Classics in Contemporary Culture

Rhetoric for a Change (...We Can Believe In)

Nick Cohen (Evening Standard)  writes a column about how Obama's presidency makes rhetoric "cool" again, as part of the discussion of a UK initiative to teach children suffering from "word poverty" (lack of copia verborum, obviously...) how and when to speak formal, correct English.

The view that oratory is phoney is a thoroughly modern one which has led to schools from the 1960s onwards abandoning the teaching of debating and public speaking. Virtually every other generation in history would have found their dismissal of the ability to convert your listeners absurd.

"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men," said Plato, and Obama proved him right. Obama's victory renewed interest in rhetoric worldwide, and I am glad that in Britain the poorest children will benefit by being taught formal English.

Pupils in inner-city schools seem as far away as it is possible to be from the glamorous Obama campaign while remaining on the same planet. But far more people lose the chance for self-advancement because they cannot speak than ever lost a race to the White House.

The educational movements of the Sixties thought they were emancipating children by encouraging them to do their own thing and reject elitist rules.

Although it cleared out dead wood - no serious student of English believes that the old rules against split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions were anything more than dogmas - the results for children from modest backgrounds have been disastrous.

Sir Jim Rose, a former head of Ofsted who is reviewing language teaching for the Government, says that employers have told him of job applicants who cannot talk confidently on the telephone or hold a formal conversation.

He wants schools to teach speaking as a separate topic.

He knows what the ancient Greeks knew, but our generation forgot: words are weapons, and if you deprive the young of the ability to use them, you leave them defenceless.

Well, but if there's a proposal to teach kids how to make the Weaker Argument stronger, I imagine there'll be Aristophanean alarm bells, though...

For more on the UK proposal, see this article from the Times.

Tense Moments in the US House...And the Real Reason for the Fall of the Roman Empire

Oh, Language Log!  Always a source of fun...

From today:  Extensive excerpts from last year's congressional investigations into possible contraventions of the Hatch Act by Lurita Doan, now dredged up again in the wake of her resignation/dismissal...I had not realized that such an extensive grammatical discussion had been involved.  Latin teachers, hold on tight...Here's the paragraph that brings in the Latin:

REP. JOHN P. SARBANES (D-MD): I hope my mother’s watching. She’s a Latin teacher, and I’m just going to take issue with your citing of the hortatory subjunctive. (Laughter.) The actual tense that was used in the statement about will not be getting promoted and so forth, that is just clearly the future tense. It’s not future perfect or future pluperfect or anything of that nature.

So really, there is a reason to learn all those terms in Latin class:  for the purpose of obfuscation in the halls of Congress.  But privately, of course, make sure you do know the difference between tense, mood, voice, and that stuff; or not, I guess:  does "I didn't know what I was talking about" qualify as "plausible deniability"?

From a week ago, in a post entitled "PONT MAX TR POT LOL" (and citing the Epea Pteroenta blog as the source), a new explanation of the Fall of Rome is advanced:  a frame of mind not unlike the one so prevalent among text-messagers..."Kids these days," and all that...

Religion Is Contagious!

Mark Liberman (at LanguageLog) has been posting on "Language as a Virus" and now expands (with help from Cosma Shalizi) to "Culture" (specifically, religion) as a contagious phenomenon, citing Pliny (Ep. 10.96.9) on the Christians:

Neque civitates tantum, sed vicos etiam atque agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est.

This phraseology is likely derived from Livy's depiction of the spread of the Bacchanalia (39.9):

Huius mali labes ex Etruria Romam veluti contagione morbi penetravit.

["The infection of this mischief, like that from the contagion of disease, spread from Etruria to Rome." (Google Books)]

Cf. R. M. Grant, "Pliny and the Christians," Harvard Theological Review 1948: 273-4 [link via JSTOR].

One more:  Tacitus, discussing measures against Egyptian and Jewish rites, (Ann. 2.85) mentions 4000 freedmen "infected with that [sic] superstition" (quattuor milia libertini generis ea superstitione infecta)...although "infecta" by itself is not as specific as the English "infected."

The Christians gave as good as they got, of course:  The metaphor appears, for example in the title of Theodoret's great work of apologetic, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, "Cure of the Greek Maladies" [the Greek title being:  Hellenikon therapeutike pathematon]. (Greek text via Google Books)

For later incarnations, note Ludovico Nogarola (16th cen.) on Gian Matteo Giberti's actions against heresy (i.e. Protestantism), presuambly with Livy in mind also:

ille...vir prudens curavit sedulo, ne hoc tam late disseminatum malum Germaniae vicinitate veluti contagione morbi ad nos serperet. [Google Books]

And for more examples in Medieval times, see R. I. Moore, "Heresy as Disease," in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th-13th C.), ed. by W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Leuven, 1976), pp. 1-11.

Myrmidons-->Brown Shirts (??)

Random observation/question:  Why is it that "Myrmidon" (when not referring to the Myrmidons) is usually pejorative?  Too loyal, too ant-like?  Joined with Achilles' sitting out from the fighting and hence associated with some kind of Fifth-Column-ness?

This comment by Philip Giraldi on the recent National Intelligence Estimate refers to Karen Hughes' (media) "Myrmidons"--perhaps the reference to "worker bees" in the previous sentence is an indicator of a train of entomological associations?  See these other references in the news too, including mention of "brown Nazi myrmidons"...

OED:   

2. A member of a bodyguard or retinue; a faithful follower; one of a group or team of attendants, servants, or assistants. Also in extended use. [Occas. difficult to distinguish from sense 3.] ...3. a. A member of a gang or army adhering to a particular leader; a hired ruffian or mercenary.  b. In extended use: an opportunistic or sycophantic supporter; a hanger-on.

I like this pair of attestations:  1874 F. W. FARRAR Life Christ II. lx. 372 Herod and his corrupt hybrid myrmidons ‘set Him at nought’.   1927 S. LEWIS Elmer Gantry iii. 45 No timid Jesus did he preach, but the adventurer who had..dared to face the soldiers in the garden, who had dared the myrmidons of Rome and death itself!

 

On Julius Caesar, in Latin

At the Süddeutsche Zeitung, an interview with Wilfried Stroh about Caesar, in Latin!  The introduction:

Hodie ante MML annorum res gravissimae Romae gerebantur: Coniuratores Gaio Iulio Caesari dictatori insidias paraverunt et eum tribus et viginti ictibus confosserunt. Nomen interfecti autem multis saeculis post memoria tenetur...

My favorite exchange:

sueddeutsche.de: Id saltem pervelim scire: Quomodo Caesarem veteres Romani pronuntiaverunt: “Zäsar” an “Käsar”?

Stroh: Neque haec neque illa vera est pronuntiatio: dicendum est “Kaisar”, sed ita ut litterae mutae K sive C non adspiretur, littera S merus sibilus sit sine susurro.

German translation also available.  [Thanks to MM at Transblawg.]

Bloggeamus Igitur...

A new blog, the first I've seen (I think) written in Latin, more or less...by one "Scipio."  The title:  "Scipio Scripsit."  As he puts it:

Frustra petitus, ullos scriptitarios in latina lingua compositos invenire non possum. Plurimi de latina, sed nullos in ipsa latina.

He adds:

En, compositioni malae veniam mihi date, sis!

I look forward to seeing more...

Outsourcing Classics

I don't remember having heard this before:

And remember that when the Perseus project of digitizing the whole of the Greek literary canon looked around for input typists, they ended up training a squadron of Filipino women to use an ancient Greek keyboard to do the job. Knowing the meaning of the Greek apparently got in the way of input speed when they tested classics graduates for the job.

But then, I don't remember ever hearing anything about how Perseus gets its texts online...I sort of assumed scanning and OCR...

"Conjugating Everything in Sight..."

Good grief.  From the headline "SAT MD heals wounds with Latin tongue"/ "Wounds healed with Latin tongue by SatMd" I was expecting at least an incantation or two, or what a mother bear does to her cubs...but all it was was a "press release" advertising Michael DiSalvo's SAT preparation services.  Of couse, I do agree with the strategy:  learning Latin!  I can't help but think, however, that there's a vein of salaciousness in this story of licking students into shape.

Daily Show Philology

Latin "informants" wanted at the Daily Show!  Yes, that would be "wanted" in the sense of "needed"....In the fore-math of the election of Joseph Ratzinger to the post of pontifex maximus, Jon Stewart's late-night TV cohort Stephen Colbert brought out a spoof attack ad with text in "Latin" [video clip here]--and it's been ripping up a portion of the  Classical side of the blogosphere!  I'm not finding any mainstream media attention except for this, in the Sacramento Bee:

Q: Have any cardinals campaigned for the job?

A: Last week, a spoof on "Saturday Night Live" showed the cardinals campaigning for the papacy as if it were an American election - the show even had one of its troupe portraying the Rev. Al Sharpton as a papal candidate. "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" satirized the conclave by showing the cardinals attack ads in Latin.

But the cardinals - and the church - take the conclave and their duties seriously. Discussion prior to the death of a pope is forbidden. Cardinals can discuss their candidates before the conclave, but open campaigning is frowned upon.

Clint Hagen of "House of Hagen" posted his transcription of the Latin text, and his correction (and now also has an audio link of the original); and Angelo Mercado (Sauvage Noble) tightened it up stylistically and commented at length; meanwhile, there's also a LiveJournal thread on the subject, which also came up at Language Log, Open Book and Lawyers, Guns & Money.  So, click some links if you want to find out how to say "sausage-eating bastard" in Latin (and Greek)

Latine Adoremus

Still relevant:  Joan LaGuardia (News-Press [FL]) reports on continuing use of Latin:

Latin — a so-called "dead" language  — is having a lively resurrection in Southwest Florida.

Ave Maria University, northeast of Naples, and St. Martha Parish in Sarasota regularly celebrate the Roman Catholic worship service, Mass, in Latin.

Ave Maria, a Catholic university, requires the study of Latin in its core curriculum.

St. Leo Parish in Bonita Springs has a Latin choir.

"What happens during the Mass is so beautiful, the Latin words truly reflect the beauty and the majesty," said Mary Jo Klein after a Latin Mass in the Stella Maris chapel of Ave Maria on Sunday.

She and her husband, Darryl Klein, home-school their five children in Latin. One son sings in the St. Leo Latin choir.

The Kleins said the ancient language inspires a deeper richness, beauty and spirit in their worship.

Interest in classical languages is not limited to the prayerful. Movies such as "The Passion of the Christ," "Gladiator" and "Troy" encourage general interest.

Many cardinals who begin selecting a new pope today are not fluent in Latin.

I love this:

St. Martha and Ave Maria use the same rite of the Mass that is routinely used in most Catholic churches. They substitute Latin for English, Spanish, Creole and other languages spoken here.

And, in conclusion, I have to note someone from my homeland:

Many Catholics, such as Franciscan Sister Marie-Josee, will choose the Latin option when available.

"The Latin gives a certain reverence and majesty that give depth to the Mass," said the nun from Alberta, Canada, who will graduate in May from Ave Maria.