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Is our Roman History Teaching Reactionary?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

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Three years of war have clarified a good many issues. One of the luxuries that soon had to go was the academic and scholastic privilege of sitting on the fence in the interests of ‘intellectual honesty’. The war has forced us to take sides. There are values to which to-day—in different degrees of understanding and sincerity—we all necessarily subscribe. We believe in the virtue of free thought and discussion, in coming to conclusions on the basis of objective evidence, in deciding our courses of action through the operation of an informed democracy: we are against the autocratic rule of a group or an individual, we reject dogmas (such as racial teaching) based on emotion, a priori assertions that must not be tested, ‘inspired’ truth as the controller of scientific investigation. If anyone doubts that we have made up our minds about these values, let him consider the fact that 99–99 per cent, of the people of this country are ready to fight on in an increasingly conscious struggle against the Fascist enemy who denies them all.

Now for the past few years it has been my privilege to mark ancient history answers of candidates for Higher Certificates from some of the leading schools in the country. And as the issues to which I have just referred have grown clearer, I have become progressively more uneasy. The question which has gradually, framed itself in my mind is this: Are we teachers of Roman history in fact engaged in an unconscious trahison des clercs? Are we in danger of becoming an intellectual ‘fifth column’? In short, are we presenting Roman history in such a way as to bring those rightly accepted democratic values into contempt? (I say ‘Roman history’ designedly: for the dangers I have in mind do not arise to the same extent in relation to Greek history.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 12 , Issue 35-36 , June 1943 , pp. 57 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1943

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References

page 58 note 1 By ‘intellectual approval’ I mean the recognition that such-and-such an action was correct for such-and-such a person at such-and-such a juncture to secure such-and-such an end.

page 60 note 1 Camb. Anc. Hist. ix. 137–8: ‘The populates are often loosely described in modern times as democrats, but this is both unjustified and misleading.… The great populates of Rome—Marius, Cicero in his early days, Caesar and, to some extent, Augustus himself—were as oligarchical as their Optimate opponents.… The alliance (sc. with the popular assemblies) was one of convenience alone, which was far from implying the slightest devotion to the principles of democracy on the part of the so-called populates.

page 61 note 1 Fundamentally different, not merely because of the existence of slavery in the ancient world—and this alone ‘distorts’ most analogies with modern affairs—but also because of the completely changed material basis of modern society, with its consequent change in the classes capable of exerting a decisive influence on events.