29

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

The study of ancient history has changed profoundly over the last hundred years. Much new material has been made available by archaeologists, including even literary texts rediscovered after centuries of oblivion, and research has been facilitated by the collation of evidence in such works as the Realencyclop1tdie of Pauly-Wissowa. thp half-finished Dizionario Epigrafico and the corpora of coins and inscriptions. The study of the Athenian empire and the Athenian democracy. to take one example, is now something quite dif­ferent from what it was in the days of George Grote, the great mid-nineteenth century historian of Greece, who knew nothing of the treatise on the Athenian constitution attributed to Aristotle, and who could not consult the Corpus of Greek Inscriptions or the four volumes of Meritt, Wade-Gery and McGregor's The Athenian Tribute Lists.

Not only new material, however, but also new techniques, new domains of specialisation have been found out, and the darker side of twentieth century history has given us a better understanding of the realities of Athenian or Roman politics. Current interpretations of ancient history are truer to life than their nineteenth century predecessors. Certainly a book like Sir Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution is as much a product of its time, of the thirties and the rise of Hitler, as Tacitus's history of the early principate is a product of his own time. And it is to Syme himself, in his Tacitus, that we owe the demonstration of how much Tacitus is influenced by his experiences under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan.

If then new approaches have been made to the study of ancient history at the highest level of scholarship (and we shall return to this later), the study of ancient history in schools and universities has also changed pro­foundly. When almost everyone learned Latin and Greek, ancient history could be regarded as merely an ancillary subject. The great Wilamowitz describes in his autObiography how it was in his schooldays just 100 years ago, writing of one of his teachers, Carl Peter: "He drew a sharp distinction between Science and School. For the latter, Livy's Rome, with its fables of kings and the legendary constitutional struggle, was to be treated as a reality, not because it was true, but because it had a typical importance, inseparable from the Latin, which as an absolutel ideal of lucid speech has incomparable value in forming the youthful mlnd" And again in the same vein: "The treatment of Tacitus .•. took the school alone into account, without any historical criticism or instruct­ion on the wars, the constitution, and the government." It appears that some instruction in ancient history was given later, but there too "the constitutional history according to Livy was drilled into us: •.• for the centuries after Tacitus a few dates sufficed," and so on, sufficient indication of the radical-ly literary bias.

But now times are changed: not everyone learns Latin, and few learn Greek. Ancient history, far from being merely subordinate to the study of the languages and literature, may be the only contact a student has with Greece and Rome. How then is the teaching of ancient history to be adapted to the needs both of specialists or future specialists and of the profanuro vulgus? And who is to teach it, and what sort of formation should the teacher have had? Neither question is easy to answer, largely because of the peculiar position of ancient history as part of two separate disciplines, two conventional fields of study, at the same time: it belongs both to Classics and to History, and its practitioners, whether engaged in research or in teaching, ought to be

30

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

instructed in both disciplines. and ought in their researches or their teaching to be aware and to make their readers and students aware of the rela­tionship which Greek and Roman history bears to both.

Let us consider first the relationship between ancient history and the classics. On the one hand, a knowledge of Greek and Latin is essential for anyone wishing to do original research in ancient history. just as we should expect a specialist in Russian history to know Russian. It is not necessary that the ancient historian should be a master of the techniques of comparative philology or textual criticism, nor be able to write a good set of elegiacs, but he must be able to read his sources in the original, not only because much valuable source material remains untranslated (especially inscriptions), but because a great deal can often turn upon a fine point of translation and interpretation, and the historian must be able to judge for himself. Translations may mislead, and how is the man who cannot read the original to spot their deception? Consider for instance the passage in Thucydides on the causes of the Peloponnesian War. 't~v Il€;V yap UA118e:o'to:tT1V ;l. p6qx:t:o~v 1

&qxx.VE:O'tcl'tT]V bE. A6yw~, 'toue; 'A9T]vo;(oue; ~YOUflal. flE:ya.AOUe; y~yvofllvoue; Kat q>6j3ov naptxov'tae; 'tOLe; 1Ia.KE:baLfloV(OLe; a.vaYK6.oa~ tc; 'to TtOAE:fle;Lv.

Jowett translates this as follows: "The real though unavowed cause I believe to have been the growth of Athenian power, which terrified the Lacedaemonians and forced them into war." But Jowett is out of fashion. What does Rex Warner make of it in the Penguin translation? "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta" . Nothing here of the idea of compulsion; and yet the word Thucydides uses is a.vayxa.oa L. It is a strong word. 'AvayxT], Necessity, is the force no man can resist. The Lacedaemonians had no chOice, he says, but to fight: you would not think so from the Penguin translation.

If then Greek and Latin are necessary to the ancient historian, a knowledge of ancient history is on the other hand equally necessary to the student of Greek and Latin literature. This statement requires qualification. There are authors who can be read and appreciated without any historical knowledge other than that which they themselves supply. This would seem to be true of the philosophers; it is probably true of the playwrights, except Aristophanes; it is true of the most personal poets, like Sappho and Catullus; it is pre-eminently true of Homer, who creates his own world, so that it adds nothing to our apprtlcia'tion to know from the Linear B tablets what was the system of land-tenure 1n Mycenean Greece or to have an opinion on whether the Trojans spoke Greek or Luwian. But what of the others? To deal only with Latin authors, it may be argued that the orators and historians without exception need to be studied in their historical context; that a great deal, though not perhaps all, of the poetry of the Augustan age benefits from a similar treatment; and that most of the literature of the Early Empire, Seneca, for instance, Petronius, Martial, Juvenal, Pliny, springs so immediately from the social and inte~lectual conditions of the time as to require for its full enjoyment and appreciation an understanding of those conditions.

This statement of course implies that "history" must not mean simply military and political history. How men liv"ed, what they thought and did and made, what problems and preoccupations shaped their lives, all of these are the stuff of history. So M.L Finley in a recent article (Didaskalos 1.3, p.68) has argued that any study of history which is going to help people to under-

31

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

stand the writers of antiquity must include the study of "the history of myth and religious practice, of attitudes to them. of education and ethics, of the status of women and the rise of slavery. of friendship and love and individual psychology". This is a plea for the understanding of history, for trying to experience it as it once was lived, instead of reducing it to facts and dates and the analysis of causes and trends. It means too that ancient historians must not shut themselves up in a classical ghetto, thus depriving the study and teaching of ancient history of those insights which familiarity with the methods and preoccupations of modern history might supply. Finley again observes in an article in the Times Literary Supplement (April 7th, 1966) that his own graduate training at Columbia in the thirties was in the History Department, where he read and absorbed the works of Weber, Marx, Gierke, Maitland , Charles Beard, Pirenne and Marc Bloch, because, he says, "These were among the writers whose ideas and methods were in the atmosphere of historical study, partly in lectures but even more in endless conversation with other students." And if any reader complains that he has never heard of half of these people, Finley would no doubt reply that this proved his point. Although, ~ Finley, the arguments for assigning the teaching of ancient history to the Department of Classics r~ther than that of History seem to me very strong. there must in any case be a free exchange of ideas and indeed, at the university level, of students between departments, an exchange in which the social sciences too should participate. The WOUld-be specialist in ancient history requires a knowledge not merely of Greek and Latin, but also of modern history and historiography; and he would find an acquaintance with one or more of sociology. anthropology, economics. statistics and political science. very useful, and in some fields of research essential . Still more important is some knowledge and understanding of archaeology. but that is in a different category. to which we shall return later.

This free exchange of ideas, however, does not always take place: ancient and modern remain firmly sundered. They need not do so. Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper in his recent book The Rise of Christian Europe succeeds admirably in setting the ancient world in a l onger European perspective. Specialists may, he admits, sometimes carp, but the work is immensely stimulating, and the author's claim in his foreword that historians "should study the process of history and not merely the detail of the narrow sector in which, perforce, they specialize", should be hearkened to by ancient historians as well as others. How few ancient historians dare to apply their knowledge to the illumi­nation of more modern times. Recently in English we have had Sir Ronald Syme's Colonial Elites and a comparison by P.A. Brunt of the Roman and British Empires. but how much else? And yet this dichotomy between the ancient world and the mediaeval and modern did not exist for the Middle Ages themselves. A5 Helen Waddell says in the introduction to her magnificent The Wandering Scholars. "The great Age of the Augustans is to us a thing set in amber, a civilisation distinct and remote like the Chinese.. To the mediaeval scholar, with··no sense of perspective, but a strong sense o'f continuity. Virgil and Sicero are but the upper reaches of the river that still flows past his door." What is more, ancient historians, unless Marists, tend to neglect the Later Empire, which links the classical world with the mediaeval. There are exceptions, A.H.M. Jones's The Later Roman Empire is all that one could desire. but this period is seldom studied by university students, and yet, to quote Helen Waddell again,

32

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

"It is in the last three centuries of the Empire, the centuries of .... ,hich the classical scholar is rightly impatient, seeing mere glimmerings and decays, that the spiritual foundations of the ~!iddle Ages ... ·ere laid."

Historians must however accept the duty not only of advancing knowledge and understanding, but also of communicating their advances to the general public and the general student. This leads "Finley in the same article to urge ancient historians to "justify themselves ... by going over to a central concern with the central human problems. of values and social relations, of politics and political behaviour, of social classes and class conflicts, of the complex links between economics and politics, in the periods and places where Greek and Roman experience remain illuminating in the twentieth century." This concern to illuminate the twentieth century with the light of Greece and Rome is not however without its dangers. In the first place, we must beware, if we are to read ancient history for the morals to be drawn from it, that we do not tailor our historical interpretations to our own modern prejudices. Let ancient historians and others read and ponder Arthur Schlesinger's brief article in a recent number of Encounter (November, 1966), "On the Inscrutability of History". And it is moreover, as we shall see later, unrealistic to expect all historians, whatever their training, to dwell all the time on the lofty heights of "a central concern with the central human problems."

Now the idea that we can learn from the lessons of the past is one that has a very respectable pedigree. Thucydides subscribed to it, holding that "the future must in the course of human things resemble if it does not reflect the past" (i 22). So too David Hume: "Mankind are so much the same in all times and places that history informs us of nothing new or strange. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature." And from this point of view the study of the Greek and Roman world i s particularly useful, since there, to borrow a phrase of Arngld Toynbee's, "the plot of civili­sation has been worked out to its conclusion." We can see the I.,.hole play, as the actors in it could not. But we do not watch the play dispassionately. We too are involved. Nowhere is this clearer, for instance, than in the history of Athens and the Peloponnesian War, where the issues are those of the present day, as Thucydides interprets them. His analYSis of civil strife in connection with Corcyra and the "might versus right" arguments of the Melian Debate are well known. Or has anyone ever better expressed the case against appeasement, now as then? "I hope that none of you will think that we shall be going to war for a trifle if we refuse to revoke the Megarian Decree... If you give way, they will think that they have frightened you into a concession, and will at once make some larger demand" (i 140) And what again has Thucydides to say about the present situation in Southern Africa? "The issue is not only slavery or independence" (for which read "one man, one vote or apartheid"), "but also loss of empire and danger from the animOSIties to which it has exposed you. To recede is no longer possible. What you hold is, tv speak frankly, a despo-tism; perhaps it was wrong to take it, but to let it go is unsafe" (ii 63).

We come to Periclean Athens and to its great historian with attitudes to democracy. to imperialism and colonialism, to peace and war and politics in general, that derive from our twentieth century experience. It is not so much that the study of ancient history forms our values, as that our values shape our inserpretation of ancient history, as Finley himself has warned us else­where.

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

Let us take as an example Grote ' 5 History of Greece, the 12 volumes of which appeared between 1847 and 1856. Grote was deeply immersed in the political and intellectual movements of his time; a Radical in pOlitics,

33

elected to the Commons after the Reform Bill of 1832, he was greatly influenced by the views of Mill and Bentham. His History of Greece was actually unrlertaken to refute the strongly anti-democratic history of his Tory predecessor .'>Iitford. Grote ' s paSSlonate "'pelogia for the Athenian democracy is still worth reading. The democracy has not found many scholarly defenders since his day , but to Grote, the democratic politician , it must be defended at all costs. The trial of the generals after the naval victory of Arginusae, for instance, when they were accused of having left the Athenian sailors from ships sunk in that battle to perish in the water, was characterised by what Hammond calls "hysteria and jobbery ',{j and by a complete disregard of the accused men ' s constitutional safe­guards. Is this then a blot on the record of the democracy? Not for Grote: "Against tne democratical constitution of Athens, it furnishes no ground for censure -- nor against the habits and feelings which that constitution tended to implant in the individual citizen. Both the one and the other strenuously forbade the deed: nor could the Athenians ever have so dishonoured themselves, if they had not, under a momentary ferocious excitement, risen in insurrection not less against the forms of their own democracy, than against the most sacred restraints of their habitual constitutional morality". Grote suppresses perhaps unwittingly, evidence in the generals' favour, such as 1;he fact that one of the unfortunate generals was himself in the water :jt the crucial time when the order was given, or not given, to save the survivors, and concludes: "The verdict of impartial history will pronounce that ... the generals deserved censure and disgrace." "Censure and disgrace" is a very nice euphemism for the draught of hemlock which was the actual form the people's censure took.

Grote's historical interpretation derives naturally from his absorp ­tion in the poli t ical movements of his own time, just as we have already seen was the case with Syme ' s The Roman Revolution. Finley , however , in calling for ancient historians here and now in the sixties to concern themse l ves with basic human problems, charges them with having become too concerned with problems of interest only to other ancient historians. He specifically complains tha t t here is no modern history of the Athenian Empire, and that instead we have at the present time "an astonishingly bitter controversy in the scholarly journals in which, to put it a bit unkindly, the problems and issues of the empire have been reduced to a question of the date when the Athenian stone-cutters began to carve the letter ~ with four bars instead of three". This particular question however. for all its technicality and lack of popular appea l , is one of great importance for the chronology of the development of the Empire. A "central concern with the central human problems" is fine, but technical problems will keep breaking in, chronological ones above all, not just in the earliest periods of Greek and Roman history. where such problems naturally arise from the absence or extreme scarcity of contemporary records, but even in periods that are relatively well documented. Whom do we know better than Caesar? Yet we cannot even say for certain whether he was born in 100 or 102. And when did his command in Gaul expire? A problem for generations of scholars, it cannot be dismissed as of purely academic interest, since upon it turns the detailed interpretation of events which are themselves central to the interpretation and understanding of an entire period, and a period of supreme relevance to con­temporary concerns. Professional historians cannot be required to eschew such in-group controversies; the danger comes only if too many of them, or

34

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

too many of the influential among them, come to regard such controversies as ends in themselves, not merely means to a better understanding of history as a whole.

Is this then a danger at the present time? Or is the study and inter­pretation of ancient history being enriched by the detailed researches of the professional scholars? We began by considering the new approaches to ancient history which the last century has seen . The pace of the advance has been uneven, but it seems that ground has been won all along the front, though more perhaps in the Roman sector than the Greek. The compilation of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarwn facilitated prosopographical researches, detailed studies of indi­viduals, of their origins, relations, matrimonial alliances, careers, which first in the history of the Principate, more recently in that of the Republic, have cast new light on politics and government, producing on the one hand such invaluable works of reference as the Prosoposraphia Imperii Romani or T.R.S. Broughton's The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, and on the other, new interpretations, like The Roman Revolution, which is itself as revolutionary as was the work of Sir Lewis Namier, using the same methods, in the field of eighteenth-century English history. So again in the history of the Late Republic, the old view that made the populares "the democratic party" and sought to explain the transactions of the Senate in terms of nineteenth-century parlia­mentary democracy is superseded by one which concentrates on amicitia and clientela and factio, and which defines the difference between optimates and populares "not in class gor even in the programmes they proclaimed, but in the methods that they followed." Such a view lies behind such works as Scullard' s Roman Politics 220-150 B.C., Earl ' s Tiberius Gracchus, or Badian's influential Foreign Clientelae, to mention only some of the more important recent works in English.

A comparison of The Roman Revolution with John Buchan's Augustus, published only two years earlier, but a generation removed in spirit, emphasises the change. Listen to Buchan on Augustus's illness in 23 B.C.: "Augustus fell gravely ill. The question of the succession revived in an urgent form, for he was looking death in the face. He summoned the chief magistrates and senators to his sick-room, and made them what he believed to be a farewell speech. To his fellow-consul, Calpurnius Piso, a republican of the old rock, he gave the detailed statement of the military and financial position of the empire on which he and Agrippa had been long at work. To Agrippa he handed his signet ring, thereby marking him out as the man whom he recommended to the Senate and People as most fitted to carryon his task . .. Augustus had kept to the strict constitutional etiquette, ind~cating his preference but lea,:,ing the choice o~ his successor to the Senate". Thus speaks John Buchan, allas Lord Tweedsmulr, Governor-General of Canada, to whom no doubt strict constitutional etiquette was one of life's certainties. And he goes on: "The crisis revealed to Augustus certain defects in his scheme of empire and certain weaknesses in his own position... There was need of drastic reforms in provincial administration, a task in which Agrippa must be his chief agent, and for this purpose he must have a clear over-riding authority. The succession question might sleep for the moment."

Compare then Syme: the touching little sick-bed scene is dismissed in one brief sentence, with t~e barbed commen~ thafounder Piso and Agrippa "the. government could have contlnued -- for a tlme". Piso may be, as Buchan saId,

3S

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

"a republican of the old rock," but for Syme his consulship shows "the readiness of old Republican adherents to rally to the new regime, for diverse motives _. ambition, profit and patriotism". But Syme's real interest is in the sequel, the grant of proconsular imperium to Agrippa, which he implies was decided on, not so much by Augustus, as by "the chief men of the Caesarian party" to prevent dis­sension in theiT own ranks, "if Caesar's heir perished by disease or by the dagger": "Patriotism conspired with personal interest to discover a solider insurance, a tighter formula of government. Whatever happened, the new order must endure. Two measures were taken, in the name of Caesar Augustus. The constitutional basis of his authority was altered. More important than that, official standing was conferred upon the ablest man among his adherents, the principal of his marshals -- M. Vipsanius Agrippa, thrice consul".

Syme in fact sees Augustus, not as a blameless anticipation of King George V, but as a politician, the leader of a factio; he distrusts the far.rades and seeks to uncover the realities of power which Augustus and his friends themselves were so anxious to conceal. History books sometimes draw a line across Roman history at 31 or 27 B.C. and say, "here begins the Roman Empire". This is hindsight: to Augustus's own contemporaries, or rather to the older generation who remembered the fifties and forties and the trimmvirate, could he have seemed in 23, or for many years thereafter, anything but yet another military leader who, having seized power, was hanging onto it better than most and using it on the whole wisely, but who might any day go the way of Pompey and Caesar and Antony, leaving the whole sorry process of civil war to begin again? Horace may have prayed for his safety, not because he loved him, but because of the alternative.

History however is more than politics and government. In other fields too, particularly those of social and economic history, new approaches and the application of new techniques, those of the social scientist, for instance, might lead to a reappraisal of some time-hallowed theories. Few ancient historians are really at home with statistical theory; few are economists. Should not the relationship between trade and politics in the ancient world be re-examined? Rostovtzeff thought that the destruction of Carthage in 146 could "only be

~~~l:!~~:r~s m!~~e~~~iles~~~~ ~~w a s:!;:ln!~v:~e b~~O~~C!~~~ ~;t:~~e w:~! ~~~i;~~ states motivated consciously or unconsciously by the sort of economic considera­tions that so govern governments today? What about productivity, agricultural and industrial, in the ancient world, what about capitalism, the value of money and the standard of living, what about slavery (a subject little studied, save by Marxist historians)? Historians do not lack for worlds to conquer. ~bat more­over of the new insights that may be gained by stepping outside the traditional frameowrk? Professor J. Ferguson in a recent Didaskalos article (ii. 1, pp. 112-113), discussing his experiences at the University of Ibadan, writes: "Society here is in many ways closer to Graeco-Roman society than is 'any society which can be found in Britain and America. A few examples will make clear the range of resemblance: tonal languages; traditions of hospitality; oracles; dance­drama; respect for age; polythe~sm and animistic religion; city-states; assemblies; an attitude to nature that is religious not aesthetic; religious sacrifice. It would be possible greatly to extend the list. If we can produce scholars who will rid themselves of our preconceptions and all the nineteenth-century European prejudices of the textbooks which they read, and look at classical

36

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACIIES

antiquity with their own eyes, they will educate us in Europe and give us fresh insights". It is an exciting prospect.

In all fields of ancient history, moreover, the archaeologist has contributed and continues to contribute much. Archaeological discoveries have opened up whole new fields of research. such as papyrology or, currently fashion­able, Minoan and Mycenean studies . The Egyptian papyri have enabled scholars to reconst:ruct the social, economic and administrative history of that country in Hellenistic and Roman times with a completeness unparalleled in any other part or period of the ancient world. Those unfami liar wi th the papyrologists' achievements may be referred by way of introduction to Sir H. Idris Bell's opusculum magnum, EgyPt from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. But archaeology has illuminated almost every facet of ancient life and civili­sation. Egypt may be a special case, but a book like Sir Ian Richmond's Roman Britain (though is there in fact any book like it?) shows what archaeology in the hands of a master can contribute elsewhere.

Archaeology is becoming popular, and such works as Paul MacKendrick's The Mute Stones Speak and The Greek Stones Speak are a painless introduction, and a revelation, to the layman. But the professional historian all too often leaves archaeology to the archaeologists, and fails to master the available evidence. Archaeologists on the other hand tend to be so busy that they have little time to stop and synthesise. The results of their work have to be tracked down in monographs and journals published by museums and local archaeological societies, unknown and often inaccessible except to the specialist. The most important contribution to the understanding of Caesar's Gallic War for many years past is Wheeler and Richardson's The Hill-Forts of ~rance. The opening chapter is worth many volumes. How many students of Caesar have even heard of it? Archaeology moreover, especially Roman provincial archaeology, is the most particularist of sciences: Roman Britain men may not know what is going on in the Rhineland, and vice versa, some French archaeologists appear to read only French, and so~historian is not altogether to be blamed if he prefers to take his archaeology at second hand and often, alas, out of date. He must however understand the nature of archaeOlogical evidence. Some historians will accept and even welcome archaeological evidence where it fills a gap left by the literary sources, but reject it where it contradicts them. Yet an archaeological report is a primary source, to be studied and evaluated as carefully as a literary one, and to evaluate it the historian must be conversant with archaeological method. The recent Knossos controversy is instructive: Professor L.R. Palmer, as a philologist, diSliking the dates put forward on archaeological grounds by Sir Arthur Evans, set himself to re-examine and revalue the archaeological evidence on which Evans based his dating. Who was right does not concern us here; it is Palmer's example, his willingness to tackle the archaeological data, that is to be lauded. There have been controversies, for instance, less publicised, over the dating of Roman sites in the Ea:r::ly Empire, where the dating depends largely upon the singularly unattractive pottery known as Samian ware or terra sigillata, by means of which archaeologist would claim to be able to date sites to within, some­times, a matter of a few years. The historian must accept his claim, or learn enough about pottery to refute it. Rostovtzeff is reported once to have closed il paper with the words, "Geld und Silber haben wir nicht gesucht, aber Geschichte, und Geschichte haben wir gefunden" ("Gold and silver were not

37

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

what we sought, but history. and history was what we found"). The archaeolo­gist's contribution to history is not to be ignored or depreciated.

If then new approaches to the study of ancient history at the high­est levels of scholarship have extended our knowledge and revolutionised our understanding of the ancient world over the last century. and if still further advances are to be expected in the future, what does this mean to the teacher of ancient history at the high school or undergraduate level? We have already noted that ancient history at this level is studied by both classical spe­cialists and non-specialists, for some of whom it will be their only contact with Greece and Rome: hence the need to get away from the idea that ancient history is the handmaid of Greek and Latin literature. The study of Greek and Latin retains the value that it always had, and nobody would suggest that the traditional roles be reversed, and history elevat.ed above the language and literat.ure, for those who still study t.hem. But. ancient history can be taught effectively to those who have no Greek or Latin. Not only are there the works of modern scholars, but most of the original sources are available in transla­tion. It follows however from what we have already said that two things are essential: firstly that we get. away from the idea that history is only about wars and politics, and secondly that ancient history be taught by men well­grounded in the classics, knowing Latin, if not Greek, but aware too of the possibilities of the social sciences, of archaeology, and aware of the rele­vance of ancient history to modern history and to our own times.

We must also get away from the idea that ancient hist.ory, or even Roman history, is a unit, to be st.udied in its entirety or not. at all. For t.he high school Latin teacher t.he last twenty or thirty years of the Republic and the earlier part of Augustus's reign are of paramount importance. They can be studied, either as part of a course called "Ancient History" or as part of a Latin course, reading the appropriate authors, as they are read in Latin courses now, but supplemented with further material in translation. and the student need know no more of Rome's earlier history t.han he can glean from two hours private reading of Rostovtzeff's Rome, still, for all its faults, its dated judgements, the best short general history of Rome. Let the teacher start with the tiral of Verres, leap, as Horace suggests, in medias res. Let him try to make the students understand what it all means: the facts t.hey will have forgotten two months after the examination, but one hopes they will retain of their teaching enough to let t.hem remember where to look the facts up if they need them. It is far more import.ant in this, as in other fields, for the students to ask the right questions t.han for them to get the right answers. What they can be taught is what t.his paper has tried to show, namely, the problemsand pre-occupations here and now of the people most closely involved with ancient history. the professional schdlars. Fifll-ey is justified in urging that the professionaH should concern themselves largely, if not exclusively, with "central human problems", because otherwise ancient history is a dead subject, which it should not be. Man has such a curiosity about his past, and the past of Greece and Rome has such special relevance for us all, that it is not difficult to make it live.

C.M. Wells University of Ottawa

38

ANCIENT HISTORY: NEW APPROACHES

1. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, My Recollections 1848-1914, trans. G.C. Richards (London, 1930), p. 83.

3. Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (Penguin Books, 1954), p. 11.

4. The Legacy of Greece, ed. Sir Richard Livingstone (Oxford, 1923) , p. 229.

S. The Crisis in the Humanities, ed. J.H. Plumb (Penguin Books, 1964), p. 14.

6. N.G.L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 323 B.C. (Oxford, 1959), p. 416.

7. G. Grote, A History of Greece, abridged ed. by J.M. Mitchell and M.O.B. Caspari (London, 1907), p. 760.

8. H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, (Universi ty Paperbacks. 1963). p. 7.

9. John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, Augustus (London, 1937). p. 156.

10. R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939). p. 335.

II. M. Rostovtzeff, Rome (Oxford, Galaxy Books, 1960), p. 90.

The paper .\ncient Historv: New Approaches was originally delivered to a meeting of the Ontario Classical Association held at the University of Ottawa on 22 October 1966. It has been revised and shortened for publication.

Resume

Oepuis plus d'un siec1e de nouvelles decouvertes archeologiques et de nouvelles methodes de recherche ont trans forme 1 'etude de I 'hi stoire ancienne. L' historien de I 'antiquite sera un specialiste. mais il ne devra pas perdre de vue les questions fondamentales sur lesquelles I 'h istoire ancienne a beaucoup a nous dire. Les recherches des specialistes ont beau coup influence I' interpretation mod erne de l' antiqui te, et d' autres transformations sont encore a esperer, surtout dans les domaines de l'histoire sociale et economique, s'il se trouve des chercheurs qui ont aussi une connaissance des sciences sociales. Le professeur du secondaire doit lui aussi s'interesser aux questions fondamenta1es et se tenir au courant des recherches les plus recentes.

L'article suivant, The Computer and Classical Languages, discute des utilisations faites de l'ordinateur dans l'etude des langues et des litteratures anciennes, surtout pour les recherches lexicographiques et stylistiques, y compris les questions d'attribution douteuse, par exemple Ie cas de la 7e Epitre dite de Platon. L'artic1e est suivi d'une bibliographie qui permettra au lecteur interesse de se renseigner davan tage sur ces probl emes.

39

THE Cc.!PUTER AND ClASSICAL LANGUAGES

For some years now teachers and students of Classics have been hearing reports (usually somewhat vague, and more often than not disparaging) about the application of statistical techniques to classical texts. In this article I should like to bring readers up to date with the sort of work that has already been done and that which is presently in progress. Included will be a discussion of the techniques involved, and an estimate of their possibilities and limitations.

Quite the commonest (and certainly the least controversial) use to which Classicists are putting the computer nowadays is the compilation of lexicons, dictionaries , etc. This is readily understandable. The computer works at an unconscionable speed, has a memory more tensile and all-embracing than any human memory yet discovered, never tires (n, does not know what pre­judice is, and can rapidlY answer a multiplicity of simultaneous questions of daWlting complexity. Once the requisite information has been stored into it, it can 'scan' the picture at speeds unthinkable to man (it can ' read' the computerized text of the New Testament, for example, in three minutes), and can give clear, precise and accurate answers to carefully formulated statistical questions. The result is that scholars can now compile lexicons and the like in less than a fifth of the time it used to take, and with a much greater degree of accuracy. They can also go for ' variations' on a lexicographical theme which hitherto seemed too laborious to bear contemplation. A good example of this is the recent book of Fowler and Wolfe, Materials for the Study of the Etruscan

~~~h~e wi~h ~~e w;~~~n~~n i~~~~~t~~~S~i:~S a~~~~~; ~~v;r~~; ~~ip~~IP~~v~~:ir attempts at decipherment, and have done all they could to present as varied a series of indices as possible. With this in mind they have compiled one com­prehensive index of all known samples of Etruscan in forward alphabetical order, another one in reverse alphabetical order, another one in order of frequency, and another one in which a key-word is centred on the page. with its context to the right. All four indices were compiled by the machine itself, once it had been initially programmed with the computerized text.

For a clear picture of the number of other such computer-oriented Classical projects presently under way, the reader would do best to turn to the ACLS Newsletter for June, 1966 and current issues of Revue (see end of this article). In this present summary all one can do is offer a few highlights. At Liege p. Duroisin is compiling a complete index and metrical study of the Appendix Vergiliana, at Princeton S. Atkins has completed a form-line concordance to the Eclogues, while at Oberlin College N.A. Greenberg has done a large amount of work on Aeneid I, in an attempt to test the Knight theory of homodynamic and heterodynamic verses. At St Joseph I s College, Philadelphia, J. T. McDonough Jr. is engaged upon a complete count of the rhythmic function of each word in the Iliad and Odyssey, a complete metrical index, and a study of the precise intervals between each word occurrence. (Results to date tend to put him into the Unitarian camp.) Jacques de Bie, of Louvain, has keypunched Demosthenes' First Philippic and On the Peace, Isocrates' Areopagiticus and Against the Sophi~ and Pericles' Funeral Oration, and is now engaged in what he calls "their lexicological and morphological analysis." C.W. Dunmore, of N.Y.U. (University Heights, N.Y.), has completed a concordance to the ApocOlocyntosis, and is at present engaged on a concordance to the works of Pliny the Younger. Konrad Gaiser, of TUbingen, is at work on a new Lexicon to Plato, and A. Maniet, of Louvain, on a lexicon to the plays of Plautus. J.-M. Moitioux, of Liege, is

40

TIlE COMPUTER AND CIASSICAL lANGUAGES

preparing an index and metrical study of Lucretius. and E. Capps III of the University of Mississippi is doing computer-oriented research into the works of Pindar and Bacchylides. Projects involving somewhat later writings are those of J.W. Halporn of Bloomington, Indiana (Cassiodorus) and R.P. Luc M.J. Verheyen, of the Faculd des Lettres de Paris (a complete concordance to the works of St Augustine). Readers interested in any of these projects could contact the res earchers concerned.

A more dangerous (and commensurately more exciting) game is played by those scholars who use computer techniques as an aid to the dating of ancient documents and even to the solution of problems of authentication. So far most of this work has been done in the realm of Greek prose, both classical and hellenistic. One shOUld point out, however, that stylistic studies are far from new. A host of nineteenth-century German scholars in particular devoted patient hours to the stylometric analysis of ancient texts like the Iliad and Odyssey, Plato's dialogues and the New Testament, in hopes of delinea~so reliable a stylistic thumbprint of the author or authors concerned that works or passages of doubtful authenticity could be included in or excluded from the canon with some degree of reliability. Much of what was said at the time was no doubt wild and bizarre, but many of the radical-sounding claims have survived to form the new orthodoxy. So much so that on the Homeric Question it now takes a courageous scholar to defend full-blooded Unitarianism, while in New Testament studies those who still cling to the authenticity of all the soi-disant Pauline Epistles are nowadays usually dismissed with a deprecatiJ'lg sigh. Even in the thorny problell of the order of Plato's dialogues the researches of scholars like Campbell

~~l~~~: ~a;~~tg~a;:r~~~~~;! e~i~~~~u~~~!a(~ i ~~n~~~n~~!i ~~~n g~~e~h! ~~~:~u~f a~~e Cratylus) still remain. ---

The works of all these scholars were based upon the assumption that, given sufficiently large amounts of material from which to draw samples, one can then apply large numbers of statistical tests to the samples in question and combine the results to form a stylistic thumbprint which is as unique to the author as his own physical thumbprint. (In this they have been applauded by modern statisticians, some of whom claim that a maximum of only 200 words of consecutive prose is enough to reveal to the professional analyst the uniqueness of each man's style.) When this is said, however, one is still left facing the question. ~ statistical tests are stylistically significant? The point is an important one, because a certain tyPe of test will tell us something about an author's unconscious or only partially conscious habits while another tests will merely tell us about conscious tricks of style that he has cultivated and can vary and manipulate at will, while others again will tell us something general about (say) Greek prose but nothing peculiar to the author in question. The laborious collection of hapax legomena, for example, will usually (~ n scholars) produce statistically insignificant reSUlts, since a phenomenon of this nature i.s as likely as not to spring from the nature of the subject-matter, whereas habits (by definition) are independent of such. The same could be said for the avoidance of hiatus. This phenomenon is clearly a very conscious one, and can be varied at will; to use it, therefore, as a dating-test, as many have done, is at best somewhat temerarious. Indeed, this sort of error has impressed upon contemporary statisticians the need for applying only those tests which one can reasonably dub as 'unconscious' traits of style. These traits, to be of any value at all, must be indepeml.ent of subject-matter and remain constant over

41

THE COMPUTER AND ClASSICAL lANGUAGES

fairly long periods of time and within reasonable differences of literary form . In other words, the very last thing one will be looking for will be those 'obvious' characteristics of a man's style like avoidance of hiatus. On the contrary. one will stress those aspects of his style which are so trivially common that one has a reasonable expectation that even he himself was unaware of them.

I ••• a ••• the ••• the ••• of •.• a ••• of ••• an ••• the . •• a ••• the ••• I

Now the same passage with the above omitted:

'Next, said I, here is .•. parable to illustrate ..• degrees in wl u ..:h our nature may be enlightened or unenlightened. Imagine ••• condition ••• men living in ••• sort ••• cavernous chamber underground, with ••• entrance open to ••• light and ••• long passage all down ••• cave.'

Of the two excerpts. the first is clearly the better candidate for the title 'unconscious' • It also has the distinct advantage of telling us nothing what­soever about the subject matter. so that the analyst cannot be accused of allowing his own literary (or philosophical or historical) bias to prejudice the

Extensive tests on Greek authors whose writing - span was known to be a long one (e.g. Demosthenes and Isocrates) have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that an author's average sentence-length and use of the particle bt as second or third word have a remarkable degree of stability. in spite of the time of life at which a piece was written or the particular literary genre into which it happens to fall. Thexu. !distribution has proved to be less reliable. By itself it is likely to highlight differences which may be those of genre or those of authorship. and the two other tests will be needed to help decide which inter­pretation to place upon the evidence. Supplementary tests have involved a study of the words tv. cx. lrt 6 .:; and £ tvcx. L. and further possibilities at present being tested are the number of words occurring between the definite article and the word with which it is associated and (a suggestion of Professor Dover) the relative distribution of finite verbs and participles. It must be stressed that the greatest degree of reliability is achieved when the results of a number of tests converge; the greater the number and sophistication of the tests involved, the more accurate the 'signature' or 'thumbprint' that will emerge.

A good example of the possibilities (and limitations) of the technique can be seen in recent work by A.Q. Morton and A.D. Winspear on (Plato's) Seventh Letter. l This letter was excluded from the canon of Plato's works by a large number of nineteenth-century scholars, staged a robust come-back in the early twentieth century, and is now being subjected to heavy criticism once more. 2 The question facing modern s tylistic analysts was whether the problem could, by the employment of computer techniques, be raised from the plane of scholastic preference to that of reasonably scientific argument. Difficulties abounded from the start . First of all, the Seventh Letter is clearly itself heterogeneous, as

42

llIE COMPUTER AND CLASSICAL LANGJAGES

scholars have long suspected. The so-called 'philosophical digression' (336b-340e) is quickly isolated by the computer as markedly different from the rest. and bolsters the suspicion that its ultra-naive version of the Theory of Ideas cannot have come from the hand of the mature Plato. Secondly. there is no other lengthy letter of Plato whose indubitable authenticity allows it to be used as a yardstick. In this case a b£ tl"t£pOC; HAO Ue; is to look for a passage of continuous narrative prose elsewhere in the works. Possibilities are the ~. the Critias, large tracts of the Timaeus and large tracts of the Laws. If one is to go by the writings of Demosthenes and Isocrates, the time-gap between the ~ and the Seventh Letter should not be a major obstacle; the variation in unconscious style between the two should be minute or non-existent, if the author of the two works is the same. As it turns out. however, the differences in unconscious style are so enormous (particularly in sentence­length and the distribution of the particle bt ) that the chances of their being by the same author are infinitesimally small. This remains true even when the passage 336b-340e is omitted; what remains of the letter is so markedly different from the ~ that the chances of their coming from the same 'population' (to quote statistical jargon) is less than one in a thousand. So far. however, one has merely shown that Plato could hardly have written both the ~ and Seventh Letter as we have it. To say which one he is likelyto'have written one needs to make further tests on the dialogues, and see where the consonance lies. As it happens, the Apology's traits are very closely consonant with indisputedly Platonic dialogues like the Sophist, the Politicus and the Philebus, and this presents us with a good prima facie case~assertion that it, if either, is the work of Plato. By contrast with this, however, the Critias, the Timaeus and Laws 5 and 6 show a clear overall affinity with the style of the Seventh Letterr- This is curious enough, but their own clear internal heterogeneity (a very startling discovery) 3 makes interpretation doubly difficult. Among a number of possibilities one COUld, perhaps, argue that all four pieces of Greek, while being possibly in origin Platonic, have been worked over by a redactor who has to a large degree stamped on them the impress of his own particular style.

If this were the case, who would be possible candidates? Recent suggestions are Helicon and Speusippus. 4 A fair number of arguments have been I13rshalled in favour of the first, but not enough of his continuous prose has survived to offer enough Greek for minimum sampling. In the case of Speusippus, however, there exists a letter to Philip of Macedon which has been attributed to hi_. This letter is somewhat small, and only barely adequate for the ex­traction of minimum samples, but first analysis has shown some exciting results. The distribution of the particle 6 £ , for example, is remarkably similar to that of the Seventh Letter and other 'Platonic' works mentioned above. However, in matters of style particular caution needs to be exercised in attempting to make positive attributions. At best stylistic analysis by computer tends to offer negative results; e.g. two documents are stylistically such that they exclude s1ngle authorship. Before going on to make positive attributions one III.lst be reasonably sure that common characteristics of style are not simply standard traits of Greek writing in the genre in question. rn this instance a great deal of analysis of Greek letters in the fourth century will need to be done. For the moment, however, one can reasonably claim that there is nothing in the style of the Seventh Letter and that of (Speusippus') Letter to Philip which excludes the attribution to them of single authorship. This. if true, is a smal~eful step forward.

43

1HE COMPUTER AND CIASSICAL lANGUAGES

Like all nascent sciences, computer analysis of style will no doubt make plenty of st:rious mistakes before it achieves a satisfactory degree of sophistication and reliability. Excessive claims will be made and refuted; absurdities will be aired as Gospel Truth till common-sense demolishes them; accurate statistical information will be used to bolster untenable conclusions. and sound conclusions will lead to the falsification of embarrassing-looking statistics. But one thing is certain: computer analysis of style is here to stay. The number of projects under way is growing at an enormous rate, and it is already a task in itself simply to l-eep abreast of the literature. For this reason it seems useful to append a list of the important books and periodicals at present appearing in Europe and North America, along with a shorter and more specialized list of works of particular importance to those interested in the stylistic analysis of Greek prose.

T .M. Robinson University of Calgary

1. For an interim account of their findings see Computers and the Humanities, no. 3, Jan. 1967, pp. 72-73.

2. See, e.g., li. Ry1e, Plato's Progress (Cambridge U.P., 1966) and L. Edelstein, Plato's Seventh Letter (Leiden, 1966). For an account of the vicissitudes in the treatment of this much-discussed piece of Greek see G. Morrow, Plato's Epistles (Babbs-Merrill, New York, 1962) pp. 5-11. ---

3. If one employs the distribution of the particle of as one's geiger­counter, for Laws 1-10 chi squared is 20.26 for ten degrees of freedom, while for bookSl-4 and 7-10 chi squared is 12.33 for seven degrees of freedom. The anomalous nature of books 5-6 is at once apparent. In the case of the Critias chi squared in the first 50 sentences is 1. 75 for one degree of freedom, whereas in the remaining 122 sentences chi squared jumps to 3.15 for two degrees of freedom. In the Timaeus chi squared for the first 200 sentences is 0.2 for one degree of freedom, whereas in the rest of the text chi squared soars to 9.3 for two degrees of freedom.

4. G. Ryle, op.cit., pp. 82-84; A.Q. Morton & A.D. Winspear, art.cit., p. 73.

(a) Current periodicals and newsletters:

1. ACLS Newsletter Special Supplement, June 1966.

Title: 'Computerized Research in the Humanities: A Survey.'

8y Chester Bowles, IBM, Armonk, N.Y.

44

THE COMPUTER AND CLASSICAL LANQJAGES

2. corr.puters and the Humanities . A Newsletter.

Vol. I, no. I. September 1966. Vol. I, no. 2, November 1966. Vcr'. I. no. 3, January 1967.

Queens College, Flushing, N.Y. Ed. Joseph Rabc:n. $4.()O p.a.

A recent issue (January 1967) has a brief article on Plato's Seventh Letter by A..Q. Morton and A.D. Winspear.

Of a nun:.ber of Newsletter currently appearing this is quite the most important. It keeps the reader up to date concerning sen:inars, conferences and recent publications, and contains articles on all aspects of humanistic research by computer. The number for January 1967 has a particule.rly useful updated list (pp. 75 - 102) of literary works now converted to machine-language.

On the Editorial Board of this magazine is J.W. Halporn, of the Department of Cla.ssics, Indiana University.

3. Computer Studie-s in the Humanities and Verbal Behavior.

Edd. foR. Horowitz, L. SalOin, S. Y. Sedelow.

The first number is due to appear in the near future.

4. Revue (de l'Organisation Internationale pour l'Etude des Langues Anciennes par Ordinateur).

Ed . L. Delatte, University of Liege, Belgit:.m. $IC.OO p.a.

This magazine deals almost exclusively with projt'cts invclvir.g Latin and Greek texts, from Homer to the Byzantine period. It goes a long way to sUPFlemer.t projects not covered in (1) abeve. It first appeared in 1965, and five nUlI'.bers have already been issued. The aims of the Or£anization are perhaps worth quoting from the initial t:ulletin:

' ••• the Or!,:anization aims essentially at collecting and disseminating info:rn.ation. An information bulletin will be published quarterly (= Revue, TMR) . It will include the plans of each laboratory, curreil'tresearch surveys, progress reports, point to pO~!1ibl~ exchange~ of inforn.ation, and keep the reader infc.rmed on the subjects of theses in progress, and on the place of publication of the papers sent by members to the central office of the Organizaticn.

The Organization is also planning to help isolated workers and ne';." laboratori es ty effering methodolcgical and technical support .

It will have a library of machine programs adapted to the needs of philolcgical research and will organise the needs of philological research and will organise the exchange of these programs among the different laboratories.

WE CO>tPUTER AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES

It will organise colloquia for scientists and research workers.

45

It will keep in touch with organi~ations having related aims .'

5. Calculi. A bimonthly Newsletter.

Ed. S. F . Wai te, Department of Classics. Dartmouth College, Hanover. N.H . 03755 . (Free)

This is much smaller in scope and ambition than (2). but has' the advantage of being the only Newsletter in English which concerns itself exclusively with computer- oriented research in the Classics.

6. Texas A & M University Center for Computer Research in the Humanities Newslet t er (Free)

College Station. Texas 77843.

This adds little to (2) .

7. Annual ' bibliography' number of the PMLA (Proceedings of the Modern Language Assoc . ) -

From 1967 on this will have a category ' Computer- Oriented Literary Research' •

(All infonnation should be sent t o Computers and the Humanities by Jan . 1st of the year in question .)

8 . Educom. Vol. I, no. 8.

Ann Arbor, Michigan: 1966.

This number is a popular survey of some current computer-projects in the Humanities. It is particularly to be recommended for those consti ­tutionally incapable of jumping in at the deep end.

9. Latest edition of Current Research and Development in Scientific Documen ta tion.

(NSF 66 - 17)

Address: NSF, Office of Science Information Service, Washington DC 20402) .

This is a directory of active projects, and has several sections of interest to humanists, such as

(a) ' Language Analysis ' (b) 'Abstracting, ClaSSification, Coding and Indexing ' (e) ' Pattern Recognition '

46

THE COMPUTER AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES

(b) ~:

1. See the short bibliography on p. 6 of Vol. I, no. 1 of Computers and the Humanities.

2. Manual for the Printing of Literary Texts by Computer.

R.J. Glickman and G.J. Staalman. U. of Toronto Press. 1966.

3. Computers for the Humanities? (A Record of the Conference sponsored by Yale University on a grant from IBM, Jan. 22-23. 1965).

Among a number of interesting items, this volume contains an attack on A. Q. Morton's techniques by J. Ellison of El Paso, Texas.

4. Materials for the Study of the Etruscan Language

M. Fowler and R.G. Wolfe, University of Wisconsin Press, 1965. 2 Vcls.

(c) Literature on the Analysis of Greek Prose:

1. U. Yule, The Statistical Study of Literary Vocabulary. Cambridge, 1944.

2. G. Herdan, Language as Chance and Choice, Groningen, 1956.

3. w.e. Wake, Sentence Length Distributions in Greek Authors, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, Vol. l20, pt.3, 1957, pp. 331-346.

4. D.R. Cox and L. Brandwood, On a discriminatory problem connected with the works of Plato, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, Vol. 21, no. I, 1959, pp. 195-200.

5. A.Q. Morton, The Authorship of the Pauline Corpus, in The New Testament in Historical and Contemporary Perspective. Dasil Blackwell, Oxford, 1965.

6. A.Q. Morton, The Authorship of Greek Prose, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, Vol. 128, pt.2, 1965.

7. M. Levinson, A.Q. Morton and W.C. Wake, On Certain Statistical Features of the Pauline Epistles, Journal of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, July 1966.

8. A.Q. Morton and J. McLeman, Paul, the Man and t.he Myth, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1966 .

9. A.Q. Morton and A.D. Winspear, The Computer and Plato's Seventh Letter, Computers and t.he Humanit.ies, Vol. I, no. 3, 1967, pp. 72-73.

47

BOOK REVIEWS!C(}{PTES-RENDUS

VIRGIL, A STIIDY IN CIVILIZED POETRY. by Brooks Otis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. pp . ix, 436 .

This is an impressive book, in which Professor Otis, accepting and using to the full important ideas from the extensive previous literature on Virgil (such, for example, as Heinze's stress on technique, and P6schl's on symbolism). adds to them a fresh psychological approach of his own .

He is concerned to show the unity of all Virgil's work --Eclogues. Georgics. and Aeneid -- as an evolution, one might say, culminating in the Aeneid; and to stress the sophistication of Virgil's thought and method, despite his use of an apparently obsolete poetic form -- epic. He under-takes this through detailed character study. on the one hand. af)d detailed study of Virgil's poetic structure, on the other; which two elements in Otis's argument, however , are minutely interwoven and to a large extent inter­dependent.

We might say that Otis considers fatum to be Virgil's topic, and this fatum is, in the Aeneid for example, botiltile destiny of Aeneas and the destiny of Rome. It is worked out by the Roman virtues, especially pi etas (in all its forms -- toward country, family. and gods), and humani tas; while the setbacks come through furor and viol entia. whether on the part of gods (like Juno) or of humans. """"An'd'the traditional epic machinery, with i t s impressive narrative verse. mythological personnel, and divine inter-ference in human affairs, allows Virgil to "editorialize" through narrative, through juxtaposition of events and repetition of themes, while at the same time he can present his characters wi th both sympathy and empathy in the manner of the subjective poets of the Hellenistic period and after, as Callimachus in Greek and Catullus in Latin.

It is difficult in a brief review to give a clear idea of the pattern of thought in a booked so packed with ideas and elaborate argumen­tation as this one is; and indeed for that very reason it is not itself al­ways very easy reading, and demands in the reader a thorough knowledge of all Virgil's poetry; indeed it helps to come fresh from Homer also. If a reader wishes to concentrate only on the Aeneid this is possible, but the two chapters on the obsolescence of the epic and subjective style must be read because therein Otis shows us the grounds on which he rests his thesis; also part 2 of the latter chapter (pages 61-96) is an excellent discussion of the Dido story. where without sacrificing sympathy for Dido we are made to see clearly why she was in the wrong in relation to the Roman destiny .

Elsewhere the Aeneid is analysed in two long chapters, an Odyssean (for Books 1-6) and an Iliadic (for 7-12); and here too both character and situation studies are penetrating and all designed to show how they severally contribute to our understanding of Aeneas as the central figure of the story. carrying its meaning as well as its action. One does not pretend to subscribe to all of Otis's interpretations; for example the present reviewer finds somewhat strained the explanation of the Achaemenides episode as a symbol for Anchises' death; whereas the visit to Helenus and Andromache pointing up the contrast of their "new" Troy. which concentrates only on the past, and Aeneas's which wi 11 look to the future, is convincing.

48

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENOU5

Otis believes that not only the pUcing of the books is carefully worked out for balance and emphasis of the theme, but also that within every book there is an intricate pattern of events and episodes. sometimes even with near-correspondence in the number of lines involved in parallel parts, And this structure-patterning he thinks is fundamental. The general picture arising from the structure argument is clear enough and acceptable, but in the details there are times when it seems to this reviewer at least a little more imaginary than real -- even granting that Virgil did spend nine years on the Aeneid and wished to spend another three before it should be pu­blished~one wonders whether he might not be surprised to see some of the schemes attributed to him.

But for all that we have here without question a masterly dis­cussion of the whole Aeneid theme and all its elements.

The two chapters which treat of Eclogues and Georgics are really an integral part of the whole book and thesis, and even among their several poems Otis finds a structural approach -- which is however much harder to apply in the non-narrative setting. It is better that they not be omitted, but they will be of less interest to some readers.

There is an excellent concluding chapter drawing together the several threads and giving a welcome recapitulation of the whole . And nine appendixes provide some interesting additions on special topics as well as bibliography. Al together this is an important and a stimulating book, from which no-one, whether he agree or disagree, will not come away the more enlightened.

THE CATULLAN REVOLUTION,

Ellenor Swallow Carleton University.

by Kenneth Quinn. Melbourne; Melbourne U.P ; New York and London: Cambridge U.P . Pp . 119.

Kenneth Quinn claims that the object of this book is to "assess in general terms the shape of a new movement in poetry that began in Rome around Catullus and the impact of that movement on the subsequent course of Roman poetry." To prove that a revolution occurred, it is necessary for him to show that what happened previous to Catullus was different from what continued after. Quinn writes first of the Hellenistic achievement in poetry, noting that poets of this school were !'!arned men who wrote in a systematic scholarly fashion for learned readers. With regard to the Roman achievement before Catullus, Quinn refers to three separate streams: the main one, the epic­tragic written in a lofty style with the poet's personality excluded, the second, the comic-satiric written in a more colloquial and varying tone, and the third, slIghter genres, like epigrams. Previous to Catullus, these streams were all distinct from one another and inwardly coherent.

49

BOOK REVIEWS!COMPTES RENOUS

A revolution occurred then when Catullus fused these three genres, drawing from the first, the epic - tragic, acute study of emotion accompanied with dignity and pathos, from the second, the comic-satiric, a new directness and simplicity of language plus (from Plautus' comedy) a precedent for metrical experiment and variety. and, from the third, the slighter genres, "the technique of making a ruthless selection of detail in order to suggest a story by a few touches, instead of telling it at length" (17).

There was a revolution also in that a fundamental shift in emphasis occurred. Quinn warns that excessive pre-occupation with continuity is dangerous. He writes that the verse which poets still called ~ became for them "not the marginal by-products of genius in moments of relaxation, but "the vehicle of a new kind of poetry." Quinn believes this shift in emphasis to be primarily the result of a social phenomenon. "Poets ceased to be the craftsmen-proteges of sophisticated noblemen" (24) and assumed a high degree of independence to the point of no longer catering to authority or admonishing the man in the street but simply disregarding both.

This part of the book could be suggested for reading to Grade XIII students who might, at that level, after being introduced to Catullus in Grade XII, be more interested in the tradition behind Catullus and the impact his poetry had on subsequent tradition. Grade XII studeMs should be made aware of this revolution by the teacher, but their concentration on the whole, at their introduction to Catullus, should be directed toward an appre­ciation of his poetry as poetry~. This part of the book then is perhaps less satisfactory for student reading.

In the next two chapters, Quinn is concerned mainly with refuting a common view of Catullus, namely that his models were primarily Greek and that Roman tradition had little influence on him. Although the teacher should be aware of as much recent criticism as possible of the poets he is teach-ing, such a concern would be of lesser importance to students who are most probably not aware of any of the commonly held views anyway. The latter part of this chapter, however (24-25), in which he writes of the fundamental shift in emphasis, is important.

Also, at about this same place in the book, Quinn expounds his theory of levels of intent in Catullus to offset the idea of what he calls "some psychic dichotomy that enabled (Catullus) to write good poetry when he was not trying, and which made him write bad poetry when he was" (43). Quinn I s view is that with a low level of poetic intent, Catullus wrote ~; at a r.1edium level, he wrote "imaginative obscenity", and at a high level of poetic intent he composed his lyrics. The student, at least in Grade XII and even in XIII, who has no general picture of Catullus' poetry, having read, in Ontario, 4 at most of his poems in Grade XII and 6 in Grade XIII, would be less likely to grasp this idea; the teacher, of course, always must take into account ideas of this sort in interpreting a poem to his class.

After substantiating the occur-renee of a revolution Quinn begins a description of it, relating it frequently to modern poetic achievement. The two main characteristics of the revolution were, in his opinion, youth and reaction. The "independence, recklessness (and) enthusiasm" (48) of the youth­ful new generation of poets demanded a new type and form of poetry. The new movement was also a reaction against Cicero and his generation which favoured most highly the epic-tragic stream.

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BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENOU$

Quinn then begins a discussion of 'Catullus' poetry per se. He notes the personal involvement of the poet in contrast to the purely external and intellectual tone of the preceding Greek and Hellenistic poetry. With regard to ~ and ~, he notes how Catullus exploited the possi­bilities of metrical variety from the polymetric to the elegiac. from great surges of emotion to restrained ferocity. Quinn calls Catullus' language the living language of everyday, perfectly natural but sustained at a brilliant level. To illustrate this, he reproduces a piece of modern poetry. Robert Graves' "The Cool Web". A comparison of English poetry with Latin poetry should catch the interest of the student. He concludes that the poetry of this new movement directed its subtleties toward the elite and not the general public. It was art for art's sake. Quinn again relates this to the present day. He writes:

On both counts, again, the parallel with our own day is close, and in both contexts we might ask ourselves at what point the heightened possibilities offered to poetry cease to outweigh the consequences of divorce from large sections of the educated public. (69)

This part of the book, which consists of 2S pages, could most satisfactori l y be given to Grade XII and XIII students because it deals with the poetry itself and, in addition, relates it to modern day. It sets the student thinking about poetry in general as well as Latin poetry. It makes Latin poetry therefore relevant. The student may turn to the index at the back of the book and dis­cover that a poem that he is reading in class is discussed by Quinn.

Quinn next has a chapter entitled ''The Catullan Experience". In it he shows that Catullus conceived of a new experience of love, a combination of the spiritual and the physical, amicitia plus amor. This new experience became a source of poetry to him. Quinn mentions an important point, namely that the affair with Lesbia is significant to Catullus primarily in the way in which it can be turned into poetry . Quinn writes, "(Catullus) is almost certainly less concerned with the real Lesbia than with solving the linguistic and poetic problems he faced in expressing the conflict in himself between the residue of physical attachment and intellectual awareness of its folly" (81). This idea, (namely that a poet does not wring out his agonized soul with poetry as the result, but that the art of writing is always uppermost in his consideration), is certainly very important to the teacher ' s unders tanding of poetry in general. Such a view of poetry should also be given to students. Quinn discusses sincerity also in the 2S pages on characteristics.

Quinn next concerns himself with tracing the beginning of the modern lyric back to this period. Before this period, the poet usually sought the approval of the conununity for which he wrote. The new poets, as now, were concerned not with the conununity but with their own personal expression. The result was a degree of unintelligibility to the outsider.

Quinn concludes noting that the Catullan revolution dominated to so great an extent that subsequent poets tended to follow its expression too slavishly, making their poetry empty.

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This concluding chapter is also important for students at the grade twelve and thirteen levels in that here again Quinn shows that the classics do not exist in a vacuum but that the poetry of classical times was the forerunner of what is studied in the Eng l ish class . The chapter, in addition, discusses a matter of contemporary interest, namely. the role of the poet in society. Has he a duty to perform or does he pursue art for its own sake?

The whole book, therefore, should be familiar to the teacher; many parts of it, as outlined above, can be profitable to the student.

R. LAWSON, Althouse College of Education, University of Western Ontario.

NEW TECHNIQUES IN LATIN TEACHING by Sidney Morris. London: Hul ton Educational Publications. 1966, pp. 93.

A worthwhile investment for any Latin teacher. Morris starts off with a well-balanced summary of the methods most widely in use. One notes the difficul ties inherent in two almost contrary approaches: either to emphasize translation into English and analysis in English (the time -honored way hinders the student from understanding the thought arrangement as it meets him in the original) - or largely to by-pass syntactical drill in English and to devote classes to the use of Latin itself (this necessitates laboring over non­classical words which will arise during normal conversation and consumes large amounts of time in simple explanation, nor do statistics indicate oral Latin aids fluent reading). Chapter 2 explores the contribution offered by audial­lingual techniques and suggests the following sequence: listening and repetition, question and answer periods, "expansion" (wherein the pupil adds or substitutes words in modifying statements presented by the teacher), unguided composition (the teacher describes a scene; the class individually make up stories from the existing situation). Tape recorders are used effectively to supplement this method. Chapter 3 considers an audio-visual introduction to Latin: pictures make available not only a number of vocabulary items, and these in context, but are most helpful in imparting familiarity with Roman daily life and civilization. Use of the words is acquired by practice like that outlined in 2. At the end of the second year, reading is begun, as every word now vividly paints its own picture and suggests the relationships in situation and vocabulary and syntax mastered earlier.

The longest section deals with possibilities for programming Latin, al though the employment of such programs in teaching machines like those of B.F. Skinner at Harvard is not recommended. Morris makes out a strong case for the desirability of programming: it will enable Latin to hold its own as the programmed course comes increasingly into vogue; the language is eminently suited for this manner of presentation. Attractive examples of programs are included from the author'S own Programmed Latin Course (Methuen, 1966). from that of A. Hayter (unpublished), and W.E. Sweet of Michigan. A shorter chapter follows on the structural approach.

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Morris's portion on the testing of Latin students (Chapter 6) is first-rate. Two model exams are discussed in which a text is given and questions are posed, some in Latin. Syntax, grammar, vocabulary. content are thoroughlY covered in a masterful variety of ways. He argues convincingly in 7 for the incorporation of Medieval Latin into early reading: it makes available an obvious "bridge" between English word order and that of classical Latin, it would elicit fruitful comparisons with the styles of Caesar and Cicero, soon to follow, it is valuable in content, an asset to education, rich in interest, and genuine, not "made-up", Latin. It would stimulate those with knowledge of a romance tongue. A final chapter adds a curriculum for a two­year sequence in Classical Civilil:ation at the secondary level.

No advocate of one school, Morris urges us to utilize what seems helpful. The reader will find much to approve.

WILLIAM R. NETIIERCUT Columbia University

EXAMINATIONS: mE COLLEGE BOARD TESTS (see also enclosed sheet)

This type of paper is handled by a University Committee to deter­mine the quality of the work of the students entering the Universities of a given area. It is written at some time during the candidate's final year, and it is reasonable to assume that it presupposes a common course of study for all students writing the paper. The first such paper to appear in Ontario will be offered in the spring of 1967.

Since the questions may be used again at a later time, the question papers are confidential and not retained by the students. The following exa­mination pattern is based on an American College Board paper but the questions are purposely changed, though needless to say, the Ontario version will not necessarily be the same as the American.

Vergil Section I translation and content Section 2 translation and content Section 3 spotting passages

45 minutes) 60 minutes) 30 minutes) 45 minutes)

Total 3 hours

Section 4 essays

Prose, Lyric Poetry, Comedy (Candidates choose any two of the first three) Section 1 Livy, translation and

content 60 minutes) Section 2 Horace, scansion and

content 35 minutes) Catullus, translation 25 minutes) Total 3 hours

Section 3 Comedy, translation and content

Section 4 Essays 60 minutes) 60 minutes) H.F.L.

EXAMINATIONS: THE COLLEGE BOARD TESTS

(Supplement to Classical News and Views xi, no. 2, p. 52)

A specimen question of the type that might be asked in Paper

1, Vergil, Section 1 (translation and content) is here set out for

the benefit of high school teachers and others. The suggested time

is 45 minutes.

~;~~e~~e~~ u~ e~u~~:~a:t l~roe: ::~~~: diversi explorant ; haec fontis stagna Nwnici hunc Thybrim fluvium, hic fortes habitare Latinos. tum satus Anchisa delectos ordine ab omni centwn oratores augusta ad moenia regis ire iubet, ramis velatos ~ or,mes, donaque ferre viro pacemque expos cere Teucris. haud mora, festinant iussi rapidisque fenmtur passibus. ipse hwnili designat moenia fossa 10 moliturque locum primasque in litore sedes, castrorum in morem, pinnis atque aegere cingit. iamque iter emensi turres ac tecta Latinorurn ardua cernebant iuvenes muroque subibant. ante urbem pueri et primaevo flore iuventus 15 exereentur equis domitantque in pulvere currus, aut acres tendunt arcus, aut 1enta lacertis spicula contorquent, cursuque ictuque lacessunt; cum praevectus equo longaevi regis ad aures nuntius ingentes ignota in veste reportat 20 advenisse viros.

1. Translate into English lines 13 to 21.

2. Conunent on the significance or special force of prima lampade, Th;ybrim,augusta. Palladis.

3. Describe in your own words the succession of pictures which Vergil presents in this passage.

CLASSICAL NEI·IS I. ND VIE\;S

SIGHT TRf~NL\TION ( Grade 13)

An interesting source of Latin sight material may be found in the growing body of literature from the Vatican. This material has the advantage of being written in fairly good Latin (even by Classical standards) and having a relevance to modern times which provides Latin studies with a further dimension .

The following passage is taken from the I Declaratio De Ecclesiae Habitudine Ad Religiones Non-Christianas I and deals specifically with the Moslem religion.

Ecclesia cum aestimatione quoque Muslimos respicit qui unicum Deum adorant, viventem et subsistentem, miseri­cordem et onmipotentem, Creatorem coell et terrae, homines allocutum, cuius occultis etiaJ'll decretis toto animo se submittere student, sicut Dec se submisit Abraham ad quem fides islamica libenter sese refert. Ieswn, quem quidem ut Deum non agnoscunt, ut prophetam tamen venerantur, matremque eius virginalem honorant Mariam et aliquando eam devote etiam invocant. Diem insuper iudicii expectant cwn Deus omnes homines resuscitatos remunerabit. Exinde vitam moralem eastimant et Deum maxime in oratione, eleemosynis et ieiunio colunt.

Quadsi in decursu saeculorum inter Christianos et Muslimos non paucae dissensiones et inimicitiae exortae sint, Sacrosancta Synadus olJU1es exhortatur, ut, praeterita obliviscentes, se ad comprehensionem IInltUar.:L sincere exerceant et pro omnibus hominibus iustitiam socialem, bona moralia necnon pacem et libertatem comr:lUniter tueantur et prr,­moveant.