So read the first lines from the very first lesson in my ninth grade Latin text, Latin for Americans. I've talked to others in my generation who also studied Latin in high school. They can all recite the above lines from memory. Something about Latin sticks with you, more than many other subjects.
This past week, I've been re-reading odd bits of Daniel Mendelsohn's memoir, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, which I reviewed in September. Mendelsohn recalls his father's lament that, after studying Latin for four years, he (the father) declined to take a fifth and final year in high school, a year in which he would have read Virgil's Aeneid. Although he became a highly successful scientist and mathematician by profession, the father felt that he had turned away, for no good reason, from an experience that would have capped his otherwise successful high school Latin coursework. His regrets continued until his death, in his eighties. (His son Daniel, himself a classical scholar, tended to rub salt in his father's wounds by often pointing out to "Daddy" how exceptional and difficult was Virgil's Latin.)
I took only two years of Latin, because my high school offered only two. Mendelsohn's book made me wonder whether -- with so many cuts in so many areas outside the Three Rs -- schools still taught a subject with no immediate vocational use.
I checked on-line, and discovered that only eight public high schools in Washington teach Latin today. Two of those -- Roosevelt and Garfield -- are here in Seattle. By contrast, 89 schools statewide still teach German -- a language that is being eliminated from many schools' curricula. Seven of Seattle's eleven traditional high schools teach Japanese; five teach Chinese. Every traditional high school in Seattle teaches Spanish, which in today's world is hardly surprising.
I had a discussion on my Facebook page today about Latin, and was asked the value of studying the language. I'm not competent to discuss Latin's pros and cons as they may apply to the entire high school population. But I can tell you how Latin affected me.
First, I admit that I have no confidence that I could today translate anything but the simplest Latin inscription or other writing (any more than I could today prove one of Euclid's theorems!). But at various times, in high school and college, I've taken courses in Spanish, Italian, and French. Obtaining a limited reading knowledge of those languages was made vastly easier and faster because of my knowledge of Latin vocabulary and sentence structure.
Second, I have a good sense today of English grammar. Without disparaging English composition classes, I have to say that most of what I know -- beyond simple definitions of noun, verb, etc. -- was learned in Latin. I could, and probably would, have learned much of it later in advanced English classes, or through self-study and writing, but -- in my case -- I learned it in a way that stuck back in ninth grade.
Third, Latin teaches word derivations. The very first chapter of my first year Latin book contained a simple passage -- a part of which I quoted above. The fact that "paene" and "insula" -- "almost" and "island" -- combined to form the English word "peninsula" was a revelation that delighted me. I've been a fan of etymology ever since.
Fourth, Latin is a rigorous subject, like mathematics. You can't really BS your way through it. You either puzzle out a translation the night before class -- taking whatever time it takes -- or it becomes clear that you didn't do it. I was a lazy, if curious, student. I needed course work that forced me to work. Latin, like math, did the trick.
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.
Fifth, you don't study Latin without learning a sizable chunk of Roman history -- even if you're working so hard on the translation that you fail to realize that you're absorbing history at the same time. Much of second year Latin is devoted to translating portions of Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, the first sentence of which informs us that all of Gaul was divided into three parts -- that occupied by the Belgians, that occupied by the Aquitanis, and that occupied by those whom the Romans called Gauls (but who called themselves Celts). That's a lot of interesting historical information in just one sentence.
It got worse, at times, of course. Caesar's battles against various barbarian groups go on and on, and he is constantly "breaking camp" -- "camp having been broken" as the "ablative absolute" construction literally (and frequently) words it -- and moving on to battle another tribe. The details get lost by the end of the term -- you're being tested on the language, after all, not the content -- but an idea of what life was like on the Roman frontier in the final years of the Republic sticks with you.
I think it's a shame that classical Greek isn't offered in some high schools, at least. And it will be a shame if the few schools still offering Latin decide to drop it, along with art and music. Learning -- and the ability to learn -- comes in many forms, not all of them easily subject to annual testing.
The study of Latin ties a number of fields -- history, grammar, vocabulary, military tactics, political rhetoric, classical drama and literature -- together with a rigor that few other teaching approaches provide. It doesn't replace the function served by AP courses in specific subjects, but it enhances those courses and reveals interrelations.
Let's keep the study of Latin available to those who want it and can benefit by it.
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