It’s time to start a new series, and one I’ve been eager to write for quite some time. In this series I look at all the ways that the “Classical” world (as we call the ancient Greek and Roman worlds) continues to shape our modern life: it includes our views on guns, politics, sports, entertainment and just about every other facet of life. Scratch the surface, and you will find Classical prototypes underneath.
I spent the majority of my life engrossed in this study as a trained Classicist. It’s a field that few people today know about, although prior to the twentieth-century it used to be nearly the only thing that was studied in higher education. I would never advocate going back to those days; for one thing, they had a very different idea of how to study the ancient world then, and what lessons were to be drawn from it. Nevertheless, Classics is still a discipline that has much to offer and is worthy of study — and funding. Learning Greek and Latin, rhetoric, and philosophy can open up the hidden depths of our modern institutions.
But learning about the Classical world isn’t just about understanding how we got from alpha to omega. Studying these ancient worlds gives a glimpse of other possibilities, paths that could have been, and a recognition that history doesn’t always move in a straight line. The first democratic governments formed in ancient Greece; Athens governed itself with a radical, but durable, democracy that lasted nearly 200 years, until Alexander the Great and his Macedonians smashed their way across the ancient world. Although much has been lost, we can still read volumes and volumes of ancient texts that debate this great experiment in “people power” (the literal meaning of the Greek word dêmokratia). It’s never too late to learn from them.
Americans don’t have a very good grasp of history. We can hardly even remember the 2nd Iraq War. Instead we live in an infinite present, which makes it hard to realize just how contingent our world is. It took a Southerner, William Faulker, to express in memorable words the obvious: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In other parts of the world they work with a longer time frame. When asked in 1972 what he thought about the French Revolution, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai responded: “It’s too soon to tell.” For the Chinese, a 200 year-old event is still recent news; for us, Zhou Enlai is ancient history.
Micropolitan 