Posted on 02/21/2010 10:56:00 AM PST by Lorianne
“Americans view the Founding Fathers in vacuo, isolated from the soil that nurtured them,” says Traci Lee Simmons in his book, Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. For the Founders, says Simmons, these virtues came principally from two places: “the pulpit and the schoolroom.”
We are already fairly familiar with the explicitly Biblical influences on America’s founding, but we are far less familiar with the classical influences on the Founders—and how these two influences worked in concert to mold their education and their thinking.
It is a well-known fact that literacy was prevalent in colonial times. “A native of America who cannot read or write,” said John Adams, “is as rare an appearance…as a comet or an earthquake.” It is not nearly as well-known a fact, however, that early Americans with a formal education usually knew several other languages as well as their own. The typical education of the time began in what we would call the 3rd Grade—at about age eight. Students who actually went to school were required to learn Latin and Greek grammar and, later, to read the Latin historians Tacitus and Livy, the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and to translate the Latin poetry of Virgil and Horace. They were expected to know the language well enough to translate from the original into English and back again to the original in another grammatical tense. Classical Education also stressed the seven liberal arts: Latin, logic, rhetoric (the “trivium”), as well as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the “quadrivium”).
Thomas Jefferson received early training in Latin, Greek, and French from Reverend William Douglas, a Scottish clergyman. At the age of fourteen, Jefferson’s father died, and, at the express wish of his father, he continued his education with the Reverend James Maury, who ran a classical academy. After leaving Douglas’ academy, Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary, where his classical education continued along with his study of law.
When Alexander Hamilton entered King’s College (now Columbia University) in 1773, he was expected to have a mastery of Greek and Latin grammar, be able to read three orations from Cicero and Virgil’s Aeneid in the original Latin, and be able to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into Latin.
When James Madison applied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), he was expected to be able to “write Latin prose, translate Virgil, Cicero, and the Greek gospels and [to have] a commensurate knowledge of Latin and Greek grammar.” Even before he entered, however, he had already read Vergil, Horace, Justinian, Nepos, Caesar, Tacitus, Lucretius, Eutropius, Phaedrus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato.
Other key figures in the American founding received similar educations, including John Taylor of Caroline, John Tyler, and George Rogers Clark, all of whom studied classics under the Scottish preacher Donald Robertson.
It is interesting to note that the study of Latin and Greek, which is what the term “classical education” originally implied, was not something they learned in college, but something they were expected to know before they got there.
These men not only had to read classical authors in school, they read them in adult life for pleasure and profit. Hamilton apparently had a penchant for copying Plutarch (the Roman) and Demosthenes (the Greek). John Adams would copy long passages of Sallust, the Roman historian. If you look around on the Internet a little, you can find a manuscript of twelve lines for sale, in the original language, from the Greek historian Herodotus, in Adam’s hand. It will cost you a mere $6,300.
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Which implies that these men were far more educated BEFORE they went to college than most of our college graduates today.
Puts the lie to "education" in the current usage.
Half a century later, I still get "Where did you learn that?", . . in High School , is my reply.
I took Latin and French for 4 years (1957-'61)...Not one job required or benefited from either.
I took latin for two years in high school. I can say it benefited me greatly.
Not only because my career path was biology ( knowing the latin roots is helpful beyond belief) but because it exposed me to ancient history in a way that is just not taught in schools today.
The only thing my kids learned about ancient history that I didn’t teach them was the movie 300.
Strachan-Davidson said in Cicero’s Life: “If we were required to decide what ancient writings have most directly influenced the modern world, the award must probably go in favor of Plutarch’s Lives and the philosophical writings of Cicero.”
If I understand correctly, in America, the top honor would likely go to Plutarch. I have, on several occasions, recommended his “Lives” to young people with an interest in political or military careers, not so much to read, but to study repeatedly over the years.
The Modern Library two volume edition is what I have - others may be good as well, but mine is well translated, IMO, and has worn well with repeated reading.
“I took Latin and French for 4 years (1957-’61)...Not one job required or benefited from either.”
I’m a doctor, so Latin (3 years in high school from an ex-Jesuit priest) did provide a little bit of direct help to my career. But that’s not the point. It’s not about my job.
Perhaps your understanding of the benefits of Latin is incomplete. For me, the struggle to learn Latin was enormously important in disciplining my mind, much the way math was. In addition, the opportunity to more deeply understand and more directly enjoy the beauty of the greatest minds from antiquity was incalculable. Ten years ago, when I returned to an enjoyment of such things again after a thirty year hiatus, that foundation was enormously helpful in ways I never would have predicted.
Jefferson was one of serveral Universal Men who lived at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th Century. Jefferson invented the first document copy machine. He wrote a treatise and is considered the father of modern archelogy. This archeological treatise would help Heinrich Schliemann who was classically trained and went in search of Homeric Troy! He had read the Iliad and Odessey and when he had made his fortune in the trade business he retired and found Troy!
Franklin was the precurser of Hefner with his Playboy pursuits but he also flew a kite and identified electricity!
A 8th grade history teacher of mine taught me that knowledge is a lifelong pursuit and his goal was to teach us to learn! We did this by reading and experiencing life!
The French Jesuits missionaries in the early part of America kept a journal of all their work. The were Latin-linguists and as a result they were able to decipher the natives languages with relative ease, even though they were not using Latin. They found that the natives reversed the order of their prefixes and their suffixes from Latin, or French for that matter. But knowing word structure so well gave the Jesuits an upper hand in translating all of the native languages.
Our entire educational system has been dumbed down. I went back to college to understand what was in our Founders heads when they came up with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I went to a college that emphasizes the reading of the original author's works rather than reading an interpretation written in a textbook. It has been one of the most fruitful experience of my life.
Meyer Reinhold (1909-2002), a noted classicist, published a book called Classica Americanan: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States. I haven't gotten around to reading it, but it may cover some of the same ground as this book.
Schoolroom? Weren't nearly all of our Founding Fathers tutored or homeschooled. Am I correct that Benjamin Franklin only had 3 years of formal “schoolroom” education?
Yes, most were self-educated. Many then sought out learned men such as religious men for tutoring, etc. Thomas Jefferson did this.
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Thanks Lorianne. |
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I’m into the Neoclassical.
I hang out at the local Walmart trying to pick up a leetle esspanyole
My son is in his third year of Latin - he just turned 15. His class really impressed their Latin teacher, and she offered on her own an extra third year course - they do it on Saturdays. (I think she charged $200 for the year! Including summer.)
My wife thought it would be too much for him but I figured he could at least give it a try. I researched a bunch of stuff on the benefits of Latin to try to convince her. Lots of logical thinking, etc. He has a very rational mind, and does very well in it. As well as Spanish now too.
I keep meaning to read some of the classics like he does, but....
In my prep school circa 1960, three languages, Greek, Latin, a Modern language, two for four years.
Ditto
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