Entered as second-class matter November 18, 1907, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 1, 1879 VOL. X NEW YORK, MARCH 5, 1917 WAYS OF HELPING THE CLASSICAL CAUSE Editorial In THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.105-105 reference was made to the work done, in behalf of Latin, by the Publicity Committee of The Wisconsin Latin Teachers' Association. One part of this propaganda might have received more attention the series of articles on Latin, published in the Normal School Bulletin, a periodical issued at Madison, Wisconsin, by the Board of Regents of Normal Schools of Wisconsin. The number of this Bulletin for February, 1915, contained the following articles: Latin and Citizenship, Dr. Grant Showerman, University of Wisconsin (116-117); Latin and the Use of English, Lucia Spooner, Teacher of Latin in the Superior Normal School (117-119); The Value of Latin for the Student of Science, Frances E. Sabin, Teacher of Latin in the High School of the University of Wisconsin (119-122); Latin and Practical Life, A. A. Trever, Lawrence College, Appleton, Wis. (122-125); The Value of Latin in the Professio 1s, Mary D. Taintor, Teacher of Latin in the Milwaukee Normal School (125127); Latin in the Appreciation of Art, Maud Latta, Teacher of Latin in the River Falls High School (127128); Latin as an Administrative Problem in the Small High School, J. M. Brigham, of the La Crosse Normal School (128-129). The names and the titles of the authors appear twice in the Bulletin as they are given above on the page labelled Contents and at the head of the articles themselves. No one can help noticing that the articles were written in support of Latin by persons who are concerned with Latin as a vocation, who deal with it professionally. All this reminds me of a passage in a letter received lately from Professor H. C. Nutting, of the University of California: is domi The School situation in the State of nated by three men, all of them ex-teachers of the Classics, all of them bitterly hostile to Latin in the Schools. One of them, the State Superintendent of Education, ranges up and down the State promulgating his doctrines, and the other two, who are professors in the School of Education, second his efforts manfully. A student who takes Latin at the University is told by his fellow students that 'he is wasting his time on trash, for all the experts say that there is nothing in the study of the Classics'. In the University, of course, hardly any one will take the risk of preparing to teach Latin in the Schools, the prospect is so doubtful. This is certainly a serious situation. It adds a sense of insult to injury that such men as Professor Nutting No. 18 has in mind are able to conduct their propaganda against the Classics with the aid of public money; one feels sure that the Superintendent of Education in question is not traveling at his own expense. Is there any remedy? Here I quote again from Professor Nutting's letter: The only expedient I can think of as at all likely to be effective is to comb the country over to see what School administrative officers, psychologists and educationalists have enough interest in our cause to make them willing to help us. I am sure that there are such persons, though they are not in the majority and though they do not talk loudest. An inquiry set on foot among classical men teaching in the large Colleges and Universities would doubtless put us on the track of the men available; for the teacher of Latin or Greek generally knows how the land lies in his own immediate vicinity. If these people could be brought into alliance with us and into touch with one another, we should have some one to speak for us. When, in defense of our own house, we speak for ourselves, what we say is discounted. But if educational theorist takes issue with educational theorist, the situation is entirely different. We should profit in two ways: first, in having it shown that there are two sides to the question; secondly, in having the fight transferred to the field where it properly belongs. Here is a quotation from a later letter from Professor Nutting: Some time ago a group of legal students were talking on the Campus here, and some one spoke of the value of Latin and the recommendation of the subject by a member of the legal faculty. At which another said, "Oh, I guess that recommendation was written in response to a request from the Latin Department". There is, on the very surface of things, one difficulty in carrying out Professor Nutting's plan to its fullestin the amount of work it will entail in the way of correspondence, the expense for printing, postage, etc. To do this and other work that can be done that ought to be done for the Classics, most efficiently, we need a central office, as a clearing house, in charge of some one of high gifts as an organizer, with a force of clerks to do, under the organizer's direction and careful supervision, the manual labor of preparing lists of persons to whom inquiries might be sent, of issuing circulars to such persons, tabulating and filing the information, etc. But, in the meantime there is no need for us all to sit by idly, doing nothing. I shall be glad so will Professor Nutting-to receive from any one information along the lines suggested by Professor Nutting, and we shall do all that is possible to use that information effectively for the good of the Classical cause. Cooperation in this, as in all other matters relating to the support of the Classics, should be our watchword. If the teachers and lovers of the Classics throughout the country respond, as they should, to this invitation, it ought to be possible to get together a considerable body of valuable material, coming from persons not interested professionally in the Classics, to supplement the material put forth in the University of Colorado pamphlet on The Value of Latin and Greek (see THE CLASSICAL Weekly 8.113-115, 121-122), the University of Mississippi pamphlet (10.105), the University of South Dakota pamphlet (10.105-106, 113-114), and other pamphlets to be mentioned in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY, or such pamphlets as The Practical Value of Latin, issued by The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, and consisting chiefly of utterances in support of the Classics by lawyers, physicians, journalists, scientists, educators (not classical instructors). One other reflection is suggested by the number of the Normal School Bulletin referred to at the beginning of this article, as well as by a consideration of the other material issued by the Publicity Committee of the The Wisconsin Latin Teachers' Association. It is that the Committee and the writers in the Bulletin have been wise in suggesting that a wide variety of values attaches to the study of Latin. This reminds me of a very suggestive paper published by Professor Nutting in School and Society 4.858-859 (December 2, 1916), under the title The Cumulative Argument for the Study of Latin. We have space for just a couple of quotations from the paper. It is the felicitous combination of eight or ten different values in the study of a single language that assures to Latin its unique place, alongside of mathematics, in the curriculum of the secondary school. That some one of these values, taken by itself, is not a sufficient warrant for the choice of Latin as a language study makes little or nothing against the case for Latin. The second danger in the line of argumentation pursued by Professor Keller and others is that, in order to bring out into sharp relief the one value on which they would stake the case, there is a constant temptation to disparage all the other arguments for the study of Latin. It is entirely natural that one observer should be inclined to stress one benefit to be derived from the study of Latin while a second benefit will seem to another observer to be all important. But this circumstance must not be allowed to blind any to the fact that the case for Latin rests upon its many values, not upon one alone. The study of Latin combines advantages not matched by the study of any other foreign language; and there would be nothing to fill its place, if it were to be dropped from the school curriculum. This editorial may be brought to a close with a reference to another activity of the Publicity Committee of the Wisconsin Latin Teachers' Association. This is a leaflet, of one sheet, printed on both sides (12 inches by 8), entitled Latin Notes, published monthly, in the second week of the month, at the "Latin Laboratory maintained in connection with the course for the training of Latin teachers at the University of Wisconsin". All communications concerning Latin Notes should be addressed to Miss Frances Sabin, 419 Sterling Place, Madison, Wisconsin. Four numbers have appeared. The contents of these have been as follows: (1) What the Latin Cause in Wisconsin has a Right to Expect; Practical Suggestions for the Young Teacher; Information which the Latin Teacher may Find Useful (Books, Slides, Scrapbooks); Professional Items; For the Teacher's Bulletin Board; Can you Guess these Puns? The Answer is the Latin of the Word in Black Type. (2) The Latin Publicity Committee; Practical Suggestions for the Young Teacher; Information which the Latin Teacher May Find Useful; A Plan for Broadening the Scope of the Correspondence Work Connected with Latin Notes; Items of Professional Interest; a Caesar Device. (3) Memorizing Latin; Latin Laboratory Material; Items of Professional Interest; Publicity Committee Notes; Teachers' Bulletin Board; Useful Information (Books); Correspondence. (4) The Latin Teacher's Handicaps and Some Suggestions for Meeting Them; Items of Professional Interest: A Caution (about pronunciation of Latin Proper Names); Publicity Committee Notice; Laboratory Material; A Suggestion (about a "Derivation Card"); Note (how a German learne 1 English through the Latin words in English). С. к. MORE MODERN VERSIONS OF THE In his collection of modern versions of the Harmodius and Aristogeiton Hymn (THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.8286), as Professor Lane Cooper has pointed out (THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.109-110), Dr. Mierow did not include the translation by Wordsworth. In neither article has mention been made of the rendering by Thomas Moore, that remarkable Irish poet (17791852), the author of Lalla Rookh, who possessed a considerable amount of classical scholarship, and who wrote a Greek ode himself as an introduction to his translation of the Odes of Anacreon. He knew Pindar and Sappho and many other Greek and Latin authors. He translated several of the songs and epigrams of the Greek Anthology, especially of Meleager, Paul the Silentiary, Philodemus, Simonides, and Antipater Sidonius. He translated some of Horace and imitated Catullus, Martial, and Tibullus. The Evenings in Greece, Alciphron, Aspasia, The Grecian Girl's Dream of the Blessed Islands, and many others of his poems have classical themes, or contain classical allusions. Thomas Moore is known to the classical student especially for his translation of the Odes of Anacreon and of those graceful trifles called Anacreontics, which he annotated with notes showing wide classical learning and reading. He was evidently much interested in the Anthologia Lyrica, and translated not only the Odes of Anacreon, but the famous fragment of Sappho, imitated by Horace and Landor, which vies with Margaret's weaving song in Faust, and which is found in Addison's Anacreon (1735) and was printed with the Odes of Anacreon and the Harmodius Hymn in the old editions of Brunck (those of 1786 and 1829 are alone accessible to me. Moore, however, seems to have used the still earlier edition [1721] of Barnes for his translations of Anacreon and the Anacreontics). The Evenings in Greece were actually intended for dramatic production, and were written in 1825 for certain musical publishers. They are a series of graceful drawing-room songs, strung together on a slight thread of narrative, Moore's object being to combine recitation with music. The Sappho fragment is used for one of the songs in the First Evening in Greece, and it is well worth quoting, since, as Moore says, it is one of those fervid fragments, Which still,-like sparkles of Greek Fire, Undying, even beneath the wave,Burn on thro' Time and ne'er expire. The Song itself runs as follows: As o'er her loom the Lesbian Maid In love-sick languor hung her head, With thinking of that youth I love!" One of the songs of the Second Evening is the Harmodius Hymn, or rather a very fine rendering and expansion of it with especial emphasis on that line which has influenced so many Greek epigrams, φίλταθ' ̓Αρμόδι ̓, οὔτι που τέθνηκας. Their tale thus told and heard with pain, As oft't was sung in ages flown A tyrant's blood poured out his own. Song Thou art not dead-thou art not dead! No, dearest Harmodius, no. Thy soul to realms above us fled Tho' like a star it dwells o'er head Still lights this world below. Thou art not dead-thou art not dead! No, dearest Harmodius, no. Thro' isles of light where heroes tread And flowers ethereal blow, Thy god-like Spirit now is led, Thy lip with life ambrosial fed Forgets all taste of woe. Thou art not dead-thou art not dead! No, dearest Harmodius, no. The myrtle round that falchion spread To this Aristophanes, Acharnians 980, refers, and the scholiast makes the skolion begin with that line, though none of our modern editions does so. Aristides 11.80 (Dindorf edition, 1.133), says, καλὸν δὲ καὶ ἐν σκολίοις ὥστε ̔Αρμόδιον ἄδειν “Οὔ τί που τέθνηκας” λέγοντας. Where hearts like thine have broke or bled, Thy name, by myriads sung and said, There is much here that is not in the Greek, but the spirit and fire and ideas of the original are beautifully rendered. Even the refrain effect is well given. The worst fault is the utter neglect of Aristogeiton, but Harmodius was the more famous, since he lost his life in doing the deed, while Aristogeiton escaped, to be arrested and put to death later. The names of Achilles and Tydides also are omitted, as in Sandford's version, and we have the substitution "where heroes tread". The lines "still lights this world below" and "Their memory lights a flame instead" remind one of the epitaph attributed to Simonides, who lived at Athens in the reign of Hipparchus (Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci, 4th Edition, reprinted in 1914, 3.477, No. 131): 'Truly a great light dawned on the Athenians when Aristogeiton and Harmodius slew Hipparchus'. The martial and victorious spirit of the original is better rendered by Moore in another earlier version (1800), not so free, called In Myrtle Wreaths, by Alcaeus In myrtle wreaths my votive sword I'll cover, Here Moore begins with the line which comes first in Athenaeus (15.695), and is quoted by Aristophanes, Lysistrata 632. Here, as in the other version, all proper names, except Harmodius, which occurs only once, are omitted. Athens, Achilles, Tydides, Athena, Aristogeiton are not mentioned, perhaps that the version may make a more universal appeal to those who love liberty, and that the skolion may be applicable to any tyrant-slayer. In Sandford's martial version likewise only the proper names Athens and Harmodius occur, the latter only once, in the last stanza. In some versions, such as Peter's2, which is one of the best, the names of Aristogeiton and Harmodius are entirely lacking. In Denman's two versions Aristogeiton is omitted entirely, as in Moore's two versions, and Harmodius is mentioned only once. In one of his versions Achilles and Diomede are also omitted. Reference is made, however, by Moore to the fact that there were two tyrant-slayers, and in that respect this version of Moore is truer to the original than the song in the Evenings in Greece; and yet the translation is still very free. For example, there is nothing in the Greek to correspond to the "blade leapt forth like flame, the midnight banquet brightening". Perhaps, as Croiset suggests, the myrtle refers to the myrtle wreath of the banqueters, and Moore is thinking of the banquet, and so entitled his translation In Myrtle Wreaths. The murder was done in the daytime and not at midnight. For line 4 compare Denman's "laid the tyrant low", and for line 6 his "the noble and the brave". It is to be noted that Moore assigns the song to Alcaeus, but the Lesbian Alcaeus died about 580 B. C., and certainly did not celebrate the assassination of Hipparchus in 514, nor is the meter the Alcaic verse. Athenaeus (15.694 A ff.) cites this song in a sort of Kommersbuch, but fails to mention the author. So also Aristophanes (Acharnians 980, 1093, Wasps 1225, Lysistrata 632), Antiphanes (Frag. 4), Aristides (ed. Dindorf, 1.131), and other ancient writers refer to the song, but do not give the name of the author. It was generally called simply The Harmodius, or Harmodius's Song. Hesychius is the only writer who gives the name of the author and he attributes the song to Callistratus, otherwise unknown. I have tried to find the reason for Moore's attribution to Alcaeus, and I find that in Brunck's Anacreontis Carmina (1786), page 86, and in his Analecta 1.155, the skolion is assigned to Callistratus (also in the edition of 1829). In Jacobs's Anthologia Graeca also (based on Brunck), for the year 1794, 1.88, No. VII, I find it ascribed to Callistratus. As these books of Brunck must have been accessible to Moore, and as he used Brunck for some of his other translations from the Greek Anthology, the mistake is surprising, especially as Schweighäuser's edition of Athenaeus (1801) correctly gives the name of Callistratus. Moore may have used some other edition than that of Brunck, for he seems to have used the old edition of Barnes (London, 1721) instead of Brunck for his translation of the Odes of Anacreon and the Anacreontics. Moore is not the first to make the mistake, however, for Collins, in his Ode to Liberty (1747), said: What new Alcaeus, fancy-blest Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, At Wisdom's shrine its flame concealing (What place so fit to seal a deed renowned?) Till, she her brightest lightnings round revealing, It leap'd in glory forth and dealt her prompted wound? It is very likely that Moore knew these lines. Keble, Peter's version, found in Felton's Greece, Ancient and Modern, 1.371, is quoted, with some errors, in Davis's Readings in Ancient History (1912), 1.118. a contemporary of Moore, in The Christian Year, Third Sunday in Lent (1827), speaks of "the sword in myrtles drest". The lines evidently were popular in his day, and the verses In myrtle leaves my sword shall hide its lightning, Like his, the youth, whose ever-glorious blade Leapt forth like flame, the midnight banquet brightening, are an echo of Collins, its flame concealing Till, she her brightest lightnings round revealing, The words "flame", "bright" ("brightest" in Collins, "brightening" in Moore), “lightning", "leap'd forth", "glory" ("glorious" in Moore; compare "glory" in the lines of Byron cited Lelow, and in the other version of Moore) occur in both, and this cannot be accidental, especially as the idea is not in the original Greek song. And yet I have seen no statement anywhere to this effect. Probably, then, Moore got the idea of Alcaeus from William Collins, who not only mentioned him in the Ode to Liberty, but added a note saying "alluding to that beautiful fragment of Alcaeus": and then quoted the Greek with the omission, however, of six lines, two after line 2, two after line 4, and two at the end. This omission may account for Moore's failure in either of his translations to mention Achilles and Tydides, though his phrase "where the heroes tread" seems to imply that he knew lines 7 and 8. Many of the editions of Collins (even that of Little, Brown and Co., 1853) give all sixteen lines of the Greek. Ward's Poems of Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, in The Muses' Library, 294 (1912), which is supposed to follow the Aldine text, quotes all the lines in the note on the Ode to Liberty, and says, "alluding to that beautiful fragment wrongly attributed to Alcaeus". The volume on Collins in the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, 39 (1866), and the edition of Walter C. Bronson (1898) give Collins's note correctly, with his omissions. I have also consulted the edition of Collins's Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects, printed for A. Millar in 1847 (the date of the Ode to Liberty), and find that the same lines are omitted there. Langhorne also thought this song belonged to Alcaeus, for in his Observations on the Odes he says: This alludes to a fragment of Alcaeus still remaining in which the poet celebrates Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who slew the tyrant Hipparchus, and thereby restored the liberty of Athens. That in the eighteenth century the hymn was often attributed to Alcaeus is shown also by the note of Robert Lowth (1710-1791). Compare Gregory's translation of Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. I have consulted an edition by Stowe (1829), where, on page 19, the hymn is quoted as by Callistratus. On page 305 the translation of Sir William Jones The translation is ascribed to Sir William Jones, but it is somewhat different from that in Blackwood's Magazine, 1833,887, and the omissions and changes make a great improvement. The realistic lines objected to by Dr. Mierow, THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.83. are omitted. is given, and Lowth says, "This skolion some have attributed to Alcaeus, but not conformably with strict chronology", etc. The note in Dindorf's Aristides 1. 133 (1829), "Confer Alcaei fragmenta", shows that scholars as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century did frequently attribute the song to Alcaeus. It is not so very remarkable, then, that Thomas Moore thought that the author was Alcaeus, who was a vigorous opponent of tyrants, who was a writer of skolia (skolia of Alcaeus are given as early as 1556 in Stephanus's edition of Anacreon and other lyric poets; compare also Aristotle, Politics 1285 A 35, the Scholiast on Aristophanes, Wasps 1239, Athenaeus 15.693 and 11.503. In the latter passage a fragment of Antiphanes mentions the Telamon skolion along with the Harmodius). Onefragment (Bergk, 3.167, No. 48 A) makes it likely that Alcaeus wrote one of the skolia cited in the Kommersłuch (compare Bergk, 3.649, Nos. 17-18). Thomas Moore was simply following Collins and the opinion of many writers of his own time, and he failed to look up all the texts, or all the opinions available in his time, many of which (some are cited above) gave the name of Callistratus. One more point I should like to touch on, and that is that the Harmodius Song was the Marseillaise or National Anthem of Athens, a true Song of Liberty, as Dr. Mierow says; and therefore it was especially popular when ideas of liberty were in the air, e. g. just after the time of the American and the French revolutions, and especially at the time of the Liberation of Greece from the Turks (1822-1830). In 1830, by the second protocol of London, Greece was declared an independent and sovereign kingdom; in 1833 a regency was established, and King Otho came to Greece. This is the very year in which Blackwood's Magazine contained so many translations of the Harmodius Hymn. Ten (really eleven, for Gregory's translation is a paraphrase of that by Jones) out of the seventeen cited by Dr. Mierow are in Blackwood's Magazine for 1833, though some of these were written long before 1833. It is interesting to see when these translators lived. Cumberland lived 1732-1811; Denman, 17791851 (one of his two translations was said in the Murray edition of Byron to be the best). Both of Denman's translations occur in Bland's Collections from the Greek Anthology 122-123 (1813), and in Wellesley, Anthologia Polyglotta 444 (1849), which also gives Sandford's version, a Latin translation by De Teissier, and a German rendering by Christian von Stolberg. The version of Denman not cited in editions of Byron is given in George Burges, The Greek Anthology (Bohn series), along with a prose version and Elton's poetic rendering (which appeared in 1814), and in the Ridpath Library of Universal Literature, 4.470, as well as in Smith's History of Greece, which Dr. Mierow cites. Gregory's rendering, in his translation of Lowth's Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, appeared Perhaps C. C. C. Oxoniensis is the Rev. Charles Coxe of Worcester College, Oxford. J. L. E. may be John Edwards. in 1787, and is a paraphrase of that by Sir William Jones, who lived 1746-1794. Christopher North, whose real name was John Wilson, lived 1785-1854. Sandford and Wrangham wrote at the end of the eighteenth century. Wordsworth's version (not given by Dr. Mierow, but added by Professor Cooper, THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.109-110) is assigned by Knight (The Classical Review 15.82) to the first decade of the nineteenth century, and Professor Cooper calls attention to the fact that Wrangham and Wordsworth in 1795-1796 "collaborated in an imitation of Juvenal, which was to strike at contemporary tyrants in England". Wordsworth's reference to Harmodius and Aristogeiton in the Prelude dates from 1804. To the poetic translators of the hymn, who wrote before 1833, should also be added Thomas Moore, whom we have considered above, and Henry James Pye (1745-1813), whose translation is an elegant rendering of the original (both of them omitted in Blackwood's Magazine, 1833, and in Dr. Mierow's list). To show the popularity of the hymn in the eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth century, it should be said that not only were there many translations, but frequent references were made to the hymn. So Keble, in his The Christian Year, Third Sunday in Lent (1827), VII, line 2, uses the words of Collins "the sword in myrtles drest". Byron, who was an intimate friend of Moore, to whom he dedicated The Corsair, and for whom he had a great enthusiasm, says in Childe Harold 3.20 (1816) Glory is when the myrtle wreathes a sword Compare Moore's "A tyrant's death your glory" and Collins (cited above). In The Age of Bronze, 6 (1823), Byron says "The Athenian wears again Harmodius' sword", alluding to the Greeks murdering their Turkish prisoners, at the time of the capitulation of Athens, June 21, 1822. The edition of Byron's works made in 1855 by Murray (based on that of 1832-1833) translates the first stanza. Thomas Moore had a large part in the preparation of that edition, and he may have been the author of the following version. The words "cover" and "brave" are an echo perhaps of Moore's In Myrtle Wreaths. The lines remind one, however, more of Denman's "Like our patriots the noble and brave" and "bade our dear country be free", a version which Moore undoubtedly knew. Byron, himself, could not have written the lines, since I have not found them in the edition of the Age of Bronze printed for John Hunt in 1823. Cover'd with myrtle-wreaths, I'll wear my sword The tyrant slew, and bade oppression end. Since the appearance of Blackwood's Magazine for 1833, there have been few translations. That attributed to Edgar Allan Poe by Ingram (The Tales and Poems of Poe, 4.330, London, 1884) appeared only two years later in the Southern Literary Messenger (Decem |