

Yeah fair enough :-) It just always seems like the guys from Knox's era and earlier all had lots of adventurous shenanigans that would either be impossible or borderline illegal nowadays ;-)

Well much of what they did was illegal in their day to. Consider Schliemann's behavior at Troy.

Yeah but it was sort of "accepted illegality". ;-D

As for Knox though, as I recall, he was one of those guys who went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War, then later put their studies on hold to serve in WWII. While I'm not a fan of war by any means (especially as a means to artificially increase one's own salient level of perceived heroism or whatever), the ease with which these guys seemed to straddle so many different "lives" is just really impressive to me.

During WWII you wouldn't have too much choice, if you were young.

6:Fair enough there wasn't exactly an outcry like there would be today...

I think i read somewhere that he went to spain to fight franco before ww2 started, so it would've been voluntary.

if he was of an age, then he would've grown up in the aftermath of ww1 and been trained up for military service.
a product of his times?
or maybe it was due to a classical education ;)

Boo to brutish soldier Bernard Knox! Bad fighting man!

**bangs head on wall**

I don't think it was so much because of his classical education, especially at that time in his life, but more because of his heavy political involvement as a Communist, to which he was seriously dedicated in his youth, to the exclusion of academics. That was behind his various involvements on the continent. WWII and the military gave him more legitimacy, which also seems to have expanded his scope. He picked up the higher degrees in classics after the war. I don't know if he retained his youthful bolshiness. It would be comforting to think he did.

There was much worse going on in that era than taking up arms against Franco and Hitler.

@ 12: Of course. There is today. It would not be so hard to discover a militia or guerilla outfit that would not seem unworthy to join.

Also, I did not mean to imply the exclusion of academics is a bad thing.

Look here for a lively account of Knox's early years including his (brief) career in the Spanish Civil War. Seemingly the Stalin purges soured him on communism. Intriguing professor.

Quote from said website: He later recalled: "The OSS also gave many Americans who had fought in the Brigades a chance to use their skills. General Donovan didn't care what your politics were or might have been as long as you were willing to fight, and there were many ex- Brigadiers who did dangerous and effective work between and behind the lines in Italy."