REPORTS OF ASSOCIATIONS, CONFERENCES, CLUBS, ETC. New England, 215-216; Joint Meeting, The Classical Association of the Atlantic States and The The Menaechmi at Hamilton College, 24; Latin and the Agitation for a Single Degree in Liberal Studies, 40; The 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 NEW YORK, OCTOBER 2, 1916 VOL. X Columbia's Summer Session this year was rendered notable by a Classical Conference conducted by Professors Gilbert Murray and Paul Shorey. Each guest of the University delivered a series of ten lectures in the afternoons from July II to July 24; during the second week three evening meetings were held at which both visiting scholars spoke. Professor Murray chose as his lecture subjects Greek Epic and Greek Tragedy. In the latter field, he analyzed on successive days the Supplices, the Agamemnon and the Choephori of Aeschylus, the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, the Rhesus, and, finally, the Bacchae of Euripides. Professor Shorey, after an introductory lecture dealing with general principles, discussed on the second day Aristophanes, and on the third day The Case of Aristophanes against Euripides. Then in seven lectures he developed Some Aspects of Ethical and Spiritual Religion in Antiquity. Of these seven hours the last was devoted to Socrates. The lectures on religion were in part the same as a series which Professor Shorey had already given at Northwestern University on the Norman Wait Harris Foundation and which will presently be published by the Princeton University Press. At the evening sessions Professor Shorey spoke on the Methods, Aims and Ideals of Classical Study, under the three heads of the High School, the College, the Graduate School. Professor Murray, on the first evening, described the situation of classical education in England; on the second and third evenings he read a finely conceived plea for the study of literature, and especially classical literature, in a scientific age. This paper will presently be published. Professor Shorey ought certainly not to keep for any long time from the classical teachers and scholars of the United States the three discussions which so informed and charmed his audiences this summer. The lectures were well attended. Those who were present gave every evidence of the keenest appreciation of the treat which had been provided for them. The impressions which were carried away must have been very varied indeed and no attempt can here be made to do justice to the suggestiveness of the Conference. It must suffice to mention a few of the reflections which occurred to the present writer. One of the happiest results was somewhat unforeseen. The two speakers were invited for their own sakes and no restriction was placed upon their choice of topics. In the sequel the audiences were delighted to find that in certain very large ways their two guests No. 1 held opposite points of view that, for example, an avenue of approach to the interpretation of the Classics which to the one seemed to promise important results offered to the other practically no promise at all. In doing battle for their respective opinions, however, each showed to the other all due courtesy of fence. This seemed to be a most fortunate conjunction. As nothing can well be imagined more tedious than a world in which everyone agrees with his neighbor, so nothing can be more injurious to Classics than the idea that on all important points classical scholars hold the same opinion. Here, as elsewhere, finality is impossible, and canonical definition of the truth is, fortunately, forever beyond the reach of the human mind. However completely careful investigation may be able to determine the objective historical facts, the intellectual significance of the facts will never, we may rest assured, be quite the same for any considerable number of thoughtful minds in any given age of the world's history and certainly not for successive generations of thinking men. But, as Professor Shorey very brilliantly pointed out, our knowledge of the historical facts themselves of classical antiquity was enormously increased during the nineteenth century and as a natural result whole sections of classical philology and history have had to be rewritten. Further, this enlargement of our knowledge of the historical facts and this consequent rewriting are sure to constitute continuous process. Those, then, who listened to these lectures had a new demonstration of the inspiring truth that not only is every man's orthodoxy the heterodoxy of some one else equally competent to judge, but for each individual the orthodoxy of to-day may - if his intellectual processes have not ceased to 'function' become the heterodoxy of to-morrow. Wisdom is justified of her children, and each must feel it his high privilege to be able to say in Solon's famous words: γηράσκω ἀεὶ πόλλα διδασκόμενος. And new knowledge brings new orientations. a A second matter of high importance was the dignity, force and charm with which the minds of the audiences during the entire Conference were continually directed to the consideration not of facts but of the meaning of facts. More and more, as the days passed, the evidence accumulated that the contribution made by the classical writers, especially the Greeks, to the world of ideas had been so vital and so fundamentally sound that their analyses of the problem of human life were at the very least as valuable and as pertinent to our present perplexities as the analyses of modern thinkers. The Atlantic Monthly, in its issue for August, 1916, prints in its contributors' column a letter from a school teacher in the Middle West in answer to Dr. Flexner's article, in the July Atlantic, on Parents and Schools. This teacher declared that for two years she has made a point of asking scholarly professors of Latin in various Universities to state their reason for advocating the study of Latin. After having regularly received the reply 'To appreciate and enjoy Latin literature', she made bold after a time to say to one of these scholars that she did not know a single individual who could be said to read Latin for enjoyment or for the sake of the ideas therein expressed. It is, of course, possible that if the word 'Greek' were substituted for 'Latin', this writer would at once withdraw her statement, but, if she actually did not know any one who reads Greek or Latin literature or both with enjoyment and for the sake of the ideas therein expressed, it is greatly to be hoped that she was present at this Classical Conference. She would certainly have made the acquaintance of a very considerable number of persons whose chief interest in those literatures was due to the high valuation which they placed upon the intellectual world which the literatures present, and who regard it as quite indisputable that many of the ideas contained in those literatures are as pertinent to our daily needs, as elevated in their conception and expression, and as fruitful in all noble thought, speech and action, as any of the ideas now current among highly educated men and women. What has just been said leads naturally to a consideration of a matter oft-discussed- the claims of the study of classical literature versus the claims of the study of classical archaeology. In so far as the material with which classical archaeology deals is definitely the product of the artistic impulse in man and he fails to remember these details after the immediate crisis has passed. The philosophy of clothes is a fascinating subject, but the fascination lies in the philosophy, not in the clothes themselves. With due reservation of the full citizenship of Kunstarchãologie, one may hold that archaeology is simply a faithful and well-deserving servitor of literature and history. It is, after all, ideas and ideals that count, not cochlearia or oyster-forks. NELSON GLENN MCCREA. THE PLACE OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE There are many teachers who know much about the application of the study of sculpture to the Schools, who for years have been applying archaeology to the Schools with marked success, as many a published statement in The Classical Journal and THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY shows; and many a silent successful teacher is using most if not all the methods of which I shall speak. He is a pedant indeed who thinks that linguistic and literary training alone leads to the shrine of classical culture, and there are few teachers of the Classics nowa-days who limit their listeners to gerund-grinding and root-grubbing or feed their flock only on the fifty-seven varieties of the subjunctive. To get the Greek spirit one must study, as Goethe and Schiller did, Greek art as well as Greek literature. Moreover, archaeology discovers inscriptions and papyri with important bits of Greek and Roman literature (see THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.41-44) which the archaeologist must study; and the idea that the archaeologist does not need to know Greek is as erroneous as the idea that the professor of Greek need not be well grounded in archaeology. Of course, language is 'the truest expression of the life of a people', but art and architecture are also an important expression of life, and many advantages can be gained for the his sense for the beautiful in form and color, archaeo-higher Hellenic humanism and classical culture by a logy has certainly equal standing with literature. But when its champions go beyond this claim and expatiate upon the educative power of the study of the material background of Greek and Roman life irrespective of its meaning for art, some at least, like Horace's shrewd Sabellian, renuunt negitantque. One such doubter was delighted with Professor Shorey's 's argument on this point. Why should a man who can never quite bring himself to think it a matter of vital importance whether he picks up one fork or another from the bewildering collection that he finds beside his place at dinner to-day prize in the study of Greek and Roman life a kind of information with which he is reluctant to burden his brain in connection with the age in which he lives? The exact ceremonial of a Roman wedding has no doubt a certain interest; so also to those who have to take part in it has the ceremonial of a wedding of to-day. But certainly a man must be an intellectual idler if he has an uncomfortable interview with this conscience whenever contemplation of casts of the noblest treasure of Greek art, the Panathenaic procession of the still unexcelled Parthenon, or by a study of the Hermes of Praxiteles, or of photographs of the ruins of Rome. Classical archaeology, that is, the scientific study of the monumental or material remains and artistic products of Greek and Roman civilizations and of the light they throw on those civilizations, trains the student to observe carefully. So does the study of language, though not so well, for the study of archaeology goes further and trains and refines the student's aesthetic tastes. It enables him to weigh evidence in a manner that the study of mere language does not. If archaeology consists in guessing, as I heard someone once say, then This paper was originally read at the Twenty-ninth Annual Convention of The Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, held at the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, November 26-27, 1915. It was presented there at the round table conference on Ancient Languages, under the title Ready Applications of Archaeology to School Teaching. I have made much use of Professor Percy Gardner's excellent pamphlet, Classical Archaeology in Schools (Oxford, 1905. 35 cents). as a student must weigh the evidence and see how much is fact and how much guess-work. The study of what the Germans call Realien broadens and vitalizes a Latin or a Greek course and the student gains thereby a sense of reality and kinship for a civilization like his own (compare Miss Mary Zimmerman, The Teaching of Roman Antiquities in the High School, The Classical Journal 11.117-119). When the student sees a photograph of an old theater, the seats fill with people and the ghosts of old days become living human beings. The old vases show how the Greeks were dressed, played checkers or went fishing. An unfinished column suggests a strike of workingmen, a change of dynasty, a foreign invasion, or even a financial crisis caused by the need of money for waging some war. By studying the gods the ancients worshipped, and the relative places given to the deities they worshipped in different localities, and by reading on such assigned topics as Professor Kelsey gives in his booklet, Fifty Topics in Roman Antiquities, the student understands what was going on in their minds and souls. For, as God made man in his image, men have always been returning the compliment by making Gods in their image, Xenophanes said of old, by embodying, in deities of wood or stone, the things which were in their own souls. As the archaeologist digs down into the soil, he digs back into the old passions and customs and lives of men who were so much like us and from whom our lives and selves have been developed. The scenes of Aeschylus and Euripides can be paralleled from Greek vases, although we must always remember that the Greek pencil was not subservient to the pen and that Greek art has its own individual message quite different often from the literary. The Vatican Statue of Demosthenes is an excellent biography of Demosthenes. Theocritus and the Roman poets can be illustrated from Hellenistic reliefs and Roman mural paintings. Caesar, Livy and Tacitus can be illustrated from almost all forms of Roman art. The literary and material expressions of Hellenic and Roman genius are inseparable. The Greeks gave as much attention to the outward appearance of the man, to the ideal but perfect reproduction of masculine muscle, and to his public surroundings as to his inner thoughts, and it is true of the Romans even more than of the Greeks that the world will 'not only remember what they said but can never forget what they did here on earth'. The excavations at Olympia, Delphi, Pergamum, Priene, Miletus, Pompeii, etc., give us information which could. have been learned in no other way and have revealed as much as the finding of Bacchylides's Odes, of Pindar's Paeans, or of parts of the Epitome of Livy. Even in so obscure a place as Tanagra, known in antiquity principally for its cock-fighting, hundreds of statuettes of wonderful Praxitelean grace were found and have established a new art-industry for Tiffany and others. The treasures of Mycenae and Crete are precious as pearls and will always interest the young as well as the the older student. A play of Sophocles was copied and recopied by medieval monks and scribbling scribes till the copy was far from the original. We have not a single autograph manuscript of any Greek or Roman writer, but we can still see the marks of Praxiteles's own chisel on the Hermes at Olympia, we can handle the very coins which Pericles minted, we can still read many of the inscriptions which Herodotus and Thucydides read, and read them better than our texts do (compare the excellent book by Laudien, Griechische Inschriften als Illustrationen zu den Schulschriftstellern [Berlin, 1912]). We can still see the method of joining the orthostates of the Propylaea so that not even the thinnest knife blade can be inserted in the joints; we can still study the curves of the Parthenon, that best gem which the earth wears on her zone, as well as if Ictinus himself were alive to explain them. Such things reveal the greatness of the Greeks and the realness of the Romans. How, then, are teachers to give their students these direct messages of contact with life? In the first place, pardon me if I say a word about the teachers themselves. Every teacher of Greek or Latin and certainly of ancient history should visit the Greeks and the Romans in their homes, and see the environment in which they lived. Only one who has breathed the air of the violet-crowned Athens, the bulwark of Greece, the mother of arts, appreciates the full significance of Hellenic architecture and sculpture. He who has seen the glories of the Athenian acropolis realizes how Athens became the School of Hellas and later of the world, where even to-day, as at Rome, scholars of all nationalities gather at the various archaeological schools and make Athens an international center of culture. Even a summer's vacation spent up hill and down dale in Italy and Greece, with a visit to Rome, Pompeii, Athens, Pergamum, Priene, and whatever other sites there is time for, will do more to make one an inspiring and interesting teacher of the Classics and classical history than the taking of a doctor's degree. The teacher who can spend a year or more at The American School of Classical Studies in Rome or Athens will fare better. These two Schools, and the trips in classic lands conducted by these Schools, by Dörpfeld, Karo, Ernest Gardner and others, have done much toward improving the quality of the teaching of Latin and Greek in our Schools and Colleges, but I fear that it will be a long time before we attain in this matter the efficiency so characteristic of the German government, which in times of peace awards every year Reise-Stipendien to the teachers in the Gymnasiums to enable them in their vacations to visit the ancient classic sites under the expert guidance of a Delbrück or a Dörpfeld. Every year (in times of peace, of course) there are conferences of schoolmasters when archaeological lectures and discussions are held in the museums and the latest finds are reported by specialists in archaeology. The Germans have many inexpensive models of ancient sites and monuments, maps, atlases, finely illustrated books, many photographs, casts, and lantern-slides of classical things with which they actually equip their Schools, so that in my opinion the teaching of the Classics in the Elementary Schools and Gymnasiums in Germany surpasses in force, vividness, and reality our own work. To be sure, many good books are appearing in America and in England, and most museums are preparing, if they have not done so already, authoritative catalogues, and the Boston and British Museums and others furnish lectures. The teacher, if he is to use archaeology with any great effect, must be willing to read carefully the museum catalogues, to spend more than an hour in the Naples Museum, and not to hurry through the archaeological museum in Florence. I sometimes think that the ideal method for the archaeological illustration of the Classics would be to have it done by a special teacher or archaeologist at special times, say one hour a week for each class in Greek or Latin or ancient history, to the study of which archaeology is indispensable. Teachers frequently complain that there is no time left from grammatical drill, translation and prosecomposition for archaeological applications. In that case illustrated talks might be given by the teacher to the students after school hours, or, as is frequently done, in Classical Clubs, where the students can report on assigned topics, such as the Roman house and family, marriage and burial rites, dress, education, trades, books, or certain classical buildings or statutes and countless other topics. If the teacher has had no training in archaeology, the illustration should be done by a special teacher, as I have said, and he should have a small museum of original antiquities, especially coins, if possible, with casts, models, large photographs, charts, maps, post-cards, lantern-slides, which can now be had for all classical subjects. Above all there should be a lantern or reflectoscope. In many of our Schools and Colleges there are enough classes in Greek and Latin and ancient history so that a specialist hired to do the work of illustration would have plenty to occupy his time, but in lieu of this much can be done by the teacher who, while not an archaeologist, has learned something about the subject. In reading a play of Sophocles, the teacher will naturally say something about the Greek theater, but he must be enough of an archaeologist to know that the present ruins of the theater of Dionysus do not date from the time of Sophocles, and he must know what is the evidence against the existence of a stage. If he is showing a vase, he must know enough of the history of Greek vase-painting to date the vase correctly, and to explain the designs so that they will not appear absurd to the student. The teacher, then, must have first-hand knowledge. The illustrations in editions of classical authors should be selected by men trained in archaeology; they should be accurate reproductions 2In America Professor George H. Chase gives every year in The Classical Journal an account of the archaeological excavations of the previous year and there is an annual article on Archaeology in The New International Year Book, by Professor Oliver Tonks, and in The American Year Book. In England new finds are noted in The Year's Work in Classical Studies. of ancient ruins or works of art, carefully chosen and of proper date and place. They should not merely adorn a tale but point a moral. There should be also restorations of ancient buildings, places, and events, for, when the archaeologist visits an old broken theater or temple, he sees not so much ruins as reconstructions; but the reconstructions must be drawn by trained artists who have scientific archaeological knowledge. They should be accurately labelled and intelligible. This may seem to be a truism, but I have seen in recent books the so-called Theseum called the Parthenon and the Erechtheum labelled the Parthenon, and the Olympic games put on Mt. Olympus. I could cite countless other examples. Now, how can archaeology be used in the Schools and the Colleges? In the first place, original antiquities should be put into the hands of the students, or, if this is not possible, the students should be taken to the nearest museum. It might even be possible for museums to arrange loan collections to be sent to different institutions for a month or two. Professor Henry Browne, of the University of Dublin, the Homeric scholar, Chairman of the Realien Committee of the Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching, is trying to arrange such a scheme in the British Schools; he made a trip to America last April and May to study this question. So far as I know, collections of original classical antiquities are rarely lent in America. Some of the Hopkins antiquities have been taken to Schools, but generally Dr. Magoffin has gone with them to take care of them and explain them. Often printed lectures accompanied by slides are lent to Schools and societies. Many Colleges and even Schools, however, now themselves have small collections of antiquities. Where a School or a College has no museum of its own and the teacher of Greek or Latin or ancient history has no funds to purchase apparatus and to organize a small museum, the teachers should give their students field work in the nature of a visit to the nearest large museum, just as the biologists, geologists, etc., take their students on an outing (for museums of art in their relation to teachers of the Classics compare Professor O. Tonks's chapter in Art Museums and Schools, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913). The best classical museums in America are the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but many Universities, such as Pennsylvania, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Columbia, Yale, have important collections. The Washington University of St. Louis has the instructive Saalburg collection which illuminates the reading of Caesar. The Art Museum and the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago and other places have reproductions of the bronzes in Naples from Herculaneum and Pompeii, which are an invaluable illustration of Roman life. Most museums are preparing or having prepared handbooks which will See THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 9.98-102. |