This chapter provides a history of the humanities, from their origins as the studia humanitatis in Roman antiquity to the modern humanities we think of today. By charting this path, it offers a sense of the humanistic tradition in its entirety and explains what is at stake in its prospective downfall. The chapter focuses particular attention on the history of the humanities in American higher education, especially during the run-up to the Battle of the Classics. This introduces the reader to much of the historical and intellectual background for future chapters. Part of this chapter also highlights a crucial shift in the definition of the humanities that took place during the latter half of the nineteenth century. This shift, from what one might call the classical to the modern humanities, makes it extraordinarily difficult to defend the hodgepodge of subjects we associate with the contemporary humanities.

The Battle of the Classics criticizes contemporary apologetics for the humanities and presents a historically informed case for a decidedly different approach to rescuing the humanistic disciplines in American higher education. It uses the so-called Battle of the Classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a springboard for crafting a novel foundation for the humanistic tradition. The book argues that current defences of the humanities rely on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of certain poorly defined skills such as “critical thinking.” It finds fault with this conventional approach, arguing that humanists cannot hope to save their disciplines without arguing in favor of particular humanities content. As the lackluster defenses of the classical humanities in the late nineteenth century help prove, instrumental apologetics are bound to fail. All the same, the book shows that proponents of the Great Books favor a curriculum that is too intellectually narrow for the twenty-first century. The Battle of the Classics thus lays out a substance-based approach to undergraduate education that will revive the humanities while steering clear of overreliance on the Western canon. The book envisions a global humanities based on the examination of masterworks from manifold cultures as the heart of an intellectually and morally sound education.

Many classical scholars have fretted about the disconnect between undergraduate instruction in Greco-Roman antiquity and the spirit of humanism. As classical studies have professionalized, an undergraduate education in the discipline has become decreasingly linked to the humanist goal of creating more ethical and introspective adults. This article suggests one means of rekindling humanism in the undergraduate Latin or Greek classroom: professors can assign a "worldview" paper. Such a paper gives students the opportunity to use Greek and Latin literary works to contemplate a sound philosophy of life.

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This article presents a representative, "state-of-the-field" picture of what US classical scholars think about issues of prime importance to their discipline. It offers results from a large-scale survey of randomly selected members of the Society for Classical Studies. We demonstrate not only what classicists think about key questions, but also how attitudes diverge on the basis of differing political ideologies, genders, ethnicities, and incomes, challenging impressionistic assumptions about the discipline. In light of the survey data, we also present ideas for the field to respond to the pedagogical, intellectual, and financial pressures of contemporary American higher education.

Recent scholarship on Julius Caesar's commentarii has attempted to move beyond earlier focus on their tendentiousness, in favour of viewing Caesar as a literary artist. Although recognising the value of this approach, this article argues in favour of blending it with the prior emphasis on Caesarian Tendenz. It stresses that highlighting Caesar's literary artistry as an antidote to viewing the commentarii strictly as propaganda can lead scholars to overestimate the persuasiveness of Caesar's rhetoric. To make its case, the article demonstrates that Caesar's depiction of events in early January 49 BCE (BCiv. 1.1-5), while rhetorically estimable, is nevertheless implausible and misleading. Hence, far from being a devastating portrait of his opponents that would have convinced all and sundry, Caesar's narrative of this crucial episode would likely have persuaded only his stalwart partisans.

John Bloxham, (2018) Ancient Greece and American Conservatism: Classical Influence on the Modern Right. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. x + 284 pp. $99.00. ISBN: 9781788311540 (hbk).At the start of his celebrated book The Liberal Imagination, the literary and social critic Lionel Trilling announced that ‘liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition’ in the United States. According to Trilling, ‘the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental

Allan Bloom on the Value of the Ancients, or The Closing of the American Classics Department ERIC ADLER “The multiversity does not appeal to the students’ longings for an understanding of the most serious problems, in particular, their doubts about the route to follow in order to live a good life and their questions about the nature of justice.” —Allan Bloom, “The Crisis of Liberal Education” (1967) In 1987, Simon and Schuster published The Closing of the American Mind by the political philosopher Allan Bloom (1930–1992).1 The book created a firestorm. In it, Bloom presented a mordant critique of American higher education and argued in favor of a return to the Great Books tradition. A lengthy, abstruse tract, The Closing of the American Mind became a surprise smash in the publishing world, earning its author fame and fortune, praise and infamy . It was a mainstay on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list in 1987 and 1988, and amounted to a seminal work in the academic culture wars. The book’s financial success launched a cottage industry of likeminded works, which ultimately ensured that debates concerning undergraduate education in the US remained a prominent feature of the national dialogue well into the 1990s. Unfortunately for those concerned about the past, present, and future of the humanities , the disputes surrounding The Closing of the American Mind typically generated more heat than light. It is thus worth revisiting Bloom’s cri de coeur, if only because the book helps explain classical studies’ near irrelevance in contemporary American colleges and universities. arion 24.1 spring/summer 2016 According to some classical scholars, Bloom’s jeremiad privileged the study of Greco-Roman antiquity. For instance, in a contribution to the 1989 edited volume Classics: A Discipline and Profession in Crisis?, Amy Richlin asserted that “Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind, suggests both that the classics are central to higher education and that only the best students are suited to work with the classics.”2 Agreeing with this assessment, Karl Galinsky suggested that The Closing of the American Mind, like other traditionalistic contributions to the academic culture wars, created a dilemma for many classicists, who had pragmatic reasons to support Bloom’s favoring of the Great Books, but who took issue with his political inclinations. In a 1991 article, Galinsky wrote: Do we want to pull the rug from under ourselves by agreeing that the importance of Greco-Roman culture should be diminished? Are we then prepared to relinquish some of our faculty positions to AfricanAmerican studies and the like? The perceived dilemma, inflicted by the usual limiting dichotomies, seems to be that as a proponent of western civilization, one is nolens volens allied with [William] Bennett and [Allan] Bloom, an impression any politically correct humanities professor wants to avoid, of course.3 But in truth this dilemma for classical scholars was greatly exaggerated. Although he grounded his conception of a proper undergraduate education in the examination of canonical Western authors, Bloom did not privilege the study of Greco-Roman antiquity as classical scholars typically approach it. In fact, Bloom proved acutely critical of the discipline of classics and professionalized, philological scholarship . This demonstrates that academic traditionalists such as Bloom were not nearly as supportive of classical studies as some believed. For this reason, the classics played a more negligible role in the academic culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s than many have supposed. And this role has, if anything , become even more negligible in recent years, in an intellectual environment uncongenial to the humanities. Although Bloom’s implicit recommendations for classical scholars canallan bloom on the value of the ancients 152 not be deemed a panacea, failure to take heed of his criticisms will ensure the continued marginality of the discipline. Before we turn to his views on classical studies, however, we need to get a sense of Bloom’s thesis in The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom called his polemic “a meditation on the state of our souls, particularly those of the young, and their education” (19). The book diagnoses the supposed soullessness of undergraduates at the most elite American universities and details the philosophical roots...

This collection, a companion piece to the editor’s Rome, Season One: History Makes Television (Malden, 2008), belongs to the burgeoning sub-field of “reception studies,” which allows classical scholars to explore the ways in which Greco-Roman antiquity has shaped—and been shaped by—postclassical engagement with the ancients. The book presents reflections on the second season of the popular and lavishly produced hbo-bbc series Rome (2005–2007), a species of historical fiction focused on the demise of the Roman republic and the emergence of the empire. In its preface, Cyrino and Llewellyn-Jones boast that the collection is part of “the first academic series…to promote interdisciplinary research in the fields of Cinema Studies, Media Studies, Classics, and Ancient History” (viii). Despite this contention, only two of the book’s contributors are non-classicists, and only one has her primary training in film.Clearly aimed, in part, at university courses that deal with Greece and Rome in popular culture, the book’s introduction and seventeen chapters are all admirably clear and straightforward. Nods to critical theory appear now and again, but scholars of media and gender studies would deem the collection light in this regard. Contributors focus on various aspects of Rome’s final season—for example, its depiction of social class, Judaism, the female body, sadomasochism, and masculinity. The authors typically compare and contrast Rome’s treatment of such matters with the ancient evidence and other movies and television programs about the time period. Most chapters seem indebted to demonstrating that the series—though maligned in some quarters for its gratuitous sex and nudity—rewards critical attention. Lee L. Brice, for instance, highlights the accuracy and seriousness of the show’s depiction of Roman veterans. Rachael Kelly contends that Rome’s creators tweaked and enriched standard elements of the famous stories surrounding Mark Antony. In venturing such points, the authors succeed in elucidating the carefulness with which the series was produced. After finishing this collection, readers would be hard pressed to argue that Rome is nothing but an adult-themed ancient soap opera.But the contributors’ enthusiasm for the series can cause problems. With the notable exception of John J. Johnston’s “The Rattle of the Sistrum: ‘Othering’ Cleopatra and Egypt in Rome”—which politely chides the series for its stereotypical portrayal of ancient Egypt—many chapters do not advance much further than an explication of the show’s complexities. Alex McAuley demonstrates that Rome’s ahistorical depiction of ancient drug abuse fits modern filmic paradigms. Yet he does not make much of this insight, save to link the series to contemporary portrayals of classical antiquity as decadent. Amanda Potter’s focus on online fanfiction surrounding the series is heavy on description but light on argument. The short length of the chapters does not help on this score; expanded essays would have allowed for more analysis.Nonetheless, Cyrino’s collection presents an accessible introduction to the ways in which classical scholars have approached the study of popular culture. Hopefully, it will lead to more genuinely interdisciplinary engagements with the sword-and-sandals genre.

Beginning with a short intellectual history of the academic culture wars, Eric Adler's book examines popular polemics including those by Allan Bloom and Dinesh D'Souza, and considers the oddly marginal role of classical studies in these conflicts. In presenting a brief history of classics in American education, the volume sheds light on the position of the humanities in general. Adler dissects three significant controversies from the era: the so-called AJP affair, which supposedly pitted a conservative journal editor against his feminist detractors; the brouhaha surrounding Martin Bernal's contentious Black Athena project; and the dustup associated with Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath's fire-breathing jeremiad, Who Killed Homer? He concludes by considering these controversies as a means to end the crisis for classical studies in American education. How can the study of antiquity—and the humanities—thrive in the contemporary academy? This book provides workable solutions to end the crisis for classics and for the humanities as well. This major work also includes findings from a Web survey of American classical scholars, offering the first broadly representative impression of what they think about their discipline and its prospects for the future. Adler also conducted numerous in-depth interviews with participants in the controversies discussed, allowing readers to gain the most reliable information possible about these controversies. Those concerned about the liberal arts and the best way to educate young Americans should read this book. Accessible and jargon-free, this narrative of scholarly scandals and their context makes for both enjoyable and thought-provoking reading.

The autumn 1987 issue of the American Journal of Philology contained a controversial editorial manifesto called “ AJP Today.” Written by Georg Luck, the editor of the journal, “ AJP Today” gave rise to numerous objections, which culminated in an open session to discuss the statement at the 1987 annual meeting of the American Philological Association. Prior accounts of this episode have interpreted it in ideological terms and led classical scholars to believe that it cost Luck his editorship. This article challenges the conventional wisdom, contending that the events in question were less ideological in their origins than is commonly believed. It argues that, though possessing ideological and methodological dimensions, they were rooted in the practical and the pragmatic.

This article presents a thorough examination of Rudyard Kipling's views of the Roman Empire in his children's book Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). It argues that the Roman tales in this work do not demonstrate the brash confidence in British imperialism commonly associated with their author. In fact, in these tales Kipling undercut preexisting inclinations to tout Britain as Rome's auspicious successor. Unlike his fellow imperialists, Kipling did not support the notion of Britain's imperial exceptionalism. Rather, he saw in Rome a gloomy future for the British Empire.

This chapter offers a cursory examination of a few enemy orations found in the work of early imperial historians of Rome. It will be of necessity brief and highly selective. Lacking lengthy discussions focused on imperialism in their works, we must often turn to ancient historians' briefer comments on expansion, such as Arrian's mention of the purported Indian aversion to foreign wars, which serves as the epigraph to this chapter. Greco-Roman authors - such as those surveyed in this chapter - ineluctably discussed foreigners with an eye toward apologizing for Roman imperialism and colonialism. Thus ancient historians, like other writers from classical antiquity, treated non- Romans as the 'Other,' dehumanized objects of conquest in need of Roman domination. Roman historians often used enemy speeches to engage in criticism of specific examples of Roman foreign policy. These critiques at least half-heartedly aimed at questioning Roman pretences to engaging in defensive warfare. Keywords:ancient historians; colonialism; defensive warfare; dehumanized objects; Greco-Roman authors; imperial historians; imperialism