A Handbook for Latin Clubs

ROMAN BOOKS AND LIBRARIES

ANCIENT MYTHS AND LEGENDS

THE ANCIENT MYTH IN MODERN LITERATURE

"The debt of literature to the myth-makers of the Mediterranean has been an endless one starting at Mt. Olympus, and flowing down in fertilizing streams through all the literary ages."

WHAT ENGLISH OWES TO GREEK

MODERN ROME

"What shall I say of the modern city? Rome is yet the capital of the world."

ITALY OF TO-DAY

O TEMPORA! O MORES!

SELECTIONS THAT MAY BE USED FOR THE PROGRAMS

A PLEA FOR THE CLASSICS²

ON AN OLD LATIN TEXT BOOK

I remember the very day when the schoolmaster gave it to me.... And I remember that the rather stern and aquiline face of our teacher relaxed into mildness for a moment. Both we and our books must have looked very fresh and new to him, though we may all be a little battered now; at least, my New Latin Tutor is. It is a very precious book, and it should be robed in choice Turkey morocco, were not the very covers too much a part of the association to be changed. For between them I gathered the seed-grain of many harvests of delight; through this low archway I first looked upon the immeasurable beauty of words....

What liquid words were these: aqua, aura, unda! All English poetry that I had yet learned by heart—it is only children who learn by heart, grown people "commit to memory"—had not so awakened the vision of what literature might mean. Thenceforth all life became ideal....

Then human passion, tender, faithful, immortal, came also by and beckoned. "But let me die," she said. "Thus, thus it delights me to go under the shades." Or that infinite tenderness, the stronger even for its opening moderation of utterance, the last sigh of Aeneas after Dido,—

Or, with more definite and sublime grandeur, the vast forms of Roman statesmanship appear: "Today, Romans, you behold the commonwealth, the lives of you all, estates, fortunes, wives and children, and the seat of this most renowned empire, this most fortunate and beautiful city, preserved and restored to you by the distinguished love of the immortal gods, and by my toils, counsels, and dangers."

What great thoughts were found within these pages, what a Roman vigor was in these maxims! "It is Roman to do and suffer bravely." "It is sweet and glorious to die for one's country." "He that gives himself up to pleasure, is not worthy the name of a man."...

There was nothing harsh or stern in this book, no cynicism, no indifference; but it was a flower-garden of lovely out-door allusions, a gallery of great deeds; and as I have said before, it formed the child's first real glimpse into the kingdom of words.

I was once asked by a doctor of divinity, who was also the overseer of a college, whether I ever knew any one to look back with pleasure upon his early studies in Latin and Greek. It was like being asked if one looked back with pleasure on summer mornings and evenings. No doubt those languages, like all others, have fared hard at the hands of pedants; and there are active boys who hate all study, and others who love the natural sciences alone. Indeed, it is a hasty assumption, that the majority of boys hate Latin and Greek. I find that most college graduates, at least, retain some relish for the memory of such studies, even if they have utterly lost the power to masticate or digest them. "Though they speak no Greek, they love the sound on't." Many a respectable citizen still loves to look at his Horace or Virgil on the shelf where it has stood undisturbed for a dozen years; he looks, and thinks that he too lived in Arcadia.... The books link him with culture, and universities, and the traditions of great scholars.

On some stormy Sunday, he thinks, he will take them down. At length he tries it; he handles the volume awkwardly, as he does his infant; but it is something to be able to say that neither book nor baby has been actually dropped. He likes to know that there is a tie between him and each of these possessions, though he is willing, it must be owned, to leave the daily care of each in more familiar hands....

I must honestly say that much of the modern outcry against classical studies seems to me to be (as in the case of good Dr. Jacob Bigelow) a frank hostility to literature itself, as the supposed rival of science; or a willingness (as in Professor Atkinson's case) to tolerate modern literature, while discouraging the study of the ancient. Both seem to commit the error of drawing their examples of abuse from England, and applying their warnings to America.... Because the House of Commons was once said to care more for a false quantity in Latin verse than in English morals, shall we visit equal indignation on a House of Representatives that had to send for a classical dictionary to find out who Thersites was?...

Granted, that foreign systems of education may err by insisting on the arts of literary structure too much; think what we should lose by dwelling on them too little! The magic of mere words; the mission of language; the worth of form as well as of matter; the power to make a common thought immortal in a phrase, so that your fancy can no more detach the one from the other than it can separate the soul and body of a child; it was the veiled half revelation of these things that made that old text-book forever fragrant to me. There are in it the still visible traces of wild flowers which I used to press between the pages, on the way to school; but it was the pressed flowers of Latin poetry that were embalmed there first. These are blossoms that do not fade.

SAINT AUGUSTINE'S LOVE OF LATIN

Andrew Lang, in his Adventures Among Books, writes:

"Saint Augustine, like Sir Walter Scott at the University of Edinburgh, was 'The Greek Dunce.' Both of these great men, to their sorrow and loss, absolutely and totally declined to learn Greek. 'But what the reason was why I hated the Greek language, while I was taught it, being a child, I do not yet understand.' The Saint was far from being alone in that distaste, and he who writes loathed Greek like poison—till he came to Homer. Latin the Saint loved, except 'when reading, writing, and casting of accounts was taught in Latin, which I held not far less painful or penal than the very Greek. I wept for Dido's death, who made herself away with the sword,' he declares, 'and even so, the saying that two and two makes four was an ungrateful song in mine ears, whereas the wooden horse full of armed men, the burning of Troy, and the very Ghost of Creusa, was a most delightful spectacle of vanity.'"

THE WATCH OF THE OLD GODS

OLD AND NEW ROME

THE FALL OF ROME

A CHRISTMAS HYMN

ROMAN GIRL'S SONG

CAPRI

PALLADIUM