WHY THE STUDY OF GREEK AND LATIN IS PARTICULARLY USEFUL IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES
WHAT used to be called “the people” in the most democratic republics of Antiquity bears little resemblance to what we refer to by that name. In Athens all citizens took part in public affairs, but only 20,000 out of a population of more than 350,000 were citizens. All the rest were slaves, who carried out most of the functions today assigned to the people and even the middle classes.
Thus Athens, with its universal suffrage, was only an aristocratic republic in which all nobles enjoyed an equal right to government.
The struggle between the patricians and plebeians of Rome should be seen in the same light, as an intestine quarrel between elder and younger branches of a single family. All in effect valued aristocracy and partook of its spirit.
Bear in mind, too, that books were rare and expensive throughout Antiquity, and it was very difficult to reproduce and distribute them. Owing to these circumstances, literary tastes and habits were concentrated in a small number of men, so that something like a small literary aristocracy developed within the elite of a larger political aristocracy. In keeping with this, there is no indication that the Greeks and Romans ever treated literature as an industry.
These peoples were not just aristocracies; they also constituted highly disciplined and very free nations, so that they inevitably imparted to their literary productions the particular defects and special qualities characteristic of literature in aristocratic centuries.
Indeed, a glance at texts left us by Antiquity is enough to reveal that although ancient writers sometimes lacked variety and imagination in their choice of subjects and boldness, energy, and generality in their thought, they always demonstrated admirable mastery of technique and care in rendering details. Nothing in their work seems hasty or accidental. Everything is written for connoisseurs, and the search for ideal beauty is always apparent. No literature brings out the qualities that writers in democracies naturally lack better than that of the Ancients. Hence there is no literature more appropriate for study in democratic centuries. Such study is more apt than any other to combat the literary defects inherent in such ages; as for their natural qualities, these will spring up on their own, so there is no need to teach people how to acquire them.
One point needs to be clearly understood.
A study may be useful to a people’s literature yet not appropriate to its social and political needs.
To insist on teaching only belles-lettres in a society where everyone was habitually driven to increase or maintain his wealth by the most vigorous of means would be to produce very polite and very dangerous citizens. On account of their social and political state they would daily experience needs that their education never taught them how to satisfy, and they would therefore invoke the Greeks and Romans to sow trouble in the state rather than cause it to bear fruit through their industry.
It is obvious that in democratic societies individual interest as well as the security of the state requires that the education of the majority be scientific, commercial, and industrial rather than literary.
Greek and Latin should not be taught in all schools, but it is important that those destined by nature or fortune to cultivate literature, or predisposed to savor it, find schools where it is possible to gain complete mastery of ancient literature and steep oneself in its spirit. A few excellent universities would do more to achieve this result than a host of bad schools in which superfluous subjects taught poorly stand in the way of teaching necessary subjects well.
Everyone who aspires to excel in literature in a democratic nation should feast often on the works of Antiquity. There is no more salutary hygiene.
Not that I consider the classics beyond reproach. I believe only that their special qualities can serve as a marvelous counterweight to our peculiar deficiencies. They prop us up where we are most likely to fall.