Ancient History in the Secondary School
WILLIAM FAIRLEY, Ph.D., Editor.
A REVIEW.[6]
Not a review of the work we teachers have been doing with our friends, the ancient Greeks; but a digression which will be in some sort a review of a notable book will occupy us for a little. There has recently appeared The Lowell Lectures for 1908-9 by Professor John P. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin, on “What Have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilization.” The book is altogether helpful to the lover of the Greek world. And to him not only; but to the reader who through early limitations of culture may have but slight ideas of the importance of the Greeks, a reading of this book should be what to one brought up in the dim light of a cave or in the dense shadows of some vast forest would be a first glimpse of the glorious orb of day, the source of all the shaded light and all the warmth that had hitherto been his to enjoy without suspicion of the existence of the master light. Professor Mahaffy’s gladsome task is to impress the primacy of Greece in all our best thinking and truest living. He is indeed an enthusiast. Occasionally the judicious reader will question some of the results of his enthusiasm. But the author is the Nestor of the Greek scholars of the English-speaking world. He says of himself at the close of his lectures: “So now, when my part in the race is nearly run, there remains to me no higher earthly satisfaction than this, that I have carried the torch of Greek fire alight through a long life—no higher earthly hope than this, that I may pass that torch to others, who in their turn may keep it aflame with greater brilliancy perhaps, but not with more earnest devotion ‘in the Parliament of men the Federation of the world.’” He bitterly decries the modern displacement of the study of the Greek tongue and the knowledge of Greek life at first hand; but at the same time serves as an interpreter of what was best in Greece to those of us who are not quite at home in this language of queer type and involved syntax.
So in this close of our study of Greece for the current school year, let me earnestly recommend the perusal of this book to all teachers of our department. We cannot give a hundredth part of it to our pupils, now, or in later courses; but it will serve to imbue ourselves deeply with the Greek spirit, and help us to enforce the true value of our heritage from the Greeks, the master minds of all our thinking. Some of us will not have opportunity to read the book. For them let me try to give a few glimpses of its worth.
There are eight lectures: Introductory; Greek Poetry; Greek Prose; Greek Art—I: Poetry and Sculpture; II: Painting and Music; Science; Grammar, Logic, Mathematics, Medicine; Politics, Sociology, Law; Higher Thinking, Philosophy, Speculative and Practical Theology. The thesis of the whole is that the best in life is wrought out elaborately and with pains by men of deep thought and long reflection. It is a glorifying of the ideal as over against the modern rush of practicality.
In his introductory lecture Professor Mahaffy seeks not to account for the Greek preëminence—that cannot be done; but to assert it, as one might extol the sporadic genius of a Mozart. He then shows how the Romans and the men of medieval Europe failed to grasp, as our modern world since the Renaissance has been grasping, the real meaning of Greece. And here comes in his plea for the study of Greek. He writes: “The danger I see before this generation is that which came upon the Roman world insensibly and which resulted in a decadence not arrested till it sunk into the night of the dark ages. The later empire was content to take Greek art and Greek letters at second hand, and to substitute Latin culture for the models which had educated their greatest masters. But ... the copy had not the life of the original. So we, too, with all our science, with our increase of material knowledge and our joyless running to and fro may sink into an ugly, tame, joyless conglomeration of societies, for whom new discoveries supply hosts of new conveniences, but no return to the happiness and contentment of a simpler age.... Happiness does not lie here, no, nor in motors, nor in turbines, nor in wireless messages across the globe, nor in daily newspapers full of inextricable fact and falsehood.”
In the chapters devoted to literature with wealth of argument and illustration is pointed out our well-known debt for rhythm and meter, period and cadence. In specific cases: “There can be no question that in the oratory of debate the Greeks taught the Romans, then through them mediæval Europe, then, after the Renaissance, modern Europe directly, so that even now they are the acknowledged masters in this splendid art.” And: “The laws of prose composition, as devised and perfected by Isocrates, are the most subtle and complete ever put into practice by any living man.”
These supreme exemplars of prose and verse, he declares, have no lesson for us of unstudied eloquence and unpremeditated art. Everything was polished to the pitch of perfection with unremitting toil.
Architecture and sculpture reveal the highest glories of Greek art. The refinements of line by which optical delusion was corrected in the Parthenon are pointed out with admiration. Speaking of the frieze of the same temple, he remarks: “There is even this subtlety in the detail of the work—that, as this band of figures was intended to be seen high above the spectator, care was taken to carve the lower limbs in slightly flatter relief than the upper, and the limbs of the horses were even made a little lighter than in nature, in order to counterbalance the predominance which the part nearer to the spectator’s vision might assume.” Glimpses of genius—pains and skill—such as that are of high artistic, yes, and moral value to our youth. Attention is called to what so many of us ignore, that color was freely used in both building and sculpture. Our flat whites would have been unbearable to these masters. Their perfection in statuary is the loving despair of the world to-day.
In the chapter on science are a host of facts which are not unfamiliar to the scholar, but which serve to hush some of our modern boastfulness. Some things will be new to many readers. Such are the system of numerical notation, almost as simple as our Arabic digits. The extent of Greek mathematical investigation is better known. Of great interest is the account of Greek medicine, which got so far beyond the nostrums, the philtres and superstitions to which medieval quackery returned.
In politics is found the weak point of Greece; yet even here we must use the historical perspective. And thus, by contrast, this ancient advance over Oriental thraldoms and tyrannies is all the more wonderful.
In matters of private law it is almost startling to come across a will like this, taken from a papyrus of Græcised Egypt: “This is the will of Peisias the Lycian, son of X., of sound mind and deliberate intention. May it be my lot to live on in health and manage mine own property, but should anything human happen to me, I bequeath to my children so much, to my wife such and such things, I set free certain slaves; I set apart money for religious purposes. And I appoint as executors such and such people.” A will like this would be admitted to probate in any surrogate’s court to-day.
The chapters on philosophy and theology are necessarily deep, but of supreme importance. For in them we are reminded of how by pure thinking the Greeks anticipated the best and latest of our modern thought. The atomic theory, the unity of the universe, the oneness of God, the eternal sanctions of the right, the high behests of the moral law, were all worked out over two thousand years ago.
“If the time should ever come when men will no longer be led by revelation, when they will reject miracle and prophecy, and determine to be led by the mere light of reason ... there will still remain the ethical types which Zeno and Epicurus have crystallized in their systems—there will always remain the man of duty and the man of pleasure, the man who lives for others and he who lives for himself, in terms of modern philosophic jargon, the Altruist and the Egoist, the Spiritualist and the Materialist.”
It were well for our youth and their teachers to bow before a race who in that dim and early age could think the thoughts and set in motion the influences which are most vital among us of the later time.
The Fall of the Curtain.
A formal presentation of the closing scenes of purely Greek history is precluded by the foregoing notice of Professor Mahaffy’s work. It may suffice to point out the three subjects most worthy of emphasis. These may well be: 1, the failure of the Greek federations before and after Alexander, owing to jealousies; 2, the extent and the political failure of the work of Alexander, and 3, the Hellenizing of the Mediterranean basin and the lasting benefits accruing therefrom.