Why You Should Read the Ancients
There is something about reading ancient literature which, after sufficient exposure, makes it feel like a duty, an obligation to the best thoughts of the past. In many ways, modern life is still based on their works. My favorite example is how Lucretius gave voice to the Atomists in his On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura), wherein he explains that around us are these little things which make up everything, and that they change to create the various forms we perceive. For seventy years one of the implications reached by that idea has yielded both the capacity to supply power, as well as destroy the world. A friend and I have thought of this reading as a kind of filial piety akin to that of Aeneas, its readiest expression being found in a statue.
Sculpted by Bernini, in it we find one of the best demonstrations of the nature of piety, that being the duty of a man to carry his father, his gods, and to pave the way for his son’s future. It is one of the central themes of the Aeneid, for he not only announces himself as “Pious Aeneas,” but he consistently gives up peace and stability to follow the will of the gods, and eventually makes his way to Latium. Along this odyssey, however, he loses just about everyone close to him except his son, Ascanius, for his wife dies in Troy, his father on the journey, and Dido committed suicide on account of his swift exit from Carthage, setting up the Punic Wars long before the Romans even existed.
Consider next that the Aeneid was composed before the birth of Christ, and then that we still have it. Even Christian monasteries both held and copied ancient texts. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire late in the 4th century A.D., classical education remained largely unchanged. Why?
Because it would be a waste of time to throw away the best ideas and even training of the past. I mean that it is better to retain Cicero, despite being pagan, and learn from him than to reject so many authors who have given us the various humanities and sciences. The reader might interject here on the basis that we don’t use their ideas explicitly today (we don’t use the Humors in medicine, for example) and so they aren’t needed. That might be true, but it’s hardly the whole story, since the application of the modes of ancient thought have even given us this wondrous machine on which I type these words, since logic ultimately derives from Aristotle, and the computer functions via logic gates.
One also experiences the past, and realizes that modern thought is trash.
One of the unconscious effects of reading the Classics is that it changes thought and even speech patterns. I’ll relate my own experience here. In Latin, I hated translating Cicero in all his convoluted, ain’t-got-a-verb-for-two-lines speeches, specifically In Catalinam II. My revulsion continued despite the explanations of why the words were put where, and their rhetorical effects they would have had. Over time, however, I started to wonder about the longevity of his works, but also how he served as a model throughout the Renaissance, and even to John Adams. His reputation was that of a defender of republicanism against Caesar’s tyranny, which I don’t exactly agree with, but I can see the appeal. Anyway, eventually I began to read his On the Orator (De Oratore), which is a dialogue about how to train a statesman.
Until I read it, I had never considered the importance of varying volume and emphasis to change how something is heard. Also about how certain rhythms seem to affect us subconsciously. It also helps explain the gravitas of certain speakers throughout history. For example, while teaching American History, I showed students footage of speeches from Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, and Mussolini to demonstrate the power of oratory, and to compare their methods, particularly with respect to rhythm, volume, and gestures. I also explained that understanding these methods also helps keep one from being used by such a speaker. The class grew uncomfortable as we realized who the best speaker was. Back to Rome.
Cicero stands, then, as a means towards eloquence and therefore declamation, given his fame as a lawyer, which was how he was able to climb into the upper crust of the Patricians. Remaining of value for two thousand years is a feat I’m not sure many modern authors will replicate. So, we have Lucretius for the atom and Cicero for eloquence. We can quickly add in Plato for politics, despite how much I despise reading the Republic. It can hardly be coincidence that Plato largely divided society into three segments, and that medieval society was split along the same lines. Indeed, the only book nearing the Republic’s fame is Machiavelli’s Prince, which has its own brilliance.
I might stop here for a moment and list some works that the Classics inspired after they were re-introduced to Italy and Europe in the Renaissance: Dante’s Divine Comedy, the poetry of Petrarch, Erasmus’ Education of a Christian Prince, Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Machiavelli’s Prince itself, Hobbes’ Leviathan, and even Milton’s Paradise Lost. Being re-introduced to the ancient world helped inspire these great works, and to some extent re-introduced the idea of a republic in a land of monarchs and emperors, and helped give a rhetorical flair to the American Revolution (see Richard’s The Founders and the Classics). I haven’t even mentioned Shakespeare. Just look up Pyramus and Thisbe.
Thus far we’ve touched on eloquence and science, politics and poetry, and the wellspring is nearly infinite. This past year has been one in which I started to read the Stoics more seriously, particularly Seneca for his understanding of how to control the self, to make it agreeable and stop it from excess. His Letters from a Stoic are invaluable. While sympathetic to them, I don’t think that I could bear the death of a close friend without the deepest sadness, so perhaps the Greeks would be a better model for that part of human life. This leads us to drama and theater.
My favorite example of the Classics’ importance here is that George Washington, against a prohibition by Congress, allowed a production of Joseph Addison’s Cato to be put on at Valley Forge for his officers. Its lessons about leadership are clear: honorable death is preferable to cowardly living, that free government is better than dictatorship, and it ends with Cato committing suicide rather than being captured by Julius Caesar. That Washington was compared with Cincinnatus later is also no coincidence, and I’ve seen that statue of his at Valley Forge with his plow and the fasces. Despite the fact that Washington lacked the education which marked the upper class, nevertheless he worked to demonstrate its virtues.
As for the playwrights, I enjoy Plautus quite a bit, particularly the Braggart Soldier. And not just because of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Lysistrata is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, partially because I think that the plan of the women of Athens and Sparta would work even today, that is, if women wanted to stop war, the only thing they would need to do would be to not have sex with their husbands. Ajax, by comparison, is dolorous and somber, and concerns the loss of honor and suicide, a topic for all ages.
That might just be the point, then, that these works and their subjects encompass the entirety of human experience, and they’ve been valued in such a way so as to have even their paganism ignored because their ideas are so powerful and enduring. It also links up the reader with nearly 2500 years of thought, although they might not have definitive answers, but enough time has passed to know that some things do not endure, like Dadaism. Unfortunately, the worship of science via scientism, and the wholesale destruction of the American university, have shunted the Classics not only out of their position as the common foundation of the old curriculum, but into small and desperate departments starved for students, all the while we allow nonsense to proliferate and ridiculous “subjects” to control the discourse on campus. How about we sit down and read Cicero before heading to the picket line?
Ars longa vita brevis.
