"Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are “individualized, unfocused and scattered.” On campus, he said, “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” Rare are “faculty with atypical views,” he charged. “Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” He counseled schools to adopt “a common core of studies” in the history, literature and philosophy “of our culture.” By “our” he means Western."

—

From the Wall Street Journal’s “Weekend Interview” with Donald Kagan of the Department of Classics at Yale University on the occasion of his “farewell lecture”.

Fortunately, there are a number of universities still engaged in the project of educating their students in the ideas, texts, and virtues of Western civilization. Not only do we have a robust core curriculum at Ave Maria University, but most of our students fulfill the language study requirement by taking Latin. A very considerable number – especially in light of the fact that we are a Catholic, not a protestant university – do Greek as well. There are even an elite few who do ancient Hebrew with Dr. Gregory Vall of the Theology Department. This means that, besides the intellectual discipline imparted by the successful study of such languages, our students encounter some of the great minds of Western civilization in their own, original words.

As Kagan says, the protection of liberty requires citizens educated in the classical ideas which enabled liberty to flourish in this country. May God continue to help us in forming such citizens for the future!

"‘In order to be educated,’ said Mr. Pekkanen, 78, who is proficient in not only Latin but also ancient Greek and Sanskrit, ‘it was once said that a real humanist must write poetry in Latin and Greek.’"

—

Latin Makes an Appearance on Finnish Radio. News at VI.

Which is one reason, among many, why Classics students at Ave Maria University are studying Latin verse composition this semester. The meter we are working on this week and last is the Alcaic, Horace’s favorite lyric meter. The students’ poem translation projects have also been moving forward. I asked them to select an English poem of their choice and to prepare a translation of it over the course of the semester, starting with the compilation of a miniature thesaurus for its words & expressions, proceeding to a draft in Latin prose, and next week to a draft in meter; most of them have chosen to use dactylic hexameter. Their topics range from Wordsworth to the west wind to baseball. I even heard tell that a couple weeks ago one student composed a Sapphic stanza for his fiancée on the occasion of their engagement. This is a practical application indeed!

Latin and Greek: a wealth of words

In a recent article in the City Journal, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. discusses the evidence for the claim that “there’s a positive correlation between a student’s vocabulary size in grade 12, the likelihood that she will graduate from college, and her future level of income.” He goes on to sketch a plan of action for improving outcomes for children of all economic backgrounds in the light of this evidence.

I read Hirsch’s article with great interest, but was impressed by his lack of discussion of training in foreign or even “dead” languages as a tool for vocabulary acquisition. I think that I can speak for my colleagues in Classics when I say that drawing connections between Latin and Greek words and their English cognates is a constant in the language classrooms at Ave Maria. (“cognate” is a great example of an English word susceptible to this sort of analysis!) Indeed, while I know that many students will leave off after only the one year of Latin mandated by the core curriculum, I hope that even these students will have acquired some facility in analyzing English words, discovering their meaning through a recognition of their Latin roots.

At any rate, Hirsch’s article is another reminder (to my mind) of the value of the study of Greek and Latin, especially for children. But if the undergraduate years bring your first encounter with Latin and Greek, don’t despair; these numbers would seem to indicate that prospective Classics graduate students are reaping dividends on the vocabulary section of the GRE, and I know that many of us Classicists saw Latin and Greek for the first time as college freshmen!

Classics student and aspiring pro baseball player, Gabriel Loweree →

Gabriel Loweree, Classics major, and currently enrolled in Latin Verse Composition, is featured in the El Paso Times. Everything said of Gabe’s character in the article is spot on: he is a gentleman and a scholar!

Vatican Manuscripts Online →

Roger Pearse shares some direct links to a few of the precious manuscripts that the Vatican Library has begun to digitize for sharing online.

"The classical books are in general the books which have possessed for mankind such vitality of interest that they are still read and enjoyed at a time when all the other books written within ten centuries of them have long since been dead. There must be something peculiar about a book of which the world feels after two thousand years that it has not yet had enough. One would like to know what it is that produces this permanent and not transient quality of interest. And it is partly for that that we study the Classics."

— Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic (1924). (With thanks to the ever wonderful Laudator Temporis Acti!)

"[W]hen one contemplates all this from the point of view of Art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme office of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without the shedding of blood, the mystical presentation by means of dialogue and costume and gesture even of the Passion of her Lord, and it is always a source of pleasure and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the Greek Chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor answering the priest at Mass."

— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1896-7)

(Source: lmschairman.org)

Mr. Anthony Thomas, Class of 2012, was so good as to write to us with some thoughts about his time studying Classics at AMU. Tony majored in both Classics and Literature during his time at Ave Maria University.

Studying Classics has opened for me a doorway not only to the classical world but also to my Catholic faith.

The abundance and variety of classical texts was opened for me by studying the Classics at Ave: poetry, epic, comedy, philosophy, and theology. With Dr. Yarbrough, I explored the basics of Latin grammar and vocabulary. My understanding of Latin was deepened in the second year, especially by studying the poetry of Catullus, Horace, and Virgil.

Junior year, I began my study of Greek with Dr. Ritter. That year, I was also able to revisit more fully and in depth the Aeneid at the same time as I explored the wisdom of the Church Fathers and their successors with Dr. Nodes. Aside from being moved by their deep spirituality, I also learned a great deal from their careful philological attention to the details of Sacred Scripture.

The following semester, I had the joy and challenge of learning to write Latin prose. It’s not until you have to write your own sentences in Latin that you really appreciate its idiom and the beautiful flexibility of an inflected language. Senior year introduced me to classical comedy’s ability to reach people even in the present with its appeal to what is truly human. That year also brought with it a glimpse of the depth of Greek philosophy, with the skill of Plato in depicting the gradual development of understanding in dialogue and that of Aristotle in using particles and other stylistic elements to write with great organization and subtlety of meaning.

Now, I in turn am teaching Latin to high school students. It is now my turn to bring the fascination with the classics that I received from my teachers to my students.

Thank you, Tony! And we wish you all the best as you apply for graduate school and in your career beyond!

Kevin Nolan’s Senior Exam & Cicero’s De Finibus

On Monday, December 10, Kevin Nolan successfully passed his senior examination. For the exam, he shared with the Classics faculty and many of his fellow students a very fine paper about Cicero’s attack on the Epicurean account of pleasure as the summum bonum. It was the unanimous feeling of those present that Kevin’s paper well captured the department’s aspirations for our undergraduate scholars: on display were Kevin’s knowledge of Greek and Latin, his engagement with the secondary literature, and his careful, clear prose used to express an incisive analysis of the original text and its ideas.

Kevin continues to revise his paper in anticipation of using it as his writing sample for graduate school applications, so I won’t spoil the fun by posting it here. I will, however, share some of my remarks from that day, which were offered as an introduction to Kevin’s paper, but which also serve as a reflection on some the themes canvassed in LATN 415: Cicero’s De Finibus, which was the upper level Latin reading course this fall semester 2012.

Three years ago when I first taught a Latin philosophical texts course, I chose a book which I thought would appeal to the Ave undergraduate mind: Seneca’s Epistulae Morales. This rich text, so close in many places to the Christian tradition, can be used nearly as lectio divina, besides being filled countless bon mots and t-shirt worthy quotations. Yet the course drew a grand total of one student!

On the other hand, for a course dedicated to the reading of Cicero’s De Finibus, I was delighted to have six of the best students in the university. Now the title of this philosophical work, De Finibus, has all of the excitement of – just to take something at random – David Lewis’ 1991 book Parts of Classes. Yet when you press a little further and ask what these “ends” (fines) are, it turns out that the ends are ethical ends (i.e., “what is the supreme good?” or “what is the greatest evil?”), and that Cicero wants to tell us about the chief ethical systems of his day.

The De Finibus has five books: the first two are dedicated to Epicurean ethics, the second two are dedicated to Stoic ethics, and the fifth book gives us something of an oddity (from our perspective): the ethical views of Antiochus of Ascalon, a syncretist if there ever was one, who saw a fundamental harmony between the ethics of Plato, Aristotle, and even the Stoics. The first four books have a similar structure: Cicero has chosen a worthy Roman of his day to speak on behalf of each school, and then in Books II and IV, Cicero (or the character called “Cicero”) offers a rebuttal.

In Book III, it is Cato the Younger who expounds Stoic ethics. As you perhaps know, Cato went on to become, at least by Seneca’s day, something of a Stoic saint. In Book I, it is Lucius Manlius Torquatus who defends Epicurean ethics; Torquatus is the scion of distinguished house of Roman statesmen, which had included Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus, who lived during the fourth century B.C. and whose exploits included taking a necklace (torquis) from a Gaul whom he had killed in single combat and, on another occasion, having his own son executed for disobedience after a successful but unauthorized attack upon the enemy – both decidedly unepicurean (with a little ‘e’) feats!

But are they Epicurean (with a big ‘E’)? The character Torquatus thinks that we can make sense of them within the Epicurean ethical system; the character Cicero, however, is inclined to think that such a philosophy disgraces the Roman name. Cicero doesn’t do much to veil his contempt for Epicurean ethics or, for that matter, for any part of Epicurus’ philosophical system. But in addition to various ad hominem sallies, Cicero uses Book II to offer his readers substantive reasons for thinking that Epicurus’ ethical system is, at bottom, deeply confused. It is this attack on Epicurean ethics which Kevin explored for us in his paper.

Next semester will see Kevin and many of his classmates take up the challenge of Latin verse composition, but after this great semester with the De Finibus, I am already looking forward to the next opportunity to take up in the classroom one Cicero’s philosophical texts.

“Hederick’s Lexicon”

This post at Laudator Temporis Acti, a quotation from Sydney Smith writing in the mid-19th century about the tedium of looking up words in a dictionary, reminded me how fortunate we are to have a wealth of (free) electronic Classics resources. These electronic aids by no means replace the need to reflect critically on what the dictionaries are telling us and, indeed, we must beware of the temptation to rely on too simple definitions found in places like Whitaker’s Words. Still, the days of flipping the pages of a massive tome to find a tiny word are, for better or worse, now behind us.

Gilleland’s post also put me on the hunt for the book mentioned by Smith: “Hederick’s Lexicon”. I myself nearly gave up in the search, but Sarah DeVille at Canizaro Library succeeded in tracking it down. (Gilleland’s original draft of the post did not contain a link to the lexicon, which he helpfully added after I sent to him what Sarah had found.)

It is an intriguing book: a dictionary for beginners in Greek in which all the definitions are given in Latin. While the method may seem to belong to a more learned age, with some success, I believe, both Dr. Dinan and I have encouraged our students in the first year Greek course to think in terms of Latin definitions for new Greek words, especially when an overly simple English definition gives an ambiguous meaning.

I include here an image of the page on which βάλλω can be found in Benjamin Hederich’s (1675-1748) Graecum Lexicon Manuale:

Here is the WorldCat entry. If anyone is able to donate a copy to our library, we would be glad to have it!

Latin: very much alive at Ave Maria University! →

Monica Bushling, one of the excellent students whom Dr Bradley Ritter and I had the privilege of teaching this semester in LATN 415.02 Sermo Latinus Hodiernus (you can see the syllabus here), was so kind as to write up an article about the course, the fun we have in it, and the aims behind it.

This video shows Dr. Christophe Rico teaching the third lesson in his Polis ancient Greek course. As he did last summer, we are very pleased that Dr. Rico will again teach at Ave Maria University this summer. Please go here for more information! (Other sample lessons by Dr. Rico are available at YouTube here.) Dr. Rico’s Greek and Dr. Ritter’s Latin courses are opportunities unique in the United States for complete beginners to learn these ancient languages via the communicative approach.

The Department of Classics & Early Christian Literature is very pleased to share that the information for the summer study of Latin and Greek in the Polis Method at Ave Maria University has now been posted. As there was last summer, so also this summer there will be two courses, both designed for complete beginners in the ancient languages. The Latin course will be led by Dr. Bradley Ritter and the Koine Greek course by Dr. Christophe Rico. Both of these courses are based on an active reception and use of the language; each course is taught almost completely in Greek or Latin from the first day, just as modern languages would be. See here for more information.

“Cuius sub ferula educatus?”

Scheck? Dinan? Ritter? Yarbrough?

In the Register of those who pass the entrance examination of Trinity College, Dublin, each one has his place of schooling entered under the heading “Cujus sub ferula educatus,” freely translated this means, “Where were you at school?”

Being “at school”, of course, involving first and foremost the study of Latin and Greek. What boys once did:

The system then in vogue was to put boys in classes according to their ages. I being nearly 13, but woefully backward for that age, was duly installed in the age class, the boys of which were reading Lucian and Caesar … .

Not that the system didn’t have its faults!

Motu Proprio: “Latina Lingua”

(The statutes, which follow this letter, can be found here.)

Notice that Benedict says that he founds this new Academy, calcantes semitas Decessorum Nostrorum. Paul VI had founded Latinitas, the predecessor of this new Academy, on June 30, 1976 with the papal letter Romani Sermonis; the document here has a parallel title, Latina Lingua. Too bad the genitive wasn’t preserved as well!