Dartmouth's Intellectual Life

The Department of Greek and Latin

If the undergraduate of fifty years ago were to come backto the College, it is probable that the department of Greekand Latin would be the first to attract his attention, sincethe cultured man of that period was still measured to a certain degree by his knowledge of Latin and Greek. Someold diaries in the possession of the College, (one of which isto be published in this or a later issue) tell of the preponderance of the classics in the curriculum of old days. Thisarticle is therefore of more than passing interest because itdeals with the present day study of those subjects whichwere once the principal vehicles of education. And thequestion may be asked today. "Can a man call his education complete without some knowledge of the Classics?

GREEK

There are still, probably, a goodly number of Dartmouth. graduates who, on meeting a professor of Greek, could say, "Oh yes, I remember some Greek," and proceed to declaim, "Enteuthen exelaunei parasangas duo." Litterati with this cultural background, however, are rapidly disappearing and a few more decades will find them entirely extinct.

As only about two students each year, who enter with Greek, elect to continue it in college, our problem is clearly to accomplish as much with the students who begin Greek in college as the few years allotted us allow. During the first two years their task is largely one of learning the language. In order to adapt the amount of work to the capabilities of the students, two divisions are made on the basis of scholarship, so that those who have greater linguistic aptitude may progress as rapidly as possible. At the end of two years students in the better group will have covered the elementary language work and will then have proceeded to the reading of parts of Xenophon's Anabasis, a play of Euripides, and six to eight books of the Odyssey.

The chosen few who advance beyond this point have a great diversity of subjects from which to choose. The third year is devoted to a study of tragedy and the Socratic dialogues of Plato; the fourth year to Herodotus, Thucydides, additional tragedies, and a comedy or two of Aristophanes.

Those who present Greek for entrance and continue it in college or those who show especial proficiency in the elementary courses are allowed in their last year to take a survey course in the whole field of Greek literature. In this course, which is intended mainly for majors in Greek, the aim is to give the student as comprehensive an idea as possible of the significance of Greek civilization. This is done by the reading of various authors throughout the whole range of Greek literature from Homer to Theocritus and also by the study in English (and when possible in French and in German) of important special subjects such as Greek history, philosophy, religion, and allied topics.

But there are few, alas, who reach this advanced stage in the study of Greek. As a great lexicographer once said,"Greek is like lace; every man gets as much of it as he can";—but upon the disappearance of lace from men's external adornment there followed the disappearance of Greek from his intellectual background.

LATIN

The alumni of an earlier day who were required to take four years of ancient language in preparatory school and one year or more in college to secure the A.B. degree will be, some disappointed, others delighted, to learn that no study of an ancient tongue in either preparatory school or college is now necessary for the A.B. degree. Under the new dispensation, nevertheless, the traditional freshman Latin, Latin 5-6, a course based upon four years of Latin in the preparatory school, is still the Department's principal offering. It comprises in subject matter readings in the more vivid and picturesque incidents from the early books of Livy, the lays of ancient Rome; the most famous of the letters of Pliny, such as those which describe the eruption of Vesuvius and the treatment of Christians under the empire; the poems of Catullus, especially the shorter ones with their quintessentially lyric note; and selections from the Odes of Horace, who has been a general favorite with so many generations of undergraduates.

Some recent features of the course may be of interest. To break the lockstep whereby the undertrained were hurried beyond their ability while the brighter pupils were discouraged by the snail's pace of the crowd, we now by an administrative device known as a placement examination divide the class into three ranks. The lowest group is put into the class beneath. The median portion, eighty to eighty-five per cent of the whole, pursues the work of Latin 5-6 as outlined above. The highest group, designated as Latin 7-8, reads rapidly a selection of Latin poetry ranging from the early writers to the hymns of the Christian church. Thus for Latin is solved one of the most critical educational problems which the freshman year presents, to wit, how to save the most able and the best prepared students from the intellectual stagnation so well-known and so perilous for that group in the first college year.

A second feature with which we are experimenting in Latin 5-6 is the division of the freshmen into small discussion groups, never more than four, which meet for a two hours' informal talk with an instructor, generally in the evening in the new departmental rooms in the Baker Library. The purpose of these colloquia is to orient the work done in class with the larger background of ancient life, to afford wider opportunity for free discussion through personal contact with the instructor, and to encourage further voluntary reading of Latin in the original.

The advanced work in Latin, which is yearly sending out men who return gratifying records from professional life or from the graduate schools, does not differ essentially from the higher courses outlined above under Greek. It need not, therefore, be here described.

CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION

Another novelty of this year is the introduction of a major in Classical Civilization. All the work here is done in English. It has seemed that the study of ancient history, thought, life, and art offered a legitimate field of concentration for those who might wish a knowledge of the classical past without desiring to approach it through the medium of the original languages, just as one might study any period of modern civilization entirely in his own tongue. The framework of the major is formed by two year-courses in Greek and Roman history. The structure is completed by survey courses over the whole field of ancient life, by the reading of Greek and Latin writers in translation, and by study in ancient philosophy, archaeology, and art. To constitute this major the cooperation of other departments, such as those of Philosophy and of Art, has been willingly extended, and thus the artificial barriers between departments to that extent removed. Any of these courses in Classical Civilization may be elected by properly qualified students whose main interest lies in some other field.

In conclusion it may be said that it is the aim of the Department of Greek and Latin to appeal to the student who is going directly into business or into the professions as well as to the specialist who intends to enter the graduate school: it is a healthy sign of the attitude of our undergraduates that up to the present the scales have been fairly equally balanced between these two groups.

THEY WERE SUSPENDED BUT CAME BACK Just the Motto "85's Suspended" painted on the back-drop gives this picture an air of entrancing mystery. Who were all these black sheep we wonder, and why did not their guilt manifest itself upon their faces? Lon Gove says that they all came back!