I was intending to write a column on uncertainty and unknowing in the humanities. I meant to begin with my one-time teacher, the great ancient historian Moses Finley and his endlessly repeated refrain (which we tried to imitate in his gravelly, chain-smoker’s New York vowels): “we just don’t know”.

One thing was certain: I was much more inclined to believe what Finley said because he admitted there was so much – about early Greek colonial settlement, for instance, or the institution of slavery in the ancient world – “we just don’t know”.