[KC Burke]

Next month on the 7th we can celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Victor David Hansen classic. Certainly overly satirical and sarcastic, less brilliant and measured than his later work, this is where the professor crosses over to popular author.

Similar works that can be discussed include a number by C. S. Lewis, The Devil Knows Latin by Kopff, War on the West by Murray and any number of others.

As I had never read this I recently got it in Audible to listen to like poetry.

[Red Badger]

Bart................

[4yearlurker]

Didn't he have a turtle dropped on his head?

[pierrem15]

A few years ago there was an article in a big UK paper where a current British university professor mocked 19th Century Britain for educating its elites almost exclusively with Greek and Latin literature.

I can't think of a better education for officials, diplomats and soldiers ruling a world-spanning empire.

[PUGACHEV]

I do not read Greek, nor particularly Homeric Greek, but I have a friend who does and she help me with it from time to time. What I find is that Homer has to re-translated at least once a generation, if not more frequently, to have the proper impact. Nevertheless, when evaluating a translation of the Iliad, I always go to Book XXI and read the passage where Achilles slays Priam’s son, Lycaon,. The dialogue between Achilles, in a blind rage rage over the death of Patroclus, and Lycaon is utterly bone-chilling: first, because it is direct and cold, and partly because, if properly translated, the sheer horror of Lyacon’s dismemberment is rendered so poetically. “ .. And the silver-sided fish will dart from beneath the dark waters-ripple to nip at the white fat of Lycaon” is an example of what I mean.

[Boogieman]

Well, Homer was blind. For all we know, he just walked off a cliff and fell into the sea.

[ConservativeInPA]

What? Homer Simpson is alive and well.

[Brass Lamp]

The two-pronged attack against classical education issues from the pretentious psuedo-intellectualism of jumped-up middle class dilettantes and, from the direction of the political Left, consists of a dialectical shift from analytical discourse, categorical thinking, and logical argumentation toward the purely rhetorical continental method of critical commentary, as a part of the Left's ongoing war against objective reality. But(!), from the false conservatives of the nebulous "right" (which is just a label applied with momentary and subjective difference to the "left"), it comes in the form of near-envious deprecations of all forms of Arts Degree programs by people who have not earned one and who could not distinguish a Science Degree from a vocational certification program.

[Honorary Serb]

When I was an undergraduate at MIT, the vast majority of us were science or engineering majors. But we all had required Humanities courses every semester.

These courses started with ancient Greek and Roman literature (in translation). Then we studied the Bible, (Western) Christian literature, medieval literature, and on to the moderns.

I don’t know if the current MIT faculty continues with this wise course of study, or what happens in other leading universities. But it would be good if something like this old policy continues.

[LadyDoc]

My granddaughter learned about Greek mythology from the Percy Jackson books.

A bit friendly toawrd gays but hey so were the Greeks.