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ANCIENT GREEK and LATIN: the Teaching of the Two Classical Subjects, I a COMPARISON Proceed to Their Content

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ANCIENT GREEK and LATIN: the Teaching of the Two Classical Subjects, I a COMPARISON Proceed to Their Content Classica, Sao Paulo, 718: 339-346, 199411995 Having stated historical-differences in ANCIENT GREEK AND LATIN: the teaching of the two classical subjects, I A COMPARISON proceed to their content. PETER WULFING Professor of Latin, 1. First, the Languages themselves. Greek Cologne University is rich in morphemes and, much more than Latin, in particles. So Greek to a greater extent expres- ses the semantic content of discourse on When the problems of our two subjects surface, whilst Latin keeps it in deep structure. are under consideration, we generally speak of I give just a few features: "ancient languages" or "classical philology" The definite article, absent from Latin. without paying much attention to the The ten participles of the Greek verb, differences between the two disciplines thus showing various relationship of time, aspect linked together. and voice; Latin has three. It is accordingly reasonable to seek The middle voice, which expresses so further facts and arguments in a study of their many shades of meaning. differences.' The considerations I am going to The optative mood in addition to the set out spring from common-place beginnings, subjunctive. but lead at least partially to useful educational The capacity to modify any word by reflexions, even concerning credentials. means of particles, whence This method would find favour with the The liberation of word-order in the structuralists, since it is they who have given a sentence. (The contrast with modern English new lease of life to that old instrument of is extreme, the latter language lacking thought, antithetical deliberation. The points syntactical signposts and so needing a rather of difference are numerous, and can easily be fixed word-order in the sentence; French and multiplied. Here I shall give a selection divided German in this regard occupy different into two sections. In the first I shall define nine intermediary positions.) points of difference between the Greek and Passing over many other details, Greek Roman worlds. In the second I shall very briefly can have recourse to a rich synchronistic ability examine these nine points from the educational to create compound words, which in Latin is angle. To conclude, I shall deal with a tenth restricted, thanks mainly to the classicism of matter. Cicero and Caesar. In contrast to the above, First, two small prelirninary remarks. Latin keeps much of its semantic content at the 1) In Classics teaching, we are handing two implicit level; one may think of the participial subjects that are very different in terms of phrase, the ablative absolute, or the conjunction age. In Western Europe, Latin is a very long- cum, their wide variety of possible meanings. standing school subject, but Greek is much In order to demonstrate the repercus- more recent. It has only been taught for a sions of these differences on teaching, I shall couple of hundred years at the secondary offer an example of what I mean, even though I level. reserve my discussion of the educational 2) We only teach Greek after Latin. Until our principles until Part 2. When pupils translate own day there has been but little teaching of from Greek and Latin, they are not at all learning Greek independent of Latin. the same thing in each case: in translating from This is important when we try to defend Greek, they are learning to suppress certain both subjects: it is, at least in Germany, much linguistic elements, i.e. to convert a number of harder to defend Greek than Latin. The drop in them back into the deep structure of their own numbers taking Greek in my country is alarrning. language. But in translating from Latin, they 340 Comunicacoes e Notas learn to make additions, and to render explicit late, for it was their "tribes" and localities which what in Latin is implicit. Both of these each brought its own individual cultural experiences are extremely valuable, but they heritage, gods, beliefs, ntes, customs, musical are different. traditions, dialects and poetry. They united only I should like to take my discussion of very slowly, under the growing influence of the two languages further: the difference epic which had a Mycenaean basis and was alluded to also affects the study of style. We strong enough to cross the frontiers of the in- feel how greatly the Greeks loved the spoken dividual "tribes". The Greeks were able to draw word, which led them to invent not only rhetoric upon the riches of each of their constituent but also dialectic, logic, grammar, and the whole "tribes", leading and borrowing all that was body of literary genres, viz all the artes best among them, Ionians receiving Aeolic lyric, sermocinales. The Romans, on the contrary, Dorians Ionic epic, Athenians Doric choruses were always cautious, reticent, and economical and Ionic prose, etc. and vice versa. What we with words. Their style was marked rather by cal1 literary genres were originally means of density of expression, conciseness, the heritage poetic expression proper to the individual of the lapidary style, the ritual formula, the "tribes". Only later did they combine to create language of the law-code and of the solemn that unity which is Greek literature2. occasion. Even when they used it in much the Nothing of the kind occurred among the same way as the Greeks, whether in rhethoric Romans. Firstly, there was no problem of or poetry, they wanted it to serve certain quite dialects. Then, they inherited a bulk legacy of specific aims: a political platform, a practical all the Greek literary genres at once. It was on requirement, the preservation of power this heritage that they worked, translating, preferably, and above all its legitimation. imitating, sometimes excelling. This was done in the one city, Rome, which proved a centre of 2. Among the Greeks, love of theory great attraction. speculation and abstraction have always been To this is added a complementary acknowledged, their ability to see through the problem which interests us classicists greatly. particular to the general has been much We see Greek literature come into being from admired; and their curiosity, the "history" of oral beginnings and we still sometimes the Ionians, is recognised as their supreme underestimate the oral character of this charcteristic. "literature", even in the so-called classical The Romans, on the other hand, rejected period of the fifth and fourth centuries. The theory, or at least gave it a more limited role. Romans adopted it just at the moment when it Their rationalism always remains under the had finally become a written literature for good. thumb of mos maiorum (an unthinkable They got to know it in its written form and they restriction for the Greeks). Greek philosophy worked on it in writing. only interested the Romans in its political and So we are teaching two subjects worlds ethical aspects. Then again, it is with the apart when we are explaining the Iliad and Romans that we feel a personal involvement in discussing the Aeneid: the former a poem philosophy. Think of Lucretius, of the whole transmitting the collective memory of a distant of his De Rerum Natura, and of the encomium heroic age, orally composed and received, with of philosophy which Cicero pronounces in the a foundation difficult to analyse consisting of Tusculanae, Book V. Would not a Greek parts of varied ongin, some already formulated philosopher have hidden such feelings? elsewhere in other contexts. These parts have been brought together to give the poem a unity 3. These two ancient peoples offer us undeniable even if not clearly distinguishable. choice exemples of the antithesis between The latter, the Aeneid, is the work of a known regionalism and centralism. The Greeks only author of historical date, who is putting a found a national unity which was fragil and mythical past at the service of contemporary Classica, Sao Paulo, 718: 339-346, 199411995 politics; from end to end it is subject to a preci- precise moments. se purpose, the proof that Roman history is meant to culminate in Augustus. 6. The competitive spirit among the Greeks The contrast between the oral and the is well known -the spirit of theagon. Glaukos written ought to be one of the main themes in in the Iliad expresses it once for a11 (11.6,208): the teaching of ancient literature, for it is there "My father charged me always to be the best that we meet with the first change of media (we and to excel a11 others" are now living through the third). Greek and aiiv &PLOTE~ELV ai U~E~POXOV Epp~vai Roman literature furnish us 'with both ahhwv. constrasting and complementary examples of It is a spirit which could be described this change. as typically European, but which, unless I am wrong, is nowhere more marked than among 4. Greek myth in a11 its richness is in our the Greeks, even today. Obviously it's a possession because it was put into written form phenomenon found among us all. The English while still in full flower. Its function was clear: have given it the name of "one-up-manship". to put the narration of significant situations It is characteristic of the English spirit to aim to and events at the disposal of those seeking neutralise an attitude which is socially dubious their historical, moral and religious identity. by giving it the form of a society game. It is mistaken, moreover, to see in The Romans never regarded individual mythology a pre-rational means of thinking; performance as acceptable. They harshly on the contrary, it allows of considerable power punished the soldier who went to the attack of abstraction: it is myth which tells of the ge- before the command was given.
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