From Lorenzo.Smerillo@worldnet.att.net Tue May 30 09:36:10 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id JAA20330 for ; Tue, 30 May 2000 09:36:08 -0700 Received: from mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net (mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net [204.127.131.47]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id JAA30768 for ; Tue, 30 May 2000 09:36:06 -0700 Received: from lorenzo ([12.79.77.55]) by mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net (InterMail vM.4.01.02.39 201-229-119-122) with SMTP id <20000530163602.IEKM6885.mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net@lorenzo> for ; Tue, 30 May 2000 16:36:02 +0000 Message-ID: <3933FBFC.3F27@worldnet.att.net> Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 12:35:57 -0500 From: L:Smerillo X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Caesar/Xenophon References: <9D98E6F6816FD21184E400A0C996124101392AE3@NYEXMBX05.net.abc.com> <002501bfca39$d9c869c0$59140dd0@t9q0o0> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael Hendry wrote: > > Besides the simplicity of the style, which is an advantage that should not > be underestimated, the violence would appeal to boys, and the simple moral > message (Greeks/Romans = good guys, Gauls/Persians = bad guys) would appeal > to upper-class boys, particularly those in Britain and the U.S. who might > grow up to fight or govern Asian or American Indians, as the case may be, or > other representatives of "the Other". (Sorry about the lapse into trendy > jargon: it won't happen again.) The lack of sex would be an advantage from > the teacher's point of view, and Victorian/Edwardian 10- and 12-year-olds > probably wouldn't have objected. The invasion of Britain would also be a > lot more interesting, I imagine, to British students -- especially those who > live in Kent or have visited it. > A response from a former Dovorian: I have not checked this either, but my impression is that Xen. and Caes. were introduced when Latin and Greek were required subjects of study, in the English public school reforms of the 19th century (Arnold at Rugby and Sewell at St Edmund's Oxon.) although how much study was involved and to what extent that was simply memorization of a translation crib (cf. some comments of Winston Churchill on his early education) is another matter. The system was rather moribund when I came into it as Head of Classics at Dover College in Kent in the 1970's. My eminient predecessor C.R. Haines had stocked us with tons of Caes. I quickly substituted these with a JACT edition of Petronius' Cena Trimalchionis, to the delight, and with no detriment to their grammatical apprenticeship, of the 'upper class' Brits and the large numbers of mixed gender Germans, French et al. pupils at the old 'O' Level exam preparations (14-16). After that it was Virgil, Cicero, Ovid and Horace with historians for A Levels. Anything touching on "sex" embarassed neither this teacher and certainly not his pupils. O tempora o mores! This is all now dust in that system, classics survives numerically healthy in only a few of the best English public schools, Manchester Grammar, Winchester, Westminister (along with Sanskrit), Eton and Oundle. The situation, and perhaps the history of textual standards is quite different in parts of Italy, in the Licei Classici, of which some other memebers of the list could comment more fully. Lorenzo Smerillo [Research Lector Late Antiquity Biblioteca Nazionale Protocoenobio Sublacense (Roma)] .