One of the (probably innumerable) ways in which I irritate my wife is by going round claiming to have a classics degree, despite having studied no Greek or Latin at university. Actually I feel this characterisation is slightly unfair, as I do have a bona fide classics degree, 100% legitimate according to the rules of the university at the time, despite the lack of any language, and it’s not as if I have ever actually attempted to pass myself off as a ‘proper classicist’ with a permanent fear that someone might ask me to translate Vergil, revealing my deception and leading to summary dismissal in disgrace. On the contrary, I’m more likely to go to the other extreme of describing myself as not a classicist but a historian who happens to do ancient stuff; some of my best friends are classicists etc., but that’s not generally what I do. Still, I occasionally wonder how many of the colleagues who wearily tolerate this ideological pose do so in the belief that I actually have the grounding in ancient languages that would entitle me to the status of ‘proper classicist’ if I only chose to claim it, and might therefore look at me differently (or break out the pitchforks) if they knew the truth.
It is now many years since this idea of the discipline of Classics as essentially and fundamentally focused on Latin and Greek language and literature, potentially but not necessarily branching out at later stages into the study of topics (like history) suggested and illuminated by that literature, ceased to be taken for granted; since, in fact, it became necessary (in the view of some) to append the adjective ‘proper’ in the face of the proliferation of non-linguistic degree programmes like Ancient History and Classical Studies alongside the traditional approach.
However, the idea that Classics is really about language and literature – that these arriviste sub-disciplines are illegitimately trying to lay claim to some share of its status and glory despite their manifest inferiority – remains remarkably strong. It is manifested in the uncertainty about what their degrees are really about that I’ve heard expressed sometimes by students on these non-linguistic programmes, especially Classical Studies – Classics students have no such doubts about the nature of their studies, and this confident sense of identity often shades into a powerful sense of superiority. It features in the expectations held of postgrads and job candidates with respect to linguistic competence – as Miko Flohr once put it on the Twitter, “we love your research on the economy and society of Roman Italy, but can you teach Tacitus as well?”
Most obviously, over the last year or so it’s resurfaced several times in debates about the place of classical subjects in schools and the entry requirements for studying them at university; in arguments around the possible fate of AQA’s Classical Civilisation A-Level (the sense that A-Level Greek won’t ever be treated in the same manner, although it’s equally small and difficult to get marked, because Proper Classics), and the imbecilic claim of James Delingpole that Oxford has drunk the Social Justice Kool-Aid and wrecked its intellectual standing by admitting students without expensive, language-driven private educations to study classics. It’s difficult to avoid the impression that these debates often reflect a certain disdain, to put it mildly, both for non-linguistic studies and as a consequence for those students who don’t enjoy the opportunity to study ‘proper’ traditional classics.
The obvious basis for this idea is historical: Latin and Greek are what Classics truly is about because that’s what it always has been about. But making this a normative claim rather than just a statement about the past seems rather dubious; other disciplines have proved capable of moving on or expanding beyond their nineteenth-century origins (many, indeed, act as if they’re frequently embarrassed by their naive, unsophisticated origins), so clearly this adherence to tradition is a matter of choice. One might surmise that it serves today a means of policing boundaries and claiming a distinctive identity – perhaps in a primarily defensive manner, trying to maintain a distinctive academic space, whereas non-linguistic approaches to the ancient world might get subsumed by more powerful, imperialist disciplines like History or Literature. It’s also a claim to intellectual superiority. Languages are hard, especially when learned in a traditional grammar-based manner, and attainment in them is directly measurable, in contrast to the more discursive and subjective skills of analysis and interpretation.
After all, it’s not that [traditional] Classics is only language; on the contrary, Classicists can do history, and literary criticism, and reception, and all the rest, and they can do these difficult languages. The claim that a grasp of other skills, theories etc. (those of modern historical approaches or archaeology, for example) offers a superior understanding of the subject matter is always open to contestation; the claim that high-level knowledge of ancient languages enables a better understanding of ancient texts is incontrovertible. The shift then from identifying language as an essential tool for understanding key aspects of classical antiquity to making it a shibboleth for the entire discipline involves a further step – but it’s often easily justified by the rhetorical question: it’s all very well for students to be encouraged to do inferior non-linguistic classical studies at school and undergraduate level, but would I really argue that someone could be an adequate researcher of classical things without language?
Well, maybe I would. The traditional approach may be justifiable if we assume that the single scholar should do everything, and therefore needs the skills to do everything (though of course there is never an expectation that every classicist should be fully qualified in epigraphy or archaeology). If, however, as I’ve argued before, it’s better to see research as a collaborative enterprise, then it’s reasonable for some people to specialise in historical or material approaches on the basis that someone else does the detailed linguistic stuff. Just as many ancient historians do with respect to archaeology, what matters is knowing enough to understand the findings of other specialists, rather than actually being a specialist.
But the model of the lone scholar who does everything persists, and is reinforced through the job market, with its insistence on an ability to teach language, just in case.* This sets up artificial barriers and instantly favours candidates with privileged backgrounds. I’m a case in point; I never studied languages at university, but because I had done them intensively at school I could make a reasonably plausible case for being able to teach them. When it comes to the skills I acquired for my research, on the other hand, I have enough grasp of numismatics and archaeological survey to make effective use of such material for my own research, but wouldn’t presume to teach them at any level beyond a very basic introduction for non-specialists – and, more importantly, no one would bat an eyelid at this deficiency.
Basically, I was lucky. I never intended to study ancient history, but came to it via the study of other periods – and then just happened to have the necessary credentials. I can easily imagine someone following a similar route into the study of antiquity via history (or indeed into classical reception via modern literature), who hadn’t had the chance to acquire credentials in a subject they never planned to study. They could certainly gain enough language during their postgrad studies to hack their way through a text to the degree required for their research, but would need to expend extra – and, from the point of view of the research, unnecessary – effort to get this to a level where they could credibly present themselves as a potential language teacher.
The study of antiquity is not reducible to the study of the classical languages. This is why we need to fight for Classical Studies and Ancient History in schools; not driven by the narrow, self-interested assumption that this could be a way of bringing more students to Proper Classics from beyond the private schools, nor the self-interested and hypocritical drive to keep Proper Classics alive by recruiting students to inferior programmes to keep departmental numbers up, but because of the belief that the wide-ranging interdisciplinary study of classical antiquity and its legacy is valuable in itself, at any age. As Edith Hall’s new Advocating Classics Education project says in its mission statement:
Far too few British children are educated about the ancient Greeks and Romans at secondary level. Studying ancient Greek and Roman civilisation, history, thought, literature, art and archaeology is not only exciting and instructive, but confers profound advantages: it hones analytical and critical skills, trains minds in the comparative use of different types of evidence, introduces young people to the finest oratory and skills in argumentation and communication, enhances cultural literacy, refines consciousness of cultural difference and relativism, fosters awareness of a three-millennia long past, along with models and ideals of democracy, and develops identities founded in citizenship on the national, European and cosmopolitan, global level.
And this ought to feed into a more confident assertion of the value of non-linguistic degree programmes. Core units in literary or historical skills and theories should be seen not as a ‘substitute’ for Greek and Latin, as I’ve sometimes heard them referred to, but as the heart of equally valid and important approaches to studying antiquity. This is relatively easy for ancient history, as a branch of historical studies (hence needing to engage with the skills and theories of that discipline, and increasingly those of the social sciences) but with a distinctive interdisciplinary identity in terms of the range of types of evidence ancient historians use and their close engagement with literary, archaeological, philosophical etc approaches compared with the history of many other periods.
This is trickier with Classical Studies – but potentially more exciting. CS offers a kind of total cultural analysis, both comparative and transhistorical, in which issues of reception and reinterpretation are unavoidable. However, there has to be a concern that it will always be in a weaker position because of its name, if only because of inherited associations and the lack of a decent name for those who do it – classicists do Classics, ancient historians do Ancient History; Classical Studies is done by, erm, Classical Studies people. Personally I prefer the all-purpose German term Altertumswissenschaft for the discipline, but that still doesn’t give use a suitable name for the people who research it.
Perhaps we need to insist that it’s all Classical Studies, with some pursuing specialist linguistic pathways – or that we are all Proper Classicists, regardless of linguistic level or interests. The alternative is a completely new name for the whole thing, if that’s what it takes for me no longer to have to make defensive noises about my degree, but more importantly to build a world in which thousands of students will no longer have any need to feel apologetic about theirs.
* On reflection, it’s actually a bit insulting to high-level Greek and Latin specialists to imply that anyone ought to be able to teach the languages adequately on the basis of a couple of years’ study at PG level. But having such an expectation, and enforcing it, serves to entrench the notion that all lecturers in a Classics department ought to be high-level Greek and Latin specialists, even when many of them aren’t.
Corrected 17/7, as I got my exam boards mixed up: AQA is axing Classical Civilisation, while OCR is keeping it but making their classical exams inaccessible to those outside the U.K.
This article is just plain dumb. You can’t do ancient history, archaeology, etc. etc.., properly if you can’t read the ancient sources in the original and understand the textual tradition and manuscript problems. The reason classics is failing is because fewer and fewer scholars can do the hard work of reading new papyri and studying manuscript traditions. Anyone can investigate ‘cultural’ questions
Would you trust someone to write the history of maths who has never once studied maths?
I can actually imagine certain approaches to writing the history of maths where knowledge of maths itself would be largely irrelevant – a sociological study of the profession, for example – but I agree that would be a little odd. However, I don’t think the analogy is terribly relevant. My point is that, yes, you need the research skills you need; what you don’t need are other research skills, not relevant to actual research but fetishised by tradition and used as a means of setting up arbitrary disciplinary boundaries, as if all historians of ideas must study mathematics to degree level because it’s an important part of some areas of study.
If you want to discuss in good faith, you could be a bit more courteous about it – my blog, my rules – and maybe re-read the argument to get it right. Of course we need people who can read new papyri – but we don’t need *everyone* to be reading new papyri, let alone make the ability to read papyri the shibboleth of a special elite. Archaeologists, for example, *really* don’t need to worry about manuscript traditions…
Well Ok but the idea that someone can understand the Greek and Roman world without being able to read a single text in the language of the Greeks and Romans strikes me as bizarre…if you were an expert on Russia, wouldn’t you be laughed at if you knew no Russian and couldn’t read Russian newspapers, watch Russian films, etc etc.?
My point isn’t that we can or should do away with all Greek and Latin; that would indeed be absurd. Rather, for most researchers it’s a tool; and, depending on the research topic, not necessarily the most important tool. There are plenty of other tools, as important or more important for researching certain areas – and other languages as well, vital for understanding the development of the ancient world – but for historical reasons only Greek and Latin are regarded as defining the entire discipline.
Thanks for the thoughtful and excellent articulation Neville! It was certainly inspiring for me, also not a proper classicist by any means. History in general often gets tarred with the, “anybody can do it” brush, and many are unaware, or choose not to acknowledge that there are lifetimes of skills acquisition and ways of being and thinking required to be an excellent historian. It is not simply a matter of just reading the ancient texts and thereby being able to engage in the historian’s discipline effectively.
I would perhaps also add that the less advanced utilitarian knowledge and understanding of Greek and Latin still very much equips one with the knowledge that translations are translations, and on difficult passages should be compared/contrasted, and what have you.
Anyway, for one who has decided that teaching, digital history, and coding are meaningful and require much time to master, but still wants to be involved in the work of ancient history, I was inspired.
Thank you for this. The point about translation is important – but it can be a matter of “knowing you can’t take anything on trust, and so comparing translations and scholarly discussions on a key point”, rather than “therefore only those with high-level linguistic skills are qualified to comment”. As you say, it’s about utilitarian knowledge – language as a tool – for many of us.
Wonderful post Neville! I very much agree with you and it is refreshing to see such a view (and problem!) being openly discussed.
A refreshing and uplifting post. As an Ancient History and History student at undergraduate level its more than a little infuriating to have Ancient History constantly denigrated as a lesser variant of ‘proper’ Classics i.e. studies focusing on literature and language within antiquity. This is a shame as it no doubt repels students from, and restricts their access to, the wider study of Classics. In the age of easily accessible translations denying students the opportunity to study the ancient past on an equal footing to ‘pure’ Classics seems a little misplaced.
Thanks for the comment. As I said in the post, I think AH students do have the option of opting out of the contest, so to speak, and adopting history as a disciplinary identity – implying that the Lang & Lit people *just* do language and literature, and emphasising a different set of technical skills. The really tricky case is Classical Studies, which all too easily becomes ‘Classics for people without language skills so obviously not really Classics’… Yes, it’s a ridiculously limited perspective that will deter most people from studying the subject, but I fear there are those who *want* to be a tiny, smug minority.
Interesting argument. I did my PhD at UC Berkeley in the “Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology” and there were language requirements: 3-hour Greek to English translation exam without dictionary plus 3-hour Latin to English translation exam without dictionary plus 1.5-hour French to English translation exam WITH dictionary, and one like that for German. However, the people getting PhDs in the Classics Department had harder language exams for Greek and Latin, and sometimes they were snide about it, and they defined “Classics” as a discipline very much in opposition to history. One of them said “I just don’t DO history.” Another said to me “Why do you study history? Is it so that you’ll know what kind of revolt or whatever happened that is the background to a speech in Demosthenes?” – that kind of thing. The postmodernists in the department audibly snickered at the historical task of trying to find out what actually happened in the past; they saw the past only as discourses. It was rather hard to be a historian there.
I’m not very familiar with US approaches to this. It does make sense that those specialising in language and literature have tougher language requirements, and I guess they can feel superior about that if they want – but the idea that history is therefore irrelevant is bizarre, to say the least.