I

We are often told nowadays that the whole business of war, especially command and administration, is becoming increasingly difficult and complicated as more and more different weapons, each more highly specialized than the last, are brought into service. But the undoubted truth of this contention must not lead us into the error of supposing that ancient warfare was a simple matter between forces composed of nothing but infantry and cavalry. Many of the battles of antiquity, indeed, are made more interesting by the presence of unusual and intriguing armaments; and though some of these may now seem largely obsolete, it does not do to be too sure—was not the Home Guard armed with pikes in its early infancy?

Let us consider, then, the parade state of Antiochus’ army at the battle of Magnesia. After his defeat at Thermopylae in April 191, it will be remembered, he had fled to Ephesus, and by the end of the following year he was ready for the Scipios with an army of 70,000 men. ‘Most of the peoples of the Empire were represented, from Dahae horse-archers of the Caspian to Arabs mounted on dromedaries. It was strong in cavalry—at least 12,000 horse, light or “cataphract”—in light-armed infantry … archers, slingers and javelin men; it included, besides 54 elephants, that engine of war dear to the Ancient East, the dreaded scythed-chariots.’

Here, surely, is a sufficiently varied assortment of nationalities and armaments to show that manifold alliances and specialized equipments are not peculiar to the twentieth century.

The trouble with Greek is that too few are taking it. This is a great loss, for Greek has unique cultural value and is in itself the most educative item on the highly varied menu for young minds which our schools set forth. A small percentage of students are taking Greek, and finding it a real benefit. But there are surely many more who could be profiting from a substantial helping of Greek yet are not. Why? And can anything be done to remedy the situation?

I would like to diagnose the ill and suggest a feasible cure—one which has worked out quite satisfactorily in practice in over ninety schools of the United States and Canada where a new technique has been used the past few years. Considerable interest in this experiment has developed in England and Scotland, and it has been repeatedly suggested to me that I describe the innovations entailed, for wider notice and under-standing on the part of those who might find it adaptable to their own needs. The following report endeavours to meet this desire.

It is a harsh fact, in Britain as across the Atlantic, that under present educational conditions and economic urgencies the proportion of able young students who can afford to devote six or more years to intensive study of Greek is very small. Why not take up their problem and work out a compromise? If we can assure them that on a special method and programme they could in only two years (at four or five hours a week) learn enough Greek to read a substantial portion of at least one major author before the two years are up, would not many of them accept the opportunity and take that much Greek at any rate? It would mean, too, in practice, many more students taking Greek, if only on a short-term basis.

Many and various have been the approaches to Virgil's Georgics. Dryden once stated roundly that they were ‘the best poem of the best poet’. The director of a well-known botanical garden maintains, rather oddly, that they are the best thing for starting boys on botany. It is worth while to try to discover what Virgil himself thought he was doing, and for what readers he intended his poem.

Let me first recall the circumstances of his upbringing. He spent his childhood on his father's farm, amid the sights and sounds and smells of the country. But by his fifteenth year he was sent to school at Cremona, and from there on to Milan, after which he completed his studies at Rome and near Naples. There is every indication that his bent was for literature and philosophic speculation, and no good evidence that he was ever himself a farmer. By 37–6 B.C., when he was 33, he was already established as a poet, and with Varius had become the nucleus of Maecenas’ circle. He had run through the gamut of pastoral poetry, and was on the look-out for fresh woods and pastures new. His intense love of the country, attested in every line of the Georgics, would in itself suffice to account for his choice of subject, and the impact of Lucretius’ recent masterpiece for his choice of form.

At the close of his breathless baroque overture Virgil alleges pity for the ignorance of the rustic as his motive for writing, but that is simply part of the game.

‘Perhaps you can draw a cypress’, says Horace (A.P. 19), a remark which many Latin poets seem to have interpreted as a challenge. Not that the poets, with the exception of Ovid, wasted many words on the cypress itself, although all are very careful to mention it. Usually it is accompanied by some gloomy epithet, feralis (Ovid, Trist. 3. 13. 21; Virg. Aen. 6. 216) or funebris, or has some remote allusion to the funeral pyre (e.g. Lucan 3. 442; Stat. Theb. 4. 464). Homer, on the contrary, preferred a more cheerful epithet ε??ώ??ης.

But the cypress is by no means the only tree in the forest, and the poets take good care to let the reader know it. The Romans thought that there were some parts of poetry, and particularly epic poetry, in which they could improve on the Greeks, and word-painting was one of these. Where the Greeks usually contented themselves with a terse epithet, the Romans loved to dip their brush in bright colours and lay them on thick. Such descriptive passages have their place in poetry, but their employment needs to be regulated carefully in accordance with the requirements of the subject. In epic particularly they should not delay the course of the action, but, as it were, provide a pleasant oasis wherein the reader can rest after perusing the account of some more strenuous activity. The forests we find in Latin verse usually contain far more trees than are generally found on an oasis, but they do provide a convenient resting-point in the action, and at the same time give the poet an opportunity of displaying his powers of word-painting.

‘This language [Latin] was my mother tongue’, says a country squire, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–92), in the first volume of his Essais, c. 25. This is how it came about. Before the boy could speak his father engaged as tutor a German latinist who did not know a word of French. Orders were given that no member of the household was to speak anything but Latin in the boy's hearing. The father and mother as well as the servants, including the chambermaid, picked up the foreign language; ‘we became so soaked in Latin that it flooded the villages around us, and even to-day (1580) the Latin names of artisans and tools are still heard in the neighbourhood. I was above six years of age before I understood any more French or Périgordin than I did Arabic’ (i. 25). He tells us elsewhere that the only verses he ever composed were in Latin. Among his tutors was the Scottish poet Buchanan, a distinguished latinist: Scott tells us that the Laird of Tully-Veolan ‘read the classic poets, to be sure, and the Epithalamium of Georgius Buchanan’ (Waverley, c. 13).

At the age of six Montaigne was sent to the ‘Collège de Guienne, the best in France’. There, under the influence of the macaronic jargon spoken around him, his Ciceronian diction soon ‘became debased’ (s'abastardit). ‘When I was about seven or eight, I used to escape from all other pleasures to read the Metamorphoses of Ovid, the easiest book known to me, and, because of the subject-matter, the best-suited to my feeble age.’