European historical article to be held up as a bad influence (4,3)
I believe the answer is:
evil eye
'a bad influence' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'european historical article to be held up' is the wordplay.
'european historical article' becomes 'eye' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'to be' becomes 'live' (to be is to live or exist).
'held up' is a reversal indicator.
'eye'+'live'='eyelive'
'eyelive' in reverse letter order is 'EVIL-EYE'.
'as' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for evil eye that I've seen before include "Look with the power to inflict harm" , "Stare with the power to harm?" , "Gaze superstitiously thought to bring harm" , "Optical sort of ancient curse" , "Look superstitiously believed to cause harm" .)