Citizens' Classics for the 21St Century

Citizens’ Classics for the 21st Century by Edith Hall

he recent general election has later 4th century BC, there never was a Hattians and Hittites. Other peoples Texposed the danger inherent in recognisable, independent, state run by provided the Greeks with crucial vote-based democracies – that they Greek-speakers, centred in and including technological advances; they learned the inevitably entail large disaffected what we now know as Greece, until after phonetic alphabet from the Phoenicians, minorities being excluded from executive the Greek War of Independence in the and how to mint coins from the Lydians. power. The ancient Greek inventors of early 19th century. They may have learned how to compose democracy vigorously debated this issue, What bound the Greeks together elaborate cult hymns from the mysterious having painful historical experience of it was an enquiring cast of mind Luwians of Syria and central Anatolia. (recorded by Thucydides) and theoretical underpinned by a wonderful shared set During the period when the Greeks solutions (discussed by Aristotle). Yet our of stories and poems and a restlessness invented rational philosophy and science, state educational system almost which made them more likely to sail away after 600 BC, their horizons were completely deprives our secondary-school and found a new city-state than tolerate dramatically opened up by the expansion children of the opportunity to think starvation or oppression in a venerable of the Persian Empire. about democracy afforded by the dazzling mainland metropolis. The diasporadic, In the late nineteenth and twentieth thought-world of the ancient Greeks. seafaring Greeks, while they invented centuries, our understanding of the other This is despite the availability of excellent new communities from scratch and were cultures of the Ancient Near East translations of all their writings – free stimulated by constantly interacting with advanced rapidly. We know far more online – into modern English. other ethnic groups, made a rapid series about the minds of the Greeks’ The foundations of the Greeks’ of intellectual discoveries which predecessors and neighbours than we did exciting culture, to which few of our propelled the Mediterranean world to a before the landmark discovery of the Epic teenagers are ever introduced, were laid new level of civilisation. This process of of Gilgamesh on clay tablets in the Tigris long before the arrival of Christianity, self-education was much admired by the valley in 1853. There has been a constant between 800 and 300 BC. Greek-speakers Greeks and Romans of the centuries stream of newly published texts in the lived in hundreds of different villages, which followed. When the texts and languages of the successive peoples who towns and cities, from Spain to Libya and artworks of classical Greece were dominated the fertile plains of the Nile delta, from the freezing river rediscovered in the European Mesopotamia (Sumerians, Akkadians, Don in the north-eastern corner of the Renaissance, they changed the world for Babylonians, Assyrians). The words of Black Sea to Trebizond. They were a second time. Hittites on the tablets found at Hattuša in culturally elastic, for they often freely Yet over the last two decades the central˘ Turkey and the phrases inscribed intermarried with other peoples; they had notion that the Greeks were exceptional on clay tablets at Ugarit in northern Syria no sense of ethnic inequality which was has been questioned. It has been stressed have been deciphered. New texts as well biologically determined, since the that they were, after all, just one of many as fresh interpretations of writings by the concepts of distinct world ‘races’ had not ethnic and linguistic groups centred in the ancient Egyptians continue to appear, been invented. They tolerated and even eastern end of the ancient Mediterranean requiring, for example, a reassessment of welcomed imported foreign gods. What world. Long before the Greeks appeared the importance of the Nubians to North united them was never geopolitics, either. in the historical record, several African history. Many of these thrilling With the arguable exception of the complicated civilisations had arisen – the advances have revealed how much the short-lived Macedonian Empire in the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, the Greeks shared with and absorbed from

The Journal of Classics Teaching 16 (32) p.1-5 © The Classical Association 2016. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, Downloaded distribution,from https://www.cambridge.org/core and reproduction in any medium,. IP address: provided 170.106.34.90 the original, on work29 Sep is 2021 unaltered at 17:48:07 and is, subject properly to cited.the Cambridge The written Core permis termssion of use, of Cambridge available at University Press 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsmust be obtained for commercial. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631015000124 re-use or in order to create a derivative work. their predecessors and neighbours. unprecedented levels. The Hittites had up the human baton of intellectual Painstaking comparative studies have made advances in chariot technology, but progress for several hundred years. been published which reveal the Greek they were also highly literate. They And that period of intellectual ‘miracle’ to have been one constituent of recorded the polished and emotive ferment produced ideas that have a continuous process of intercultural orations delivered on formal occasions in subsequently informed the most exchange. It has become a new orthodoxy their royal court, and their carefully significant moments in western political that the Greeks were very similar to their argued legal speeches. One Hittite king history. Thomas Jefferson, framing the Ancient Near Eastern neighbours, in foreshadows Greek historiography when Declaration of Independence, took the idea Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, Persia, he chronicled in detail his frustration at of the pursuit of happiness from and Asia Minor. Some scholars have gone the incompetence of some of his military Aristotle. Toussaint Louverture read so far as to ask whether the Greeks came officers during the siege of a Hurrian city. Plutarch’s account of Spartacus before up with anything new at all, or whether The Phoenicians were just as great leading the first successful slave rebellion they merely acted as a conduit through seafarers as any Greeks. The Egyptians on Haiti in 1791. Tom Paine argued that which the combined wisdom of all the developed medicine based on empirical issues like the relationship of religion to civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean experience rather than religious dogma the state should be discussed with was disseminated across the territories and told Odyssey-like stories about sailors reference to historical examples from conquered by Alexander the Great, before who went missing and returned after antiquity onwards. Chartist leaders were arriving at Rome and posterity. Others adventures overseas. Pithy fables similar inspired by the Athenian democratic have seen sinister racist motives at work, to those of Aesop were composed in an revolution. Women suffragists recited at and accused classicists of creating in their archaic Aramaic dialect of Syria and their meetings the resounding speech own image the Oldest Dead White housed in Jewish temples. Architectural which the tragedian Euripides gives his European Males; some have claimed, with design concepts and technical know-how heroine Medea on the economic, political some justification, that northern came from the Persians to the Greek and sexual oppression of the entire Europeans have systematically distorted world via the many Ionian Greek female sex. and concealed the evidence showing how workmen who helped build Persepolis, The Greeks, more even than the much the ancient Greeks owed to Semitic Susa and Pasargadae, named Yauna in Romans, show us how to question and African peoples rather than to Persian texts. But none of these peoples received opinion and authority. The Indo-European, ‘Aryan’ traditions. produced anything quite equivalent to earliest myths reveal mankind actively The question has thus become Athenian democracy, comic theatre, disputing the terms on which the painfully politicised. Critics of philosophical logic, or Aristotle’s Olympian gods want to rule them, and colonialism and racism tend to play down Nicomachean Ethics. the philanthropic god Prometheus the specialness of the ancient Greeks. I do not deny that the Greeks acted rebelling against Zeus in order to steal Those who maintain that there was as a conduit for other ancient peoples’ fire – a divine prerogative – and give it to something identifiably different and even achievements. But to function mortal men. Sophocles’ Antigone refuses superior about the Greeks, on the other successfully as a conduit, channel, or to accept her tyrannical uncle’s arbitrary hand, are often die-hard conservatives intermediary is in itself to perform an edict, draws crucial distinctions between who have a vested interest in proving the exceptional role. It requires a range of moral decency and contingent legislation, superiority of ‘Western’ ideals and in talents and resources. Taking over and buries her brother anyway. making evaluative judgements of culture. someone else’s technical knowledge Aristophanes, in his democratic comedies, My problem is that I fit into neither camp. requires an opportunistic ability to subjected politicians who wielded power I am certainly opposed to colonialism and identify a serendipitous find or to satire of eye-watering savagery. racism, and have investigated reactionary encounter, excellent communicative Socrates dedicated his life to proving the abuses of the classical tradition in colonial skills, and the imagination to see how a difference between the truth and received India and by apologists of slavery all the technique, story or object could be opinion, the unexamined life being, in his way through to the American Civil War. adapted to a different linguistic and view, not worth living. No wonder But my constant engagement with the cultural milieu. In this sense, the Romans Hobbes thought that reading Greek and ancient Greeks and their culture has made fruitfully took over substantial Roman authors should be banned by any me more, rather than less, convinced that achievements of their civilisation from self-respecting tyrant, in Leviathan arguing they asked a series of crucial questions the Greeks, as did the Renaissance that they foment revolution under the which are difficult to identify in Humanists. Of course the Greeks were not slogan of liberty, instilling in people a combination amongst any of the other by nature or in potential superior to any habit ‘of favouring uproars, lawlessly controlling cultures of the ancient Mediterranean or other human beings, either physically or the actions of their sovereigns, and then Near Eastern antiquity.1 intellectually. Indeed, they themselves controlling those controllers.’ Taken singly, most Greek often commented on how difficult it was Yet in today’s Britain, few secondary achievements can be paralleled in the to distinguish Greek and non-Greek, let school students are ever challenged by the culture of at least one of their neighbours. alone free person from slave, if all the ancient Greeks and Romans or their ideas. The Babylonians knew about Pythagoras’ trappings of culture, clothing and This is despite the existence for half a theorem centuries before Pythagoras was adornment were removed. But that does century of excellent GCSE and ‘A’ Level born. The tribes of the Caucasus had not mean they were not the right people, courses in Classical Civilisation, which brought mining and metallurgy to in the right place, at the right time, to take have been a resounding success wherever

Downloaded2 from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, onCitizens’ 29 Sep 2021 Classics at 17:48:07 for the, subject21st Century to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631015000124 introduced, and can be taught cost- non-state. There is nothing like such a who have been excited by reading Classics effectively across the state school sector. high percentage of privately educated in English. This means engaging with The failure to include Classical students on any other course; there is no literary texts fearlessly in translation and Civilisation amongst the subjects taught in similarly high chance of admission—at 45 raising the proportion of critical thinking every secondary school deprives us and per cent or so. Classics applicants have a to language acquisition. Undergraduate our future citizens of access to comparable chance of getting into degrees are supposed to produce educational treasures which can not only Cambridge, at 45%, and only a slightly competent citizens. Traditional Classics enthral, but fulfil what Jefferson argued in better ratio of state sector acceptees. courses are not making the most of those Notes on the State of Virginia (1782) was the To me, as a Greek scholar, educated ancient authors on their curriculum who main goal of education in a democracy – to in the 1970s and 1980s entirely at the enhance civic as opposed to syntactical enable us defend our liberty. History, he taxpayer’s expense at a Direct Grant competence. proposed, is the subject which makes school and at Oxford, this is profoundly There is, however, an obstacle to citizens so equipped. To stay free also embarrassing. Instead of Greek ideas such citizen-friendly proposals for the requires comparison of constitutions, expanding the minds of all young citizens, future of Classics. The obstacle is posed utopian thinking, fearlessness about Greek denotes money and provides a by the contempt directed from some innovation, critical, lateral and relativist queue-jumping ticket to privilege. upper echelons of the Classics thinking, advanced epistemological skills How can we eradicate the apartheid community against GCSEs and ‘A’ Levels in source criticism and the ability to argue system in British Classics? (1) We need to in Classical Civilisation. Some Classics cogently. All these skills can be learned support Classical Civilisation scholars and alumni happily maintain the from their succinct, entertaining, original qualifications, campaign for their exclusive private-school/Oxbridge formulations and applications in the introduction in every school and monopoly on the Greeks. Almost all the dazzling works of the Greeks. recognise their excellence as intellectual energy currently expended by some The situation is aggravated by the preparation for adult life and university. Classics-friendly charities on supporting a role that training in the ancient languages, Specifically, Classical Civilisation needs to classical presence in the state system is as opposed to ancient ideas, plays in be recognised in the English directed towards Latin. Of course I have dividing social and economic classes. The Baccalaureate and given the same no objection to Latin teaching, but dreadful rich/poor schism in the British governmental support as Latin. (2) We focussing on it exclusively entails three nation is now clearly defined, in terms of need to expand the currently tiny number dangers. First, plenty of meritorious the curriculum, by access to Greek and of teachers trained to teach Classical young people with a great deal to offer Latin grammar. In 2013 (the last year for Civilisation via Classics-dedicated PGCE society don’t particularly enjoy grammar which figures are available), 3,580 courses, and also, crucially, encourage and are put off the ancient world forever state-sector candidates took ‘A’ Levels in qualified teachers of other subjects in by being offered a diet over-heavy on Classical Civilisation or Ancient History. schools—English, History, Modern language when they might be thrilled by Greek ‘A’ Level was taken by 260 Languages, Religious Studies—to add other aspects of antiquity. Second, candidates, 223 of whom were at the Classical Civilisation to their repertoire. omitting the broader, more conceptually independent schools which only seven Take Christ the King Sixth-Form College stretching study of the ancient world, and per cent of our children attend; Latin was in South London. A committed especially of Greek thought, implicitly taken by 1305, a depressing 940 of whom Philosophy teacher there, Eddie Barnett, suggests that Latin has a prior claim on were at independent schools. High grades was inspired by the enthusiastic response our citizens’ attentions. Third, focussing in the ancient languages – easily enough elicited by the (small) Plato element on on training in Latin grammar encourages won by solicitous coaching – provide the ‘A’-Level Philosophy syllabus. After classical Luddites (who would rather near-guaranteed access to our most elite school talks on the Greeks from myself destroy the modern study of the ancient universities. For those without Greek and and other members of the Classics world than see any overhaul of Latin ‘A’ Levels there are indeed Oxbridge Department at King’s College London, he pedagogical tradition) publicly to disparage opportunities: a four-year Classics course has recently secured an agreement that Classical Civilisation’s in-depth study of at Cambridge and at Oxford the fast-track Classical Civilisation will be rolled out at ancient society. ‘Course II’ as well as two smaller courses all three campuses of that excellent One prominent Oxford-trained (Ancient and Modern History, Ancient institution. (3) Classical Civilisation journalist, Harry Mount, recently History and Archaeology) focussing on qualifications are embraced at most described Classical Civilisation history and material culture rather than universities already, and this is the first qualifications in the Telegraph as literature and philosophy. The chances of year in which it has been possible for ‘intellectual baby food’ with which admission for these are in line with other Open University students to graduate students are ‘spoon-fed’, and as ‘Classics courses such as English and History. But with single honours in Classical Studies, Lite’.2 This was to insult the entire it is easier to get into Oxbridge to read the even if they have had no contact with the community of state-sector classicists and long-established Classics courses, Greeks and Romans previously. But anyone who ever reads an ancient author requiring an ancient language ‘A’ Level, Oxford and Cambridge, with their fame in translation. He and his associates have than any other subject: between 2012 and and brand, now need to lead by example forgotten Gilbert Murray’s injunction 2014, for the traditional Classics ‘Course and offer challenging Classics courses that it is the Greeks, not Greek, who are I’ at Oxford, 51 students were accepted which do not fetishise grammar and the true object of the humanist from the state sector and 233 from the consequently repel state-sector students curriculum. They have forgotten Milton,

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90,Citizens’ on 29 Sep Classics 2021 at for 17:48:07 the 21st, subject Century to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at 3 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631015000124 who wrote in his treatise Of Education Oxford). They ‘gleamed like the topaz’ in many individuals, brave, stubborn, naïve, that language study ‘is but the instrument the distance. The lustrous topaz shares its or all three—who, in the face of every convaying to us things usefull to be known’ If a golden colour with the stone used to build kind of obstruction did succeed in linguist ‘have not studied the solid things in Oxbridge colleges, but is one of the ‘entering Minerva’s temple’, as the them as well as the words and lexicons, he were hardest minerals in nature. Jude’s fragile working-class imagination often framed nothing so much to be esteem’d a learned man, as psyche and health inevitably collapse the project of autodidacticism. This is any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his when he discovers just how unbreakable the subject of my current research mother dialect only…’ Thomas Jefferson are the social barriers that exclude him project Classics and Class (http://www. said exactly the opposite to Harry Mount: from elite culture and perpetuate his class classicsandclass.info/), for which I have he proposed that impressionable minds position. Fawley may have been fictional, gratefully received funding from the of the ablest younger children, including but Hardy was writing from personal British taxpayer via the Arts & the poor ones he wanted to be funded by experience. As the son of a stonemason Humanities Research Council. The most the state, could be kept safely occupied himself, and apprenticed to an architect’s prodigious of British autodidacts was with rote learning of the minutiae of firm, he had been denied a public school Joseph Wright, a Victorian workhouse ancient languages, until they acquired and university education; like Jude Fawley, boy who became Professor of sufficient intellectual robustness in he had struggled to learn enough Greek Comparative Philology at Oxford. mid-adolescence to cope with truly to read the Iliad as a teenager. Unlike Jude, Illiterate at the age of 15, he discovered rigorous education in argumentation. Hardy rose through the social ranks to his aptitude for languages at a Wesleyan That is, he saw language learning as the become a prosperous member of the night school, funded a PhD in Greek at intellectual baby food. literary establishment. But he never Heidelberg by teaching incessantly, and, The instrumentality of ancient resolved his internal conflict between before appointment to his Chair, lectured languages in social exclusion has an admiration for Greek and Latin authors for the Association for the Higher inglorious history which we surely do not and resentment of the supercilious Education of Women. The Reverend want to perpetuate. In 1748, the Earl of attitude adopted by some members of the John Relly Beard was a crucial force Chesterfield wrote to his son: ‘Classical upper classes who had been formally behind the movement for popular knowledge, that is, Greek and Latin, is trained in them. education in Lancashire and never absolutely necessary for everybody…the word Hardy might have found inner peace wavered in his zeal for universal illiterate, in its common acceptance, means a man had he been fully aware of the splendid educational to the highest level. He wrote who is ignorant of these two languages.’ history of the reading of ancient authors accessible works on classical and biblical Classical knowledge is here limited to by Britons far beyond the privileged elite, subjects, the sections on Latin, Greek and linguistic knowledge, education to men, a history which has been wilfully English Literature for Cassell’s Popular and literacy to reading competence in obscured by those rich enough to be able Educator, Latin Made Easy (1848) Greek and Latin. Greek was also handy to afford for their children the and Cassell’s Lessons in Greek…Intended when white people wanted to deride the opportunity to learn ancient languages. Especially for those who are Desirous of intellectual abilities of black ones. In Pope’s early 18th-century translations of Learning Greek without the Assistance of a 1833-4, American pro-slavery thinkers Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey brought Homer Master. In this teach-yourself manual he is were on the defensive. The Senator for to a far larger audience, including women, explicit about the readership he assumes: South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, than ever had access to an elite education. ‘The wants of such, the want of what declared at a Washington dinner party that Take Esther Easton, a Jedburgh may roughly be termed the uneducated, will only when he could ‘find a Negro who gardener’s wife, visited by the poet be carefully borne in mind by me, while I knew the Greek syntax’ could he be Robert Burns in 1787. He recorded that prepare these lessons… My purpose is to brought to ‘believe that the Negro was a she can repeat by heart almost everything simplify the study of Greek so as to human being and should be treated as a she has ever read, particularly Pope’s throw open to all who are earnest the man’. This snipe motivated a free black ‘Homer’ from end to end’ and ‘is a great work of self-culture’. errand boy, Alexander Crummell, to head woman of very extraordinary abilities’. Organised working-class libraries for Cambridge University in England. Pope’s Homer also captured the reveal a fascinating alternative canon of There he indeed learned Greek as part of childhood imagination of Hugh Miller, books relating to the ancient world, his studies, financed by Abolitionist another Scot, a stonemason and a from the first workers’ libraries in campaigners, in Theology at Queens’ distinguished autodidact, who grew up to Europe established in the 1750s at College (1851-3). become a world-famous geologist. He Leadhills and Wanlockhead in Dumfries The best-known example is the hero saw the Iliad as incomparable, and wrote and Galloway to the foundation of the of Thomas Hardy’s tragic novel Jude the in My Schools and Schoolmasters (1854) that Workers’ Educational Association. By Obscure. Jude Fawley, a poor stonemason he had learned early ‘that no other writer the end of the 19th century, these living in a Victorian village, is desperate to could cast a javelin with half the force of libraries’ holdings were often influenced study Latin and Greek at university. He Homer. The missiles went whizzing by ‘Lubbock’s List’, the one hundred propels himself into the torment that athwart his pages; and I could see the books in 1887 deemed ‘best worth results from harbouring such unrealistic momentary gleam of the steel, ere it reading’ by John Lubbock, Principal of aspirations at the moment when he gazes buried itself deep in brass and bull-hide.’ the Working-Men’s College in London on the spires and domes of the University For there is an alternative history of from 1883 to 1899. Lubbock, who of Christminster (a fictional substitute for classical scholarship – the history of became the first Baron Avebury, was

Downloaded4 from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, onCitizens’ 29 Sep 2021 Classics at 17:48:07 for the, subject21st Century to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631015000124 himself from a privileged banking attributed to Lubbock’s ideal would Latin, Classical Civilisation, family, and educated at Eton. Although curriculum. Ancient History, Philosophy, Anglo- he did not attend university, he was a The 109 libraries of the South Wales Saxon, Basque, Coptic, Syriac and polymath, specialising in archaeology Coalfields are a wonder of labour history, Hittite, for that matter. But Classical and biological sciences. The proportion and the books really were taken out. At Civilisation qualifications are the of classical authors in his list is Ebbw Vale, each reader borrowed an admirable, economically viable and remarkable: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, average of 52 volumes a year. The attainable solution which has evolved Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics, Augustine’s ‘Condensed Accessions Book’ of Bargoed organically in our state sector. Classicists Confessions, Plato’s Apology, Crito and Colliery Library details its holdings by who do not actively promote them will Phaedo, Xenophon’s Memorabilia and 1921-2. Texts in Latin and Greek don’t justifiably be perceived as elitist Anabasis, Demosthenes’ de Corona, feature: until 1918 almost all miners had dinosaurs. Cicero’s De Officiis, De Amicitia, and De left school on their 13th birthday. But the Senectute, Plutarch’s Lives, Homer, ‘alternative classical curriculum’ of the Edith Hall is Professor of Classics Hesiod, Virgil, Aeschylus’ Prometheus and miner was wide-ranging. He read at King’s College London. Oresteia, Sophocles’ Oedipus, Euripides’ translations and biographies such as J.B. [email protected] Medea, Aristophanes’ Knights and Clouds, Forbes’ Socrates (1905). He learned about Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus’ the Greeks from H.B. Cotterill’s Ancient This article originated as the Gaisford Germania, and Livy. In addition, two Greece (1913), the Egyptians from Lecture, based on research she had famous works on ancient history – Rawlinson’s Herodotean History of Ancient conducted with Dr Henry Stead for the Gibbon’s Decline and Fall and Grote’s Egypt (1880), and mythology from several project http://www.classicsandclass.info/. History of Greece – make it onto the list, books by Andrew Lang. It was later reprinted in The Guardian along with the most popular novel set in The inspiring past of people’s Greek newspaper. antiquity, Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii. can help us to look forward. It is More than a quarter of all the books are theoretically in our power as British classical authors, and more than a third citizens to create the curriculum we 1I outline these questions in my latest book, Introducing addressed to classical antiquity. The want. In my personal utopia, the ancient the Ancient Greeks (Bodley Head, 2015). classical riches on the working-class Greek language would be universally self-educator’s library and private available free of charge to everyone who 2‘The Greek Tragedy in our classrooms’, The Telegraph bookshelves after 1887 can partly be wants to learn it, at whatever age, as March 20th 2015.