Nearly sixty years ago, when Latin and Greek were losing their old predominance in the school curriculum, the Classical Association was founded to rally support for them and champion their claims. Since then there have been many attacks on them, and much slow erosion of their position. They have had a share in the post-war boom in sixth forms, but it is a diminishing share, for other subjects are expanding faster. This relative decline is likely to be accentuated by the current drive to promote science in education, and consequently there is good cause for anxiety about the future: this time it may be a question not of pre-eminence in the schools, but of survival itself. It is this anxiety, among teachers and dons, and especially in the institutes of education, where general trends are perhaps more clearly seen, that has prompted, the launching this year of a new society—the Joint Association of Classical Teachers.

The trouble with epigraphy is that it does not admit of tidy classification. The linguist seizes upon inscriptions as samples of language; the historian, when the linguist has interpreted them, as factual evidence. But their discovery is due to the archaeologist; and in a prehistoric period, where the historian has no loctis stanai, the archaeologist is liable to claim epigraphy as part of his province. This is what seems to have happened in the case of a recent book, Prehistoric Crete, which contains in Chapter 3 a long account of the Minoan scripts and the controversy which surrounded the decipherment of Linear B. It is regrettable that Mr. Hutchinson's expert knowledge of Minoan archaeology is not matched by a similar grasp of Minoan and Mycenaean epigraphy, and I feel driven to write a criticism of this chapter, in the hope that it will be thoroughly revised and brought up to date in a second edition.

Every literary language differs more or less from the spoken language. Most of the ancient Greek that is studied today is written in a literary language. Yet the student should not ignore pronunciation. In a society that did not practise silent reading sound mattered for prose as well as for verse. Accentuation deserves as much attention as any other feature, if the attempt is made to accustom the ear to the sound of a language. Blass, Postgate, and others have discovered a great deal about the accentuation of ancient Greek. More recently the evidence has been collected and the main conclusions stated by E. H. Sturtevant in The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin.

Field events are notoriously the Cinderellas of the athletic world, and this was as true in antiquity as in our own day. The Greeks practised three, long jump, discus, and javelin, and in their festivals did not accord them the status of separate events but grouped them, together with a foot race and wrestling, which were also solo events in their own right, in the pentathlon. This was first included in the Olympic programme in 708 b.c.; other festivals imitated Olympia, and, with the astonishing conservatism of the Greek athletic world, the pentathlon remained unchanged until the disappearance of the festivals a thousand years later.

One should perhaps apologize for reopening the question of Hannibal's route over the Alps after the publication of Sir Gavin de Beer's recent book. It is, however, a perennially fascinating problem, and some of de Beer's points are not entirely satisfactory, though I accept his main conclusion. The cruces of the argument, as I see them, are: (1) the crossing of the Rhone; (2) the position of the Island; (3) the river Isaras/Skaras; (4) the two passes, the first where Hannibal was attacked by the Allobroges from the front, and the second the main Alpine pass into Italy; (5) the attack in the gorge by local tribesmen on his approach to the main pass; (6) did Hannibal cross the Durance?

Early Roman education had been based on the mos maiorum rather than on reason, the guiding light of Greek education. It had been education not so much for intellectual achievement as for a clearly envisaged type of character, summed up in the word gravitas. A Roman, learning a way of life rather than a body of formal knowledge, was ‘usu … et domesticis praeceptis multo magis eruditus quam litteris’. This training was conducted largely by the father and was entirely un-supervised by the state, hi contrast with education in Hellenistic cities, whence, by 100 b.c., many new ideas had come. Such training, however, though suitable for a rural community, was bound to change when Rome became a city and when foreign campaigns during the expansion of her empire took fathers away from home for months on end. Moreover the influence which had been exerted from an early date by the near-by cities of Magna Graecia began to increase after the capture of Tarentum in 272 b.c., and the result of Rome's successive conquests of Sicily, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia during the third and second centuries was so great an increase of Greek culture in Roman life that Horace was finally able to say ‘Graecia capta ferum captorem cepit et artis | intulit agresti Latio’.

Mr. Macdonald's attack on the -orum -arum heresy is welcome. But statistics seldom carry much weight; the best way of convincing schoolmasters (and, perhaps, certificate examiners) that the Romans had not the slightest objection to the gerundive with repeated -orum or -arum is to confront them with plenty of examples. I hope the following will be of help to Mr. Macdonald in a crusade which deserves all success.

The non-specialist student of Latin has been with us for a long time, but he has become a somewhat imposing problem nowadays. When Latin was a compulsory subject for matriculation, he partook of the nature of the seed which fell by the wayside or on stony ground, and his subsequent growth frequently proved to be as chancy as his habitat; but now more interest is being taken in him and his particular needs, perhaps because Latin has once more the opportunity of becoming a subject in its own right. The pride of place which it has lost in the school curriculum ought not to be regretted, for it was based on false values. Tradition, in its loosest and worst sense, may be said to have kept Latin alive; and, paradoxically, tradition, in terms of methods and convictions, has very nearly strangled it. Now that it has been freed from its unenviable position, the time is ripe for a reconsideration of its proper function.

In view of the attention now being paid to translation machines, it is of interest to recall a composition machine which was made over a hundred years ago and is still functioning. When wound up and set in motion this remarkable machine is capable of producing over 26,000,000 different Latin hexameters. With rare exceptions each line scans and makes sense. Typical lines are:

MARTIA CASTRA FORIS PRÆNARRANT PROELIA MULTA

PESSIMA REGNA DOMI PRODUCUNT VULNERA MIRA

TURPIA TEMPLA FERE PROMITTUNT JURGIA DENSA

The inventor (Fig. 1) was an eccentric genius named John Clark, who was born at Greinton in Somerset in 1785. After leaving school he lived for a time with his uncle at Glastonbury until about 1809, when he settled in Bridgwater. At first he was a grocer, and then about 1817 he became a printer. In his spare time he invented a pneumatic mattress and also patented a water-proof cloth. To his great financial loss he later sold this patent to a certain Mr. Mackintosh, who developed the Mackintosh raincoat and made a fortune. His own fortune (such as it was) came from his Hexameter Machine.