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connotations of those phrases have changed; he is creating a history of usage. It was also plain to his first readers that the civilisations of Rome and Athens were markedly superior to any they might see around them; as well as being a history of usage, the
Collectanea
was a history of decline (and even, sometimes, fall). Repeatedly Erasmus emphasises the dangers and inconstancies of the modern world as opposed to a classical culture erected upon ‘the noble old systems of thought’. 4 This perspective—which we might describe, perhaps anachronistically, as one of historical relativism—is quite different from any that More would have known in the scriptural dramas and historical compilations of his youth. In a play where Noah or Judas would wear contemporary dress, and in a history where miracle and legend emphasised the archetypal significance of events, there is no decline and no progress, only the re-enactment of therituals of eternity. The world was suspended in a cosmos of unchanging truths. It is all in marked contrast, therefore, to that history of change, decay and possible restoration which is at the centre of the humanist enterprise as outlined by Erasmus and More.
    The idea of institutions and societies living through history lies at the very heart of the humanist’s belief in civic activity and involvement within the world. Consider again More’s private seal which displays the face of the Emperor Titus. Titus was not a Christian emperor, but for More he was an image of practical wisdom and civic virtue. He had conquered Judaea and wasted Jerusalem, in what was considered to be an act of divine reprisal for the death of Christ less than forty years before, but More would have read in Suetonius of his exemplary social actions during his brief reign. Titus provided an example of what might now be called ‘enlightened government’, and More would also have known that he had once trained as a lawyer and had a great facility in composing verses and orations. He had stamped his image upon the changing times, just as More would use that image upon the seal with which he conducted public business. This sense of usefulness in public affairs characterised the ‘humanism’ of the early sixteenth century and prompted More’s own involvement in civic life. It is to be seen in the production of the new maps and globes, in the renewed interest in medicine and natural science, and in that belief in the efficacy of the will which was soon to be elaborated by Machiavelli in his great treatise on the uses of statecraft. For More, public duty was the natural consequence of his professional training as a rhetorician, and at no point did it ever come into conflict with his instinctive piety; indeed, it was an aspect of it.
    One proviso ought to be added, however, in a life replete with ambiguity. In
The Prince
Machiavelli distinguished the ideal world of eternal verity from the actual world of human affairs; he directed his enquiry towards the lessons of history rather than the idealised concepts of a medieval polity. He also distinguished ethics from politics, thus promoting the forces of human will and the possibility of harnessing
‘fortune’
to individual ambition. In his own writing More would adopt a cautious attitude towards this new understanding of the self; he was attracted by its novelty and even welcomed it in the sphere of civic activity, but at the same time he sensed its dangers.
    His early composition of verse, as of prose, was also associated with this practical instruction in rhetoric and grammar; it is impossible to separate his ‘creative’ activities from his scholarship and general training. From the beginning his own writing was firmly based upon classical models. In his youth, according to Erasmus, he had written a dialogue in defence of Plato’s
Republic
—a suggestive preliminary to his own work in the sphere of political fantasy. His first poetical exercises were translations into Latin from