The volcanic eruption of MountVesuvius (see Fig. 1) in A.D. 79affected the psyche of the

Romans for a long time after the event,and the memory of the explosion withits large loss of life was perpetuated by avariety of imperial and later Romanwriters. Martial, Valerius Flaccus, SiliusItalicus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger(whose two famous letters to Tacitushave helped us understand the pyroclas-tics – the nature of the volcanic rockejections of the eruption), Suetonius,Cassius Dio, Marcus Aurelius, Florus,and later Christian writers like Tertul-lian all mentioned the calamity of Vesu-vius in various contexts in their works.

Statius (ca. A.D. 45-96), who wasborn in Naples, for example, tells us inhis eulogy for his deceased father (Silvae5.3.205-08) that his father had plannedto write an epic poem about the erup-tion of Vesuvius before he died. Statiusalso demonstrates the emotional con-nection he had to Vesuvius:

Will future generations believe, whenonce more crops and these desertedplaces thrive again, that cities andpeoples are buried below and thatancestral lands have disappeared, hav-ing shared in the same fate? Not yetdoes the mountaintop cease to threat-en death. (Silvae 4.4. 80-85)

Statius’ expression of disbelief aboutthe desolation of the landscape of Cam-pania after this natural disaster and hisrealization that Vesuvius had not yetstopped threatening the neighboringterritories (a fact that modern volca-nologists have been studying for yearsnow) have a ring of contemporaneity tothem.

Statius’ comment leads us to ponder

what happened after A.D. 79 to the“cities and peoples buried below” theland in and around the areas affected bythe eruption of Vesuvius. The region’stopography, notably the coastline andthe course of the River Sarno, was dras-tically altered by the eruption. Theburied cities remained somewhat alivein the collective memory of theRomans, but at some point, it seemsthat local knowledge of the precise loca-tion of both Pompeii and Herculaneum,

Book Review: AREIOSPOTER kai he touphilosophou lithosby Diane L. Johnson

Andrew Wilson, trans. AREIOS POTER kaihe tou philosophou lithos. The ancientGreek edition of J. K. Rowling’s HarryPotter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Blooms-bury Publishing (http://www.bloomsbury.com), 2004. Pp. 250. Hardcover $21.95.ISBN 1-58234-826-x.

After the much-anticipated release ofthe sixth book in the Harry Potter

series this past summer and the release ofthe fourth film, Harry Potter and the Gobletof Fire, in November, few people thesedays are unacquainted with the Harry Pot-ter phenomenon. Readers who are bothHellenists and Harry Potter enthusiasts will,of course, need no encouragement toundertake Andrew Wilson’s delightfultranslation of J. K. Rowling’s first book. Inthis review, I am addressing those whohave not yet discovered any reason whythey should read the Harry Potter novels atall, whether in English, Greek, or any oneof the more than fifty world languages intowhich the books have now been translated.Among this group I once numbered myself,and I found any number of excuses for notreading such fiction marketed to the young.I managed to hold out although I am sur-

WHAT’S NEW AT POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM?RESEARCH, EXCAVATION, EXHIBITIONS,AND BOOKS by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow

A publication of the American Philological Association Vol. 4 • Issue 2 • Fall 2005

“Almi Parentes” ..................................................5

“TELL THEM WE ARE RISING”: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CLASSICS .......................................................6

Book Review: “The October Horse”......................................................................7

Ask A Classicist.................................................8

ORAL LATIN: “LOQUIMUR QUO MELIUS LEGAMUS” – WE SPEAK TO READ BETTER ........................................................8

“Classics and Contemporary Fiction” Panel at the APA Meeting in Montreal.....................................................11

Audio Review: “A Recital of Ancient Greek Poetry” ...........................14

To A Professor of Latin ........................16

Greek And Roman Antiquities at The Montreal Museum of ............18Fine Arts

Guidelines for contributors........20

continued on page 2

Insi

de

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Fig. 1. View of Mount Vesuvius fromNaples harbor, August 2005. Photocredit: Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow.

the two most famous cities affected, dis-appeared. The name Cività (City) wasused for the whole zone beneath whichancient Pompeii was actually burieduntil the 1740’s when formal excava-tions began.

A number of exciting discoveriessince the 1980’s indicate that there wasa resumption of life immediately afterthe eruption around the area of theburied town and continued regenerationin the area. In fact, a whole new field ofPompeian studies has been establishedto understand those survivors whostayed on and tried to rebuild theirlives. In modern Pompeii, for example,excavations on the Via Lepanto thatbegan in the late 1980’s have revealedin the jumble of structures found therea definite resumption of life immediate-ly after the eruption of A.D. 79. Withinthe last ten years, Italian archaeologistshave also found a necropolis to thesoutheast of Pompeii with finds datingbetween the fourth and fifth centuriesA.D. Archaeologists, volcanologists,geologists, and anthropologists havebeen hard at work carefully reconstruct-ing a detailed sequence of events duringthe eruption and its effect on the Bay ofNaples. The Discovery Channel’s“Pompeii: The Last Day” (2004) is atestament to this research (seehttp://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/pompeii.html).

Nowadays, Pompeii and Hercula-neum are such household names to usthat we tend to take them for granted. Itis well known that Pompeii and Hercu-laneum were each destroyed in a verydifferent manner (more pumice and ashat Pompeii, up to twenty-five meters ofsuccessive pyroclastic surges at Hercula-neum). Each city, therefore, offersarchaeological evidence of a distinctcharacter. At Herculaneum, we canrecover more upper floors of structures,wooden beams, doors and collapsiblegates, wooden furnishings, shrines,screens, beds, and even a cradle withevidence of a blanket still in it, not tomention papyrus scrolls and woodentablets. The human remains are pre-served differently as well. To anthropol-ogists, the bones of Herculaneum (seeFig. 2) reveal a great deal more than theplaster casts of Pompeii, although Pom-peii has other treasures to offer us. Butafter more than two hundred and fiftyyears of excavation history at Pompeiiand Herculaneum, new techniques, new

approaches, and new expectations haveemerged. It is time to pause and ask:what is new at Pompeii and Hercula-neum? What are the exciting discoveriesthat archaeologists have been making inrecent excavations? What kinds of stud-ies have developed out of ongoing workat these sites?

PompeiiBetter control by the authorities of theillicit activities of organized crime onthe Bay of Naples (the number of rob-beries of antiquities, for example, hasgreatly decreased) along with the intelli-gent management of the site of Pompeiiby Superintendent Pietro GiovanniGuzzo over the last ten years or so havegreatly improved the “archaeological cli-mate” and educational value of the siteof Pompeii. In 1997, Pompeii wasdeclared a UNESCO World Heritagesite, and now the Italian governmentallows Pompeii to keep the money fromits ticket sales for site conservation. TheSuperintendency of Pompeii has anexcellent Web site (http://www.pompeiisites.org); visitors can take a vir-tual tour of the ruins of Pompeii andaccess interactively (by name oraddress) about fifty locations at Pompeiifrom a panoramic perspective.

At the actual site of Pompeii, morehouses (of the roughly 400 houses thatare excavated) are accessible to the pub-lic today than were open ten years ago,and more care is given to conservationand restoration throughout the site. TheHouse of the Menander, for example,opened to the public about two yearsago. After a visit to the pristinely reno-vated mansion, one can later go to asplendid new exhibit devoted to theeveryday objects from the House of the

Menander in the Antiquarium at Bosco-reale. The exhibit includes glassware,furnishings, pottery, bronzes, marbles,and much more. Panels describe whothe inhabitants were, what they ate,what they read, what graffiti they scrib-bled, and generally how they lived.

Pompeii has seen a renaissance ofhighly focused research and excavationprojects in the last ten years. A shortsampling follows of the many ongoingprojects that are helping to provide anew understanding of many aspects ofPompeiian life: John Dobbins studiesthe forum (urban center) at Pompeii(http://pompeii.virginia.edu/page-1.html);Kevin Cole has been refining the build-ing history of the northwest corner ofthe Pompeian forum; Steven Ellis hasbegun work on explorations of the areaaround the Stabian Gate at the southernend of the city near the entertainmentand theater district (http://www.stanford.edu/group/pompeii/index.htm); EricPoehler has been studying wheel rutsand curb marks to better understandPompeian traffic patterns; Betty JoMayeske, Robert C. Curtis, RobertLindley Vann, and Benedict J. Lowe aremaking a non-invasive study of thestructures that are associated with thestorage, distribution, preparation, serv-ing, and consumption of food and drinkat Pompeii (http://www.Pompeii-Food-and-Drink.org); and Eckhard and ElaTiemanns are raising funds to restorethe noble suburban Villa Imperiale (goto www.pompeiisites.org, click on“Eventi” in the upper menu bar, andfollow the link to “Il Progetto VIMP”).

A closer look at another large project,the Anglo-American Project(http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/archsci/field_proj/anampomp), can demonstratethe new kind of detailed information weare now gaining from the excavationsand how this information is truly settingtrends for the future of Pompeianarchaeology. The Anglo-American Pro-ject in Pompeii, begun in 1994 by RickJones and Damian Robinson, aimed torecord and excavate the history of anentire city block, insula 1 of Region VI(see Fig. 3). I have visited various partsof this large excavation site almost everyyear since it started and have had thebenefit of personal tours from Jones andRobinson on many occasions. The trian-gular insula 1 (a block in the northwestcorner of Pompeii near the Hercula-neum Gate) was first excavated in the

WHAT’S NEW AT POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM?continued from page 1

2

Fig. 2. Skeletons in the boat storage atHerculaneum, August 2005. Photo credit:Catherine K. Baker.

eighteenth century but had been leftexposed to the elements and abandonedever since. Since erosion had eaten intowall decorations and floors, the teamcould excavate down to the city’s earli-est strata in areas where no floors sur-vived. The bare masonry of many of thewalls revealed much about the block’sstructural history.

What we see as tourists in Pompeii isonly August 24, A.D. 79, the finalmoment in a long history of habitationat Pompeii. Jones and Robinson andtheir team (comprising a field school ofhundreds of eager university studentsfrom over thirty countries around theworld) have essentially been writing anew 400-year history of insula VI. 1,including a new dating for the originalconstruction of the House of the Sur-geon, long thought to be one of the ear-liest houses in Pompeii (see Fig. 6).The house, it turns out, cannot havebeen built before ca. 200 B.C. and per-haps dates to even later than that! Thisfinding compresses the sequence ofchanges in building styles and plan, notjust for this house, but also for theentire architectural history of Pompeii.Jones and Robinson have also shownthat the original plan of the house wassignificantly different from the generally-

accepted version. Thanks to the Anglo-American Pro-

ject , we can now see how insula VI.1was first occupied in the fourth centuryB.C., reorganized with modest housesand workshops in the second centuryB.C., bombarded by the Roman army acentury later, and finally dominated by asingle luxurious residence, the House ofthe Vestals, which was surrounded bybars and shops. The team plans onemore season (2006) at Pompeii and thenwill focus on further publications thataddress a new array of questions: Whenwere Pompeii’s streets first laid out?How did the densely packed townscapeof A.D. 79 come into being? What wasthe relationship between rich and poorhabitation and inhabitants? How did themasses of Pompeii earn a living?

The Pompeii Trust (http://www.pompeiitrust.org) is an outgrowth of theAnglo-American Project. It is a charita-ble organization founded a few yearsago to preserve insula VI.1 for posterity.The Project Director of the Trust, RickJones, does not believe that archaeolo-gists can excavate Pompeii and thenwalk away to their studies without look-ing back. Pompeii is being ravaged bytourists, sun, rains, and wind every year,and an on-going effort must be made to

preserve it for future generations. Thefirst efforts of the Trust will preservethe House of the Vestals, then the innsand bars of insula VI.1, and finally theHouse of the Surgeon and the shrinearea. Eventually, the whole block willbe open to the public so that we all canappreciate the dynamic development ofPompeii in context.

Herculaneum New excavation at Herculaneum hasalso yielded impressive results. Touristscan now visit an exposed part of theVilla of the Papyri, an opulent seasidedwelling located a few hundred metersfrom the western side of Herculaneumthat was perhaps owned by LuciusCalpurnius Piso, the father-in-law ofJulius Caesar (an advance reservationdone online at www.arethusa.net isrequired). While the villa contains color-ful wall paintings, marbles, bronzes, andother statuary, it has been known, sinceits original excavation, more for itslibrary of papyrus scrolls. In 2004, theFriends of the Herculaneum Society

Fig. 3. Pompeii Interactive Map.Courtesy of Current World Archaeology(www.archaeology.co.uk).

continued on page 10 3

rounded by undergraduates who, judgingfrom the emblems on their tee-shirts and cof-fee mugs and the references they make intheir essays, are crazy about Harry. It wasnot until one of them dared me to read aHarry Potter novel that I was goaded intoaction. “If I have to read it,” I weakly insist-ed, “I’m going to do it in Greek.” “Lan-guage-ist!” she fumed but accepted mycondition.

Well, I have kept my end of the bargainand can confidently state that Rowling tellsa good story: Hareios, an unloved and neg-lected orphan to whom various unaccount-able things happen (polla . . . paradoxa) isrescued from his horrid foster family by ahalf-gigas named Hagrides, who helps himon his way to Hyogoetou Paideuterion, theboarding school where he is to study themagic arts (see Fig. 4). Our story tracesHareios’ first year at Hyogoetou: how hebecomes the star player on the Icarus-ball(ikarosphairike) team, how he interacts withthe eccentric sophistai of the faculty, howhe meets those who will become his friendsand enemies, how he resists the evil forcethat has killed his parents and longs todestroy him.

The reader is reminded throughout thestory of important truths: that it is equallydestructive to be self-satisfied and to beoverwhelmed by lust for what one does nothave; that compassion for those who areweaker is better than arrogance and intol-erance; that biological and ethnic diversityis preferable to tedious conformity; and,finally, that the paranoid drive for securityis both futile and deadly and must be coun-tered by the infinite potential of creativemagic and youthful élan. This philosophicalaspect of the novel, of course, is part ofRowling’s original achievement, as are thecompelling and sometimes repellent charac-ters around whom the story develops. And,while Andrew Wilson has masterfully ren-dered them all in Attic dialect, we still needto answer the question: why read this trans-lation when you can read the novel in Rowl-ing’s original English?

Well, I can start with the old utile-dulceargument: that it is fun to read an arresting

and entertaining story (dulce) while review-ing Greek vocabulary and grammar (utile).Such an activity increases one’s ability toread and appreciate Greek prose. Anyonewho has gone through first-year Greek willderive considerable profit from Wilson’swork.

But there is something else in this textthat classicists will find appealing. As theyread, they will find themselves catching andsavoring the memories of previous encoun-ters with ancient texts, for into his transla-tion Wilson has incorporated elements fromthe styles of many Greek authors, addingsomething from Homer, Hesiod, Plato,Xenophon, the Athenian tragedians, andAristophanes.

The opening line in the Greek sets thetone: “Doursleios kai he gune enokoun tetetarte oikia te tes ton mursinon hodou”(“Dursley and his wife lived in the fourthhouse on the street of the myrtle trees . . .”).This reflects Rowling’s original sentence(“Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Priv-et Drive, . . .”). Yet, with the Greek pagebefore my eyes, I think at once of the open-ing of Xenophon’s Anabasis: “Dareios andParysatis had two sons.” Further on in Wil-son’s text, banqueters in Homeric fashion“put aside their desire for potable and eat-able” (103). Characters call Zeus and allthe gods to witness (see 124, for example,for a mouth-filling oath uttered by thesophistria Magonogalea and another oathby the prim Hermione, 188.) Time is reck-oned in the ancient manner: a lesson takesplace “a little after the ninth [hour] of theafternoon” (119), or Wilson adopts theHesiodic “at the hour when the yoke is lift-ed from the oxen” (69). The effect is espe-cially delightful in those passages in whichRowling’s original presents a phenomenonperfectly ordinary to a modern reader butpresumably alien to Wilson’s idealizedreader of Greek: a train, for example,which Wilson describes in a Herodoteandigression as

a wonder made of iron, breathing smoke,such that it runs by itself (ex automatou)upon iron wheels, using steam to movejust like the aiolipylai of Heron of Alexan-

dria. And this treno draws along manywagons, upon which the people of today(hoi nun) are carried all over the country,mounting and dismounting in the sta-tions.” (52)

Or take, as another example, marshmal-lows: “malakhai helodeis are a kind ofsweetmeat rather different from what peo-ple of today call loukoumi“(162). Or golf:“Those playing it strike the balls of gkolphwith rods . . . hoping to direct them into avery small hole” (138). Have a look atChristmas dinner, complete with cranberrysauce, plum-pudding, and the krakeres thatthe British are fond of exploding at holidays(165-66).

Many of Wilson’s adaptations of Rowl-ing’s names are evocative: Hareios Poter,for example, preserves the English whileevoking both Ares and the Areopagus,implying martial and political glory. Thenthere is Snape, the malicious sophistes herenamed Sinapys (“mustard”). Hareios’ bêtenoire is Malfoy, an arrogant coward herenamed Malthakos (“weak-spirited”).Poiphyktes (“snort”), is a nasty little ghoul.Voldemort, the arch-villain himself, bears a

Book Review: AREIOS POTER kai he tou philosophou lithoscontinued from page 1

4

Fig. 4. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potterin Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone(Warner Brothers, 2001), the film adap-tation of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potterand the Philosopher’s Stone (1997).

name reminiscent of scaly serpents anddeath: Pholidomortos.

The quality of Wilson’s prose is veryhigh. I found very few errors in the Greekduring my first read-through. The story is acompelling one, forcing the reader to keepturning the page to see what happens next.And while there are a few accent errors, afew slips in gender agreement, minor typo-graphical problems (the misspelling in theheader for Biblos Theta, for example), therewas no occasion where I had to stop andwonder where the text was going. WhenWilson uses verse, as in the song of thePilos Nemetes (Sorting Hat) on pages 96-97 or in the school anthem (104), theprosody is flawless. On all counts, thistranslation is a delight, to be read withpleasure and profit by Hellenists (and Latin-ists, too) who love imaginative literature.

Diane L. Johnson (diane.johnson@wwu.edu) has been teaching classics in theDepartment of Modern and Classical Lan-guages at Western Washington Universitysince 1991. Here she encourages in herstudents the development of writing andconversation skills in the ancient languagesalong with the acquisition of reading ability.She is also the editor of The World’s Muse,her department’s journal of creative writingin world languages.

In his essay “On Good Teaching,”which appeared in issue 2.1 ofAmphora (10-11), Randall Nichols

eloquently relates that he entered theclassics profession because he had chal-lenging, dedicated professors who tooka genuine interest in him. I, too, hadgood teachers, but what motivated meto pursue a career teaching both classicsand Spanish was the dedication andencouragement of my mother andfather, coupled with a natural interest inlanguage. As traditional Romans reveredtheir parents and looked to them forguidance, so I did with mine, receivingfrom them their sage advice and theconfidence to follow my true interestsand strengths.

Until the fourth grade, I did not caremuch for school and attended onlybecause I knew I would be in troublewith my parents if I did not. However,during this grade and for someunknown reason, I took a liking towords. The high point of each day camewhen the teacher would give the vocab-ulary quiz, for which I would preparewith great diligence. After some initialfailures, I was soon earning A’s and B’sand began to feel much better aboutmyself as a student. My mother andfather were enthusiastic that I had finallystarted to enjoy school, telling me howproud they were each time they saw mypapers with those little gold or silverstars affixed. Success was contagious,and I began to study my other subjectswith similar effort.

Ninth grade was another pivotal yearin my academic development, for it wasthen that I began to think seriouslyabout college. Ever since I was a child, Ihad wanted to follow in my father’sfootsteps and become a physician.Before registering for classes, I spokewith my dad at length about the coursesI should take during high school to pre-pare myself to be a pre-med student incollege. Besides studying biology,advanced math, physics, and chemistry,he was insistent that I take Latinbecause it would help me learn medicalvocabulary and be excellent training forthe mind.

I was curious about this language thatmy dad said was useful and relevant tothe present even though it was mostancient. Knowing that he had studiedthe subject in college, I asked him if Icould look at his old Latin books. Hewas happy to comply since he loved

Latin and had the fond hope that Iwould as well. As I perused thosetomes, I was captivated by the picturesand became absorbed with what I readabout Roman civilization and the histo-ry of English words. However, thecharts termed “declensions” and “con-jugations” completely mystified me,and I wondered whether I could everlearn something that seemed so com-plex. Intimidated though I was, I fol-lowed my father’s advice and was deter-mined to sign up for Latin.

When it came time for registration, Iwas very excited because I was thenentering high school and would bestudying new, challenging subjects. Ihad no difficulty getting the classes Iwanted, except for Latin. Upon askingmy counselor why Latin was notoffered, I was informed that it was adead language (which I assumed meantthat it was worthless) and therefore ithad not been taught at the school foryears. I found out that Spanish was theonly foreign language available, so I hadno choice but to enroll in it since I knewthat colleges looked very favorably uponlanguage study. The counselor reas-sured me of the value of Spanish, point-ing out that it was modern, spoken inmany countries, and thus useful. I wascompletely dismayed that my dad,whose advice I trusted implicitly,seemed out of touch with contemporaryviews on education.

Later that day, my parents asked mehow registration went. I replied that itwent well and that the only class I couldnot get was Latin, so I took Spanishinstead. My dad could hardly believethat our high school, which touted itspre-college curriculum, did not provideits students the opportunity to study thelanguage that he considered essentialfor an aspiring college student. Mymom, a registered nurse who had stud-ied both Latin and Spanish, remindedhim that Spanish was one of theRomance languages, the direct descen-dants of Latin, and stated that shewould be pleased to practice Spanishwith me.

I took her up on her offer and wasglad that I did, for she helped makeSpanish the highlight of my years inpublic school. Besides quizzing me onvocabulary and verb conjugations, shewould practice speaking the languagewith me and teach me Spanish sayings

ALMI PARENTESby Daniel N. Erickson

5continued on page 15

Coming in FutureIssues of Amphora

Classics and the U. S. Presidency

The Plague at Athens

Teaching Latin in Inner-City Schools

What Do Classics Librarians Do?

Novel Approaches to the Classics III

Neo-Latin Literature

The Art Infusion Project at the U. S. Mint

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri

The Colony of Augusta Merida inRoman Lusitania

Naming Children in Ancient Greece

Review of HBO’s ROME

Review of Margaret Atwood’s ThePenelopiad

Review of Harrius Potter et PhilosophiLapis

From the time of the Americancolonies until well into the twenti-eth century, a “classical educa-

tion” (meaning training in Latin andGreek) was largely associated withelites, that is, with white gentlemen.The received wisdom of the time wasthat those outside this elite group hadneither the requisite mental capacitynor the necessary leisure to master theclassical languages. This criticism wasleveled particularly at African Ameri-cans, who were assumed to be intellec-tually deficient and socially marginal.Thought to be descended from “sav-ages,” they therefore lacked a vestedinterest in the foundations of Westerncivilization.

Evidence from the archives of histor-ically-black colleges, autobiographies byearly black classicists, and political writ-ings by abolitionists demonstrate, how-ever, that not only were large numbersof African Americans able to master theclassics but that indeed they saw theclassics as part of their own heritage.This article will therefore address boththe motivation behind African Americanclassical training and the means thatAfrican Americans used to achieve aclassical education. Our focus spans themid-nineteenth to the mid-twentiethcentury.

We begin with the challenges AfricanAmericans historically faced. Typical ofthe predominant views of the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries aboutAfrican Americans and the classics arethe following two examples. ThomasJefferson, in his Notes on the State of Vir-ginia (1785), dismissed the slave PhillisWheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects,Religious and Moral (1773), inspired byclassical models, as beneath the level ofcriticism (Notes, Query XIV). His racistviews led Jefferson to regard the statusof blacks in America as fixed by natureand not by institutionalized slavery.Therefore, no training, particularly inLatin and Greek, could improve theirstatus. We find essentially the same crit-icism being expressed roughly a centurylater by Walter Hines Page, who hadstudied Greek at Johns Hopkins underBasil Lanneau Gildersleeve. Page, writ-ing in 1902, recalls an incident he hadexperienced in the South during Recon-struction:

One morning I went to a school forthe Negroes and I heard a very blackboy translate a passage fromXenophon. His teacher was a full-blooded Negro. It happened that Iwent straight from the school to a clubwhere I encountered a group of gen-tlemen discussing the limitations ofthe African mind. “Teach ’emGreek?” said old judge so-and-so.“Now a nigger could learn the Greekalphabet by rote, but he could neverintelligently construe a passage fromany Greek writer – impossible.” I toldhim what I had just heard. “Read it?Understood it? Was black? A blackman teaching him? I beg your pardon,but do you read Greek yourself?”“Sir,” he said at last, “I do not for amoment doubt your word. I know youthink the nigger read Greek; but youwere deceived. I shouldn’t believe it ifI saw it with my own eyes and heard itwith my own ears.” (The Rebuilding ofthe Old Commonwealths [1902], 132-33)

Both Jefferson and Page illustrate theprevalent thinking about African Ameri-cans’ intelligence, particularly regardingthe classics. Given the racial and socie-tal bias against them, it is important tonote that educated African Americans inthe early nineteenth century used theirconnection to the classics and the factthat there were great African civiliza-tions in classical antiquity to bolstertheir argument for the freedom of theirbrothers and sisters in slavery and there-by their inclusion in the American main-stream. Indeed, African Americans wereappropriating for themselves the largerAmerican impulse of adducing classical,particularly Roman Republican, modelsto justify their efforts to define the newAmerican nation and their right to fullcitizenship in the American Republic.

For example, an article drawn fromthe work of the Haitian scholar Baron deVastey in the African American publica-tion Freedom’s Journal (February 7,1829), argued thus: “The enemies ofAfrica wish to persuade the world thatfor five of the six thousand years that theworld has existed, Africa has been sunkin barbarism. Have they forgotten thatAfrica was the cradle of the arts and sci-ences? If they pretend to forget this, itbecomes our duty to remind them of it.”African Americans in the North, whohad received a classical education inNegro schools and northern colleges anduniversities or abroad, began to form lit-erary and historical societies in order todemonstrate mastery of the intellectualcurrents of the day and to promote liter-acy. As Elizabeth McHenry convincinglyargues in Forgotten Readers (2002), thesesocieties were also acts of resistance,refuges from the racial attitudes thatdenied African Americans citizenshipand often even full humanity.

David Walker’s Appeal to the ColoredCitizens of the World (1829), which com-bined African Americans’ interest insocial and secular history with a pleaagainst the injustice of slavery, is anoth-er example of using the classical past todefend blacks’ full human status. Inpart, Walker’s text reminds us how hisviews differ from those of Jefferson. HisAppeal offered an alternative reading ofclassical sources that argues for the intel-lectual achievement of ancient historicalpersonages from North Africa, such asHannibal, Cleopatra, and Augustine.Walker contended that ancient slavery,which was not racially specific, washumane in comparison to the conditionof blacks in early nineteenth-centuryAmerica. Ignorance among AfricanAmericans resulted not from biologicalinferiority but from a lack of education.Appealing not just to secular sources butto biblical history, Walker inveighedagainst Christians for their invidioustreatment of blacks. Appropriating themillennial and teleological speculationsof American Protestantism, Walkercapped his appeal for tolerance by pre-dicting that one day the world would beturned upside down and that AfricanAmericans would assume their rightfulplace within the social, political, andeconomic life of the nation (74).

Walker’s appeal not only to reform6

“TELL THEM WE ARE RISING”: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CLASSICS by Kenneth W. Goings and Eugene O’Connor

Ex-slave communitiesbelieved that economic

independence and politicalself-motivation could not

happen without well-trained intellectuals.

Colleen McCullough. The October Horse.Simon and Schuster (http://www.simon-says.com), 2002. Pp. 792. Hardcover$44.00. ISBN 0684853310. Pocket Books(www.pocketbooks.com), 2003. Pp. 1120.Paperback $7.99. ISBN 0671024205.

Julius Caesar has been a figure ofcontroversy since before his death, and

controversies will continue to flourish.Monarch? King? Rampaging general?Democrat? What was Caesar? At the popu-lar level, HBO’s new series ROME hasbeen devoting itself to the subject, but previ-ously Colleen McCullough had entered thedebate with six historical novels comprisingroughly 4,300 pages in her Masters ofRome series: The First Man In Rome (1990),The Grass Crown (1991), Fortune’sFavorites (1993), Caesar’s Women (1996),Caesar (1997), and finally The OctoberHorse (2002). McCullough believes that noone can understand Caesar without beingintimately familiar with the entire history ofthe fall of the Roman Republic and the lead-ing figures in it. Without such understand-ing, she says, “Caesar would remain whathe is in most people’s eyes: tritely judgedthe man who would be King, more adestroyer than a builder, and – greatestmisconception of them all – a man whoimpatiently cut the knot of his Gordiandilemma by marching on his country with aflip remark about dice” (Colleen McCul-lough, “Reflections On Her Long HistoricalNovels,” pre-publication advertisement forFortune’s Favorite, 3).

As highly entertaining and prodigiouslyresearched as its predecessors, The Octo-ber Horse opens just after the battle atPharsalus (48 B.C.) as Caesar sails forAlexandria in search of Pompey (whosedeath concludes Caesar). He wants to par-don all who will be pardoned, to bring allinto full participation in the political, eco-nomic, and social structures of Rome. TheRepublicans, however, regroup under thebenevolent, if unwilling, leadership of Catoand head for Utica. McCullough gives anenthralling account of 10,000 Republicansmarching 1,400 miles along the coast ofAfrica, only to be defeated at Thapsus.Caesar arrives in Utica just as Cato has dis-

patched himself, an event McCulloughdescribes in grisly detail, including spilledguts and blood all over the place.

Plots in Rome fester. The “Kill CaesarClub” grows slowly, under the guidance ofTrebonius, abetted by Antonius. To justifytheir conspiracy, the conspirators put therumor about that Caesar wants to be King.This disgusts Caesar who only wantsenough power to impose his style ofdemocracy on the structures of the Repub-lic. He has, for example, imposed sumptu-ary laws and has made it difficult for sena-tors to absent themselves from the Senate,measures that have not increased his popu-larity with the senators.

The Republicans make their last stand atMunda. Both sides are worn out. Caesar,more often clement than not, warns themthat this time there will be no mercy. Victori-ous, with Octavius acting as his contuber-nalis (general’s aide), he sets about estab-lishing Roman colonies all over NarboneseGaul. He draws up all the legislation, ordi-nances, and by-laws himself. Typically, allcolonies are to have Roman citizenship, vet-erans are to have generous land allotments,freedmen are enabled to sit on the councilin each colony, and a separate colony is tobe founded for Rome’s urban poor.

As Caesar’s relationship with Antoniusdeteriorates, his relationship with Octaviusgrows. As they are discussing possiblesources of wealth to sustain Rome, Caesarexplains his plans to invade Parthia.Octavius uses the opportunity to worm thesecret of Egypt’s wealth out of him. Caesarprepares for his expedition. He draws uphis will. Not trusting the Senate to send himnecessary funds while he is in the field,Caesar rifles the treasury and banks themoney in Brundisium: “A prudent generaltakes his funds with him when he goes,” heexplains to Octavius; “. . . if he has to sendback to Rome for more money, the Senatecan prove very difficult . . . .” (448).

Warned of his impending death bynumerous people, Caesar, who has steppeddown from the Dictatorship and is lictorless,ignores the warnings. He is killed while atwork with his scrolls in the Curia Pompeiaby twenty-two assassins (by McCullough’scount). The account is graphic and gory:

7

but also to educate was the drivingforce behind the rise, following theCivil War, of many of the black collegesand universities predominantly, but notexclusively in the South. Establishedby missionary societies and often fund-ed by northern philanthropists, theseliberal arts colleges were largely createdon a New England academic modelthat stressed a classical education.Their founding roughly from the 1870’sto World War I truly comprised a“Golden Age” for African Americaneducation. The missionaries, philan-thropists, and church societies, as wellas African American students and theirparents, concluded that a traditionalclassical education would providefuture black leaders with a training thatwas a prerequisite for social equality inAmerican civil and political life.

Given the level of intolerancetoward education for African Ameri-cans, the task at hand was indeed a for-midable one, but one performed bymen and women of dedication and per-severance. For decades before the CivilWar, slaves, with few exceptions, hadbeen forbidden to read and write. Andif they did so, it could be done only sur-reptitiously. Thus, the political signifi-cance of an education for former slavesfollowing the end of the Civil War andemancipation cannot be underestimat-ed. Ex-slave communities pursuingtheir educational objectives stressedleadership training. They believed thateconomic independence and politicalself-motivation could not happen with-out well-trained intellectuals. Mostblack educators saw the classical cur-riculum not as a mere imitation ofwhite schools but as a way of gainingaccess to the best intellectual traditionsof the era and the best means of realiz-ing their own development. For exam-ple, Richard Wright, an influentialblack educator of the post-Reconstruc-tion era, was once approached, when hewas a student at Atlanta University, bya northern visitor who asked him whatfreedmen had to say to their friends inNew England. Young Wright’s replywas: “Tell them we are rising” (JamesD. Anderson, The Education of Blacks inthe South, 1860-1935, [1988], 29).

For Wright, the classical curriculumdid not impose a white culture onAfrican Americans; rather, it was a wayfor African Americans to understandthe development of Western cultureand their inherent right to participate inthat culture. Thus, with limitedresources and often poor physicalplants, black colleges and universities

continued on page 12

Book Review: The October Horseby Helen Geagan

continued on page 13

Oral Latin, or the practice of spo-ken and extempore (to variousdegrees) interaction in Latin,

has become a “hot topic” among thoseconcerned with the pedagogy of Latinin North America during the last decadeor so. Oral Latin is frequently the sub-ject of interchanges on listservs, espe-cially LATINTEACH (http://nxport.com/mailman/listinfo/latinteach). Oral tech-niques for the classroom are treated invarious recent articles published in jour-nals aimed at Latin teachers (see, forexample, Jeffrey Wills, “Speaking Latinin Schools and Colleges,” ClassicalWorld, 92.1 [1998], 27-34). Workshopson oral strategies in Latin instructionhave become quite common at confer-ences for teachers and professors of theclassical languages, especially at theannual Institute of the American ClassicalLeague (ACL).

The rubric “oral Latin” includesquite a large range of activities. OralLatin can consist of simple substitutionsor word-change drills performed orally.It may involve, at a somewhat higherlevel, asking students for simpleresponses in Latin, perhaps relating to awritten text, or a set of prepared ques-tions by the instructor. Total immersionis rarely the goal for classroom activities;in some cases, nevertheless, oral Latinmay involve those taking part in a total-ly Latin environment, such as in theintensive Latin workshops at the Uni-versity of Kentucky (see Fig. 5),designed to acclimatize participants toextempore expression in an intensiveten-day experience, or in a number ofother seminars for spoken Latin thattake place on a regular basis in variousparts of Europe and the United States.

The resurgence of interest in spokenLatin is due to several factors. Manyteachers in both high schools and uni-versities have independently discoveredthat oral interchange can be a usefuladdition to the tools available to themfor stimulating learning in the class-room. Many Latin students, whether inhigh schools or universities, enjoy beingable to say things in Latin and to usetheir new-found language skills to com-municate just like the students of otherlanguages.

Latin in state school systems anduniversities counts as a foreign lan-guage. Oral proficiency is a part of lan-guage-learning standards for both pre-college and college levels mandated invarious states. To our knowledge, nostate education regulation specificallyexempts Latin from this aspect of lan-guage learning. Indeed, Latin teachersthemselves have now begun to bringthe expectations of Latin instruction afew small degrees closer to the level ofproficiency that is taken for granted inthe pedagogy of other languages. In theStandards for Classical Language Learn-ing recently formulated by a committeeformed under the auspices of the ACLand American Philological Association,under Goal I, Communication, we findStandard 1.2 “Students use orally, listento, and write Latin or Greek as part ofthe language learning process.”

The move to oral Latin may seemradically new, but it is in fact a return tosomething quite traditional in the peda-gogy of Latin after the collapse of theWestern Roman Empire. AlthoughLatin was nobody’s native language inthe Middle Ages and Renaissance, aspoken use of Latin existed among theeducated, tied chiefly to the fact thatLatin remained the universal linguafranca of the church, law, the world oflearning, and even secular administra-tion. Students in Latin schools in manyparts of Renaissance Europe wererequired to use only Latin in school,usually after the second year. ManyRenaissance textbooks designed for stu-dent conversational Latin survive. Theyare known as colloquia. Some of theselittle dialogues were written by famoushumanists, including Erasmus, whosecolloquia familiaria, revised and ampli-fied many times by their author, riseabove the rather undistinguished levelof such works and include several mini-masterpieces of Neo-Latin literature.The pedagogy of the Jesuit order found-ed in the sixteenth century, a system ofteaching that lasted without muchchange until the eighteenth century,insisted on maintaining the spoken useof Latin. In the Ratio studiorum of 1599,the blueprint for the academies of theJesuit order, we read (among other

ORAL LATIN: LOQUIMUR QUO MELIUS LEGAMUS –WE SPEAK TO READ BETTERby Milena Minkova and Terence Tunberg

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Ask A Classicist

A new feature in Amphora whereour panel of experts will tackleintriguing questions about theclassical world and its influences.

QI have long wondered about therelationship in meaning betweenthe Latin verb despondeo,

despondere, despondi, desponsum, (“topromise a woman in marriage”) and itsEnglish derivative despondent (“despairing,depressed”). Shouldn’t Roman fathers, whoordinarily chose the men that their daugh-ters married, have been cheered up, ratherthan depressed, when they promised theirdaughters in marriage?

AWhen used with the direct objectanimum, (“spirit”) despondeo (“topromise a woman in marriage”)

means “despair, give up hope, and loseheart” in classical Latin. Always quick on theetymological draw, the learned late Republi-can author Marcus Terentius Varro venturesan explanation at De Lingua Latina 7.71:

A man who had promised his daughter(spoponderat), they said, had promisedher away (despondisse) because she hadgone out of the control of his will(sponte), that is, of his volition: even if hedid not want to give her away, he gaveher away because he had been obligat-ed by his promise to give her in marriage(sponsu) . . . . Thus, a person is also saidto have promised his spirit away(despondisse animum), just as he is saidto have promised his daughter away(despondisse filiam) because he had seta limit to the power of his will (sponte).

According to Varro, then, what caused emo-tional distress in a Roman man was not nec-essarily losing his daughter from his house-hold and giving her away to the bridegroomhe had selected but the loss of his perceivedability to exert control over her. Varro positsan analogy between losing one’s spirit,what we might call one’s heart, and losingone’s daughter in marriage, on the groundsthat both involve loss of control, and evident-ly, a depressing loss of control at that. Nowhow do we say “control freak” in Latin?Paterfamilias, perhaps?

Ask A Classicist

injunctions of a similar kind):

Latine loquendi usus severe in primiscustodiatur, iis scholis exceptis, inquibus discipuli Latine nesciunt, itaut in omnibus quae ad scholam perti-nent, numquam liceat uti patrio ser-mone, notis etiam adscriptis, si quisneglexerit: eamque ob rem Latineperpetuo magister loquatur.

Let the practice of speaking Latin bestrictly preserved – with the exceptionof those classes in which the studentsare untrained in Latin – so that in allactivities pertaining to the class it isnever permissible to use the vernacu-lar, with the provision of bad marks foranyone who neglects [this injunction].For this reason the teacher shouldconstantly speak Latin.

But ability in extempore Latin expres-sion, whether speaking or writing, wasthen highly prized for practical reasons.Latin, as noted above, was the function-ing language of the academic and eccle-siastical establishments. Academic pub-lication and ecclesiastical correspon-dence throughout Europe were over-whelmingly in Latin. Students withoutsome oral ability in Latin and compre-hension of Latin discourse could neverfinish a university curriculum since,throughout the Middle Ages andRenaissance until the seventeenth cen-tury, and in some cases even later, Latinwas the language of university teachingand disputations, not merely in what wewould call classical studies, but in medi-cine, law, and other fields.

These social factors that onceencouraged the active use of Latinhave, of course, long since faded away,but one practical motive remains. Thosewho favor oral Latin believe that ithelps students learn Latin more quickly

and instinctively. Perhaps not surpris-ingly, in view of the fact that oral com-munication has not been a typical prac-tice for Latin teachers for more than twocenturies, modern statistics that illus-trate the value of oral Latin as a learningtool are hard to find. But most advocatesof oral Latin, including ourselves, areconvinced by the logic of what the ped-agogy of other languages tells us: mostpeople are likely to learn any languagebetter and appreciate its nuances moreeasily if they have an active as well aspassive command of the language, espe-cially in speaking, which demandsimmediate response, and if they employall the faculties in learning: reading,writing, listening, and speaking – andnot merely reading and translating. Inour own experience with M.A.-levelLatin instruction that involves bothwritten composition and oral discoursetogether, we have certainly observedthat, while some students may do some-what better at writing than spoken dis-course or vice versa, those who canexpress themselves accurately and cor-rectly in both oral and written discoursenearly always also do better on sight-translation exams.

We are convinced that oral Latin canbe a very useful tool for beginning lan-guage instruction, and particularly foryoung children. But our experience alsoindicates that active usage is highlyeffective in the more advanced stages oflearning Latin when students are assim-ilating the more complicated material inupper-level grammar courses and espe-cially when they are developing theability to read unadulterated Latintexts. When students reach this level,they must recognize and understand awide range of complex constructions,put them together in context, and

develop a large vocabulary in order toread more easily and quickly. Preciselyat this point, the concomitant active useof the language in writing and evenmore so in speaking (which is muchmore difficult if one aims at consistentlymaintaining correct construction) is anincomparable aid to acquiring a moreinstinctive knowledge and control of allthese elements.

But how should one speak Latin? It iswell known that the Latin spoken by theordinary citizens on a daily basis in thestreets of ancient Rome, or other citiesin the empire, was quite different fromthe polished and sometimes elaboratediction of Cicero or Livy, to name justtwo canonical authors. Should we not tryto find out what the real day-to-day spo-ken language of the Romans was anduse that idiom in our oral Latin? Such anapproach might cause difficulties.Despite the evidence provided byinscriptions and Pompeian graffiti, thereal sermo cotidianus of even the literatemembers of the ancient Roman popu-lace is not known in enough detail toenable a modern practitioner of oralLatin to reproduce every aspect of it in acontinuous and extempore spoken dis-course. And even if such knowledgewere available, it would probably notprovide the most viable syntactical andmorphological model for our oral Latin.Latinists who use spoken Latin today asa way to teach Latin better (such as our-selves) or use it to help internalize theirown grasp of Latin will usually aim at adiscourse close to the usage in themajority of literary texts studied by stu-dents and scholars. For most modernpractitioners of oral Latin, the texts arethe standard and goal. Good examples ofthe kind of sentence structure and syn-tax in literary texts that is congruentwith spoken discourse can be found inthe letters of Cicero and Seneca (despitethe fact that the latter are not real let-ters), the plays of Terence (without thearchaisms), or the colloquia of Erasmusand other Renaissance humanists.

continued on page 16 9

Fig. 5. Participants of the 2005 summer Latin seminar at the University of Kentucky.Photo credit: Diane Arnson Svarlien.

Oral Latin can be a usefultool both for beginning

language study and at themore advanced stages.

(http://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk) wasfounded in order to advance public edu-cation of this UNESCO World Heritagesite, to create an archive of materialsrelating to it, to promote research (espe-cially continued investigation of theVilla of the Papyri), and to promote con-servation. The hope is to build an inter-active membership to air publicly issuessuch as whether further excavation (insearch of more scrolls in the Villa of thePapyri, for example) should be under-taken.

I first visited the villa in 1993 byclimbing down some sixty feet on a nar-row fireman’s ladder that was fitted intoa well. I could walk upright throughsome of the tunnels, but I also had tocrouch down and dodge centipedes andspiders to view the dimly-lit decorativefeatures hidden there (see Fig. 7).These were the same tunnels firstcleared in 1750 under the supervision ofKarl von Weber by his excavation crewof forced laborers, who had beenplucked from local prisons and asylumsfor the mentally impaired.

The new excavations, funded in partby the Getty Museum in Malibu, Cali-fornia (itself a replica of the Villa of thePapyri), proved that von Weber’s eigh-teenth century plan was accurate to thecentimeter (A. O. Koloski-Ostrow,“Villa Re-Excavated,” Archaeology,March/April 1994, 23). Now, more thanten years later, several rooms of the villaare exposed once again to the Campan-ian sun: a second-story balcony, poly-chrome mosaics, and an elegant diningarea have emerged. In the northwestinsula near the villa property, moreover,we can see the atria (formal entrancehalls) of other houses, a large swimmingpool, an elaborate nymphaeum (a large,decorative water fountain) and otherunidentified buildings, as well as animpressive skeleton of a horse. Oneunfortunately gets the impression thatthese finds were quickly passed by inthe quest to clear the villa. The entireexcavation site sits in a vast valley thatlooks like a giant gravel pit cleared bylarge earth-moving equipment. Thevilla is of exceptional importance, but ifwe expose more of it and do so with toomuch haste, are we really ready to guar-antee its safety for the future?

Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill,Director of the British School at Rome,has written passionately on this topic (inthe newsletter Birth of the HerculaneumSociety 1, 2004, 2, among other places);

he favors a cessation of excavation fornow. Conservation at Herculaneum(and this is just as true for ancient Pom-peii) is a serious issue with complexdimensions. For example, on the onehand, one of the many challenges cur-rently facing the main site at Hercula-neum is the damage that pigeon drop-pings are causing to excavated build-ings. Pigeons have nested in just aboutevery available angle of every house.The acidity of their guano has been aserious conservation problem, since itweakens structural foundations every-where. With help from the Hercula-neum Conservation Project, a collabora-tive venture of The Packard Humani-ties Institute and the British School atRome, falcons have now been releasedinto the archaeological zone to scareaway the pigeons. Because falcons havealready been successful against pigeonsat several airports, the ConservationProject at Herculaneum, with threeeager falcons soaring over the site, ispromising helpful results, although thepigeons still seem to have the upperhand.

Professor Robert Fowler of the Uni-versity of Bristol, on the other hand,believes that the excavation of the villamust continue in the more immediatefuture (The Times of London, Apr. 5,2002, 42). He feels that the remainder

of the papyrus fragments containingknown and unknown masterpieces lostfor two millennia must be recovered assoon as possible while there is still time.There is, indeed, a very real threat ofanother eruption of Vesuvius within thenext five to ten years, although no onecan pinpoint the exact time. Volcanolo-gists suggest that this event will be cata-clysmic, like the eruption of A.D. 79,and if this is true, it puts the importanceof additional excavation of the papyri inanother context, one of greater urgency.One thing is sure: the crisis of conserva-tion is acute in both Herculaneum andPompeii, as is the threat of another pos-sible eruption of Vesuvius, and nocourse of action will easily or inexpen-sively provide solutions.

Exhibitions on Pompeii andHerculaneumIn 2003, the National ArchaeologicalMuseum of Naples produced an engag-ing exhibit called “Stories from anEruption – Pompeii, Herculaneum, andOplontis.” In the large entry hall of themuseum were projected changingimages of plaster casts of the volcano’svictims, mosaics, and frescoes. This fast-paced slide show was accompanied bypulsating music, alternating with scenesof Vesuvius erupting, and sounds of ter-rified crowds, crumbling walls, and thewhoosh of a pyroclastic cloud swoopingover the landscape. This show conclud-ed with silence and darkness before the

WHAT’S NEW AT POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM? continued from page 3

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Fig. 6. Professor Rick Jones of the Anglo-American Project (on the left) and Dr. StevenOstrow, History faculty of MIT (on the right), in the atrium of the House of the Surgeon,Pompeii, August 2004. Photo credit: Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow.

sequence started all over again. It wasan evocative way to begin the tour ofmore than 700 of the most recentlyrecovered and restored artifacts fromPompeii and Herculaneum, as well asfrom lesser-known towns on the Bay ofNaples affected by the eruption:Terzigno, Oplontis, and Moregine (seeJudith Harris and Angela M. H. Schus-ter, “The Lap of Luxury,” Archaeology,May/June 2001, 30-35). The exhibitionbroke new ground by placing objectssuch as gold rings, oil lamps, bronze ves-sels, and jewelry in the context of thestory of the people found with them.New casting techniques were also ondisplay; solidified transparenciesshowed visitors both the shapes of thevictims (in the manner of the old plastercasts) and the skeletal remains insidethe casts as well. The exhibit began inNaples and will continue to tour inter-nationally until 2008. It will be at theField Museum in Chicago from October22, 2005 to March 26, 2006 (seehttp://www.fieldmuseum.org/pompeii).

A second, similarly intense exhibitioncalled “The Last Hours of Hercula-neum” (see http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/smb/en/kalender/index.php) will bein Germany between May 20, 2005 andApril 16, 2006. This show attempts tounravel the final hours of the unfortu-nate inhabitants of Herculaneum whoran to the seashore.

Further ReadingMany excellent monographs on publicarchitecture and private houses, cityinfrastructure and urban space, subur-ban villas, social and sexual life, history,politics, economy, wall paintings, and

spectacles and entertainments continueto appear regularly. J. C. Fant has pro-duced a Pompeian bibliography at hisWeb site, covering most of the impor-tant publications of the last ten years:http://www3.uakron.edu/csaa/Pompeii/bibliography.html.

I single out a few of the more recentpublications that are particularly usefulin the classroom: Allison Cooley, Pom-peii (2003); Ernesto De Carolis and Gio-vanni Patricelli, Vesuvius A.D. 79: TheDestruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum(2003); Jean-Paul Descoeudres et al.,Pompeii Revisited: The Life and Death of aRoman Town (1994); Robert Etienne,Pompeii: The Day a City Died (1992);Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses andSociety in Pompeii and Herculaneum(1994); and John Dobbins and PedarFoss, eds., Pompeii and the Ancient Settle-ments around Vesuvius (forthcoming).

I also recommend Robert Harris’thriller historical novel, Pompeii (2003),especially if you are not going to Pom-peii any time soon (it might be a bitunsettling to read it on site). A happyending, of course, is not an option for astory called Pompeii so the tension does

not revolve around the conclusion.Rather, as readers, we are captivated bymore subtle matters, such as how thehero, Marcus Attilius, an appealingwater engineer from Rome, uses hisknowledge of Roman water technology,and especially the castellum aquae (waterdistribution center) of Pompeii, to sur-vive the catastrophe. Harris shows usthat there are different ways to look atalmost any situation in life.

Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow is AssociateProfessor and Chair of the Department ofClassical Studies at Brandeis University inWaltham, Massachusetts, where she has beenteaching Latin, University Humanities, andGreek and Roman Art and Archaeology since1985. She has written extensively on Romandaily life, water use in the Roman city,ancient health and sanitation, and Romantechnology. Her most recent book, for whichshe was editor and contributor, is WaterUse and Hydraulics in the Roman City(2001). Her current project is a new bookcalled Pompeii and Herculaneum:Roman Daily Life in the Shadow ofVesuvius (forthcoming).

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Fig. 7. Workmen in a tunnel near thelibrary of the Villa of the Papyri, Hercu-laneum, July 1993. Photo credit: AnnOlga Koloski-Ostrow.

“Classics and Contemporary Fiction” Panel atthe Annual Meeting of the American PhilologicalAssociation in Montreal Barbara GoldAPA Vice-President for Outreach

Apanel on classics and contempo-rary fiction (organized by Thomas

Falkner, Judith P. Hallett, and C. W.[Toph] Marshall and sponsored by theAPA Committee on Outreach) will bepresented at the annual meeting of theAmerican Philological Association inMontreal on Friday, January 6, 2005,from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. in the Palais desCongrès de Montréal (see Fig. 8). Thispanel will offer a unique approach tothe relationship between classical antiq-uity and contemporary fiction by presenting both critics and authors and will afford adirect inquiry into the creative process. Panelists will focus on the ways that the classi-cal world finds expression in their own works and those of others in narratives, fic-tional characters, and the thematic, intellectual, and cultural concerns that inform con-temporary fiction.

Critic Michael Dirda (McDaniel College, Washington Post Book World) will speakon “Classical Antiquity and Modern Fiction,” poet Anne Carson (University of Michi-gan) will speak on “Our Married Life is Perfect: Contempt in Homer, Moravia, andGodard,” author Margaret Drabble will speak on “Crossing the Styx: The Afterlife ofthe Afterlife,” and author Carol Goodman will speak on “A Classical Muse.” Wehope you will attend the panel and join the discussion!

Fig. 8. Exterior, Palais des Congrès deMontréal January 2002. Photo credit:Christian Degrandmaison, Palais desCongrès de Montréal.

offered a wide range of courses in Greekand Latin that reflected those coursesbeing taught at white liberal arts col-leges. Men and women at black insti-tutes of higher learning, sometimes for-mer slaves or the children of slaves, roseto become pioneering educators, schol-ars, and civil rights leaders. Amongthem were Daniel B. Williams (1861-1895), Professor of Ancient Languagesat the Virginia Normal and CollegiateInstitute; William Sanders Scarborough(1852-1926), the author of First Lessonsin Greek (1881) who became president ofWilberforce University in Ohio; andMary Church Terrell, a teacher of Latinand also first president of the NationalAssociation of Colored Women.

By 1880, missionary education hadestablished thirteen black universitiesand eight colleges in North and SouthCarolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama,Texas, and elsewhere, predominantlybut not exclusively in the South. How-ever, given the poor state of primary andsecondary education for African Ameri-cans at the time, these schools (at leastin the beginning) had to concentrate onremedial learning. Thus, the collegesusually had three levels: the primary, thesecondary, and the collegiate. By 1895,twenty schools offered college-levelcourses, though fewer than 750 of their9,100 total enrollment took such courses.But twelve years later, in 1907, the num-ber of missionary-related schools hadgrown to thirty-seven, with nearly halftheir enrollment taking college subjects.This is a remarkable achievement for apeople who had been enslaved onlyforty years earlier. An 1899 survey of tenmissionary-related black colleges foundthat “Ancient Languages” comprisedthirty-one percent of their curriculum.Stress was duly placed on mastery ofboth Greek and Latin but also on philos-ophy and the modern European lan-guages, chiefly French and German.

Starting after the turn of the twenti-eth century, and particularly from 1910to 1919, teachers of the classics through-out the nation began to see their hege-mony in higher education slip away withthe introduction of course electives andthe increase in science and businesscourses, as well as with a promotion ofthe modern European languages overGreek and Latin. While these changeswere also happening within the largerAmerican educational system, African

American proponents of the classics,including the civil rights activist andeducator W. E. B. Du Bois, railedagainst the rising tide of what theycalled “utilitarianism.” The purpose oflearning, they said, was to acquirevirtue, not to amass wealth.

Many contemporary educators, bothwhite and African American, however,decried this stress on classics, in that itwas not especially “useful” for trainingAfrican Americans for the lives they wereexpected to lead, particularly in the peri-od of Jim Crow, which extended from1876 to the mid-1950’s. Preferred wasthe model of education promulgated bySamuel Chapman Armstrong’s HamptonInstitute and by Armstrong’s protégéBooker T. Washington, head of theTuskegee Institute, which stressed“domestic science” for women andindustrial, manual, and agricultural train-ing for men. As stated in Negro Education:A Study of the Private and Higher Schools forColored People in the United States (1917),edited by Thomas Jesse Nash:

The colleges have been . . . handi-capped by the tenacity with whichthey have clung to the classical formof the curriculum. They have had analmost fatalistic belief not only in thepowers of the college, but in the Latinand Greek features of the course. Themajority of them seem to have moreinterest in the traditional forms ofeducation than in adaptation to theneeds of their pupils and their com-munity. Ingenuously, some of theirleaders have been urging secondaryschools to prepare their pupils for col-lege rather than life. (56)

Following the historical trend, black col-leges and universities inaugurated, asdid white schools, a greater number ofscientific and industrial courses, with aresulting reduction in classics. Thus,between 1899 and 1909, the overall per-centage of class hours devoted to classi-cal languages declined from thirty-oneto twenty percent. Nonetheless, the cat-alogues of black colleges such as Fisk,Howard, Livingstone, and Spelman,show, at least until 1920, an ample offer-ing of classical courses and authors. Butas the century progressed, enrollmentsin classics courses shrank. A 1942 surveyof higher education for Negroes, pub-lished by the U. S. Office of Educationunder the title General Studies of Colleges

for Negroes, showed that only one per-cent of students at black colleges choseclassics as a major, a percentage roughlycomparable to that at white schools (seeCaroline Winterer, The Culture of Classi-cism [2002], 181). Beyond the bare sta-tistics, the report contains some tellingcomments on the status of educationand life for African Americans in themid-twentieth century. Clearly favoringthe Hampton-Tuskegee model of prac-tical education, the report states:

Fortunately there are signs of changewhich indicate that a type of educa-tion more closely related to earning aliving, developing good communities,and providing better homes appears tobe receiving more widespread atten-tion. . . . [T]he tendency to exalt a lib-eral arts education distorts the idea ofhigher education and without a doubtkeeps many students at institutionsfor Negroes from pursuing a kind ofeducational experience that is of thegreatest value to them. (Vol. 3, 11)

After World War II, with the rise of themodern phase of the civil rights move-ment, African Americans at historicallyblack colleges increasingly rejected, asdid their white counterparts, the classi-cal influence as elitist and Eurocentric.This was part of a larger national move-ment in higher education to demoteclassics because of its supposed lack ofrelevance. But in addition to followingthese trends, some African Americaneducators, such as Carter G. Woodson,in his Mis-Education of the Negro (firstpublished in 1933), argued that the clas-sical curriculum had made African

12

“TELL THEM WE ARE RISING”: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CLASSICS continued from page 7

Fig. 9. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.(with President Lyndon B. Johnson in thebackground), Cabinet Room of theWhite House, March 18, 1966. Photo credit: LBJ Library photo by YoichiR. Okamoto.

Americans despise their African Ameri-can ancestry, nor had such elitist train-ing done anything to lift up the race.

By the time of the civil rights move-ment of the mid-1950’s to the mid-1960’s, however, many African Ameri-cans were turning, once again, to promot-ing Africa as the cradle of civilization andemphasizing the need to stress the roleof Africans in classical culture. Perhapsthe most prominent example is Dr. Mar-tin Luther King, Jr. (see Fig. 9), who waseducated in the classics and whosespeeches are filled with allusions to clas-sical authors, most notably Plato (TrudyHarrington Becker, “A Source for Ideolo-gy: The Classical Education of MartinLuther King, Jr.,” Classical Bulletin 76.2,2000, 185). Thus, we go back to the earlynineteenth century, when northern blackabolitionists were working to dispelmyths of black inferiority and also vaunt-ing the contribution of Africa to the clas-sical world in order to validate the placeof blacks in American culture. Onceagain, the emphasis lay on African Amer-icans’ control over the role they were toplay in the public, political, and intellec-tual life of the nation. As part of themovement to restore the primacy of clas-sics to the American classroom, classicalscholars have been showcasing, in printpublications, Web sites, and exhibits, thecontribution of African Americans to theclassics and the influence of the classicson prominent African American teachers,artists, and civil-rights leaders. Suchefforts continue those of earlier AfricanAmerican classicists to instill pride and asense of achievement in their students.

Kenneth W. Goings (goings.14@osu.edu) hasa Ph.D. in history and is professor and chairof the Department of African American andAfrican Studies at The Ohio State University.

Eugene O’Connor (oconnor.136@osu.edu)has a Ph.D. in classics and is managing edi-tor and acquisitions editor in classics at TheOhio State University Press.

Lips tightening in outrage, Cimber cast hisfellow Liberators a fierce glare . . . andstrode forward to yank the toga awayfrom the left side of Caesar’s neck. ButGaius Servilius Casca . . . got in first, driv-ing down from behind at Caesar’s throat.The blow glanced off the collarbone . . . .Retreating backward, [Caesar] encoun-tered Pompey’s plinth just as Cassiuspushed to the fore, sank his blade intoCaesar’s face, screwed it around, enucle-ating an eye . . . .” (484)

Caesar dies, his dignitas intact, the Repub-lic in chaos.

The final 250 pages are aboutOctavius, the brilliant, cold-blooded, calmlyterrible young heir to Caesar’s wealth.When he hears of Caesar’s death, one ofthe first things he thinks about is the warchest in Brundisium. McCullough thinksOctavius stole it and gives a highly enter-taining account of how she thinks he mighthave done it.

Rivalries among the assassins aboundand shift: McCullough calls this chapter“Armies All Over The Place.” The accompa-nying map is entitled “Who MarchedWhere.” Finally, Octavius manages to con-solidate forces with Antonius, Lepidus, andPollio and agrees to terrible proscriptions.They all march off to meet Brutus and Cas-sius at Philippi (42 B.C.). McCullough givesus a riveting account of this battle, makingsense out of great confusion. We leaveOctavius, now Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Fil-ius, in Rome manipulating the Triumvirate,intent on peace and proscriptions.

McCullough writes for the general pub-lic, but her wealth of social, cultural, andpolitical detail has merited her works a

place on many a reading list for students ofancient history. The series opens in 110B.C., in the consulship of Marcus MinuciusRufus and Spurius Postumius Albinus. Sheproceeds, year by year, consulship by con-sulship. Volumes include maps, drawingsfrom period portrait busts (all art work isMcCullough’s own), synopses in variousforms of what has transpired in previousvolumes, afterwords, and extensive glos-saries adapted to needs as the series pro-gresses. In the one instance where she can-not accept a traditional date, her reasonsare given in the glossary, as are her rea-sons for diagnosing Caesar as sufferingfrom hypoglycemia and Octavius fromasthma.

If one of the greatest assets of the seriesis its wealth of detail, in The October Horseit can become overwhelming. The scenes ofCato’s suicide and Caesar’s assassinationare too gory; the scenes involving Caesarand Cleopatra are too detailed andsteamy; accounts of processions and tri-umphs are too long. But this is a minordrawback. In her “Afterword” to The Octo-ber Horse, McCullough notes that this is thelast volume in her series, and “If I don’tstop now, I never will” (750). Recently,however, she has been reported to be con-sidering a sequel, and I, for one, look for-ward to it with interest and enthusiasm.

Helen Geagan has an A.B. from BrynMawr College (1962) and an M.A. fromthe University of Cincinnati in classics andarchaeology (1964). She also has aB.S.W. from McMaster University (1982).She was Secretary of Corinth Excavationsin 1966-67 and maintains an interest inancient history and archaeology whileworking as a volunteer with Alzheimerpatients and with refugees.

Book Review: The October Horsecontinued from page 7

APA SPEAKERS BUREAU

The APA maintains a roster of enthusiastic speakers who are available toaddress a wide variety of audiences – civic groups, professional societies,

library and other reading groups, middle schools and secondary schools, junior andsenior colleges, universities, and many other organizations.

The Speakers Bureau can be found by going to the APA Web site at www.apa-classics.org and clicking on Outreach, listed on the left hand side of the screen ofthe home page. Under Outreach, you will find the Speakers Bureau. The Bureaulists e-mail addresses of dozens of speakers as well as descriptions of the talksthey are prepared to give. A glance through the topics described there will makeclear the breadth of presentations that are available, from Medical Practices inPompeii and the Roman Empire to Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt.

13

Stephen G. Daitz. A Recital of AncientGreek Poetry Read in English Translationand in Ancient Greek, 2nd edition, order#S23820. Jeffrey Norton Publishers, Inc,(1-800-243-1234), 1999. 4 audio tapesabout 40 minutes each side, with a bookletcontaining all the Greek texts, 63 Pp. Pub-lished as part of The Living Voice of Greekand Latin, series ed. Stephen G. Daitz.$59.50. ISBN 1-57970-046-2.

Those of us who have an interest in orlove for ancient Greek poetry owe

Stephen Daitz a debt of gratitude for histireless crusade to restore sound to thewords most of us absorb with our eyes offthe printed page. In his numerous recitalsand workshops and in his recordings forThe Living Voice of Greek and Latin seriesof audio tapes produced by Jeffrey NortonPublishers, he has not only taught the listen-er the sounds of the “restored pronuncia-tion” of Greek and encouraged the use of apitch accent, but he has also demonstratedhis own understanding of how soundenhances our experience of poetry in per-formances of epic (he has recorded thewhole of the Iliad and the Odyssey), lyric,and dramatic texts. As the founder of theSociety for the Oral Reading of Greek andLatin Literature, he has created occasions atAPA meetings both for scholars to readpapers discussing the issues that arise fromthe attempt to restore sound to “dead” lan-guages and for anyone who is interested toattend informal sessions where people readaloud their favorite Greek or Latin texts.

His latest contribution to the cause is asecond edition of his 1978 audiotapes, ARecital of Ancient Greek Poetry, whichinclude performances of Homer, variouslyric poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripi-des, and Aristophanes (see Fig. 10). Thissecond edition contains new recordings ofall the selections in the first edition as wellas additional passages of lyric and epic.The four tapes (one of the Iliad, one of theOdyssey, one of lyric, and one of dramaticpoetry) are accompanied by a booklet inwhich the Greek texts are printed (with thehelpful addition of long marks over longvowels). In the introduction, Daitz intro-

duces some of the principles he uses in hisrenditions. The tapes themselves include thepassages read first in English and then inGreek. In the preface, Daitz convincinglyexplains that he has produced this secondedition out of a performer’s desire to repeata performance (this time, twenty years later)when he knows he can do it better.

Used in conjunction with Daitz’s earlieraudio tapes, The Pronunciation and Read-ing of Ancient Greek (1984), these tapeswould enable someone who is interested inlearning to recite Greek poetry to progressfrom the first steps of pronouncing individ-ual letters and learning the basic principlesof quantitative rhythm to a model of how tocombine rhythm, pitch, diction, and expres-sion into an oral representation of a poem.It would also be possible for a teacherwhose course includes discussion of any ofthe selections on the tapes to give studentsthe experience of hearing the poem as anaid to that discussion. This use will be par-ticularly helpful for language students at theintermediate or advanced level who mayhave worked their way through a poem,since they can then have the experience ofunderstanding the poem as it is performed.The speed of Daitz’s delivery is exactly suit-ed for this purpose. Listening to Daitz’stapes is also an extremely valuable experi-ence for students who find it difficult tobelieve that anyone could listen to andunderstand an inflected language, with itsfreedom of word order and nuanced use ofcases, without mentally rearranging all thewords; this is particularly true if the teacherencourages students, following Daitz’sexample, to learn to recite a poem them-selves. Daitz acknowledges in his introduc-tion that the selection of poems is deter-mined by his own preferences. It may be hitor miss, therefore, whether teachers wouldfind a passage in Daitz’s selections thatthey planned to read with their classes.However, the passages include enoughvariety of author, length, and difficulty thatthere should be no trouble finding anappropriate passage for listening.

It is a little harder to imagine how thesetapes might be used by those who havetaught, or are teaching, students with an

interest in Greek literature without extensiveknowledge of the language. One might cer-tainly listen to one or two selections to get ageneral sense of the sound of ancient Greekas best we can reconstruct it, but I do notthink there would be much incentive to listento the tapes in their entirety. I say thisbecause of a limitation – as I see it – in thenature of Daitz’s performance. His greateststrengths are the clarity and fluency of hisrepresentation of the different rhythms ofGreek poetry and the consistency of his pro-nunciation (although I occasionally find itdifficult to distinguish eta from long alpha,pi from phi, and tau from theta in his per-formance), and there is enormous pleasureto be derived from being able to hear, withclarity, the range of rhythms his selectionsillustrate. What I do not find in his perform-ance, however, is a subtlety of expressionthat would allow the listener intending to lis-ten to the four tapes at a sitting to hear thedifferences in character, style, and tonebetween the different poets represented.Besides a raising of the pitch of his bassvoice when he is performing a female voice,an increase in volume to express momentsof intense anger, or a protraction of longsyllables to indicate despair, there is littlevariety in the tempo, volume, or emotionalrange of his performance.

Daitz has a naturally sonorous and delib-erate style of recitation that characterizes theperformance of passages both in Englishand in Greek. It allows him to deliver, forexample, the chorus of Furies from theEumenides or Simonides’ epitaph for theSpartans who died at Plataea with greateffect. But it is beyond his ability – and per-haps that of anyone except for the finest

Audio Review: A Recital of Ancient Greek Poetryby Rachel Kitzinger

14 continued on page 17

Fig. 10. The Parthenon from the north-west, 1957. The Parthenon sits atop theAthenian Acropolis, location of one ofthe riotous scenes in Aristophanes'Lysistrata. Photo credit: Leo Curran(http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/)

and songs. Oh, what fun times we hadtogether! Spanish quickly became myfavorite and best subject, and hopes ofbeing a doctor were soon replaced withthoughts of becoming a Spanishteacher. My mom continued to be mymentor throughout high school, and Iremain grateful to her for her patience,encouragement, and diligence in help-ing me discover and develop my talentfor languages.

Following graduation from highschool, I enrolled in college to major inSpanish and become a teacher. Amongother courses, I registered for second-year Spanish since I had placed out ofthe first year. Although I enjoyed mySpanish class immensely, I started toquestion whether I had made the rightchoice of career because I knew thatteachers earned much less than otherprofessionals and were sometimes heldin low esteem. In contrast, accounting,one of the most popular majors on cam-pus, had the potential for high earningsand the prestige that accompanies theCPA designation. After an uncharacter-istically rash decision, I changed mymajor to accounting the next semester. Iliked my new course of study, but notnearly as much as Spanish, and gradual-ly began to doubt whether it was theright one for me.

Shortly before the start of my junioryear, I was totally confused as to whatcareer path to follow. The truth wasthat, although I did well in accounting,my heart was not in it. To whom was Ito turn for help? After a little thought, itwas obvious that I should ask my par-ents since I felt that they would knowbest. I sat down with them to discussmy dilemma, and they offered the sim-ple suggestion that I follow my dreamsand choose a career that I truly enjoyed,regardless of status or monetaryrewards. With their assurance that theywould be happy with whatever I didwell, I decided to resume my Spanishstudies in earnest.

Not wishing to make another costlypoor decision, I carefully redid myschedule to include not only Spanishbut also beginning Latin, for I neverforgot what my parents had said yearsearlier about its intrinsic value and rela-tionship to Spanish. I devoted myselfzealously to both languages that year,and my efforts paid off. I soon started tosee remarkable similarities betweenLatin and Spanish, such as in the wordsfor “friend” (amicus/amigo), “to love”

(amare/amar), “good” (bonus/bueno), and“bad” (malus/malo). Moreover, Latinimproved both my vocabulary and read-ing comprehension in English, strength-ening my critical thinking in theprocess. As I continued my Latin stud-ies the following year, I became con-vinced of the advantages that thisancient tongue afforded students oftoday and realized that my dad wasright after all. I found that Latin – farfrom being dead – was immortalbecause it lives on in the Romance lan-guages and is the source of countless

words in our own language and manyothers.

My enthusiasm for Spanish eventual-ly yielded to my love for Latin, and Ideclared a major in classics and a minorin Spanish. At that time (1980), Latinwas gaining in popularity at the second-ary level, and it was not hard to find agood job teaching Latin together withanother subject. Therefore, after someserious thought, I enrolled in educationclasses to prepare myself to teach Latinand Spanish, which I later discoveredwas a highly marketable combination.The demands of my new program ofstudy required that I spend an addition-al three semesters in college, but I feltthat it was worth it because I was confi-dent that I had at last found a career inwhich I could excel and a cause inwhich I truly believed.

The rest of college was exciting andpassed quickly. When the opportunitycame to student teach at a local publichigh school, I looked forward to it withgreat anticipation since it was then thatI would learn for certain whether I hadpotential as a teacher. Although the firstfew days in the classroom were a bitawkward because I was fully in chargeof students for the first time, little bylittle I became comfortable in my newsurroundings and began to enjoy teach-ing the subjects that were my passion.

In the end, student teaching was a totalsuccess, enabling me to graduate fromcollege and obtain a teacher’s certifi-cate. I was elated that I was then quali-fied to enter what I now knew to be anoble profession, thanks in great part tomy parents’ guidance and wisdom.

When I applied for teaching posi-tions, I was surprised to receive severaloffers, all of which required teachingboth Latin and Spanish. I chose the jobthat appealed to me most, which was atNewport (Arkansas) High School, andthoroughly enjoyed it. After teachinghigh school for eleven years (four atNewport and seven at the LouisianaSchool in Natchitoches, Louisiana) andearning a doctorate along the way, Iaccepted a classics position at the uni-versity where I have been since 1998.Although I no longer teach Spanish, Imake it a point to show my studentshow their knowledge of Latin will helpthem learn Spanish. They are often asamazed at the similarities between thetwo languages as was I upon beginningmy Latin studies twenty-seven yearsago.

I have never forgotten the positiverole my almi parentes (“nurturing par-ents”) played in shaping my future.One of the ways in which I try to returnthe favor is by maintaining a genuineinterest in each of my students. As mymom and dad did for me, I offer themsuggestions when they appear per-plexed and encourage them to do whatthey know in their hearts they can dobest. After all, good education is morethan just imparting knowledge to ourstudents, training their minds, andpreparing them for careers. It is alsoconcerned with humanitas and helpingthem achieve happy, satisfying lives.

Daniel N. Erickson (daniel_erickson@und.nodak.edu) is Coordinator of ClassicalStudies in the Department of Modern andClassical Languages and Literatures at theUniversity of North Dakota. He is complet-ing a book entitled Latin, Spanish, andEnglish: Vocabulary Bridges withEdward V. George, Professor Emeritus ofClassics at Texas Tech University. RandallNichols’ article, “On Good Teaching,” isavailable in the Amphora archive athttp://www.apaclassics.org/outreach/ampho-ra/2003/amphora2.1.pdf.

ALMI PARENTEScontinued from page 5

As traditional Romansrevered their parents and

looked to them for guidance,so I did with mine.

15

If we accept that our goal is a con-versational Latinity reasonably close tothe language of the texts that we study,does this mean sticking exclusively tothose subjects discussed in canonicalauthors, such as Cicero and Vergil, andavoiding all other topics? If we intendto use Latin as a truly communicativetongue, we may on occasion want torange outside this rather restrictedmaterial and also discuss things perti-nent to the experience of students. Somuch the better, the oral Latinistwould argue, for this will stimulateone’s ability to think in appropriateand correct Latin sentences unsupport-ed by the memory of familiar Latinpassages. And if the discussion of suchnew material might occasionallyinvolve the use of a rare word or a Neo-Latin term that never appears incanonical texts, the speakers are stillusing the Latin language with its cor-rect structures, grammar, and evenidioms. The occasional untypical ornew word need not make the discourseless Latin in regard to structure, syn-tax, and other properties of Latin (suchas the proclivity towards verbal expres-sion rather than abstract substantives).The main goal is to maintain a continu-ous flow of grammatically and idiomati-cally correct discourse in the target lan-guage, with all of its conventions – alinguistic environment that is neverinterrupted simply because someonewishes to discuss material outside theconfines of a text or a prescribed set ofcircumstances.

Pronunciation will also be an issue.Most people interested in spoken Latintoday employ one of two main systemsof pronunciation, the restored classical(to greater and lesser degrees of exact-ness according to current linguisticthinking) or the Italianate ecclesiasticalpronunciation. Which of these twomethods a person uses is, in our experi-ence, less important than helping learn-ers understand that there is a method(common in fact to both) and a standardusage for each system. Whichever sys-tem one uses, the goal should be to aimat consistency and precision. The mostsignificant difference between the twosystems lies in the sounds of consonantsand two diphthongs. In both types ofpronunciation, the same rules applyabout where a word should be accentedand which syllables are to be treated as

long or short. When speakers followthese rules using one system of pronun-ciation, they can easily be understoodafter a period of acclimatization of onlya few days by a person used to the otherpronunciation. Proponents of each pro-nunciation take part in the summerLatin seminars at the University ofKentucky.

Several societies exist for the promo-tion of the active use of Latin, of whichthe oldest (founded in the 1960’s shortlyafter the Second Vatican Council) andprobably the most authoritative, is theRome-based Academia LatinitatiFovendae (ALF) whose internationalmembers are elected on the basis ofcontributions to the active use of Latinafter being nominated by a regularmember. The ALF sponsors a quadren-nial international conference (the lastone celebrated in Madrid in 2002, thenext to be held at Amposta, Spain fromJuly 24-28, 2006), in which Latin is thelanguage of all contributions. Anyone,including non-members, may submit apaper to these conferences. For theteacher or student of Latin, the experi-ence of participating in such an event,or in one of the seminars for spokenLatin held each year in Europe and theUnited States, can be boundlesslyenriching. Teachers may never employLatin in their classrooms at the levelencountered in some of these confer-ences, but the increment in spoken abil-ity that may result from such protractedimmersion can improve a teacher’sclassroom effectiveness. A teacher whohas mastered this facility can resort toextempore discourse in any situation,and with much more flexibility than onewhose knowledge of Latin does notinclude the extempore oral dimension.Meetings in which Latin is the spokenlanguage are especially attractive whenthe participants are international. Thereis a special joy in using the language weteach and study to communicate andestablish relationships with people whostudy the same language but whose ver-nacular language we may not know orbe able to use.

Pedagogy of Latin (and, of course,Greek) will probably always be moreoriented to reading ability than activeexpression – the goal, after all, is to bet-ter our ability to read ancient, medieval,early-modern, or any texts written inLatin. But all the signs indicate that oral

ORAL LATIN: LOQUIMUR QUO MELIUS LEGAMUS – WE SPEAK TO READ BETTERcontinued from page 9

Most memorable of word stories you told us –

That “trivia” means chat where three roads meet;

That “pagan” in its root means backwoods Roman

Who, ignorant of Christ, was kneeling yet

To idols in the grove; more heartfelt than

"Infant” from infans, meaning “speechless one” –

To me, a daughter of the working class –

Was “proletariat” from proles, “offspring,"

The child-bearing ones who stayed at home,

While emperors and the military traveled,

And populated all the hills of Rome.

Marie Cleary, M.A., Ed.D., is an inde-pendent scholar specializing in Americanclassical tradition and classics in education.She is a member of the Associates at FiveColleges, Inc., Amherst, a program thatprovides a base for qualified independentscholars. She is currently writing a biogra-phy of Thomas Bulfinch, which will be pub-lished by Peter Lang. At Emmanuel College,Boston, she studied Latin under Sister Wil-fred Parsons. Sister Wilfred (1881-1970)taught at Emmanuel from the 1940’s to the1960’s. Her best known publication wasan edition of the letters of Saint Augustinein her own translations.

To a Professor of Latin(In Memory of Sister WilfredParsons, SND)by Marie Cleary

16

Latin is here to stay as a viable approachto the teaching and enjoyment of litera-ture written in Latin.

Milena Minkova is Professor in Classicsat the University of Kentucky. She has stud-ied, conducted research, and taught in Bul-garia, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, andVatican City. She is the author of severalbooks and numerous articles on Latinmedieval philosophy, Latin literature, Latincomposition, and Latin pedagogy. She is theco-author (with Terence Tunberg) of therecently published Readings and Exercisesin Latin Prose Composition, FromAntiquity to the Renaissance (2004) andReading Livy’s Rome (2005).

Terence Tunberg, Professor in Classics atthe University of Kentucky, has also taughtin Canada and Belgium. He has won inter-national prizes in Latin composition, editedLatin texts, and published articles on ancientand Neo-Latin prose style. He is the founderand moderator of the conventiculum Lat-inum, an immersion seminar for the spokenuse of Latin held annually every summer onthe campus of the University of Kentucky. Heis, along with Milena Minkova, an electedfellow of the Academia Latinitati Fovendae.

Audio Review: A Recital of Ancient Greek Poetrycontinued from page 14

actor – to represent convincingly the largerange of genres, styles, and emotions in aselection that includes, for example, Homer’senactment of a quarrel between Zeus andHera, Xenophanes’ skeptical poem aboutanthropomorphic divinity, Sappho’s prayerto Aphrodite, a Cretan merchant’s epitaph,Timotheos’ account of the Persian defeat atSalamis, Hermes’ warning to Prometheusfrom the Prometheus Bound, Sophocles’“Ode to Man” from the Antigone, and achorus from the Bacchae. Even a conserva-tive opinion about the nature of mimesis inancient performance would allow more sub-tlety and variation in the representation ofcharacter and emotion than Daitz allows,but given the distinctive character of Daitz’snatural voice, with its depth and resonance,the vocal range and suppleness that mightbring out the dramatic shadings of differentpieces are hard to achieve. His most con-vincing performance is the delivery of thewonderfully onomatopoetic language of cho-ruses from Aristophanes’ Frogs and Birds,where the effect of the passage is entirelydependent on an accurate representation ofthe sound and rhythm of the passage.

In addition, decisions Daitz has made

out of scholarly conviction – for example,limiting pauses within the lines of stichicmeters so that effects a poet might achievethrough enjambment or strong sense breaksin the middle of a line are difficult to hear –restrict the means by which he mightachieve a more varied palette for his voice.In fact, the selections that Daitz sings (Sap-pho 1 and the epitaph of Seikilos) are, tomy ear, effective because Daitz’s beautifulsinging voice allows the emotional coloringof the music to emerge, without anydependence on dramatic performance. TheEnglish translations he reads also have aconsistency of tone – in part because formany of the passages he has chosen thesame translator, Richmond Lattimore –which may frustrate the listener withoutGreek who wishes to enter imaginativelyinto the riveting experience that listening tothe Iliad or seeing the Oresteia must havebeen for early audiences. Choosing differ-ent translators for different authors mighthave given the Greekless reader someexperience of a variety of styles, at least.

All this being said, however, I must returnin the end to the energy and dedication ofDaitz’s life-long campaign to enrich ourunderstanding of Greek poetry through per-formance of its sounds. I know from my expe-rience with students or, indeed, anyone inter-ested in ancient literature what a revelation itis to hear the poetry and to remove the“dead” from the misnomer “dead lan-guage.” Though there is room for a range ofopinion about what the living sound of thelanguage should be, we owe the possibilityof exploring, through performance, differentideas about that living sound to StephenDaitz.

Rachel Kitzinger (rakitzinger@vassar.edu) writes about Sophoclean tragedy and isinvolved in the production of tragedy inGreek and in English and the recital ofGreek poetry. She has recently published atranslation of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonuswith the poet Eamon Grennan (2004); it ispart of the Oxford University Press seriesGreek Tragedy in New Translations.

(ISSN 1542-2380) is published twice a year by the American Philological Association(APA). The APA, founded in 1869 by “professors, friends, and patrons of linguistic

science,” is now the principal learned society in North America for the study of ancient Greek andRoman languages, literatures, and civilizations. While the majority of its members are university andcollege classics teachers, members also include scholars in other disciplines, primary and secondaryschool teachers, and interested lay people. The APA produces several series of scholarly books andtexts and the journal Transactions of the American Philological Association. An annual meeting is held eachJanuary in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America.

All of the APA’s programs are grounded in the rigor and high standards of traditional philology, with thestudy of ancient Greek and Latin at their core. However, the APA also aims to present a broad view of classi-cal culture and the ancient Mediterranean world to a wide audience. In short, the APA seeks to preserve andtransmit the wisdom and values of classical culture and to find new meanings appropriate to the complexand uncertain world of the twenty-first century.

The APA’s activities serve one or more of these overarching goals:• To ensure an adequate number of well-trained, inspirational classics teachers at all levels, kinder-

garten through graduate school;• To give classics scholars and teachers the tools they need to preserve and extend their knowledge

of classical civilization and to communicate that knowledge as widely as possible;• To develop the necessary infrastructure to achieve these goals and to make the APA a model for

other societies confronting similar challenges.The APA welcomes everyone who shares this vision to participate in and support its programs. All

APA members receive Amphora automatically as a benefit of membership. Non-members who wish toreceive Amphora on a regular basis or who wish further information about the APA may write to TheAmerican Philological Association at 292 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 249 S. 36th Street,Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304, or at the e-mail address: apaclassics@sas.upenn.edu. The APA Web site isat www.apaclassics.org.

Members are urged to pass this copy of Amphora on to non-members and to request additionalcopies of Amphora from the APA office.

®

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The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (LeMusée des beaux-arts de Montréal),

which began its life as the Art Associationof Montreal nearly a century and a halfago becoming known by its present namein 1948, has long prided itself on the all-encompassing nature of both its permanentcollection and its programme of visitingexhibitions. The classical material in its per-manent collection was, for the most part,acquired during the twentieth century andhas developed over the last eighty years orso to become representative of manyaspects of the visual and material culture ofthe Greek and Roman world. Just five yearsago, I was appointed as the first ever Cura-tor of Archaeology with the mandate bothto develop the collection of antiquities andto organise a completely new exhibition ofthe permanent collection of MediterraneanArchaeology in a series of two galleries (ofwhich the Greek and Roman material occu-pies the larger) on the ground floor of theMuseum’s oldest, monumental building onthe North side of Sherbrooke Street. Thisnew permanent exhibition, highlights ofwhich are described below, opened inearly February 2004 at the same time as avisiting exhibition about Hellenistic terracot-tas entitled “Tanagra, a small world ofclay,” co-produced with the Louvre. Thedouble event marked a turning point in themuseum’s history revitalising the local inter-est in antiquity. As currently seen, the muse-um’s permanent collection and its exhibitionare enriched by two important loans, theone a group of seventy-four objects fromthe Diniacopoulos Collection on long-termloan from the National Gallery of Quebec(Le Musée nationale des beaux-arts duQuébec), the other a large mosaic floor oflate antique date on loan from the govern-ment of the Syrian-Arab Republic.

In the centre of the Greek and Romanroom, a large pedestal supports a range often sculptured pieces (see Fig. 11),grouped around the headless statue of theApollon Chigi carved in Parian marble dur-ing the second quarter of the second centu-ry A.D. and inspired by a work of the earlyfourth century B.C. Acquired in 2003, this

sculpture is one of only five examples of thetype so far known and is in superb condi-tion. Other pieces in the sculptural groupinclude portrait heads of Brutus (? or Corbu-lo?), the young Alexander Severus, as wellas Sokrates. On a neighbouring stand is aremarkable early fourth century B.C. Atticgrave stele and, behind it, a well-preservedportion of an Attic marble funerary lekythosof similar date; both pieces appear to comefrom the cemetery of Koropi, to the south-east of Athens.

Although the Bronze Age is only thinlyrepresented in the Museum’s permanent col-lection, the subsequent development ofGreek and Roman pottery can be followedfrom Geometric times through to the Imperi-al period. After a sequence of smallerKorinthian vases, the largest proportionconsists of Attic black-figure and red-figurepieces, several of which are grouped intotwo particular showcases as vases that “tella story” (for the particular use of our educa-tional service). An interesting example ofthis is the early fifth century kalpis/hydriafrom the circle of the Antimenes Painter; thisvase shows Aineias fleeing from Troy withhis father Ankhises on his shoulders andaccompanied by three other people, twofemales in front of him and a male (archer)behind. While it is possible that one of thetwo women is intended to be Aineias’ wifeKreousa, there is no indication of his son.The story as represented here thus does not

correspond in detail with the account givenby Vergil in Book 2 of the Aeneid butrather refers to a Greek version known cen-turies before Aineias’ son acquired, at thehands of the Augustan propagandist-poet,his role as ancestor of the Julio-Claudiandynasty at Rome. Another vase that tells astory is a black-figure lekythos by the The-seus Painter showing Priam ransoming Hek-tor’s body from Akhilleus; here the detailscorrespond very closely indeed with thosegiven in the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad.Another vase in this group is again an Atticblack-figure hydria showing the duel ofAthena and the giant Enkelados (?). Inanother museum case, a Panathenaicamphora attributed to the Kleophon Painter(ca. 430 B.C.) bears the only representa-tion known, in red-figure, of Kharon; Her-mes as psykhopompos leads a young man(the deceased) towards Kharon who standsin the stern of his boat (N. B. the steeringoar).

In addition to these and other Atticblack-figure and red-figure vases, there arealso examples of Boiotian and Euboianblack-figure and of Etruscan and South Ital-ian red-figure, as well as plain black-glazedcups, one of them in the shape of a Phei-dias cup, so called from the finding of oneincised with his name in the workshop ofthe sculptor/architect at Olympia. There isalso a selection of smaller Hellenistic vasesand a few Roman pieces, including a goodinstance of early green glazed ware, prob-ably produced in Asia Minor.

The exhibition contains other objectsmade of fired clay, namely terracotta stat-

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Greek And Roman Antiquities at The MontrealMuseum of Fine Artsby John M. Fossey

Fig. 11. General view of the Greek-Roman Gallery at The Montreal Museum of FineArts. Photo credit: Brian Merrett, MMFA.

uettes (an area of current expansion in thecollection) and lamps. With the latter cate-gory, we have a sufficiently wide collectionnow (as opposed to merely four or five asrecently as 2001) to be able to show thedevelopment in form of this common andessential artifact type from Neolithic timesto the Islamic Middle Ages.

After clay objects, we turn to the ancientglass collection. This was for a long timealready a principal kernel of the antiquitiescollection, especially since the receipt bythe museum in 1953 of the Harry Nortoncollection (Fig. 12 gives some examples).This part of the permanent collection is solarge that only a representative sample canactually be displayed. Of particular interestamong the glass works is a necklace ofPhoinikian or Punic manufacture, whichshows a series of tiny pendant heads; thisattractive type dates between 650 and 500B.C.

The metal objects are perhaps our leastrich section but some recent (and for thatreason, not yet displayed) acquisitions arehelping to fill out this aspect. There are,moreover, some outstanding works in thecategory, such as the fourth century B.C.gold laurel wreath, apparently from Sinopeon the Black Sea, and a fine leadsarkophagos of third-fourth century A.D.date (see Fig. 13). The latter is one of thebest preserved examples of this type ofobject, which was manufactured at Tyre onthe Levantine coast. The metal artifacts alsoinclude several miniature Etruscan bronzefigures and a number of Hellenistic andRoman ornamental pieces, as well as ear-rings and a bracelet. The metals sectionconcludes with coins. Here, we have takenthe opportunity to use the artifacts to show

something of the extents, tempo-ral and geographic, of the classi-cal world by placing a Greekcoin (for every mint representedin the collection) at its place oforigin on a map of the Mediter-ranean area. Below this, a hori-zontal series of Hellenistic andRoman imperial portrait issues(unfortunately far from complete)emphasises the duration of the

later part of the classical world.The last stage of classical antiquity is

represented by a single object, the largefloor mosaic on loan from the Syrian gov-ernment (see Fig. 14). This magnificentexample of Palaeochristian art originallydecorated the floor of a church of the latefifth century A.D.; it probably lay eitherwithin, or immediately in front of, the roomknown as the diakonikon, to the side of thesanctuary; the eucharistic symbols in itscomposition refer to the function of thediakonikon in preparing the host for thecommunion service. This floor was one ele-ment in a total of over eighty seized byCanada Customs in the second half of the1990’s and subsequently repatriated toSyria after analysis by my team fromMcGill University, together with the investi-gations service of Canada Customs. Thecurrent loan by the Syrian government wasmade in thanks for our work in protectingthat country’s cultural heritage.

To an academic audience, it is obviousthat a collection of this sort, however welldisplayed, is of much more use when pub-lished and thus made available to a wideraudience than just that which visits themuseum. The Diniacopoulos collection as awhole has already been edited by me andJane Francis of Concordia University (andpublished by the Museum and Concordia)

and is available at the museum’s book-store. The coin collection was publishedsome years ago by Paul Denis and is nowapparently out of print. The catalogueraisonné of the ancient glass collection is inits final stages of preparation (authored byBeaudoin Caron and Eléni P. Zoïtopoúlou),and John Oakley and I have begun the vol-ume on the Greek and Roman pottery. JaneFrancis has undertaken responsibility forthe sculpture, Eléni Zoïtopoúlou and I forthe small objects.

John M. Fossey (jmfossey@mbamtl.org),after obtaining his first degree at the Uni-versity of Birmingham (U. K.) and his doc-torate at Université de Lyon II (France),taught classical archaeology and Greekepigraphy at McGill University from 1969to 2000, first in the Department of Classics,then in that of Art History. Since his retire-ment as Emeritus Professor from McGill, heserves as Curator of Archaeology at theMontreal Museum of Fine Arts. He is a Fel-low of the Royal Society of Canada and ofthe Society of Antiquaries of London aswell as a Corresponding Fellow of the Ger-man Archaeological Institute. Author ofeight books and over a hundred articles onGreek archaeology, history, and epigra-phy, and co-author of two books, he hasedited many volumes, in part through theseries McGill University Monographs inClassical Archaeology and History, whichhe directs. He is also currently ExecutiveEditor of the The Ancient World.

Fig. 12. Examples of ancient glass(1953.Dg.6, 1953.Dg.86, 1953.Dg.61),The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Photo credit: Denis Farley.

Fig. 14. Palaeochristian mosaic fromSyria (6.2004.1-2), on loan from theGovernment of the Syrian-Arab Repub-lic (General Direction of Antiquities), TheMontreal Museum of Fine Arts. Photocredit: Christine Guest, MMFA.

Fig. 13. Lead sarkophagos (1964.Ea.1),The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Photo credit: MMFA.

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