Golden Era Classics

While the Golden Era is something I like to try and base my life and interests around, it comes at a distant second to my true calling, Classics (the conglomeration of Latin, ancient Greek, and the histories of the two cultures).

There are easily less than 10 people in my year that are classics/Latin/Greek majors, and that's fairly accurate for the upperclassmen too.

I'm interested in seeing how these subjects were taken from the 1930s-1950s.

From what I've heard and read, there was a lot of activities going around in the Classics world during that time, and it seems that most schools (maybe just in Britain) would require several years of Latin as part of curriculum.

It's folly to say that Latin and Greek are unimportant because they are dead languages. Most people forget that Rome, and to a lesser extent Greece, had a society and culture that is comparable to our modern day society, and that Romans were far from uneducated, merciless barbarians.

I know for a fact that my old highschool is shutting down its Latin programme because they don't have anyone to teach it (possible career for me ).

Does anyone else fear the day when Virgil will no longer be taught in Latin, and the sheer beauty and complexity of his poetry in his native tongue will be lost to time?

My (mid-western American) high school certainly offered no Latin, nor did any in our entire county (except the Catholic high schools) I'd wager. When I went to university, I was able to fit in a year of Greek -- which was offered through the religion department, no Latin offered at all -- and I believe I was the only person in the class not attending seminary afterward! Yes, a sorry state indeed for the Classics.

Amusingly, the Greek was of great insight to me, a student of the sciences, due to the scientific Greek naming conventions. However, then I went off to law school and what I really needed was Latin. I'd love to study Roman Law in the future, but I think it would take some doing on my part to work up to the challenge.

As for how it was taught in the 30s-50s... Well, my professor of Greek used Machen's "New Testiment Greek for Beginners" as the main textbook. I happily used a cloth-bound 1923 first edition that I picked up for $0.50 at a book sale. Definitely much more formal and grammatical style of teaching/learning than the modern languages I've studied, but it fits with the period.

I am currently in the dissertation stage of my PhD in Ancient History at Berkeley. So this is a topic very dear to my heart.

The study of the reception of the greco-roman world by the later world is sometimes called "Reception Studies." Some universities have a professor on the faculty who specializes in reception. And it is quite possible to focus primarily on the way that persons in the 1920s (exempli gratia) saw, and wrote about, the greco-roman world. For example, there is a presently a small industry on how the Nazis viewed the Spartans, how British intellectuals during the "Golden Era" conceptualized Athens, that sort of thing.

My father was born in 1921 and had mandatory Latin. My mother was born in 1930 and also had mandatory Latin. They both went to public schools for most of their education. My father regrets never having studied Greek, and he has forgotten all his Latin. He still reads a lot (a lot) of greco-roman literature, but translated into English, which is better than nothing. He has read all of Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides in English, all of Juvenal as well. Often I give him Penguin Classics translation for his birthdays.

Most people I have met today who are under 75 have very little idea of anything greco-roman, nor of why they should study it, nor of why anyone ever found it interesting.

I find this to be a staggering loss, culturally.

I teach Berkeley undergrads almost every year through either the Classics department or else in the History department, either as a TA or a lecturer or a Latin teacher, and so every year I have the (enjoyable) challenge of making the greco-roman world interesting to a new generation of young minds. It is a good exercise for me, and I think I am fairly good at it. One of the angles that appeals to them is the fact that if a person wants to understand what a nation is and what citizenship is, it is not possible to understand either of these things well unless the greco-roman world is understood, what its constraints were, what the military pressure was, and so on.

I don't think that the study of the greco-roman world or its languages will go away. It certainly has become a more specialized field, and is not standard fare anymore. My suspicion is that the demands that education be "relevant" which the hippies made in the late 1960s is what led to the weakening of the study and teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek.

One way to trace the waxing and waning of this study is to see how many students are enrolled in the ancient language classes: Latin 1 and Latin 2 and Greek 1 and Greek 2 each year (in the universities that teach these languages, that is!). I believe that at Berkeley these have been pretty well-attended. Any semester in which we are able to fill two entire classrooms of students wishing to take Latin 2 is pretty good, and we have consistently been having semesters like that over the past several years.

I am less concerned about people who don't know much about that stuff than I am about people who think it's horrible to study "such cultures of oppression and misogyny" and other such attitudes, or who think the greco-roman stuff is stupid and uninteresting. Luckily I have the happy opportunity to try to change their minds every semester!

Sorry I went on so long in this post. This topic is very important to me, both personally and professionally.

The only thing i know about the subject is what the the British poet and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) said about the Greek philosopher Socrates:



"The more I read him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him."

I am less concerned about people who don't know much about that stuff than I am about people who think it's horrible to study "such cultures of oppression and misogyny" and other such attitudes, or who think the greco-roman stuff is stupid and uninteresting. Luckily I have the happy opportunity to try to change their minds every semester!

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This is well said. I am a university professor, and though I don't teach or research in classics (other than filling in for someone on occasion in a history of political thought class, then I might teach a little Plato or Aristotle) I think they are very important and I enjoy reading them or about them when I have some free time.

One of the casualties of the multi-cultural movement in most universities in the past 30 years or so has been the "Western Classics". In history departments "Western Civilization" has mostly been turned into "World Civilization". While I am not an ethnocentric person, and I fully believe in teaching students about Asian, Middle-Eastern, African, and other civilizations, if this means students get a BA and NEVER read either Plato or Aristotle this is a shame.

My feelings are that there are two causes for this, one not so threatening the other more threatening:

(1) Space and time contraints: Sure more weeks added to teach about Ancient China or Persia is less weeks devoted to Western Civilization. Fair enough, all disciplines in academia are under a space and time crunch and also pressure to be "real-world applicable" or "relevant" in "today's globalized, wired environment with the new students of the 2000 generation..." etc. (tongue fully in check here, I've been to too many meeting where administrators made us endure self-criticism and collective punishment about raising enrollments while spouting lingo they picked up at some summer workshop.... rant over). We all have to deal with that new subjects come to the fore and we have to balance the old and make some cuts to put in the new, etc. All our classes and subjects evolve over time to some extent.

(2) The more worrying are the professors and administration who really do think like the above quote Doran gives. There really are people out there who WANT to eliminate Classics programs because they feel they "continue Western domination and imperialism" in the world...

I remember sitting on a search committee last year for a history position. One applicant wrote in his letter than one couse he could offer was a survey of "Great Books of Western Civilization": Plato, Aristotle, Roman writers, modern writers. Looked like a nice course that would dove-tail with our small Classics program. One of other members of the committee who is one of these Western Classics haters essentially killed this guys application because he made mention of this class. He scoffed at it, "Great books of Western Civilization, what an oxymoron, no such thing. This is what is wrong with history programs..." etc.

Chasseur said:

I remember sitting on a search committee last year for a history position. One applicant wrote in his letter than one couse he could offer was a survey of "Great Books of Western Civilization": Plato, Aristotle, Roman writers, modern writers. Looked like a nice course that would dove-tail with our small Classics program. One of other members of the committee who is one of these Western Classics haters essentially killed this guys application because he made mention of this class. He scoffed at it, "Great books of Western Civilization, what an oxymoron, no such thing. This is what is wrong with history programs..." etc.

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Unfortunately a gun is the only permanent solution to this sort of problem.

However, I do not possess one, and I do not advocate using one when reasoning will suffice.

This may get too political but I would suggest the following argument.

"Under what regime has so high a number of human beings been able to live under such high living conditions with so many rights?"

Why have the living conditions been so high?

Because of scientific knowledge which permits the most efficient use of environments.

Why has scientific knowledge reached so far and wide?

Because it was permitted to, because a tradition existed of CITIZENSHIP as an alternative to despotism, incentivizing scientific discovery in many periods.

It sounds like the person who said this was a class-A idiot whose political understanding had never gone beyond very, very trite 1980s-style Foucaultian thought. And his attitude toward western civilization was a trite blend of Rousseauian "Noble Savage," frankfurt school attempts to undermine the western tradition and (laughably) suggest that the world was full of societies less racist and homophobic than Western liberalism, and a smattering of freudian theory that Western civilization was a tradition of personal sexual repression. Plus an admixture of lame Howard Zinn style critique of America in which, rather than looking at America as one nation state among many and judging its (state-level) behavior against other societies, a wholly fictitious egalitarian dream society is held up as the yardstick.

All societies are ethnocentrist to some degree; only one civilization has invented a critique of its own ethnocentrism. This began 2,400 years ago with Herodotus.

Even aside from all this: the Greeks cannot be fingered for the allegedly horrible state of modern society. They can only be studied on their own. The Romans cannot be blamed for modern imperialism either. Their system of granting citizenship of various levels to all allied and conquered people was breathtakingly revolutionary and, yes, liberal -- and it was what allowed the Romans to escape the confines of the city-state level of organization. No other ancient city-state was so liberal with granting citizenship to conquered people, allies, and even ex-slaves.

Your professor, Chasseur, should have been shot down. At least verbally. At least as a very behind-the-times fool whose education had not progressed beyond very trite postmodernist clichés of the mid-1980s.

Your students will suffer from not having read Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. Without these books, without comparing and contrasting them, my mind would be feeble.

The triumph of tenure over common sense.

HadleyH said:

The only thing i know about the subject is what the the British poet and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) said about the Greek philosopher Socrates:



"The more I read him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him."

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I say, too soon.

Classics are very dear to my heart, but to my great shame I have not been able to learn Latin (yet). I have to make do with English translations.

Your professor, Chasseur, should have been shot down. At least verbally. At least as a very behind-the-times fool whose education had not progressed beyond very trite postmodernist clichés of the mid-1980s.

Your students will suffer from not having read Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. Without these books, without comparing and contrasting them, my mind would be feeble.

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Doran, no worries on two counts: (1) You are preaching to the choir; (2) No worries about our students not reading the classics. We have a small Classics program and also my majors are all required to take a history of political thought class that requires Plato, Aristotle, etc. So they will not suffer from not reading them.

However, you description of that member of the search committee was pretty much spot on