‘Proper Classics’

One of the (probably innumerable) ways in which I irritate my wife is by going round claiming to have a classics degree, despite having studied no Greek or Latin at university. Actually I feel this characterisation is slightly unfair, as I do have a bona fide classics degree, 100% legitimate according to the rules of the university at the time, despite the lack of any language, and it’s not as if I have ever actually attempted to pass myself off as a ‘proper classicist’ with a permanent fear that someone might ask me to translate Vergil, revealing my deception and leading to summary dismissal in disgrace. On the contrary, I’m more likely to go to the other extreme of describing myself as not a classicist but a historian who happens to do ancient stuff; some of my best friends are classicists etc., but that’s not generally what I do. Still, I occasionally wonder how many of the colleagues who wearily tolerate this ideological pose do so in the belief that I actually have the grounding in ancient languages that would entitle me to the status of ‘proper classicist’ if I only chose to claim it, and might therefore look at me differently (or break out the pitchforks) if they knew the truth.

It is now many years since this idea of the discipline of Classics as essentially and fundamentally focused on Latin and Greek language and literature, potentially but not necessarily branching out at later stages into the study of topics (like history) suggested and illuminated by that literature, ceased to be taken for granted; since, in fact, it became necessary (in the view of some) to append the adjective ‘proper’ in the face of the proliferation of non-linguistic degree programmes like Ancient History and Classical Studies alongside the traditional approach.

However, the idea that Classics is really about language and literature – that these arriviste sub-disciplines are illegitimately trying to lay claim to some share of its status and glory despite their manifest inferiority – remains remarkably strong. It is manifested in the uncertainty about what their degrees are really about that I’ve heard expressed sometimes by students on these non-linguistic programmes, especially Classical Studies – Classics students have no such doubts about the nature of their studies, and this confident sense of identity often shades into a powerful sense of superiority. It features in the expectations held of postgrads and job candidates with respect to linguistic competence – as Miko Flohr once put it on the Twitter, “we love your research on the economy and society of Roman Italy, but can you teach Tacitus as well?”

Most obviously, over the last year or so it’s resurfaced several times in debates about the place of classical subjects in schools and the entry requirements for studying them at university; in arguments around the possible fate of OCR’s Classical Civilisation A-Level (the sense that A-Level Greek won’t ever be treated in the same manner, although it’s equally small and difficult to get marked, because Proper Classics), and the imbecilic claim of James Delingpole that Oxford has drunk the Social Justice Kool-Aid and wrecked its intellectual standing by admitting students without expensive, language-driven private educations to study classics.  It’s difficult to avoid the impression that these debates often reflect a certain disdain, to put it mildly, both for non-linguistic studies and as a consequence for those students who don’t enjoy the opportunity to study ‘proper’ traditional classics.

The obvious basis for this idea is historical: Latin and Greek are what Classics truly is about because that’s what it always has been about. But making this a normative claim rather than just a statement about the past seems rather dubious; other disciplines have proved capable of moving on or expanding beyond their nineteenth-century origins (many, indeed, act as if they’re frequently embarrassed by their naive, unsophisticated origins), so clearly this adherence to tradition is a matter of choice. One might surmise that it serves today a means of policing boundaries and claiming a distinctive identity – perhaps in a primarily defensive manner, trying to maintain a distinctive academic space, whereas non-linguistic approaches to the ancient world might get subsumed by more powerful, imperialist disciplines like History or Literature. It’s also a claim to intellectual superiority. Languages are hard, especially when learned in a traditional grammar-based manner, and attainment in them is directly measurable, in contrast to the more discursive and subjective skills of analysis and interpretation.

After all, it’s not that [traditional] Classics is only language; on the contrary, Classicists can do history, and literary criticism, and reception, and all the rest, and they can do these difficult languages. The claim that a grasp of other skills, theories etc. (those of modern historical approaches or archaeology, for example) offers a superior understanding of the subject matter is always open to contestation; the claim that high-level knowledge of ancient languages enables a better understanding of ancient texts is incontrovertible. The shift then from identifying language as an essential tool for understanding key aspects of classical antiquity to making it a shibboleth for the entire discipline involves a further step – but it’s often easily justified by the rhetorical question: it’s all very well for students to be encouraged to do inferior non-linguistic classical studies at school and undergraduate level, but would I really argue that someone could be an adequate researcher of classical things without language?

Well, maybe I would. The traditional approach may be justifiable if we assume that the single scholar should do everything, and therefore needs the skills to do everything (though of course there is never an expectation that every classicist should be fully qualified in epigraphy or archaeology). If, however, as I’ve argued before, it’s better to see research as a collaborative enterprise, then it’s reasonable for some people to specialise in historical or material approaches on the basis that someone else does the detailed linguistic stuff. Just as many ancient historians do with respect to archaeology, what matters is knowing enough to understand the findings of other specialists, rather than actually being a specialist.

But the model of the lone scholar who does everything persists, and is reinforced through the job market, with its insistence on an ability to teach language, just in case.* This sets up artificial barriers and instantly favours candidates with privileged backgrounds. I’m a case in point; I never studied languages at university, but because I had done them intensively at school I could make a reasonably plausible case for being able to teach them. When it comes to the skills I acquired for my research, on the other hand,  I have enough grasp of numismatics and archaeological survey to make effective use of such material for my own research, but wouldn’t presume to teach them at any level beyond a very basic introduction for non-specialists – and, more importantly, no one would bat an eyelid at this deficiency.

Basically, I was lucky. I never intended to study ancient history, but came to it via the study of other periods – and then just happened to have the necessary credentials. I can easily imagine someone following a similar route into the study of antiquity via history (or indeed into classical reception via modern literature), who hadn’t had the chance to acquire credentials in a subject they never planned to study. They could certainly gain enough language during their postgrad studies to hack their way through a text to the degree required for their research, but would need to expend extra – and, from the point of view of the research, unnecessary – effort to get this to a level where they could credibly present themselves as a potential language teacher.

The study of antiquity is not reducible to the study of the classical languages. This is why we need to fight for Classical Studies and Ancient History in schools; not driven by the narrow, self-interested assumption that this could be a way of bringing more students to Proper Classics from beyond the private schools, nor the self-interested and hypocritical drive to keep Proper Classics alive by recruiting students to inferior programmes to keep departmental numbers up, but because of the belief that the wide-ranging interdisciplinary study of classical antiquity and its legacy is valuable in itself, at any age. As Edith Hall’s new Advocating Classics Education project says in its mission statement:

Far too few British children are educated about the ancient Greeks and Romans at secondary level. Studying ancient Greek and Roman civilisation, history, thought, literature, art and archaeology is not only exciting and instructive, but confers profound advantages: it hones analytical and critical skills, trains minds in the comparative use of different types of evidence, introduces young people to the finest oratory and skills in argumentation and communication, enhances cultural literacy, refines consciousness of cultural difference and relativism, fosters awareness of a three-millennia long past, along with models and ideals of democracy, and develops identities founded in citizenship on the national, European and cosmopolitan, global level.

And this ought to feed into a more confident assertion of the value of non-linguistic degree programmes. Core units in literary or historical skills and theories should be seen not as a ‘substitute’ for Greek and Latin, as I’ve sometimes heard them referred to, but as the heart of equally valid and important approaches to studying antiquity. This is relatively easy for ancient history, as a branch of historical studies (hence needing to engage with the skills and theories of that discipline, and increasingly those of the social sciences) but with a distinctive interdisciplinary identity in terms of the range of types of evidence ancient historians use and their close engagement with literary, archaeological, philosophical etc approaches compared with the history of many other periods.

This is trickier with Classical Studies – but potentially more exciting. CS offers a kind of total cultural analysis, both comparative and transhistorical, in which issues of reception and reinterpretation are unavoidable. However, there has to be a concern that it will always be in a weaker position because of its name, if only because of inherited associations and the lack of a decent name for those who do it – classicists do Classics, ancient historians do Ancient History; Classical Studies is done by, erm, Classical Studies people. Personally I prefer the all-purpose German term Altertumswissenschaft for the discipline, but that still doesn’t give use a suitable name for the people who research it.

Perhaps we need to insist that it’s all Classical Studies, with some pursuing specialist linguistic pathways – or that we are all Proper Classicists, regardless of linguistic level or interests.  The alternative is a completely new name for the whole thing, if that’s what it takes for me no longer to have to make defensive noises about my degree, but more importantly to build a world in which thousands of students will no longer have any need to feel apologetic about theirs.

* On reflection, it’s actually a bit insulting to high-level Greek and Latin specialists to imply that anyone ought to be able to teach the languages adequately on the basis of a couple of years’ study at PG level. But having such an expectation, and enforcing it, serves to entrench the notion that all lecturers in a Classics department ought to be high-level Greek and Latin specialists, even when many of them aren’t.

Please note that I’m away at the moment, so it may take some time for any comments to get approved, let alone for me to get round to responding to them…