How To Read The Ancient Classics

________________________________________________
Title:     How To Read The Ancient Classics
Author: George Hamlin Fitch [More Titles by Fitch]

AUTHORS OF GREECE AND ROME ONE SHOULD KNOW--MASTERPIECES
OF THE ANCIENT WORLD THAT MAY BE ENJOYED IN GOOD
ENGLISH VERSIONS.

In choosing the great books of the world, after the Bible and Shakespeare, one is brought face to face with a perplexing problem. It is easy to provide a list for the scholar, the literary man, the scientist, the philosopher; but it is extremely difficult to arrange any list for the general reader, who may not have had the advantage of a college education or any special literary training. And here, at the outset, enters the problem of the Greek, Latin and other ancient classics which have always been widely read and which you will find quoted by most writers, especially those of a half century ago. In this country literary fads have prevailed for a decade or two, only to be dropped for new fashions in culture.

Take Emerson, for instance. His early development was strongly affected by German philosophy, which was labeled Transcendentalism. A. Bronson Alcott, who never wrote anything that has survived, was largely instrumental in infecting Emerson with his own passion for the dreamy German philosophical school. Emerson also was keenly alive to the beauties of the Greek and the Persian poets, although he was so broad-minded in regard to reading books in good translations that he once said he would as soon think of swimming across the Charles river instead of taking the bridge, as of reading any great masterpiece in the original when he could get a good translation.

Many of Emerson's essays are an ingenious mosaic of Greek, Latin, Persian, Hindoo and Arabic quotations. These extracts are always apt and they always point some shrewd observation or conclusion of the Sage of Concord; but that Emerson should quote them as a novelty reveals the provincial character of New England culture in his day as strongly as the lectures of Margaret Fuller.

The question that always arises in my mind when reading a new list of the hundred or the fifty best books by some recognized literary authority is: Does the ordinary business or professional man, who has had no special literary training, take any keen interest in the great masterpieces of the Greeks and Romans? Does it not require some special aptitude or some special preparation for one to appreciate Plato's Dialogues or Sophocles' OEdipus, Homer's Iliad or Horace's Odes, even in the best translations? In most cases, I think the reading of the Greek and Latin classics in translations is barren of any good results. Unless one has a passionate sympathy with Greek or Roman life, it is impossible, without a study of the languages and an intimate knowledge of the life and ideals of the people, to get any grasp of their best literary work. The things which the scholar admires seem to the great public flat and commonplace; the divine simplicity, the lack of everything modern, seems to narrow the intellectual horizon. This, I think, is the general result.

But over against this must be placed the exceptions among men of literary genius like Keats and Richard Jefferies, both Englishmen of scanty school education, who rank, to my mind, among the greatest interpreters of the real spirit of the classical age. Keats, like Shakespeare, knew "small Latin and less Greek"; yet in his Ode on a Grecian Urn and his Endymion he has succeeded in bringing over into the alien English tongue the very essence of Greek life and thought. Matthew Arnold, with all his scholarship and culture, never succeeded in doing this, even in such fine work as A Strayed Reveler or Empedocles on Etna. In the same way Jefferies, who is neglected by readers of today, in The Story of My Heart has reproduced ancient Rome and made Julius Cæsar more real than we find him in his own Commentaries.

If you can once reach the point of view of Keats or Jefferies you will find a new world opening before you--a world of fewer ideas, but of far more simple and genuine life; of narrower horizon, but of intenser power over the primal emotions. This was a world without Christ--a world which placidly accepted slavery as a recognized institution; which calmly ignored all claims of the sick, the afflicted and the poverty-stricken, and which admitted the right to take one's own life when that life became burdensome through age or disease, or when self-destruction would save one from humiliation and punishment.

These ideas are all reflected in the great masterpieces of the Greeks and the Romans which have come down to us. Sometimes this reflection is tinged with a modern touch of sentiment, as in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; but usually it is hard and repellant in its unconsciousness of romantic love or sympathy or regard for human rights, which Christianity has made the foundation stones of the modern world. This difference it is which prevents the average man or woman of today from getting very near to the classic writers. Even the greatest of these, with all their wealth of beauty and pathos, fail to impress one as do far less gifted writers of our own time.

At the head of the ancient classics stand Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's _Æneid. It is very difficult to get the spirit of either of these authors from a metrical translation. Many famous poets have tried their hand on Homer, with very poor results. About the worst version is that of Alexander Pope, who translated the Iliad into the neat, heroic verse that suited so well his own Essay on Man and his Dunciad. Many thousand copies were sold and the thrifty poet made a small fortune out of the venture. All the contemporary critics praised it, partly because they thought it was good, as they did not even appreciate the verse of Shakespeare, and partly because they feared the merciless pen of Pope. The Earl of Derby translated the Iliad into good blank verse, but this becomes very tiresome before you get through a single book. William Cullen Bryant, the American poet, gave far greater variety to his verse and his metrical translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey is perhaps the best version in print. The best metrical translation of the _Æneid is that of Christopher P. Cranch. The very best translation for the general reader is the prose version of Butcher and Lang. These two English scholars have rendered both the Iliad and the Odyssey into good, strong, idiomatic prose, and in this form the reader who doesn't understand Greek can get some idea of the beauty of the sonorous lines of the original poem. Conington and Professor Church have each done the same service for Virgil and their prose versions of the scholarly Latin poet will be found equally readable.

Homer and Virgil give an excellent idea of the ancient way of looking upon life. Everything is clear, brilliant, free from all illusions; there are no moral digressions; the characters live and move as naturally as the beasts of the field and with the same unconscious enjoyment of life and love and the warmth of the sun. The gods decree the fate of men; the prizes of this world fall to him who has the stoutest heart, the strongest arm and the most cunning tongue. Each god and goddess of Olympus has favorites on earth, and when these favorites are in trouble or danger the gods appeal to Jove to intercede for them. None of the characters reveals any except the most primitive emotions.

Helen of Troy sets the whole ancient world aflame, but it is only the modern poets who put any words of remorse or shame into her beautiful mouth. And yet these old stories are among the most attractive that have ever been told. They appeal to young and old alike, and when one sees the bright eyes of children flash over the deeds of the heroes of Homer, he may get some idea of what these tales were to the early Greeks. Told by professional story-tellers about the open fire at night, they had much to do with the development of the Greek mind and character, as seen at its best in the age of Pericles. Virgil took Æneas of Troy as his hero and wrote his great national epic of the founding of Rome.

Only brief space can be given to the other worthies of the classical age. Every one should have some knowledge of Plato, whose great service was to tell the world of the life and teachings of Socrates, the wisest of the ancients. Get Jowett's translation of the Phædo and read the pathetic story of the last days of Socrates. Or get the Republic and learn of Plato's ideal of good government. Jowett was one of the greatest Greek scholars and his translations are simple and strong, a delight to read.

Of the great Greek dramatists read one work of each--say, the Antigone of Sophocles, the Medea of Euripides and the Prometheus of Æschylus. If you like these, it is easy to find the others. Then there is Plutarch, whose lives of famous Greeks and Romans used to be one of the favorite books of our grandfathers. It is little read today, but you can get much out of it that will remain as a permanent possession. The Romans were great letter-writers, perhaps because they had not developed the modern fads of society and sport which consume most of the leisure of today, and in these letters you will get nearer to the writer than in his other works.

Cicero in his most splendid orations never touched me as he does in his familiar letters, while Pliny gives a mass of detail that throws a clear light on Roman life. Pliny would have made an excellent reporter, as he felt the need of detail in giving a picture of any event. There are a score of other famous ancient writers whose work you may get in good English translations, but of all these perhaps you will enjoy most the two philosophers--Epictetus, the Greek stoic, and Marcus Aurelius, who retained a refreshing simplicity of mind when he was absolute master of the Roman world. Most of the Greek and Latin authors may be secured in Bohn's series of translations, which are usually good.

This ancient world of Greece and Rome is full of stimulus to the general reader, although he may have no knowledge either of Latin or Greek. More and more the colleges are abandoning the training in the classics and are substituting German or French or Italian for the old requirements of Greek and Latin. As intellectual training, the modern languages cannot compare with the classical, but in our day the intense competition in business, the struggle for mere existence has become so keen that it looks as though the leisurely methods of education of our forefathers must be abandoned.

The rage for specializing has reached such a point that one often finds an expert mining or electrical engineer graduated from one of our great universities who knows no more of ancient or modern literature than an ignorant ditch-digger, and who cannot write a short letter in correct English. These things were not "required" in his course; hence he did not take them. And it is far more difficult to induce such a man to cultivate the reading habit than it is to persuade the man who has never been to college to devote some time every day to getting culture from the great books of the world.

[The end]
George Hamlin Fitch's essay: How To Read The Ancient Classics

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN