Erasing the Past for Purity's Sake

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Massey, history, and memory

Why we honour flawed heroes

Jonathan Tracy
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I am deeply troubled by the recent call to rename Massey University, on the ground of racist utterances made by New Zealand Prime Minister William Massey a century ago.  There is not a single historical figure, of any race, nation, culture, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or political creed, who could possibly stand the test of absolute ideological purity by modern standards.

Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi both advocated forms of racial segregation and discrimination.  Should their homelands therefore stop honouring them as national martyrs and liberators?

There have been calls to change the name of Massey University because of racist comments made by William Massey almost a century ago.

As for names of New Zealand places or institutions, Abel Tasman, the Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Auckland, Viscount Palmerston, and Queen Victoria all held opinions that would today get them banished from polite society.  If we must shun every great man or woman of the past whose views did not precisely match our own, the only solution is to declare a Cultural Revolution, a Year Zero, and simply wipe the slate clean.


But the Greeks and Romans understood the importance of showing respect to our ancestors, without being blind to their shortcomings.  Theseus, the legendary architect of the Athenian city-state, once kidnapped the future Helen of Troy, among other unsavoury exploits.  The first act of Rome's eponymous founder, Romulus, after erecting the city walls, was to kill his own brother Remus in a fit of rage.

The Athenians and Romans certainly did not approve these misdeeds, but they nonetheless revered their imperfect founders for their enduring achievements of nation-building.  The Athenians venerated Theseus as a demigod, and Romulus was actually worshipped in the form of the Roman god Quirinus.

Needless to say, such veneration did not provoke an epidemic of copycat girl-abductions or brother-slayings in Athens or Rome: the ancients knew what to admire and emulate in their forebears' example, and what to avoid.

Or consider the heroes of the Trojan War.  Ajax and Achilles were far from saints.  Ajax committed suicide after the humiliating failure of his attempt to assassinate the leading men of his own army; Achilles' pride and selfishness caused horrendous suffering for his own side, as chronicled in Homer's epic Iliad.

Nevertheless, at the Battle of Salamis, when the Greeks, heavily outnumbered by the Persian armada, were in desperate need of inspiration, they looked for succour to these flawed but valiant heroes from their remote past.  Sacred images or relics of Ajax and Achilles (among others) literally presided over the miraculous Greek victory at Salamis.

Again, the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, began his career by waging civil war and colluding in the massacre of political opponents, including the famous orator Cicero.  But the blessings of peace, prosperity, and security that he subsequently bestowed on the Roman world earned him (like Romulus) a permanent spot in the pantheon of Roman deities.

Of course, there are limits to our duty of respect.  No sane person today would revere the blood-soaked memory of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot.  The Romans honoured their first king, Romulus, but not the last, Tarquin "the Proud", whose tyrannical behaviour led to his overthrow and the establishment of the Roman Republic.  Similarly, while Augustus' merits far outweighed his crimes in Roman eyes, Romans abhorred the names of brutal tyrants like Caligula and Nero.

I see no evidence, however, that Prime Minister Massey was in fact such a monster.  Rather, I see an effective leader of his country in war and peace, who expressed views about race that are now extremely offensive, but that were shared with most of his contemporaries.

The South African statesman Paul Kruger offered the following advice: "He who wishes to create a future for himself must not lose sight of the past.  Therefore seek in the past everything good and beautiful that is there to discover, shape your ideal in accordance with it, and endeavour to make this ideal a reality for the future."

There were indeed many aspects of our past that were neither "good" nor "beautiful"; I'm sure that our descendants will find just as many things to condemn in our own age.  But we can never move forward as a nation by spitting on the legacy of the men and women (however imperfect) who helped to build it.

-  Jonathan Tracy is a lecturer in Classical Studies in the School of Humanities at Massey University.