An ally for Classics in the DfES?

I've just come across this interview from a February TES. Jack Kenny, a Classics student, is director of technology and chief information officer at the Department of Education. Here's the beginning of the interview:

Strategy:Giant steps to 21st century learning

Jack Kenny

Published: 06 January 2006

Tell us a little about yourself.
Here I am, 45, mid-career, brought up in Yorkshire. Grammar school background, studied Latin and Greek. That’s where the interest in history came from – which now sits happily beside an interest in the digital future. A good deal of my career has been at the BBC, initially making programmes, later in management. I learned a lot, especially about how you take a large organisation, with lots of tradition, and square it up to the modern age. And how you evolve it to meet the changing expectations of its consumers.

What is your role at the Department for Education and Skills (DfES)?
I am director of technology and chief information officer. It’s a board-level role because ministers want to signal the importance of this area for the years ahead.

Read the whole interview.

Julian Morgan's Circe

Julian Morgan led an option group at the ARLT Summer School in 1994 about CIRCE, an EU initiative to provide a whole load of resources for Classics teaching throughout Europe.

At the time it was very much 'work in progress'; now it is being launched upon the waiting world. The Times Educational Supplement has this article about CIRCE:

Classics to get ICT booster
George Sharpley

The Classics have suffered in the curriculum, but they will be helped by a Europe-funded manual on how to harness the power of ICT

Circe, the sexually rapacious witch of the Odyssey, has lent her name to an ICT project that opens up the lost world of the Classics to a new generation of teachers.

“Classics and ICT Resource Course for Europe” is a pan-European project, funded by the Socrates programme. If it proves successful, then the first hurrah will be to remember Circe for her enchanting malevolence and Socrates for his stubborn integrity and so rescue the Classics from eurocrats whose appetite for plundering classical names comes dangerously close to passing off.

Some argue that it will take a lot of magic and no little wisdom to work the Classics back into the mainstream curriculum. The classical world is something of a lost garden these days, walls overgrown with impenetrable brambles. CIRCE’s new manual, which will be launched in London with the help of Boris Johnson on April 21, is helping clear the path to rediscovery.

The manual is principally an ICT resource reference for teachers, who now fall into different kinds: those yet to catch the ICT bug; the growing generation of Classics teachers with little classical background, but who come to the subject from English or another language.

CIRCE has something for all teachers, with step-by-step tips on setting up an email address, browsing the web, use of search engines and running software programs; while those already comfortable with ICT can leap straight to the excellent websites and software programmes that are listed in the manual.

The guide points the way to web sites that offer classical texts, translations, cultural tasters and linguistic support. The Perseus site, for example, is a virtual classical library and remains the most impressive collection of texts and translations. The full complement is available in the eponymous software program. The Greek language site on Eton’s web pages is a must for all pupils of Greek (click on Eton in Action and then on Greek Project). While students of Latin can now access the Cambridge Latin course via a DVD from Granada Learning.

CIRCE sets out to present these resources for teachers to exploit. There's help for teachers setting up networks and making use of distant-learning facilities. Reliance on distant support systems and video-linking can be a negative – the Classics can ill afford to appear to be on some cranky electronic life-support. But in general, when something as old and traditional as the Classics rubs up against innovative technology, you can expect something to happen, either a flop or a marvel, and here the latter, for the internet’s global presence gives access all around the world.

CIRCE has six partners: in Italy and Greece, the classical homelands, and in Belgium, Denmark, France and the UK, each one embracing their shared classical heritage and contributing to a suitably European venture.

Perhaps it won’t be long before Turkey is involved in such projects; it's a land rich in classical remains, the home of Homer, the poet whose story of the Trojan War is the first exposure of the political fault-line between east and west, though in Homer’s case with a sensitivity to both sides.

This classical heritage is not confined to Europe, but embraces all speakers of English, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Italian and others besides. Islam too has played its part in the translation of Greek texts into Arabic that might otherwise have been lost. There are precious few things we share in this increasingly divided world: the Classics is one of them. So let’s hope CIRCE can work her magic.

Constantine exhibition opens in York

I found this in the Belfast Telegraph, though it reads like a press release from the Yorkshire Museum:

Constantine: The greatest Roman emperor

An exhibition which opens in York tomorrow marks the debt owed by the modern Church to a Christian convert who rescued a failing empire, brought peace and preached tolerance. Ian Herbert tells his story.
30 March 2006

A decision reached almost 1,700 years ago by Constantine the Great is a source of inspiration to any who despair of lasting religious tolerance in the world. On the eve of an improbable battlefield triumph in Rome, AD312, the young Roman emperor saw a vision of Christ and converted to Christianity, joining the ranks of those who had been persecuted by his predecessors for centuries.

Most self-respecting emperors would force their subjects to follow suit – so what was he to do? Constantine's answer arrived in the edict he issued at Milan the following year. “I grant both to Christians and to all men, freedom to follow whatever religion each one wishes,” it stated. His words were the touchstone of modern Christianity, ending centuries of persecution for Christians. But they are also the first known articulation of religious tolerance, permitting the co-existence of Jews, Christians, British Pagans and those who worshipped the traditional Roman gods such as Eros and Jupiter.

The modern Church's debt to Constantine, who also introduced the architecture on which the St Peter's Basilica in Rome and Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre were later built, is recognised in one of the most important Roman exhibitions staged in Britain, which opens tomorrow in York.

“Constantine the Great, York's Roman Emperor” marks the 1700th anniversary of his coronation in the city and is staged in association with the British Museum, which has loaned scores of artefacts. The exhibition is designed by Ivor Heal who, with finely carved sculptures and cameos and brilliantly coloured mosaics, recaptures Constantine's lavish Roman world with the same panache he showed in the Royal Academy's two huge successes The Aztecs and The Three Emperors.

Only Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, rivalled Constantine's achievements in a reign that lasted until 387, according to Elizabeth Hartley, the exhibition's creator.

He rescued the failing empire, continuing work started by his father, Constantius. But he also reinvented the empire. He restored peace, stability and security by promoting harmony and tolerance, abandoned Rome to establish a more easily defensible capital at Constantinople. “He created a new world without upsetting the old and creating conflict,” says Ms Hartley.

York, which erected a statue to Constantine outside the Minster in 1998, cannot be accused of underplaying its part in the story of the great emperor. In addition to the exhibition, which includes exhibits from 36 museums and private collections from across Europe, it will stage a service of commemoration at York Minster on 25 July – the 1700th anniversary of Constantine's proclamation here, and will stage a three-day international conference on the man in the same month.

Yet the city's important role in the emperor's story presented itself by chance. Constantine was far away at Nicomedia in the east of the Empire, being trained to accede to his father's position as one of the caesares (junior emperors), by Diocletian when news arrived that Constantius was facing a spot of bother from the Picts, in Scotland. Constantine headed west, met his father at Boulogne, crossed to Britain before winter set in and proceeded into a battle, which they won. Both then returned in December 305 to York – then called Eboracum, one of the regional capitals and home to the Romans' northern military command.

No one is sure why father and son lingered in York but they were still there on 25 July 306 when Constantius died. With the support of troops stationed at York, Constantine took the throne, possibly in a service held at the city's imperial residence. Coins issued for his imperial visit suggest he returned to York at least once in the first 10 years of his reign and he described his coronation there in a handwritten testimony, fragments of which are on display at the exhibition.

It seems he may also have ordered a rebuilding of the Roman northern command HQ in York, at the spot where a magnificent head of Constantine was unearthed in the 19th century. It too is being exhibited.

The event which was to assign Constantine his part in Roman history occurred in 312 on the eve of the Battle of Milvian Bridge on the outskirts of Rome which, if troop allegiances were anything to go by, Constantine was expected to lose. In a dream, Constantine saw the Chi-Rho – the Christian symbol that combines the Greek letters X and P (the first two letters of the name of Christ) in front of the sun with the words “in this sign you will conquer”. He was told to paint this sign on the shields of his soldiers and, after doing so, won the battle.

Whether Constantine really had the dream or invented it as a shrewd political move to endear him to Christians and win support is a matter of enduring conjecture.

Boris Johnson, the Tory MP, a huge enthusiast on the subject of Constantine after coming across him during work for his BBC series on the Romans, has some suspicions. “It may have been a stunt. He was a supreme political operator and the conversion might have had its advantages. It's difficult to establish,” he said.

Perhaps Constantine's mother, Helena, played a role in the conversion. She was probably born a Christian, though virtually nothing is known of her background, save that her father was a successful soldier, a career that excluded overt Christians. Either way, Constantine immediately granted restitution to the Christians, creating an unprecedented tolerance of the previously minority religion, and initiated the building of a Christian basilica at the Lanteran in Rome, the first Christian church. The emperor also legislated Sunday as a day of rest, banned gladiatorial games and promoted Christians to high office. At the Council of Nicea in 325, he saw to it that Christianity was fully legalised in the empire for the first time; a move considered integral to the development of the religion. The Nicene Creed, still used by Christians as the fundamental expression of their faith, also emerged from that council. Constantine's reputation as the “first Christian emperor” has been promulgated by historians from Lanctitius to the modern day, though he was only baptised on his death bed.

Constantine's pursuit of tolerance may have stemmed from his time in Diocletian's court, before he met up with his father in Britain, Ms Hartley believes. “He saw persecution under Diocletian and its disastrous consequences and was probably very distressed. By contrast, there was almost no persecution in his father's western empire.”

York's exhibition provides a true sense of the creative power which Constantine's endorsement and appreciation of new modes of thought unleashed. He modelled himself on both Augustus and Alexander the Great – a clear expression of his determination to be one of the great figures of history – but ushered in a golden age of creative, Byzantine arts while allowing the classical traditions to continue. Among the more memorable examples on display at York are a youthful head of Mithras, never before loaned from the Museum of London; a collection of wall mosaics recovered in the 1970s from Roman villas in Dorset, and a mosaic illustrating Ovid's Metamorphoses, recovered in Somerset. There are sculptures, textiles, silverware, games, weapons, coins and jewellery – all reflective of the magnificence of the emperor's age. Few examples of the artistic endeavour that Constantine helped create have been located by archaeologists in York, though one of those in the exhibition is an extraordinarily well-preserved bun of auburn hair with two hairpins intact.

Constantine the Great, York's Roman Emperor is at the Yorkshire Museum, York, from tomorrow until 29 October

Agamemnon as Latino gangster

From The Mercury News, California:

Latino playwrights revisit the classics

PRODUCTIONS ON THREE BAY AREA STAGES DRAW UNIVERSAL THEMES FROM WORLD LITERATURE

By Karen D'Souza
Mercury News

Sophocles is reborn in a San Jose barrio in “Electricidad.''

Luis Alfaro reinvents the house of Atreus as a Latino family steeped in gang culture. Agamemnon becomes “El Auggie,'' the king of the hood. Electra emerges as a hard-core Chola decked out in tattoos, tanks and flip-flops. Her mother, Clemencia, is Clytemnestra as a chain-smoking matriarch in high heels who orders hits as if they were pizzas. Desperate for power, she'll do anything to be a queen. You know, “como la Oprah.''

The ancient speaks to the now in Alfaro's gutsy new Spanglish reinvention of the Greek tragedy. The playwright filters Sophocles' bloody cycle of violence and vengeance through the prism of pop culture in a heady mixture of classical and kitsch, Spanish and English. The made-over myth is now in its regional premiere at San Jose's Teatro Visión.

“I wanted to do an adaptation that spoke to me,'' says Alfaro, “and I wanted to be able to convey to young people that these classics are our classics, that the Greeks are relevant to our stories. You've got to make that connection for them.''

Read more.

Aeneid translation "like a novel."

From SouthCoastToday:

Author to discuss Vergil's 'Aeneid'

MARION — The chairman of Tabor Academy's Classics Department, G. Bruce Cobbold, will be the guest author to lead Marion's new discussion series, Sundays with the Author.

The event, to be held this Sunday, is sponsored by the Elizabeth Taber Library and will begin at 4 p.m. Mr. Cobbold's new book is a contemporary prose translation, in the style of a novel, of the ancient epic by Vergil, “The Aeneid.” It retells the story of a man whose city, Troy, is destroyed by war, and of his journey to find his destiny.

Mr. Cobbold will review the interesting facets of the historical and political landscape of Rome in 25 BC and how Vergil on his deathbed wanted “The Aeneid” destroyed, claiming it wasn't yet finished (he had already spent six years writing it).
“It was, in a sense, a political poem, so the historical context is quite relevant,” Mr. Cobbold said.

Mr. Cobbold also plans to read short passages to illustrate the change in language that his new translation provides.
“I wanted this to be an easy read for someone who thought that they would hate a 2000-year-old poem. My publisher's mission is to promote 'popularization of the classics,' so they suggested I approach it more like a novel. I'm not a poet, and I wanted to emphasize the story, yet still using language that was suitable to the tone of the verse.”

Having taught at Tabor Academy for almost 40 years, Mr. Cobbold is now assistant headmaster as well as chairman of the Classics Department. Born in England, he was educated at Cambridge. His department currently teaches Latin, Greek and ancient history to about 100 students at Tabor.

The series is free and open to the public. The library is at 8 Spring St., and can be reached at (508)748-1252.

A Political Scientist speaks up for Classics

Thiis letter is from The Phoenix Online:
March 30, 2006
Classics benefits other students

To the Editor:

Full disclosure: I majored in political science. I was an honors major, in fact, although I graduated with a course major because I couldn’t quite manage to absorb the requisite knowledge for a minor in chemistry despite the best efforts of Professors Pasternack, Rablen and Voet (sometimes simultaneously). But never mind that. The point is I participated in one of the most crowded majors at Swarthmore. And yet, rather than leap to Rachel Ackoff’s defense when she proposes cutting the classics department, I find myself moved to write my first letter to a newspaper for the opposite purpose. It’s not that I have a sentimental attachment to Swarthmore’s classics department since I never took any of its courses (more disclosure: I did take Latin in high school). But it seems to me that Ms. Ackoff bases her argument on two faulty premises. The first is that popular courses and/or majors are crowded due to a lack of resources devoted to them. As previous letters have already argued, that is not strictly true. Ms. Ackoff’s argument also assumes that if Swarthmore cuts positions in one department, new positions in other departments are automatically created. But if a classics professor were to disappear and his/her budget given to the political science department, they might very well be used to give tenure to a current professor rather than hire a new one (who would probably have to have an office on a different floor from the others as well). Or if those resources were given to the (also very popular) biology department, they may go towards buying more equipment. These would all be well and fine (notwithstanding that some hapless classics professor had to be cut in the process), but they won’t ease the crowding problem.

But let us assume a spherical cow and say that the elimination of the classics department leads to a seamless and painless transition of the resources elsewhere. Which department gets them? Political science? Should not the departments of economics, biology and English also get a piece of the classics pie? It seems to me that the benefit will not actually be all that great for any one department. And against this must be balanced the costs. No clear-eyed economic analysis is complete without a consideration of externalities. I didn’t take any classics courses, but I could have. Choice is a valuable thing, not to be dismissed lightly. And also, I made friends with many people who did study classics at Swarthmore with whom I have had countless discussions about their passion which increased my general enjoyment of Swarthmore (and helped on at least one paper). If the price of those unique friendships and experiences is that I had to maintain an A- average in poli sci courses, I am willing to pay it. And so I find myself moved not only to write this letter but also to dust off my Latin dictionary: Studium linguae latinae graecaeque conservandum est.

Ernest Le ’05

A couple of pieces about supporters of the Latin Mass

The first is from the USA:

(From the March 30 edition of The Wanderer)

This article is the second of a three-part series based upon interviews with Msgr. Michael Schmitz, who heads up the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) in the U.S., and Fr. George Gabet, the North American General Superior for the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP).

Both priests reveal the phenomenal growth they are experiencing in Traditional Latin Mass communities, both in terms of numbers of families, as well as the number of young men attracted to vocations to the priesthood in the traditional rites.

More …

And this is from Great Britain:

LONDON – 29 March 2006 – 290 words

Latin Mass Society launches training fund for clergy

The Latin Mass Society has launched a training fund to provide training days in England and Wales for priests who wish to learn the Latin and rubrics of the Traditional Latin Mass. It will also provide funds for priests to stay in the European seminaries of the Traditional priestly orders such as the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest where they can experience the Traditional ethos and receive spiritual and practical advice from Traditional priests.

The two main Traditional priestly orders are the Institute of Christ the King and the Fraternity of St Peter. Their seminaries only provide training in the Traditional rite and they have long waiting lists of young men wishing to serve the Church as Traditional priests. Their candidates to the priesthood have been ordained by such as Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, Prefect of the congregation for the Clergy, and Cardinal Medina Estevez, retired Prefect of the Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship. Pope Benedict took a close interest in the resurgence of the Traditional rite when he was cardinal.

Julian Chadwick, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society, said: “There is growing interest, particularly among younger priests, in the Traditional rite and the LMS has received many requests for help from priests eager to find out more about this rite. The feeling is growing that a sea change has begun in the Church and priests are searching for greater reverence and spiritual depth in the celebration of Mass. The LMS's new training days and bursaries to help priests stay at the Traditional seminaries will give this process a real boost.”

For more information call the LMS office on 020 7404 7284.

© Independent Catholic News 2006

Where can I learn A level Latin and Greek?

Can anyone help with this request that came to the ARLT website?

I am a thirty something male and I am trying to find either a distance learning course or an institution in Greater London that offers A-level courses in Latin and Ancient Greek. Can you please help me?

If you can help this gentleman, either post a comment below, or email me, removing the spaces in my address: webmaster @ arlt.co.uk