Bemusement So, my new book Classics: why it matters has been reviewed on the Classics For All webpage by Richard Jenkyns – I’d asked for a copy to be sent to them (I don’t know if they’re on the regular distribution list for review copies) as they’re a worthy organisation seeking to promote the study of classics in state schools rather than keeping it as preserve of the elite, and that’s one of the points of the book. Jenkyns is one of their patrons, so it’s entirely reasonable that they asked him to write the review – and he didn’t like it much… Okay, I wouldn’t have expected my comments on the place of ancient languages to win much favour with an eminent Oxford classicist, but is it really true, as is implied, that the book only shows any liveliness when it’s attacking classics? How must I have failed to express myself clearly, if someone thinks that I’m recommending David Engels’ prophecies of doom as a model for classical studies, rather than offering them as an example and symptom of alarming politicised appropriation of the ancient world? And as for the idea that Thucydides is straightforward to read in translation whereas such an approach in the case of Tacitus would inevitably lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding…
Amusement Actually this is hilarious. I’ve always tended to avoid reading reviews of my work, suspecting that my fragile ego won’t cope very well with even a hint of criticism and so I don’t deserve to enjoy any positive comments, but this is different. I hate Twitter accounts that celebrate themselves by retweeting praise, but it’s hard to resist quoting choice snippets from this one. Because I reference Nietzsche, and refer only in passing to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, I am “the Uebermensch of the West Country” (the downside of this is that I can now never move, or I’ll lose the use of that title). “Proud Philistine” is even better, for a child of the punk era who is therefore instinctively in favour of assaulting elite culture, but whose cultural tastes tend more towards high-brow German novels and abstract European jazz. I need to get a t-shirt made…
Acceptance It’s not just the principle that no publicity is bad publicity – there’s nothing like a rousing academic spat to build up interest in a book, suggesting the existence of a titanic intellectual struggle between the Progress League and the Legion of Gloom (though that implies I should be thinking up some equally memorable insults for Prof. Jenkyns, which really isn’t my style). Rather, it’s the nature of the attack, and its embedded assumptions; this is exactly the sort of response that my book ought to be provoking, expressed in a way which perfectly represents the sort of Classics that I’m criticising (whereas I always feel that dear old Nietzsche was actually expecting conservative German professors of philology to read The Birth of Tragedy and hail him as the true future of the discipline, and only later decided that philology was inherently flawed and doomed to irrelevance after it had rejected him). With criticism like this, who needs supportive cover quotes?
Depression But this isn’t all about my book, except as a symptom; it’s about the current state and future prospects of the discipline. That there are still people – thoroughly eminent senior figures in the field, indeed – who dismiss the study of material evidence as at best ancillary compared with the wonders of the Texts, who insist on mastery of the languages as the only acceptable approach to studying antiquity, and who fail to recognise the problematic limitations of how the subject has been conceived or the dangers of the arrogance of assuming that classicists are automatically the best people to study classical reception, not the specialists in the periods and societies in which classical texts are being received. Apparently this shows disdain for classicists – but surely not half so much as suggesting that any work that departs from the narrow path of traditional philology is likely to be “lively perhaps, but slight, easily satisfied and short of self-criticism.”
Anger I owe a lot of these later thoughts to Liv Yarrow, who wrote a thoughtful blog post in response to the review. I can find this episode hilarious, because I’m an established professor who isn’t going to suffer any adverse consequences from the fact that an eminent retired Oxford classicist thinks I’m a grumbling intellectual lightweight. But what of the numerous young scholars who see their work being dismissed like this, or at least the potential for such policing? What of all those who are worried about the future of the discipline, who see possible problems with the image of classical studies being waved away or even unwittingly exemplified? What of the young people, especially from backgrounds which don’t traditionally engage with classical antiquity, who are presented with a world that really isn’t for them unless they wholly submit to its traditions? If my book says nothing very new about the discipline of classical studies, maybe that’s because the problems with it have been known for a long time, and its grandees still refuse to accept that anything needs to change…
Sphinx 
On reflection, one thing I found especially odd is Jenkyns’ comment about what I thought was a perfectly straightforward category: “literature specialists”. Can the logic really be that there is no such thing, because that would imply the existence of other sorts of legitimate classicists who are *not* literature specialists? A Classicist is a literature specialists or s/he is nothing – or at least no longer a Classicist?
You can also be a “language specialist”, although this also implies you’re thoroughly familiar with the Texts.
If anything that made me curious to read your book. I also think this behavior is not restricted to classics, but a common occurance in academia. I recall an article that theorized that academics are perceived by their peers as more intelligent and competent the meaner they behave. Accordingly this would suggest to follow the same strategy. Anyhow, I shall see if we have a copy of your book in the library, if not I order one and shall read it with interest.
Very likely – though I would qualify that by saying that it applies to *male* academics; female academics displaying even a moderate amount of assertiveness are instantly characterised as ‘pushy’, or worse, so heaven help one who’s perceived as ‘bitchy’ or ‘spiteful’…
I came to the field as a “literature specialist” in a heady period for literary critics. I learned a lot from them and worked as a “literature specialist” on … Thucydides. κακοῦ δ᾽ ἄρα μοι πέλεν ἀρχή! One cannot work on Thucydidean “language” without plunging into a broad range of historical and methodological topics, including political science and international relations.
And Thucydides proved to be a gateway drug: inevitably, perhaps, I then got immersed in work on Moses Finley, who did so much to shape social and economic history of antiquity as a field respected by other serious social scientists. One challenge as this work continues is to situate Finley’s work, now half a century old and seemingly outpaced by the development of knowledge, in a way that recognizes both its significance and its historical position.
Finley was no philologist, but he did develop skills in other areas that vastly enriched our field. He regularly condemned the dominance of philology in ancient studies, believing — examples aren’t hard to find — that their neglect of advances in contemporary historiography impoverished ancient studies. He dared to use the words “social science,” that were, in the day, anathema to many classicists: I’ve just completed a quick search and can report that many Big Names In Our Field — a bit embarrassing to list them — regularly condemned social science before, approx. 1969, fewer since; and that archaeologists certainly seem, often, to class themselves as social scientists. One archaeologist who’s pioneered anthropological approaches points out that if we had only texts to work with, we would remain ignorant about much that was going on in the ancient world.
It’s perhaps no surprise that the bulk of the references to “social science” I came upon in this quick survey come from archaeology, relatively few from literature and historiography. Equally unsurprising that much of the work on literary texts concerns gender.
Petty turf wars aside, there’s plenty of reason to celebrate the maturation of our profession into one that is no longer exclusively literary. I say that as a person whose interests remain, literary.
Finally, though I would demur from much of what Richard Jenkyns said, it seems obligatory to remember that this scholar has contributed a great deal to the field. Just today, I came upon his comments on Adam Parry’s “Two Voices of Vergil’s Aeneid,” CW 111.1, fall, 2017 (the spendid collection on the “Harvard Vergil”). I can say from experience that he shows more understanding than a number of others, in England or the USA, in the 1960s and now:
‘Rereading Adam Parry’s essay (1963) on “The Two Voices,” I am struck by how deliberately it presents itself as an essay in belles lettres. There are no footnotes, not even line references. The first pages are the most brilliant. Parry takes a fragment from the ordinary texture of the Aeneid, less than two lines in the Italian catalogue, and submits them to a close reading out of which he develops an idea of the character of the whole. This is practical criticism at its best, with a sense of both the particular and the general, showing how a fine sense of detail can enhance a larger understanding.
‘There is another way in which the essay is old-fashioned (a term which I mean to carry no disparagement), and that is in the plangent eloquence of its prose, matching its Tennysonian idea of a poet majestic in his sadness at the doubtful doom of humankind. The tone is in striking contrast to Parry’s other most famous article, “Have We Homer’s Iliad?” (1966). There the answer is clear-cut: “Yes, absolutely.” The difference between this and the half-light of the Virgil essay is partly because the two articles have different jobs to carry out: with Homer Parry is investigating a question of historical fact, with Virgil searching for a sensibility. But perhaps the difference between the character of the two epics has something to do with it too….’
“The difference … is … because” is an interesting way to put things. But my effort in this essay is to avoid the tone of H.W. Fowler. I’m grateful for both Neville’s book and Richard Jenkyns’, as well as for the review of Parry I might not have read but for Neville’s piece. My selfish conclusion (easy since my ox hasn’t been gored) is that it’s good to have all of these.
I’ll send this to CLASSICISTS as well.
Dan Tompkins
PLEASE don’t send it to the Classicist list, Dan. Keep that for conference announcements and random insanity.
Reading this episode have reminded me of another article I read recently: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/learning-greek-and-latin-will-be-key-renewing-west
There is something reassuring to all about the unchanging nature of Classics, but I fear that Classics will become a niche subject unless the modern world is made suited to Classics (as traditional Classicists would define it). So a radical change of name from Classics?
There seems (I cannot give evidence) to be more Ancient History scholars and departments who approach Classics with a historian eye. Perhaps these too grates with the philogists and philology-centred polymaths.