Canon Fodder

You can't kill the classics.

1733

A Yale senior named Eleazar Wheelock wins the university's Berkley Foundation prize in Greek.

1754

Wheelock's Indian Charity School teaches its first two pupils, ages 11 and 14, three languages—English, Latin, and Greek.

1806

Dartmouth's admissions requirements include a thorough understanding of the Greek New Testament Cicero's select orations, and Virgil's Aeneid.

1851

Three fraternities—Psi Upsilon Kappa Kappa Kappa, and Alpha Delta Phi—are formed. Their activities include orations (not toga parties) with an emphasis on Greek and Latin.

1881

President Bartlett recruits a no-name minister to fill the vacant postion of professor of Greek rather than promote associate professor John Wright 1873. Wright eventually is lured away to Harvard, where he becomes the preeminent Greek scholar of the era.

1910

The Dartmouth Drama Club stages Oedipus Tyrannus. This is only the second American production of the play done in the original Greek. The drama critic for this magazine reports, "The play was drawn out and tedious....ln general the acting was poor and lacking animation."

1963

Dartmouth professor of Latin Norman Doenges tells the Valley News that the launch of Sputnik has put Latin teachers on the defensive because it is difficult to justify teaching the language as a contribution to the national defense.

1987

Hebrew is once again taught at Dartmouth.

1989

Thirty-five percent of the senior class has taken at least one class in the classics department during its time at Dartmouth.

1990

Classics professor Matthew Wiencke quotes Daniel Webster 1801: "Latin should be learned for the sake of the good things which are in Latin. It is a folly to learn a language and then make no use of it." Wiencke contends that the rhetoric of Cicero underlies the power of Webster's oratory.

1994

The classics department graduates eight majors. Government, history, and English graduate 145, 107, and 81, respectively.

This B.C. (before coeducation) production of Antigonemade news—the castincluded a woman.