OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE STUDENT OF CLASSICS

It is natural and proper that a young man of the twentieth century, in mapping out his college course, should turn towards subjects that offer new outlooks and new possibilities of investigation, not realized by preceding generations. The apparent remoteness of Greek and Roman civilization and the long accumulation of important criticism upon ancient art and literature have obscured the indubitable fact that the Classics present such opportunities in the same degree as Economics or Science.

The revolutionary temper of the day suggests the first opportunity. In the prevalent spirit of scorn for old prejudices and of aspiration toward unadulterated truth, the student can do what no earlier epoch of classical criticism has generally and consciously essayed: he can apply himself to the privilege of discrimination and seek to arrive at an ultimate valuation of the different works of ancient literature. The moment has at last come when we may disembarass the Classics of the glamour that the humanistic enthusiasm of the Renaissance cast over all things ancient, good or bad, and when we may hope to view the past in proper perspective. Some monuments of Greek and Roman literature we shall have to depreciate, but others, in compensation, we shall esteem more highly, because more intelligently, than ever before. The discovery in Egypt, for instance, of large fragments of Menander has detracted from the glory that had attached to his name, but it has correspondingly increased the appreciation of Plautus and Terence, who had hitherto been considered less talented imitators. Gilbert Murray's translations and extravagant eulogies of Euripides have provoked such a legion of protestants that from the polemics of both factions we may expect finally to attain a just conception of the Greek poet's actual worth.

Whatever else one may think of Gilbert Murray's scholarship, he has, at least, taken advantage of a second modern opportunity, in that he has embodied, perhaps better than any other, the meaning of Hellenic culture for his own time. The mediaeval period, the Renaissance, the seventeenth century, each understood antiquity differently and found in it a different kind of inspiration. It remains for us to interpret the Classics to our contemporaries in contemporary terms, to demonstrate their perennial vitality by showing their relation to modern problems and fashions. We may not be willing, like the English scholar, to reduce the Greek religion to a set of anthropological phenomena, but we may seek to illuminate such modern governmental tendencies as socialism by the light of Plato's Republic and the Spartan system.

Another opportunity is placed in our hands by the recent finds of papyri in Egypt and by the wonderful achievements of archaeological research. The recovery of certain works of Sappho, Sophocles, and Menander enables us to sketch more clearly periods and figures of literature that were somewhat obscure to our ancestors. Who knows what may yet await the student, perchance at Herculaneum, if he is far-sighted enough to prepare himself for future prospects by labor with the Classics that we have? The great archaeological conquests of the last fifty years, when used with caution, permit us to re-create more vividly than our forerunners the environment in which the masterpieces of letters were produced and assist us in the solution of certain distraught questions in the history of literature. Both the investigation of the papyri and the application of archaeology to literature have the same fascination and call into play the same faculties of the pioneer as experimentation in a new problem of biological or medical science. The study of the interdependence of art and literature may well lead to the attempt at a synthesis of all branches of culture in a given period, a subject which, like Comparative Literature, may some day become the province of a definite department in our universities, and which has always been the ideal of the doctor's degree in Classical Philology at Harvard.

The old benefits to be derived from the Classics acquire a new importance in the face of present conditions. Never was there a time when English style needed so sorely the influence of the carefully wrought sentences of Athens and Rome. Never was there a time when young men needed so sorely a training in that mental concentration and in those orderly ways of thought which are bred by the reading of highly inflected languages. But it is paradoxical to champion the Classics on the ground of their practical advantages. Their chief value cannot be measured by materialistic standards. Since they form the corner stone of the humanities, they fulfill their highest function in affording their, devotes the noble opportunity of repudiating the utilitarian theory of education