# Classical Education



## TennysonsHarp (Apr 30, 2017)

Today was my first day of college classes. I had a bit of a rocky start (was wicked late because I overslept and then suffered a nosebleed in the shower) but I got all my textbooks together and it turned out to be pretty enjoyable by the time my classes were finished.

Most of my classes for this semester are in the Classics department, and it got me thinking about the number of people who still value a classical education. What are your thoughts on the study of Greek and Latin literature, philosophy, language, rhetoric, etc? Personally, I think the Classics are more than worth preserving, as Greece and Rome are the foundations of Western society as a whole.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

I was forced to study Latin and Classics at school. The Latin is now largely forgotten (it was a while back) but I've retained my interest in Classics, particularly the history of the later empire following Diocletian's reforms in the late 3rd century up to the fall of the Western Empire in 476. 

I think Classics is a worthwhile area of study, even if you might be more interested in the philosophical and artistic aspects of Greek and Roman society rather than the historical ones. In my view, there are many parallels between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the challenges that society faces today. History most definitely does repeat itself in my opinion.


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## TennysonsHarp (Apr 30, 2017)

I know that a lot of British schoolchildren still are taught Classics, but it's a damn shame that such a tradition of erudition isn't as upheld or respected here in the US. My end goal after I complete college is to become a professor so that I can help teach the Classics and restore them to their rightful place as the foundations of Western thought and society.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

TennysonsHarp said:


> I know that a lot of British schoolchildren still are taught Classics, but it's a damn shame that such a tradition of erudition isn't as upheld or respected here in the US. My end goal after I complete college is to become a professor so that I can help teach the Classics and restore them to their rightful place as the foundations of Western thought and society.


A noble aim indeed. I wish you all the best in your endeavours.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

TennysonsHarp said:


> I know that a lot of British schoolchildren still are taught Classics, but it's a damn shame that such a tradition of erudition isn't as upheld or respected here in the US. My end goal after I complete college is to become a professor so that I can help teach the Classics and restore them to their rightful place as the foundations of Western thought and society.


Maximum respect for you! This is about the greatest thing that a man can do, in my opinion. The Classics aren't very well respected in my home country either, and I can say that I'll do my best to make them better known here, for the same reasons as you, even if I don't think I'll become a professor - more likely, an essayist, a critic or a lecturer. Progress requires both memory and innovation, and while today's society (over)values the latter, it has all but forgotten the former. It's about time we remind ourselves who we are and where we come from.


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

TennysonsHarp said:


> I know that a lot of British schoolchildren still are taught Classics, but it's a damn shame that such a tradition of erudition isn't as upheld or respected here in the US. My end goal after I complete college is to become a professor so that I can help teach the Classics and restore them to their rightful place as the foundations of Western thought and society.


On what do you base your statement that "a lot of British school children still are taught the classics"? I wasn't offered a Greek or Latin class at school in the 1970s; that was the norm, and that's even more the norm these days! Not one Greek/Latin author was covered in translation, or even in summary.

We did quite a bit of "Romans in Britain" history, because I lived in a city where the Romans were well entrenched, and we took day trips to Hadrian's wall and the ruins of various forts... good & important memories... As a student of classics, these are not to be missed when you do the "grand tour"...

http://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/

I've read Homer, Plato, and several others, in translation, since school, and they are often great fun, and never less than interesting, so you should have a great time, as well as gaining lots of kudos for studying a subject that's still renowned for being difficult & important. Also, unlike lots of trendy stuff ("Continental philosophy", "Media Studies", ...), it never becomes out of date, unfashionable, or passé. Plato, like Beethoven and Shakespeare, will be forever at the centre of our culture, as long as it exists.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I did Latin at school but wasn't brainy enough for Greek so ended up in the modern stream doing Science.

I taught in Durham and took school trips to the wall. One of the delights was walking from Twice Brewed along the wall to Housesteads.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

I think it reasonable to expect that anyone (in the western world) considered educated have some "classical" learning or exposure. That said I am not sure it need be a required part of everyone's formal education. 

Everyone with a degree isn't educated. And learning shouldn't stop with graduation.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Taggart said:


> I did Latin at school but wasn't brainy enough for Greek so ended up in the modern stream doing Science.


I wasn't brainy enough for Greek either. One ancient language was compulsory at my school so I chose Latin on the basis that at least I wouldn't have to learn a completely new alphabet as well as a new language.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I took 3 years of Latin in school, and I doubt I benefited from the experience. Of course, I was young, and Latin, as a language, may not benefit people as much as Roman or Greek texts taught as literature or history. Overall, I think many subject areas can be very useful for people to study. Those would include economics, sociology, history, philosophy, literature, math/logic, and science. All of these subject areas can contribute enormously to society in general. 

The real question is how much of any one area ought one to study. We are all relatively weak in some areas, and some people know essentially nothing about some areas. Personally, I wish I had taken philosophy or economics rather than Latin, but I've had many years to correct my early lack of knowledge in those areas. Given the enormous expansion of knowledge and areas of study, it may be very hard for everyone to reasonably sample all the relevant areas in formal education.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

I liked Latin and loathed Greek.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Xaltotun said:


> Maximum respect for you! This is about the greatest thing that a man can do, in my opinion.


That's exactly what I wanted to say. 
For your own sake, for a personal growth so to say, there is nothing better than that. Class-ic-al education! and only brave and/or independent chooses this education nowdays.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

A lot of schools in the UK have dropped the teaching of Latin (and Greek), though it's been making a limited comeback in recent years.

I studied Latin to A-level at school, and I loved it. I found it useful for English (grammar and derivation of words) and useful at university when I did my MA thesis on religious ballads, since many of them were based on stories from the Apocryphal Gospels or medieval Latin lives of the saints. I also taught it at an elementary level at a choir school, and it was huge fun. 

I studied New Testament Greek later on, when I did an AS level in Religious Studies, and I found the unique grammatical structure to be fascinating, and again, it's surprising how many words in Engiish can be related to Greek. 

The only downside is that at my girls' school, we had to choose between German and Latin. The more studious arts girls all did Latin, though some of them caught up with German or Greek after O-level - I couldn't do that, because I was keeping up my French along with my 3 A-levels of English, History and Latin. Then I moved schools and had to study on my own to take my exams.

I've always missed not knowing German, and I think we could have coped with studying both languages. 

But I'll never regret studying Latin - I loved it.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Ingélou said:


> A lot of schools in the UK have dropped the teaching of Latin (and Greek), though it's been making a limited comeback in recent years.
> 
> I studied Latin to A-level at school, and I loved it. I found it useful for English (grammar and derivation of words) and useful at university when I did my MA thesis on religious ballads, since many of them were based on stories from the Apocryphal Gospels or medieval Latin lives of the saints. I also taught it at an elementary level at a choir school, and it was huge fun.
> 
> ...


The good point of Latin is that it gives such a solid platform for learning all other languages from similar group, French, Italian, Spanish, etc and not just that it provides a person with deeper understanding of rules of a language and not just a language but a structure as such. It's like a periodic table in chemistry, once you mastered it, you understand all main principles of this subject, the same about Latin. Good for logic and overall for intellectual development. Uff... so many things....profound stuff.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

This is a most excellent and enjoyable thread! My view of the study of Latin and Ancient Greek, having taken both in high school, is that, unless one A) knows that one is going to make the classics a career path, or B) one learns languages easily (not me!), one should avoid them and concentrate on a living language or languages. Almost all Latin and Greek classical works are available in translation, plus innumerable histories and other studies of all sorts, wherein one can gain a good understanding of the Greeks and Romans. I salute all who have mastered Greek and/or Latin, and say more power to them, but still I maintain that mastery of living languages and excluding the dead ones in no way precludes enjoying the benefit of the exposure to classical history and culture for large numbers of people.


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## JJF (Aug 25, 2017)

We have a four year old daughter and moved from a big city to the hills of NC. Initially worried about access to decent schooling, we researched methods of homeschooling but still were concerned about the socializing aspects of school. Which for me in the early years were probably the most important. Well, we found a classical education charter school nearby that is award-winning in NC and is state funded so free to us! They stick to a strict classical education model and for me, seeing the wreckage the, frankly, Bolshevik style indoctrination that passes as education in America has created, more the better. 

As far as language, the more the merrier. My wife is Chinese and has both Chinese languages as well as Japanese and of course English. Me, I have bits and pieces of Gaelic of all things.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

At a "Comprehensive" secondary school in Scotland in 1975-81 I studied English, Mathematics, Computer studies (a fledgling subject in 1980), Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Geology and technical subjects (Woodwork, Metalwork, Engineering drawing). Oh, and French. (There was a Latin teacher who doubled up as the Russian* teacher but few people did Latin).

Q: Does this make me a philistine in the arts?


*We rather liked our system of Bolshevik indoctrination in 70's Scotland!


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Q: Does this make me a philistine in the arts?


Not at all, as the fact that you are a moderator here amply proves.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I had to do Latin at school and absolutely loathed it. I would have been better served by Spanish as I've attempted to use that on many foreign holidays (badly). I always found latin utterly pointless.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

I had two years of high school Latin, but I mostly interact with Latin as the matrix for contemporary word etymologies. Concerning the value of a classical education, it is the study of the foundation on which any thriving culture must build, and thus has great value indeed. As modern pedagogy makes its own special contribution to the current and ongoing avalanche into the Second Dark Ages, we might as well study the classics now - they are going to have to be rediscovered in another thousand years anyway.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

chill782002 said:


> Not at all, as the fact that you are a moderator here amply proves.


Kind of you to say so, but I'm merely an autodidact in the arts and humanities.


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## JJF (Aug 25, 2017)

"ongoing avalanche into the Second Dark Age"

Brilliant!


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Kind of you to say so, but I'm merely an autodidact in the arts and humanities.


I am an autodidact in classical music.

Long live the autodidact!


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

JJF said:


> "ongoing avalanche into the Second Dark Age"
> 
> Brilliant!


You are too kind.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Amat victoria curam.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

When I went to University, Latin was a compulsory entry requirement. Students were entered into four nations - Rothesay, Glottiana, Loudonina and Transforthiana - for rectorial elections. This was at Glasgow, the second (chronologically) after St. Andrews.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

OK, I probably rate for being a polyglot (including passive knowledge of Latin, Greek & Hebrew), but I don't like the sanctified halo around Latin & Greek. So I will try to make a thought provoking case against Latin & Greek.

Both languages are guilty of a centuries old discrimination of women. The Latin word _virtus_ is derived from _vir_, man. Morality for Romans and Greeks equaled 'manliness'. This conviction went so deep, that they anchored it in their languages (Greek: ἀρετή). The Roman/Greek concept of excellence is exclusively created from the male perspective.

Often the ancient Greeks are being praised for having invented 'democracy'. But their democracy was an oligarchy of a selected group: you had to be born as a citizen of a _polis_, you had to be male and you had to have a certain affluence. If your _fatum_ happened to be otherwise: say, you were female or a _xenos_, you never would be able to cast a vote.

Greeks were typical fond of deriding all _xenoi_ who were making mistakes in Greek. With Homeric laughter such a _xenos_ was denigrated. All foreign languages were "bar bar" for Greek ears: all foreigners were potential barbarians to them. So we still suffer under their legacy of _xenophobia_.

Of course I do like Latin & Greek, but some of their 'virtues' may have turned into vices from our modern perspective.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

It's not really fair to compare civilisations that flourished 2000 or so years ago by modern standards. However, with reference to your point about democracy, this was an innovation at the time in that it gave at least a certain proportion of the population some control over state policy instead of rule exclusively by one man or a very small group of men as had been the case previously. It's also worth noting that the Roman Republic eventually developed into a series of military dictatorships which were later formalised under the imperial system. This then remained the accepted system of rule for centuries. 

The modern system of universal suffrage is a relatively recent innovation, existing in most countries for only around a hundred years or less. There is also no guarantee that it will continue to exist in the future. Who is to say that the world might not turn their backs on it under external or internal pressures decades or centuries from now, just as the Romans did?


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

You are right in saying that the Greeks were very xenophobic though, even against the Romans, who conquered Greece in 196 BC.

_For a long time well-educated Greeks of good social position were constrained by no necessity, and in the late Republic and early Empire, felt no desire, to learn Latin. There was little reason for wishing to visit Rome or Latin-speaking Italy as a tourist, for there was no architecture, or, save where it had been stolen from the Greek East, any art of consequence. Nor was there any temptation to learn the Romans' barbarous language in order to read the masterpieces of Latin literature in the original. Until the late Republic there were no such masterpieces; and even after that what had Cicero to offer that was not to be found far better in Demosthenes and Plato, what was there in Virgil which could face comparison with Homer? For the educated Greek, there was no language, no literature, comparable with his own._ - "Romans & Aliens" - J.P.V.D. Balsdon


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## TennysonsHarp (Apr 30, 2017)

I would agree that the Greeks were by modern standards xenophobic, but it must be considered that Greece had never been a unified country, only a grouping of city-states linked together by a common mother tongue (or dialects thereof). Athens was different from Sparta, which was different from the Italian colonies like Tarentum and Syracuse. They all had similar values and shared a common mythology and language, but they were not a unified country or nation-state in the modern sense. Plus, the Greeks often had to deal with invaders like Persia as well as Rome, so their distrust or dislike of foreigners is somewhat justified, in a way. Sure, it's rather absurd by modern standards, but when you manage to defeat the biggest military power in the known world (Xerxes' army), you do end up on a high pedestal.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

According to _ius Romanum_ each Roman citizen had to beget three children and each freed slave even four children. If they didn't meet this requirement, they were fined with heavy taxes. From the women who had to bear the children no word. In the Roman world women were necessary for producing new soldiers for the Roman legions. To keep their legions intact was an constant worriment for the Roman (city)state. To my surprise the systematic prosecution of 'Christians' (from 177 CE onwards) is directly connected with their breaching the Roman law with respect to women. There existed a Christian subgroup (Montanists) that forbade their followers to re-marry. Life was short and women often became widows more than one time in their lives. The first female & male monasteries that came in existence factually withdrew women from the Roman militaristic system of child production. So the Roman state reacted harshly (with abhorrent measures) as if their existence was endangered. In the long run the Roman (city)state was indeed debilitated.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

I agree. After Christianity became the religion of the imperial family under Constantine and even more so after the old Roman religion (which was heavily derived from the religious beliefs of the Greeks and, to a lesser extent, from those of the Etruscans) was officially banned at the end of the 4th century, the Roman state found it harder and harder to maintain the size of its army.
This was partly, as you say, due to some men and women joining the Christian clergy en masse as monks and nuns, which led to a fall in the birth rate and further reduced the pool of potential future soldiers.

However, it was also due to the fact that the Roman Empire had, by the late 3rd century, become a military despotism far more monolithic and oppressive than the relatively brief periods of one man rule by generals during the chaos and civil wars in the late Republic. Those were merely examples of opportunist generals backed by the army being able to assert their power for a while. The empire after Diocletian was much more similar to some 20th century dictatorships with compulsion and repression established as formal instruments of state power in order to defend Rome from external enemies. The emperor essentially held power at the pleasure of the ever-shrinking army, which he had to buy off at regular intervals, resorting to higher and higher levels of taxation and debasement of the currency to do so.

As the army grew smaller for the reasons mentioned above and those within it became more and more corrupt, the Empire was forced to continue with this ruinous, inflationary policy, now to also pay for foreign mercenaries to defend it. These were largely Germanic tribes and other groups from further east in areas which the Romans had never been able to subdue and where they had previously built huge fortifications in earlier times to keep those groups out, much as the Chinese did with the Great Wall several centuries before. However, as a majority of native Roman officers and troops by the 5th century seemed more interested in extorting money from the helpless peasantry and defrauding the state than in defending the Empire's ever-shrinking boundaries, the imperial government had little choice. By the fall of the Western Empire in 476 when the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus (a boy of 15), was deposed and exiled by the Germanic general Odacer, the emperor had become little more than a figurehead.

The Roman Empire collapsed as a result of political and economic instability and demographic and social changes and many of its achievements and innovations, both social and technological, were lost for centuries. The Romans left Britain at the beginning of the 5th century as the legions were pulled back to defend Italy and their memory was only really preserved within the monasteries, along with Christianity itself. Outside, Germanic paganism asserted itself on a large scale for several centuries and the Romans themselves were forgotten with an unknown 8th century English poet writing the following words on viewing abandoned Roman ruins, possibly the remains of Roman Bath, and believing that giants had built them. Nonetheless, the sense of wonder at past glories, coupled with sorrow at their passing and the realisation that all things are fleeting, is captured in a most evocative manner and seems as fitting an epitaph as any.

_Splendid this rampart is, though fate destroyed it, 
The city buildings fell apart, the works
Of giants crumble. Tumbled are the towers
Ruined the roofs, and broken the barred gate,
Frost in the plaster, all the ceilings gape,
Torn and collapsed and eaten up by age.
And grit holds in its grip, the hard embrace
Of earth, the dead-departed master-builders,
Until a hundred generations now
Of people have passed by. Often this wall
Stained red and grey with lichen has stood by
Surviving storms while kingdoms rose and fell.
And now the high curved wall itself has fallen._


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

chill782002 said:


> I agree. After Christianity became the religion of the imperial family under Constantine and even more so after the old Roman religion (which was heavily derived from the religious beliefs of the Greeks and, to a lesser extent, from those of the Etruscans) was officially banned at the end of the 4th century, the Roman state found it harder and harder to maintain the size of its army.
> This was partly, as you say, due to some men and women joining the Christian clergy en masse as monks and nuns, which led to a fall in the birth rate and further reduced the pool of potential future soldiers.
> 
> However, it was also due to the fact that the Roman Empire had, by the late 3rd century, become a military despotism far more monolithic and oppressive than the relatively brief periods of one man rule by generals during the chaos and civil wars in the late Republic. Those were merely examples of opportunist generals backed by the army being able to assert their power for a while. The empire after Diocletian was much more similar to some 20th century dictatorships with compulsion and repression established as formal instruments of state power in order to defend Rome from external enemies. The emperor essentially held power at the pleasure of the ever-shrinking army, which he had to buy off at regular intervals, resorting to higher and higher levels of taxation and debasement of the currency to do so.
> ...


Great post! Lately my interest in the ancient Greek & Romans has turned towards the position of women. I'm wondering why _Asia minor_, especially Anatolia & Phrygia were the hotspot of female earth goddesses: Artemis, Demeter & Cybele. Why the Amazons originated from the area around Ephesus and what exactly made the Montanist movement so attractive for former Cybele priests (self-inflicted eunuchs) and ex-Cybele priestesses. It seems that the women of _Asia minor_ were more outspoken & rebellious than anywhere else in the _imperium Romanum_. Perhaps the influx of Jews, Persians, Babylonians etc. made the Anatolian cities more open-minded than the city-states of Greece & Italy.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

I don't have a whole lot to contribute to this discussion, but just wanted to say that I'll be graduating college this coming June, and although I am majoring in linguistics, I am minoring in Classics, specifically Latin. I've taken a number of upper-division Latin courses, incl. the works of Horace, Ovid, Virgil, and I'll be starting a class on Lucretius soon. It's a pity that the Classics are no longer the educational staple that they once were, but there are some of us who still look back to the old greats. 

Since linguistics is my primary interest, I've been studying specifically how Greek and Latin are related, and how these two are both related to Sanskrit. Among the many aspects of classical culture I don't want to be forgotten, the languages are #1 on my list.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Tristan said:


> I don't have a whole lot to contribute to this discussion, but just wanted to say that I'll be graduating college this coming June, and although I am majoring in linguistics, I am minoring in Classics, specifically Latin. I've taken a number of upper-division Latin courses, incl. the works of Horace, Ovid, Virgil, and I'll be starting a class on Lucretius soon. It's a pity that the Classics are no longer the educational staple that they once were, but there are some of us who still look back to the old greats.
> 
> Since linguistics is my primary interest, I've been studying specifically how Greek and Latin are related, and how these two are both related to Sanskrit. Among the many aspects of classical culture I don't want to be forgotten, the languages are #1 on my list.


Mighty Lucretius! Often in error, never in doubt. In a sense, a beginning, or a very important consolidation, of the way we think about thinking about the world happens with Lucretius. With Lucretius, the idea that we can figure things out is presented boldly and relentlessly, quite beyond the fragments that are left to us of the writings of his great predecessor Epicurus. It will take centuries, and the advent of Galileo, and close observation and experiment to mark the beginnings of science. But Lucretius showed that the world, the universe, could be understood by the human mind. Almost all modern commentators speak of the singular modernity of Lucretius, and the uniqueness at that time of his message. He is also judged to be one of the giants of Latin poetry, but I am certainly not a proper judge of such things.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> Mighty Lucretius! Often in error, never in doubt. In a sense, a beginning, or a very important consolidation, of the way we think about thinking about the world happens with Lucretius. With Lucretius, the idea that we can figure things out is presented boldly and relentlessly, quite beyond the fragments that are left to us of the writings of his great predecessor Epicurus. It will take centuries, and the advent of Galileo, and close observation and experiment to mark the beginnings of science. But Lucretius showed that the world, the universe, could be understood by the human mind. Almost all modern commentators speak of *the singular modernity of Lucretius*, and the uniqueness at that time of his message. He is also judged to be one of the giants of Latin poetry, but I am certainly not a proper judge of such things.


In his cast of mind, he was modern - but, ironically, he chose to use archaisms in his poetry. That made it pretty difficult for us poor A-level students, and in the end, our Latin mistress gave in and put us back on to Vergil.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

TxllxT said:


> Great post! Lately my interest in the ancient Greek & Romans has turned towards the position of women. I'm wondering why _Asia minor_, especially Anatolia & Phrygia were the hotspot of female earth goddesses: Artemis, Demeter & Cybele. Why the Amazons originated from the area around Ephesus and what exactly made the Montanist movement so attractive for former Cybele priests (self-inflicted eunuchs) and ex-Cybele priestesses. It seems that the women of _Asia minor_ were more outspoken & rebellious than anywhere else in the _imperium Romanum_. Perhaps the influx of Jews, Persians, Babylonians etc. made the Anatolian cities more open-minded than the city-states of Greece & Italy.


Thank you, you are most kind. However, I was inspired by your excellent (and much more elegantly concise) post.

I agree that the cult of the earth or "mother" goddess, particularly the goddess known to the Greeks and Romans as Cybele or Magna Mater (Great Mother) definitely originates in Asia Minor but I am uncertain as to why this is. There is evidence of some form of goddess of this type in Asia Minor going back thousands of years before the Roman Republic or the Greek city states existed, particularly at sites like Çatalhöyük and possibly even Göbekli Tepe, which is even older.

The Greeks adopted her worship around the 6th century BC but the Romans avoided her for another three hundred years or so until the colossal defeat at the battle of Cannae in 216 BC when her cult was imported to Rome in desperate hope that the favour of the much revered (and also feared) foreign goddess might throw back the armies of Rome's great rival, Carthage, and deliver the Romans from the disaster that had befallen them.

The goddess arrived in Rome in the form of a black, meteoric stone, accompanied by her priests and attendants and the orgiastic features of her worship, something that many older Romans found shocking and predicted would lead to the undermining of traditional Roman values and eventual disaster. Nonetheless, the tide of events was turned and the Carthaginian armies pushed out of Italy. The Romans would finally settle all accounts with the Carthaginians in 146 BC, when Carthage was sacked and destroyed and the ground famously sown with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again.

Some historians (including some later Roman historians) date this as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Republic and of Rome itself as the purpose of the army became less to defend the Republic than to expand its area and acquire war booty and imported luxuries. The old Roman values of thrift, simplicity and modesty were eroded more and more over time with the eventual results described in earlier posts although these took place over several centuries and there were also other factors at play, including the expansion of the Empire to its greatest extent under Trajan.

The figure of the earth or mother goddess goes a very long way back in human psychology, far further back than any recorded human history and likely represents a number of very complex factors. I suspect the goddess symbolises the cycle of birth and death in the same manner as certain Hindu deities and that she appears to have originated in Asia Minor due to the fact that this also appears to be the birthplace of the earliest large-scale human settlements. My guess is as good as anyone's however.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I had a few years of Latin and Greek in high school (which here is age 12-18). Greek was one of my examination subjects (together with Dutch, English, Mathematics 1&2, Chemistry, Physics and Biology). Can't say I had much use for it in my life. I'd have been better off choosing French instead.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

The Latin word for marriage is _matrimonium_. This sums up what one of the partners in the legal settlement has to perform: become _mater_ (mother). The other side however was allowed to enjoy one or more concubines next to his official wife. Even the famous St. Augustine had a concubine, who happened to bear a child of him, but was nonetheless dumped when mother Monica had found a future wife (12 years old) with a lot of money & influence for her son. Roman law allowed women to become _mater_ at the age of 14, so St Augustine had to wait two years! He was in deep trouble, because his concubine with son was sent away (without heritage rights). But mother Monica came up with the solution: she found a new concubine for her pampered son.

One of the things I marvel at in Roman culture is the high level of engineering, especially in building aquaducts, triumphal gates etc. How did they do this, when they didn't have Arabic numerals at their disposal? Roman numerals must have been a real nightmare for making calculations.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

It became clear to my teachers and to me more or less from the time I entered my High School years that languages were going to be my principal field of study. In those far-off days languages weren't often offered before the age of 11 here in the UK, but I studied French and Latin as soon as I went to High School and started German (which rapidly became my favourite) a couple of years in. I continued with all three right up until I went to university to do Modern and Medieval Languages (French and German in my case), at which point I dropped Latin, but I'm tremendously glad I did it for as long as I did.

My main reason for that is one which hasn't been mentioned yet. Yes, it's a help with foreign language studies, but I maintain that it's of great help in developing clarity of thought and expression in English as well. Language and thought are VERY closely intertwined, and the grammatical patterns of Latin as well as some of its vocabulary are basic to the ways in which we think and express ourselves because of its influence on our own native languages. As a child I was always taught that mathematics would help inculcate clear thinking patterns but, though I managed to pass the maths exams for which I was entered, I did so very much from memory (remembering what kind of calculation was required to work out what kind of problem question) rather than by genuine understanding. What _really_ sharpened up my thinking tools was working my way through some long, complex but beautifully expressed passage from Cicero or some such. If I remember rightly, startling results have been achieved by schools in some ghetto areas in the States which offered their pupils Latin and philosophy. I don't believe for one moment that that's accidental.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Animal the Drummer said:


> It became clear to my teachers and to me more or less from the time I entered my High School years that languages were going to be my principal field of study. In those far-off days languages weren't often offered before the age of 11 here in the UK, but I studied French and Latin as soon as I went to High School and started German (which rapidly became my favourite) a couple of years in. I continued with all three right up until I went to university to do Modern and Medieval Languages (French and German in my case), at which point I dropped Latin, but I'm tremendously glad I did it for as long as I did.
> 
> My main reason for that is one which hasn't been mentioned yet. Yes, it's a help with foreign language studies, but I maintain that it's of great help in developing clarity of thought and expression in English as well. Language and thought are VERY closely intertwined, and the grammatical patterns of Latin as well as some of its vocabulary are basic to the ways in which we think and express ourselves because of its influence on our own native languages. As a child I was always taught that mathematics would help inculcate clear thinking patterns but, though I managed to pass the maths exams for which I was entered, I did so very much from memory (remembering what kind of calculation was required to work out what kind of problem question) rather than by genuine understanding. What _really_ sharpened up my thinking tools was working my way through some long, complex but beautifully expressed passage from Cicero or some such. If I remember rightly, startling results have been achieved by schools in some ghetto areas in the States which offered their pupils Latin and philosophy. I don't believe for one moment that that's accidental.


Surely there are--there must be--living languages that can promote clarity of thought and expression as well as Latin. And there then is the not-inconsiderable benefit of having a whole culture/population of native speakers of that living language with whom to converse.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Not in the same way, no, at least not in my view and (considerable) experience. That's not to downgrade the benefits of learning modern languages - I'd hardly have spent so many years studying them and earning Bachelor's and Master's degrees in French and German if I didn't recognise how enriching such study is in many different ways. But the point about Latin in particular is that its structure and vocab provide much of the foundation for those very languages, as well as my own, and lengthy experience has made very clear to me how especially beneficial it is for one's overall intellectual development to go back to those first principles and to work on them in detail.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

The city state of Pergamum boasted on the fact it had the second largest library of the world after Alexandria. In contrast with the famous library of Alexandria however they didn't have a great number of learned scholars to study the book-rolls. So having a big library seems to have been more a matter of status in those days. In 43 BC Mark Anthony married Cleopatra and provided her with a wedding-gift of 200.000 book-rolls from Pergamum. The library of Alexandria had been robbed lately and the Egyptian queen was very much at loss that her library all of a sudden possessed less book-rolls than its rival in _Asia minor_.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

During my brief time in seminary, I was encouraged to use a Greek lexicon for studying the New Testament. I enjoyed the Classics by Plato and Aristotle a lot (translations).


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

TxllxT said:


> Of course I do like Latin & Greek, but some of their 'virtues' may have turned into vices from our modern perspective.


That is why I don't judge them with a modern perspective.

What ever we have accomplished would not have happened if they hadn't accomplished what they accomplished. The fact that they did not accomplish what we have accomplished means absolutely nothing.

Unless you are worried today about complying with a standard that won't be here for another several thousand years.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

JeffD said:


> That is why I don't judge them with a modern perspective.
> 
> What ever we have accomplished would not have happened if they hadn't accomplished what they accomplished. The fact that they did not accomplish what we have accomplished means absolutely nothing.
> 
> Unless you are worried today about complying with a standard that won't be here for another several thousand years.


Well, what does a so-called monogamy mean, wherein one partner is being burdened & confined with all thinkable obligations and the other partner is as free as a dinky toy? But did all monogamous relations in those ancient times look like an earthly copy of the Greek/Roman standard-marriage: that of the ever freewheeling Zeus/Jupiter, the supreme god, with his ever discontented wife Hera/Juno, the goddess of matrimonium? No. Take St. Augustine for example: did this saintly Christian scholar know about Abraham & Sarah (wife) versus Abraham & Hagar (concubine)? Yes. Did he know, that the '*******' son of Hagar, Ishmael, was also acknowledged as his own son by Abraham? Yes. So why did St.Augustine refuse to acknowledge his only begotten '*******' son? I understand the totalitarian rule of the masculine will in the Greek/Roman society, resulting in an endless copying of strained relations à la Socrates & Xantippe. But St.Augustine knew better.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

TxllxT said:


> *The Latin word for marriage is matrimonium*. This sums up what one of the partners in the legal settlement has to perform: become _mater_ (mother). The other side however was allowed to enjoy one or more concubines next to his official wife. Even the famous St. Augustine had a concubine, who happened to bear a child of him, but was nonetheless dumped when mother Monica had found a future wife (12 years old) with a lot of money & influence for her son. Roman law allowed women to become _mater_ at the age of 14, so St Augustine had to wait two years! He was in deep trouble, because his concubine with son was sent away (without heritage rights). But mother Monica came up with the solution: she found a new concubine for her pampered son.
> 
> One of the things I marvel at in Roman culture is the high level of engineering, especially in building aquaducts, triumphal gates etc. How did they do this, when they didn't have Arabic numerals at their disposal? Roman numerals must have been a real nightmare for making calculations.


Derived from pandemonium? Wish I would have had that valuable information in advance.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

This thread reminds me of the late Peter Cook, in his E.L. Wisty persona:
"I could've been a judge, only I hadn't got the Latin...".


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Flavius Josephus was arrested as the Jewish general of Galilea and he became the personal slave of the Roman general Vespasian, who later on would become the emperor of Rome. This general had a habit that was probably shared by all other Roman generals as well: each night a maiden slave girl was brought to him. Vespasian had a peculiar sense of humour. He slept with a Jewish slave girl and all of a sudden he got the idea to let his still unmarried slave Flavius Josephus marry with this slave girl in the Jewish tradition. The big chuckling joke for him was, that no one would be able to say whether the child that would be born out of the wedding night was his or from Flavius... Later on Flavius Josephus got again into better conditions of living and he immediately took great pains on himself to get a divorce from this wife. The sanhedrin of Alexandria fined him to 40 whip lashes and Flavius (who got this first name from his master, Vespasian) agreed.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Pat Fairlea said:


> This thread reminds me of the late Peter Cook, in his E.L. Wisty persona:
> "I could've been a judge, only I hadn't got the Latin...".


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Especially the Romans were unbelievably superstitious. Before making any bigger or smaller decision the gods had to be consulted. Roman generals were commanders of the legions who at the same were _augurs_, priests. In the sky they 'inaugurated' a _templum_, an imaginary rectangle and observed the flight of birds. When the birds flew into the rectangle, say, from the left, it was an ill omen; from the right, it meant that the gods looked favourably down at the planned action. But even when all the signs stood on green, still the priests looked at the fresh bloody livers of the sacrifices that were about to be burned in order to please the gods. Constantine also was no different from the other Roman generals. He looked up to the sky into the sun and according to the chronicles of Eusebius of Caesarea he all of a sudden saw a cross-sign with the Greek words "ἐν τούτῳ νίκα" or the Roman words _"In hoc signo vinces"_ written on it. What is conspicuous is the rectangular shape of this vision: Constantine was an _augur_, trained to observe & interpret signs in the sky. After Maxentius was defeated Constantine dutifully brought the prescribed sacrifices to the gods.


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