A Word for It

Almost every elementary course in the College begins with a lecture on how basic classical learning is to the subject in question: science, mathematics, philosophy, history, government, drama, and the like. And after paying this token tribute or explaining that the Greeks lived in city-states or that Greek culture was molded by the geography of Greece, the course moves on to something else.

The ancient language requirement was dropped after the war, the last vestige of it disappeared when the English Department abolished its requirement of an elementary knowledge of a classical language last year. And so there is no real provision for any acquaintance with these "founding documents" outside the Classics Department.

It is always fashionable to say that Greek and Roman literature "suffer in translation," but surely the nuances of meaning if not the beauties of the language itself are sufficiently captured in a good translation supplemented by explication for all but the concentrator in the field. Yet Harvard lacks a comprehensive course in the classics in translation. A number of courses offer a taste of the classics but none offers an integrated picture of classical culture and civilization.

Classical studies have long been pictured as a narrow field dominated by bearded Germans who write learned and dry monographs. Although graduate studies in the field deal with minutiae more intensely than is to some people's taste, there is no reason for the classics to be so solely the possession of specialists. Other courses are not ashamed to assign Tolstoy and Dostoievsky in translation.

Rather than being narrow, classical civilization extended for fifteen hundred years, included two basic literary tongues and the basic thought of almost every every sphere of human knowledge, and has left a profound imprint on all succeeding cultures. Both modern democracy and Marxist communism have their theoretical origins in classical thought.

Therefore it would seem that an elementary Humanities course in classical studies which would read the source materials in translation would fill a long and deep felt need. And it would have as much breadth--and perhaps more depth--than any course now offered in the General Education Program. At present, the extremely limited readings offered in Greek and Latin authors in the Gen Ed courses are among the most popular selections.

This is not to deprecate the value of the classical languages as disciplines or their value for intensive analysis of the texts. It would be hoped that the lecturers and section men in such a course would have such a knowledge of the languages. A fairly inconclusive course of this type, rather than distorting the texts, would tend to quash some of the rabid and facile generalities beginning "The Greeks thought..." with which many Gen Ed courses abound.

Since the teaching of the classics has declined almost to the vanishing point in college preparation, the University is responsible for purveying this knowledge. Indeed it would seem by neglecting the language, such a course could offer a perspective obtainable at present only from years of study in the original.