Everyone knows that the Emperor Constantine (306–37) made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. The religious aspect of that act does not concern us now. But it will be appropriate to say something about the events which led to it. It is only possible to govern upon the basis of respect for authority: that is, in the long run, by consent.

The Department of Classics of the University of Melbourne held a special course for beginners in Greek throughout February 1946. The idea first came from discussion with the Professor of Philosophy: he felt that there was a real demand for Greek among students in Philosophy and other Arts departments who had not done it at school. The course was therefore offered without cost to present and intending members of the University, both staff and students. Seventeen were accepted, including five University teachers: History and Philosophy were both strongly represented; we had a number of men, including a high proportion of ex-servicemen, who were about to do Arts courses leading to Theology; and we had several students of a highly commendable type, namely those who, while fully committed to other courses, felt that a month's work in Greek would at least give them a worth-while experience. There were other applicants whom we could not fit in. It seems quite clear then that there does exist among adults a demand for opportunities to find out something about Greek. The sincerity of this demand is shown all the more by the fact that the applicants were required to undertake to give their whole time to Greek for a month, working all day and six days a week.

The conception of a full-time course was suggested by observation of the success of the Australian Army and Air Force schools in Japanese and by reports of similar courses in America, which by working at high pressure achieved results never dreamed of in the leisurely methods of peace.

In the somewhat unusual situation of a mathematician invited to address a Classical Society, there is one question which I am forced to put to myself. Can anything of interest to present-day students of the Classics survive from a modest Classical course taken over forty years ago, and followed by a lifetime of activity in a very different academical groove? Any slight merit which the following remarks may possess will arise from their character as a personal testimony.

I begin by putting a question to you. What influences led you to take up a course in Classics at college? I can imagine many possible contributory causes: the accident of the particular school you attended, high success in your School Certificate Examination, a real pleasure in getting up the rudiments of Latin or Greek grammar; or a teacher who bound you with a spell and gave you glimpses of romance. Whatever the cause, you have made the choice, and, like all choices, it imposes a limitation. To some extent, and at least for a time, you are debarred from specializing in some other subject: Philosophy or Modern Languages, Physics or Biology. You are approaching the vast unity of human knowledge and achievement from a specific angle, and along a very definite path.

Pascal, the great literary, scientific, and religious genius of seventeenth-century France, has a fine saying: ‘The whole succession of men through the ages should be considered as one man, ever living and always learning.’ The unity of human knowledge and achievement cannot be broken up without serious loss.

The desire to celebrate the lives of famous men has no doubt been a fundamental characteristic of human nature since the beginning of time. The picture of ‘primitive’ man, squatting at night by a fire in the smoky cave, which served him for a home, relating his brief, rude, ancestral tales to an appreciative audience of two or three, rapt and forgetful (for a moment) of the harsh life outside, is neither unplausible nor improbable.

It is perhaps possible (on the principle of ex pede Herculem) to disentangle some of the elements which contributed to the experience afforded by the relation of such stories. In an uncivilized community the dead exact a tyrannical homage from the living in order that the consequences of their imagined wrath may be averted. Hence they are to be placated by all means, and their memory is to be revered by the enumeration of the glorious exploits which they performed whilfe living. For, in the ‘next world’, whither they have been translated—call it the Elysian Fields, or what you will—they are conceived of as taking joy in the celebration of their valour and the recital of their achievements.

Again, the tribe or race must be preserved, and there is no more suitable medium for the crystallization of tribal or racial virtues than oral tradition. The young men, as they listen to the deeds of their forefathers, are stirred by ‘this constant renewal of the good report of brave men’ and are themselves fired with the desire for an immortal name.

This is no place, and to-day there should be no need, to attempt to justify the inclusion of a study of Roman Britain in the school curriculum, nor to stress its fundamental purpose of demonstrating the power, grandeur, and humanity of Roman civilization as expressed in one of the least and most remote—yet to us the most familiar—of the Imperial provinces. This article is concerned with ways and means of teaching the subject and is intended as a response from an archaeologist to the difficulties expressed by teachers in handling unfamiliar material.

As I see it, the problem of relating a study of Roman Britain to the study of Latin is part of the larger problem of devising methods of introducing the archaeological approach to the past into school teaching. And by the archaeological approach I mean getting in touch with the past through material things, the things that man has lost, or thrown away, the ruins of his home, his tomb, or his city for instance, the things that happen to survive to the present time; in short the things that are generally called ‘Roman Remains’. It is in this respect that Archaeology differs from History (even Ancient History), not in the aim, which they share—the recovery and interpretation of man's past—but in its methods and in the nature of its evidence. Of course it is not suggested for an instant that the textual and archaeological approach are conflicting, for it is generally recognized that they are complementary and must work together.

Apologists for the Classics are apt to concentrate on the excellence of their matter and the perfection of their form. Much has been done, and notably in these latter days by Dr. Gilbert Murray and Sir Richard Livingstone, to enable English readers to appreciate the content of Greek and Latin literature by translations of the highest merit. But no translation can reproduce the perfection of the form, and nowadays there appears to be a tendency to accept this loss.

The reader of a translation may be compared with a man who flies in an aeroplane over a mountain. True, he gets the view; but without the peculiar satisfaction that comes to one who has climbed the mountain itself. The view may even be a wider one, but it is robbed of the detail that the climber has been able to enjoy at every stage of his climb. Indeed, the detail is distorted, and often false. Still, the aviator gets a splendid view, and it is pointless to minimize its splendour. All I would maintain is that it is a different view. This is recognized by the climber if he flies over the heights he has climbed, or by the man who has read the Odyssey in the original if he reads it again in ‘Butcher and Lang’.

But what of those who never get beyond the foot-hills, those from whose eyes the mountain tops, and even their lower eminences, are concealed by huge walls of rock, which none but experts can scale? These humble strivers often wonder whether they are not wasting their time in plunging about on the nursery slopes; and their instructors must often wonder too whether they are doing any good by dragging often unwilling pupils through the declensions and conjugations, and by getting them somehow or other up to the standard of the School Certificate.

An apology is needed for taking up this well-worn theme. My reason is that in discussions and in reading works on Greek literature I have often felt that Aristophanes' antipathy to Euripides is still as a rule too strongly stated, and his sympathy wholly or partly ignored. It is said that Aristophanes attacked Euripides mercilessly in the Frogs, or even throughout his career; that he condemns Euripides entirely, or counts him with Cleon and the sophists amongst his worst enemies. Others agree that he thought Euripides a great poet, and even felt a curious fascination in his poetry, but insist that from a moral standpoint he condemned Euripides' work uncompromisingly. I feel increasingly convinced that Aristophanes had a finer and more complete appreciation of Euripides' greatness. Professor Gilbert Murray gives a juster estimate of his feelings: Aristophanes, he says, loved Euripides with all his faults, and was inevitably drawn towards him. I should like to go a little further in the same direction, and try to show that in some important things Aristophanes must have been actively and strongly in sympathy with Euripides.

Let me say at once that I am still prepared to believe that Aristophanes preferred Aeschylus (I am not sure about Sophocles; Aristophanes no doubt loved and admired the man and his work, but perhaps his feelings were not so strongly aroused in either direction by Sophocles); and of course Aristophanes found many things great and small in the art of Euripides, in his morality and above all in his influence, which exasperated him beyond endurance and which he whole-heartedly condemned; he recognized the symptoms of great changes which he deplored, though he was by no means out of touch with the new spirit and perhaps not so completely out of sympathy.

Primitive man defended his community from the ravages of his enemies by a thick thorn hedge or a wooden palisade. But a spear could penetrate these meagre defences, and the next stage in the race of better defences to ward off methods of attack, better methods of attack to penetrate the defences, and so on, was to build mounds of earth to ward off the enemy's spears. When the defenders realized that they needed defences which the enemy could not climb over, they made their mounds relatively higher by digging a ditch round the outside. Thus increased in height, the mound kept off the enemy for a time, but before long they in turn had learned to fill up the ditch with earth and faggots and thus to neutralize the depth of the ditch. So the wall had to be made higher, and as there is a limit beyond which one cannot pile up a mound of earth, the mound was strengthened with logs. The enemy had a counter-measure to this too, and made a breach in the defences by setting fire to the logs which formed the basis of the mound. This incendiarism was checked for a time by piling layers of earth and hides on the logs and so placing the logs that they could not be got at easily by the attackers. But this did not prove satisfactory, and we come at last to the wall of masonry or brick as the best means of defence. To this basic element many additions and improvements were made—the defenders learned, for instance, to make their perimeter curved as opposed to angular, because it was easier for the enemy to undermine a corner than a curved stretch of wall; and they learned to build towers out from the walls from which they could give flanking fire against the enemy who reached the bottom of the wall, at whom those on the main part of the wall could not fire with impunity.

I have been teaching School Certificate Latin for twenty years. The results might be worse. Most of the candidates pass; a good many get credits; a few get distinctions. But I feel with Mr. Frank Jones that much of the work is a waste of time, and that many of the boys could be better employed.

The wisest plea for learning Latin is that it teaches us to weigh the meaning of words. The merit of Latin is that on the whole it calls a spade a spade, and we cannot translate into it even a simple-looking phrase like ‘let us make sure of winning the peace’ without knowing what it means. This point has been made so often that it need not be laboured; and anyone who has read advanced Latin with a sixth form knows it to be sound. We all have been asked whether some phrase in the version, especially if we have written it ourselves, renders the English adequately, and the question is usually apt. And though the plea is not so often met, it is true, too, that translation into and from Latin makes us weigh the power of words. If a sixth-form master were to accept ‘undoubtedly forgivable, if the departed were acquainted with forgiveness’ as a rendering of ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes, his complaisance would be challenged at once. And when a boy, unaided by Dr. Mackail, produced ‘and now in majesty my ghost shall go beneath the earth’ for et nunc magna mei terras ibit imago, it was an achievement.

When the American bombardment of Belgrade in 1944 drove me to take refuge in Rušanj, a village only twelve miles to the south but so inaccessible that the Germans had never occupied it, I noticed that my hostess, Savka Nikolitch, used to clean her mud floor by sprinkling it with water and sweeping it every day, though any exceptional mess had to be scraped off with a mattock (cf. Odyssey xx. 149: αἱ μ༐νμα koρήσατε πoıπνσασαı ῤὰσσατέ τ and xxii. 455 f.: Λíστρoıσıνὰπεὰoν… ξoν). In the course of conversation she told me that her father-in-law had paid her father a deposit for her (cf. Od. i. 277, ii. 196 ενα). This had been spent on her trousseau. She had brought it to her father-in-law's home in a chest which still contained precisely ‘ʒσατρά τε kαí πέπΛovς kαí ῥήγεα σıγαλóεντα’ (Od. vi. 38). Both her husband and father-in-law had failed to return from the war in 1918. ‘This house lost two oxen’, she said, ‘in the last war—and two men too.’ This was all so Homeric that I looked round to see whether there was anything else about the house which might illustrate the Odyssey. I offer the following observations in all humility to the scholars from whose ranks circumstances have excluded me.

Savka's house is the oldest in the village and reckoned by an expert from Belgrade to be at least two hundred years old. The population of those parts is believed to have migrated from Macedonia during the Turkish rule.

About a year ago a group of Rugby School masters planned a short residential course for factory workers; and Shakespeare, History, Poetry, Religion, Music, and Geography seemed the obvious subjects to choose. In addition, a few lectures on Classics were proposed and provoked the inevitable reaction: ‘surely that's dead; why can't you bury it?’, ‘the world has passed through that phase’, and so on. But in spite of these protests six lectures, each lasting an hour, were allotted to the Civilization of Ancient Greece.

As general organizer I regarded these lectures as the most interesting feature of the course: it is perhaps relevant to add that I had read very little Greek since taking Matriculation thirty years before, and so I felt sufficiently detached to judge impartially. It was easy to guess that in prospect these lectures would be unpopular; and indeed, before the first, I heard students saying that no one expected to enjoy the Greek. So we decided to watch carefully; and if, after three lectures, there were little interest shown, then we were prepared to cancel the remainder. But it was soon abundantly clear that there was no risk of failure, and by the third lecture Greek was evidently one of the most successful features of a course that was enjoyed by all. Here are a few sentences from various letters sent by the students after the course: ‘I thought that the subjects were too “classic”, especially the last one (Ancient Greek civilization)…. Now I know that these subjects are vital for anyone who is to get the most out of life’; ‘Doors were opened to me into new worlds of delight’, meaning poetry and classics; ‘What a change from technical studies which unfortunately resume next week: I now feel that I want to give up engineering… gave me the incentive to go farther afield and delve deeper into the classics’; ‘Two weeks of exquisite delight’… with later special reference to the Greek class; ‘Greek culture and literature for instance seemed such dry subjects before, but now I realize how much we can learn from them and how very similar their problems were to those confronting us to-day.’

Mr. melluish's vigorous plea for the restoration of Latin to an honoured place in the school curriculum cuts through the mists of apologetic defeatism and loose thinking which have in recent years befogged discussion of pre-certificate Latin. The Four-Year Course was imposed on classical teachers by the fact that the majority of boys and girls in secondary schools left at the age of sixteen, or at any rate dropped Latin after taking the School Certificate Examination. What was really an evil to be fought against has been erected into a sort of permanent educational article of faith, and would-be reformers have been trying in various ways to put the quart of Latin (or substitutes and dilutions thereof) into the pint pot of the pre-certificate curriculum.

There were those (and the writer confesses he has been one of them) who would have tried to teach their pupils to run before they could walk. Less formal grammar and less English into Latin, it was argued, would leave more time for the reading of Latin authors, that is, for the enjoyment of Latin literature and an understanding of Roman culture. Herein lay two fallacies. In the first place, Latin authors cannot be read with any facility or, indeed, at all, until the pupil has mastered the elements of Latin accidence and syntax. This, in spite of modern methods, remains a formidable task for the average boy or girl, calling for a great deal of hard work. It is, therefore, misleading to suggest that up to the School Certificate stage much more is possible than the acquisition of the essential preliminaries.

When Xerxes was marching through Asia to invade Greece, says Herodotus, he had to pass through the town of Kallatebos, not far from the crossing of the river Maeander. At this place (where, by the way, men make their living by preparing honey from tamarisk and wheatmeal) the king saw by the roadside a magnificent plane-tree, which on account of its beauty he presented with golden ornaments, and arranged that a man should stay there as its keeper or guardian for ever after. He then proceeded to Sardis.

The story became famous, and later centuries thought it rather silly. Aelian in particular declares that Xerxes, who ‘thought nothing of the works of God's hands, but must go and build himself newfangled roads and unusual ship-canals’—so he sneers at the eminent engineering feats of the Hellespont Bridge and the Athos Canal—made himself ridiculous (γɛλoīoς) by falling in love with a plane-tree, and decking it with golden necklets and bangles, and setting a guard over it, as he might set a slave to keep an eye on his harem. ‘What good did it all do the tree?’ Aelian rhetorically asks. ‘The apposititious ornament nothing suiting with it, hung there in vain… For to the beauty of a tree are requisite fair branches, leaves thick, a body strong, roots deep,… wideness of shadow, the successive seasons of the year, the nourishment of water by channels and rain.’ The criticism is rational. But Aelian, who though he wrote in Greek is recorded never to have left his native Italy, could hardly appreciate the feelings of admiration and delight, even of religious awe, shown by the dwellers on the arid plateaux of Asia for large and shady trees, feelings shared by the Greeks, and by any modern traveller in Greece who on a dusty summer's day has spied far-off a whitewashed chapel with trees at hand, and known that there he would also find a spring of cold dear water and rest from the road.

The modern miss will sometimes ask, ‘Did the ladies in ancient Greece and Rome use “make-up”?’ They most certainly did. It would, indeed, be true to say that nearly all modern artificial aids to beauty had their counterparts in classical antiquity: hair, eyebrows, eyelids, eyelashes, and cheeks all had their own ‘preparations’ guaranteed to enhance woman's natural charms.

In Homer, both sexes after washing anoint themselves with oil, but of cosmetics in the usual sense of the word there is no trace. Soon, however, the Greek ladies, finding, we are told, that the sedentary life imposed upon them by convention caused their complexions to fade, eagerly adopted those devices that the Eastern races had so long employed to add to their charms; and it is clear that the ladies of Rome became even more enthusiastic than their sisters in Athens in their endeavours to improve upon nature.

Frequently my lady did not bother to use cosmetics when at home—Quando videri vult formosa domi? Juvenal asks in disgust—but on special occasions, or when going to meet an admirer, she appeared in all her brilliance. The aid of white lead (Ψרμύθιοѵ, cerussa) was often called upon to produce a fair complexion, although its use cannot have been wholly free from risk; or a chalky powder (creta) was employed. Means of reddening the cheeks were obtained from the alkanet root (ἂγχoυνσα)—a dye which is still used to-day; from the crushed fruit of the mulberry (συκἁμινoν, morum) or the elderberry(acinus ebuli); from the poppy (papaver); and from a plant which we cannot identify (παιέρως) but which was guaranteed to give ‘that schoolgirl complexion’ a darker tint could be obtained from a composite preparation known as purpurissum.

If, as Colonel Lawrence claimed, his own was the twenty-eighth translation of the Odyssey, Mr. Rieu's must be at least the twenty-ninth, and it is a tribute to the eternal fascination of the poem. As Butcher and Lang remarked many years ago, there can be no final translation of Homer; translator after translator, whether he chooses verse or prose, will continue to render him in a manner which he considers to be most faithful to the original text, or in one which he thinks most congenial to the taste of his own day. Mr. Rieu has set out to fulfil both purposes. ‘It has been my aim’, he says, ‘to present the modern reader with a rendering of the Odyssey which he may understand with care and read with appreciation.… In the very attempt to preserve some semblance of the original effect I have often found it necessary—in fact my duty, as a translator—to abandon, or rather to transform, the idiom and syntax of the Greek. Too faithful a rendering defeats its own purpose; and, if we put Homer straight into English words, neither meaning nor manner survives.’ He disparages Butcher and Lang, whom he finds ‘turgid’, and appears to aim at a style with as contemporary a flavour as possible. He does not, however, hail as a predecessor Samuel Butler, who, as we know, likewise reacted against Butcher and Lang, and gave the world a translation of the Odyssey of which the diction was to display the same benevo-lent leaning towards the Tottenham Court Road as theirs had done to-wards Wardour Street.