​       Can atrocities such as those in Syria unleash memories of a remote past and hopes for a brighter future?  The images of Syria we now see show more vividly than the mind can bear the prisons in that country --  not of “slaughterhouses,” as Amnesty International describes them, but of places where prisoners beg to be put to death.  It was that bad, as we are now beginning to see.
       Yet the news from Syria has sent memories rushing back after years of dormancy,   I can hear the kids asking me “Speak Eeengleesh; speak Eeengleesh;” I can hear the sand  storm whipping our rented Peugeot; and still sniff the camel’s snout  pushing through an open window in that car, parled near ancient Palmyra archaeological site,  while Callie studied the antiquities and I moaned  from the traveler’s plague induced by the single  bottle of Euphrates beer, that I had consumed  the preceding  night.
 Most enduring, however, are the memories of  countless acts of courtesy, hospitality and friendship shown to us by the  people we met.  Here is one story of many:
       It was lunchtime in Aleppo on the Fourth of July.  We were led up to a rooftop garden, empty and quiet, quite unlike the hubbub below.  After we had placed our order, the little speaker amid the grape vines started playing the Star Spangled Banner.   I thanked the waiter for playing our National Anthem on our Independence Day,
       “We are Kurds,” he said earnestly, almost whispering, “We hope some day that we too can celebrate our Independence Day.”
       That was 1995, before the Arab Spring and its failure, before Bashir al-Assad cane to power promising a gentler rule than his tyrannical father, and  before September 11th and all the disasters that followed. Since 1995Bi have not really known what to pray for or hope for the Syrian people and the Kurds, except peace and reconciliation, and the end of oppression.
.
 
. Perhaps now, after so much cruelty, there  may be a chance for just that,
 
P.S. The International Rescue Committee is doing good work in Syria and would welcome your support, either on line or by a check sent to the IRC , P.O. Box 6068, Albert Lea, MN 56007-9847.
 

As climate change dries up familiar soirces of water, Athens has turned back toHadrian’s aqueduct, as the New York Times reports.
“Its 15-mile mostly underground network still runs beneath the city, and the local authorities describe it as Europe’s longest functional underground aqueduct. It also basically still works, carrying water from riverbanks and aquifers along a sloping route. “
The flow, 250 million gallons of water per year, is not to be scorned, but the endurance of Hadrian’s engineering project should come as no surprise to anyone who has attended a rock concert in the Colosseum, seen a Greek tragedy in the theater of Herodes Atticus, or travelled along a road in remote parts of Europe that is basically asphalt poured over the deep, solid foundations the Romans laid for their roads.
 
 
       They built to last and they wrote that way, too.  To outlast the ravages of  time was the goal, even if that seems incomprehensible  to those of us raised in a culture of swift returns on investment, evanescent reputations and  short attention spans.
 
.
       The challenge most likely to confound modern minds is, I think, to imagine a culture based not on short term returns, but on endurance – at the personal level  putting up with hardships on remote frontiers, and at the societal level  outlasting change.  It’s what Horace boasted at the culmination of the third book of his Odes: “exegi monumentum arere perennius.” He was right:  his poetry has outlasted monuments whose bronze has long since been melted down and turned into a quick profit.
       Roman aqueduct builders would understand what Horace was saying; Romans built to last, and wrote that way, too.

​

“Creative Destruction”:
          The phrase is much in vogue in Silicon Valley, and perhaps now in Washington, thanks to Elon Musk and others.   It has come to mean not just that new practices replace older ones; now it often means you have to destroy the old, even before knowing what the new will look like.
The phrase first came into circulation through the work  of
 the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883 – 1950) who saw such change as a driving force in capitalism. Later  Karl Marx thought it would destroy old wealth and maybe capitalism itself. 
          Nowadays the phrase has wide application.  It’s not just about old styles of manufacturing that need to be destroyed so new, more efficient, more profitable ones can find a place. It   also goes after services, and beyond economics to, governance, and the operation of institutions public and private, and to traditions, norms, values, and all that holds communities together.   
But, as another distinguished thinker, Alfred E. Neumann (1954 - ), has observed, “What, me worry about collateral damage when I am enjoying a little  schöpferische Zerstörung?”
--
 
“First, Do No harm”
 
 Hippocrates’ injunction (Epidemics 1 and adaptations thereof.)  In Hippocrates it applies to the human body, but today should it not also speak to those who tend to the body politic? There is, however, one important difference: in medicine the concern is for the flesh and blood of an individual’s body.  But when extended to the body politic, it applies to what citizens need most to protect -- norms, procedures, laws, and, perhaps, most crucially, institutions public and private.  All these are vital but vulnerable. Harm them and we may all suffer lasting harm.
 
Two Men, Two Epistemologies:
 
The differences between Musk and Hippocrates are rooted, I suspect, in different epistemologies – Hippocrates’ humility before all that is still to be learned about the human body, and Musk’s confidence that he can always find a way through destruction to success.
--
After the Election:
 
All through the election campaign I was unable to write – at least in any way that might be of interest to readers of this Newsletter.  Everything seemed gulped down into the great political gullet.  After the election things got even worse. But then, temporarily at least, I became a Stoic – that is, I started concentrating on what I can control, not what I’d like to control.
That led me in two directions, first to thinking about history, and then about language.  My knowledge of American history is sketchy, but while we cannot control events, we can recognize patterns in the past that speak to our present condition.  I began to think about times in American history when things looked bleak, for example, 1856 – 1857 when an anti-slavery candidate was defeated in the presidential election, followed by a Supreme Court decision ( Dred Scott v. Sandford) that seemed to require Americans to tolerate slavery.
We’ve been through rough times before and come out better despite them.
Stepping back from the present has helped me.  And so has renewed attention to the way I speak and write.  I try to avoid terms like fascist and  communist,  and want to step back from cliches, slogans, insults – all the things a political campaign normalizes.  I’m not very good at this, I fear, but the effort seems to help.
--
Practical Stoicism:
 
          The best guide to putting Stoicism to work is still, in my opinion, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.  The emperor, of course, is Marcus Aurelius but the life experience of the author, Donald J. Robertson, gives his book great immediacy.
 
--
A Motto juste:
“Keep dead languages alive,” is the motto of the linguistics program at the University of Texas at Austin.  Yes!  But how does one do that?  History helps, of course, alertness to how speech patterns work, but also delight in language at play – ambiguities, puns, double entendres, rhymes, etymologies, riddles, metaphors, mixed and unmixed.
Enjoying such delights in dusty old languages has, I find, an unexpected benefit.  One becomes more alert to the vitality of one’s own language, its exuberance and the tricks it sometimes plays on us.
--
 
Best Mixed Metaphors of the Month:
          “It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you in hot water.” Franklin B. Jones.
   “He’s gone behind my back, right in front of my face!”
          Attributed to Craig Bellamy, rugby coach
 “Every lemon has a silver lining,” someone says; another replies “Yes, a bird in hand gathers no moss, while a rolling stone catches the worm.” Ian Nisbet  cites ,“'When the dust settles on this tempest in a teacup, I want to broach the subject of...,” but adds, “Then I realized that this sounded silly, so I changed it to: ”When the dust settles on this can of worms...”.
Michael Gillespie suggests "It's clear that French pastries are not your kettle of fish."
--
A Friendly Challenge on the Purpose of a University:
          In the last Then and Now Newsletter I gave my view of the purpose of a university education –  Fletch Waller isn’t quite coinvinced, writing  “With respect to your comments about the core mission of universities: “the advancement, preservation and dissemination of knowledge.” “Does not the development of values fit in, also?  Values are formed in families, of course, but institutions also play a powerful role, a welcome role in many cases.  I’m thinking of churches, courts and legislatures, and schools and universities.  It seems to me a quite desirable and societally useful role for teachers and professors to play, i.e., to provide philosophical and historical context and a forum in which alternative values are examined and their application explored.”
          Do you agree or disagree? (I have come around to agreeing with Fletch.  All institutions, whether they know it or not, are value machines, and had better be clear about which values they are manufacturing and disseminating.) 
--
 
Poem of the Month:
 
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
                      Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
                      Troubles my sleep.
                     Troubles my sleep.
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,
Now lettest thou thy servant
                      Depart in peace.
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation . . .
                      Oh well!
                      It troubles my sleep.
 
 
 
.
   Ezra Pound Cantico del Sole
   Question for Mr. Pound: Why should this induce insomnia, dear Mr. Pound?  Is it that if all of us Americans read the Classics, we would speak differently, and so, think in radically different ways, and ultimately act differently?  Are they disruptive classics, lurking in our libraries, waiting to strike?
--
A History about History:
Oswyn Murray’s new book, The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present surveys the changing understanding of the ancient Greeks over the past several centuries – or, read in another way, it puts the ancient Greeks to work illuminating British and European intellectual history  during this period.
 
          Here are two discussions: first, a provocative  review by Spencer A. Klavan; then, a masterly essay by
Katherine Harloe (the director of the Institute of Classical Studies in London.)  It’s in the London Review of Books for 10 October. 2024.  Thanks to Catesby Leigh and to Judith Peller Hallett for steering me to these discussions.
--
 
Challenge:  Can You Identify This “Old Fable”?
In Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit  Samuel Taylor Coleridge alludes to “the old fable of Love and Death, taking each the arrows of the other by mistake.“  Can anyone identify that fable for us?  If not, can you make up your own version of the story?  I don’t know the answer but if you do, Messrs. Eros and Thanatos will join in the applause.
Thanks to Brooks Graebner for steering me to this essay by Coleridge.
--
Ponderable Statistics:
Figures from Harvard

• 45% of students feel uncomfortable discussing controversial issues in class, 38% outside of class.
• 51% of faculty are uncomfortable leading class discussions on controversial topics.
• 68% of faculty avoid discussing controversial issues outside of class, such as around students, faculty, or staff.
• 41% of faculty feel uneasy researching controversial subjects.

But here’s the good news: These figures come from the work of the University’s Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group.  Faculty at Harvard and, I bet, at many other colleges and universities, are trying to develop the skills of open inquiry and “constructive disagreement,” on their campuses.
--
Another Antiquity Goes Home:
A beautiful  necklace that was "probably looted" from a tomb in Turkey in the 1970s will soon be returned after it was held for decades in the collection of a Boston museum, Masslive reports.

Now Reading:
          The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son and the Quest to build the World’s Greatest Library, by Edward Wilson-Lee. 
          Never have I so vividly imagined what it was to be alive in the Renaissance!  Thanks to Jean Anderson for steering me to this book, and to Jean Houston for the news that one American college (which shall remain nameless but may well be followed by others) has decided it no longer needs a library. Welcome to the anti-Renaissance!
--
Quotable:
“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thought on the unthinking.”   

• John Maynard Keynes, via Paul Krugman.

--
 
 D.E.I. Sub Numine Viget?
          The old motto ([This university] flourishes under divine guidance) takes on new meaning in our acronymic age.  The most pressing issues in American higher education at this moment, I believe, are raised by programs in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (D.E.I.).  It’s a hot potato, but I want to write about them in the next Newsletter, but first I’d like to hear from readers with direct experience of them.  To what extent are they, to parody the old motto, providing the guidance that makes a college or university flourish?  If you have had some experience with such a program, let me hear from you at [email protected].  Anonymity guaranteed.
--
A “Second Renaissance”?
Hyperbole from the Guardian? I suppose so, but  let’s not underestimate the potentialof scrolls buried by Vesuvius in the eruption of 79 CE are only now being deciphered.  Most recently: New readings shed light on Plato and his Academy.  Check out The Guardian’s report here.  Stay tuned; new texts keep coming.
           
--
Recipe of the Month:
Paul Cartledge reacted to the last of these Newsletters by likening it to salmagundi, which as one dictionary says, is “a mixture of chopped meat and pickled herring, with oil, vinegar, pepper and onions..”  Sounds awful, but I take Cartledge’s analogy as a compliment.  The dish was, popular in  18th century Britain, then adopted by the Americans both as a dish and as a title for literary magazines and collections of essays, beginning with those by Washington Irving and others in 1807. The purpose was “simply to instruct the young, and reform the old, correct the town and castigate the age.”
So, thank you, Paul, for the compliment and to all, Bon Appetit.
Bob Connor
[email protected]
PS: I almost forgot to thank
David Derbes
Judith Hallett
Jean Houston
and, as always, Callie Connor, for  their continued help, ideas, suggestions and corrections. Keep ‘em coming! And, please, keep forwarding Then and Now to friends who might have a taste for such salmagundi.
 
 

​We have been through worse before, and come through it stronger.  Imagine yourself in 1856 when a third party (Whigs  and Know Nothings) helped defeat the an anti-slavery  candidate, Fremont in the presidential race.  The following year a Supreme Court worse than  Alito-Thomas issued the Dred Scott decision, making the U.S.  a slavery tolerating nation.  Civil War followed, but, Thank God!, slavery was eventually abolished – slow, painful progress, but real..


  Nil desperandum

 

          The purpose of these now and then Newsletters is to share my delight in the ways the past speaks to the present.  But behind that delight is awareness of how much we depend on colleges and universities to preserve that past, advance our understanding of it, and transmit that understanding to successive generations.  Over the past few months that part of the story has been anything but a delight – in fact, deeply troubling.  Still, there are signs of movement in amore encouraging direction.  So, I want to begin with campus protests, then go on to some of their unexpected consequences before prowling in quotations, etymologies, palindromes and other sources of fun and delight.
--
3200 Campus Arrests and What They Achieved:
          Last Spring, the Boston Globe has reported, over 3200 arrests were made on U.S. campuses as a result of protests tied to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict.  That’s only part of the story: some Jewish and some Muslim students felt the environment on their campus had turned hostile, even threatening.  Arguments turned violent, classes and exams were interrupted, a Congressional committee jumped into the fray; heads rolled when some university presidents gave wishy-washy answers to the Committee’s questions. Donors made threats; commencements were curtailed or cancelled; friendships turned into hostility.  The collegiality on which educational institutions depend was sometimes lost.
What was achieved? As nearly as I can tell, nothing – nothing to alleviate the miseries caused by the conflict in the Middle East or enrich the educational experience on American campuses. What the protests did do, I believe, was to force many universities and their faculties, students, boards,  donors and other constituents, to ask what is a university for?  If an institution’s proximate goal is to bring about social change at home and abroad, then protestors are justified in demanding forceful statements, bold action, curricular and policy change and much, much more.  But if the goal is to preserve, advance and transmit knowledge so that better educated citizens can advance the values they stand for, then such protests are at best a distraction.  Which is it?
          Over the summer many university leaders have spoken more clearly  and forcefully than before about what their institutions  stand for and what is acceptable or unacceptable on their campuses. But change can be seen not just at the top. At Harvard a group of faculty, alumni and students focused on “academic excellence, academic freedom, and good governance” has good things to report.  You can sign up here for their 1636 newsletter.
One tell-tale change: Harvard, Johns Hopkins and no doubt other institutions, too, have decided no longer to make “statements of empathy,” as Harvard did after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the atrocity in Israel on October 7.  They will issue such statements only when the ”issue is clearly related to a direct, concrete, and demonstrable interest or function of the university,” As John Hopkins phrases it.
          These are minor, perhaps timid steps, but motivating them is a commitment “to our foundational ethos…to be a place where competing views are welcomed, challenged, and tested through dialogue and rigorous marshaling of evidence.”
The most eloquent of the new statements about the purpose of a university comes from the newly appointed president of Stanford.  It’s worth quoting:
 
“The university has a very noble and distinctive purpose, which is inquiry and learning. And in order to support that mission, we give students and faculty a very broad range of freedom of inquiry—what to study and think about; and expression—what they can say and write. It’s actually different than in a democracy. In a democracy, it’s there to protect the citizens from tyranny. At the university, the freedom is there to promote inquiry and learning
          Jon Levin, President, Stanford University
 
Lofty sentiments and fine words in our sullen age provoke suspicion and often cynbicism.  We’ll see how they hold up as students return to campus – or perhaps the barricades – this fall.  But we did not often hear such words in recent years.  Perhaps a sea change is underway.
--
Thanks to Those Arrested:
          These developments, it seems to me, are refocusing higher education on its core mission, the advancement, preservation and dissemination of knowledge.  That’s not, I suppose, what the protesters intended, but thanks anyway; you’ve forced us to focus and think more clearly about what colleges and universities are for.
--
          And now for something completely different:
--
 
Dubious Etymology of the Month”:
          gazebo (noun, or possibly a verb?)
We are building a gazebo at our vacation home in Maine.  The project sent me searching for the history of the word.  Was it, as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, a term borrowed from some unspecified locale in the Orient? Or is it, as Etymonline suggests,  18th century  fake Latin, made out of our verb gaze plus the Latin ending for a future tense?. That is, an “I will gaze.” place   If so, what’s the plural, gazebimus?
--
 
 
Gilgamesh Meets Artificial Intelligence:
          There are thousands of unread cuneiform tablets and very few scholars to read them.  Enter AI, which has helped scholars recognize the ones that belong together, and the marks and verbal patterns that convey their meaning, thereby providing a fuller understanding of the very early and very splendid Gilgamesh epic.  Here’s the story.
 
--
Have You Ever Been In Love? Does This Ring True?
          Here’s one of the tablets:
 
 
 
“You truly are the sun, so let me warm myself in your heat.
 You truly are a cedar tree, so let the heat not burn me in your shadow!”
          From a cuneiform tablet, (maybe part of the Gilgamesh epic?), translated by Agnete Lassen in the New York Times
 
--
Pot of Gold:
          Rarely do archaeological finds resonate so nicely with historical texts as when the University of Michigan’s excavation of ancient Notion turned up a hoard of gold coins from the late fifth century BCE.  Here’s the link to the story.  And here’s a link to Hobbes’ old translation of Thucydides 3.34, where the “barbarians” are mercenaries posted at Notion, paid, no doubt, in gold coins like those in the newly discovered hoard.  Did one of them bury his savings before going into battle, and never return to enjoy them?
 
PS Notion is on a beautiful section of the Asia Minor coast, near the village Ahmetbeyi, and not far from ancient Ephesus. . Time for some vacation sightseeing?
--
Speaking of Thucydides; Thinking Through Analogies:
          Historians, both of the ancient world and of modern times, like to draw analogies between past and present.   Their readers seem to love it, especially when the talk is about democracy and  the “fall of Athens.”
But analogies are slippery critters.  Proceed cautiously, as Mark Fisher advises in “The Historical Present: Thucydides and the politics of historical analogy .“  .  Here is the link: https://aeon.co/essays/what-thucydides-really-thought-about-historical-analogies
 
It’s required reading for anyone who wants the past to speak to the present..
 
Quotables:
“‘Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic.  But one is paranoid, and the other is out to get him.”
          Attributed to Edgar Degas
--
Have You Ensorcelled Anyone Lately?
          In The Arabian Nights (1885) Richard Burton used this rare word in a story about a prince). Now Maureen Dowd has applied it to Kamela Harris’ smile.  Here’s the etymology.  Your move.
--
 
Ponderable:
“But somehow most people prefer erring and aggressively defending the view that has become dear to them instead of enquiring without obstinacy what is said with greatest conformity to the truth.”
Cicero, Lucullus 9 (trans. Reinhardt, modified)
Thanks to Bob Kaster for this timely quotation.
--
Quiz:  Which American Politician Quoted Which Ancient Author?
“This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes.  Let the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquility.”
Answer: Augustine City of God, quoted by J.D. Vance in his account of his conversion to Catholicism  “How I joined the Resistance” in The Lamp.
 
--
 “Out of the Corner of Andrew Wyeth’s Eye” and “An Almost Perfect Form of Government”  and an exploration of where “weird” came from are among recent posts on my blog  at https://www.wrobertconnor.com/blog
--
Thinking about Liberalism
          “Autopsy and demonology—these are the two genres of writing on liberalism with the most sway in public discussion today. Autopsies propose to explain "why liberalism failed" or how it decayed into neoliberalism. Demonologies claim to show that the inequalities, oppressions, and corruptions of contemporary society are the work of a single vaguely defined yet immensely powerful force, "liberalism," haunting our era. There are, to be sure, recent writings that try to rescue or even glorify liberal thinkers or ideas, but their tone is plaintive or desperate. The moment belongs to liberalism's critics on the left and the right. “
          Bryan Garston Journal of Democracy April 2024
--
On Walking:
          “You don’t need to be on a pilgrimage for each step to be a prayer.”
          Maurice Brendenheim Confessions III
--
Congratulations
          First, to Jean Anderson, who not long after her 100th birthday was awarded a long delayed and richly deserved Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.
          Then, to that same university for appointing Peter T. Struck as Dean of its College of Arts and Sciences.  Two good moves for Penn.
--
Will Lord Elgin Lose His Marbles?
The New Yorker has the goods on him: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/13/the-british-museums-blockbuster-scandals
 
--
The Metaphorical Mixing Bowl:

• “He’s gone behind my back, right in front of my face!” attributed to rugby coach Craig Bellamy.
•  “The ship of state is sailing the wrong way down a one-way street,” attributed to Ronald Reagan

Both quotes (and many more) are  from Regner Kreuz  “In Praise of Mixed Metaphors.” .  Come on, Then and Now readers, send us your favorite mixed metaphors and I will share them in the next Newsletter.  Don’t sit on your hands and drag your feet..
--
Back and Forth in Late Latin:
Communication is always a back and forth exchange between speaker and listener. But palindromes embody that back and forth motion in the letters themselves.  Here’s a palindrome, beloved of Late Latinists. for your back and forth pleasure:
 “Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.
Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 9. 14).
 It can be roughly translated “Rome,,  Love will swiftly  come to you woth its motions (the emotions?).”
          Thanks to Mark Saltveit for steering me to such palindromes.
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Pass It On:
                    Please consider forwarding this Newsletter to friends and colleagues who might enjoy it. They can subscribe (and unsubscribe whenever they want) with an email to [email protected]
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Excuses, Excuses:
          What has made it take so long to produce this little Newsletter?  In a word, grandchildren.  The desire to be closer to them led us to sell our North Carolina home and move to Cape Cod.  We made the move north this spring.  Then we kept heading north, first to Maine, then on a bus tour of Newfoundland and Labrador – on which my wife Callie and I both contracted Covid. Recovery has been slow, just like this Newsletter, but things are now looking up.
          Our new address is P.O.B 188, Cataumet MA 02534.
--
 Thanks to friends who have sent me useful quotes and leads, especially Judith Hallett and Jean Houston, and to Callie Connor for help and encouragement.

​August 2924

​ “My struggle is to preserve that abstract flash like something you caught out of the corner of your eye”
 
Andrew Wyeth quoted in a 2024 exhibition at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland Maine
--
Oblique vision can catch what a direct stare fails to comprehend.   The stare may produce proudly uncompromising realism. It may then scold the fleeting glimpse for neglecting the unlaundered exactness of what is clear to see. But abstraction holds a trump card, for its kind of vision has great power to awaken slumbering emotions, jolt them into alertness.
       Perhaps something similar can happen in literature – a fleeting image, a turn of phrase can awaken us in a way narration must struggle to achieve.   Even better is the evocation of a sight that has now passed – a moon that has set, Pleaides one can no longer see.
 

Even though we are not registered voters on the Maine island where we spend summers, we usually attend its Town Meeting, in part to see how democracy works in such a setting. The 2023 “warrant” included a controversial and expensive item, challenged by several voters.  As one voter after another spoke up, the rationale for this item became clearer and clearer. At last its lead opponent rose again, this time to withdraw his objection.  The item then passed, unanimously.
       Before moving on through the agenda the Moderator remarked, “This is a nearly perfect form of government. People speak up; facts become clear; people listen and sometimes change their minds.”
       He’s right, I think, though I came away convinced that democracy is not so much a form of government as a cluster of habits of mind, including a willingness to listen to those with whom one disagrees, and, if need be, change one’s mind. These habits are slow to form; they atrophy unless regularly used.  But when they flourish, they are a source of strength for a community and of pride for its residents. 

​
 
--
       For a long time weir was at home with Shakespeare’s three  weird sisters in Macbeth. Its roots went back to Germanic warden, to become; that is, a weoird person was some one who had the power to make things, even very  strange things, come into being.
       Then a weird thing happened.  Weird entered politics, and it seems to be making strange things happen.  According to Politico, a new phase began around July 23rd when democratic Governor Tim Walz    of Minnesota applied it to Trump and Vance.  It caught on:
“As this simple and quintessentially Midwestern description of Trump and Vance catches on, it marks a notable rhetorical shift — away from Biden’s apocalyptic, high-minded messaging toward a more gut-level vernacular that may better capture how many voters react to far-right rhetoric of the kind Vance in particular trades in. “
       Smart move? Or a further debasement of our civic discourse?
 What do you think?
P.S. Jessica Bennett has good things to say about the term in her July 31st essay in the New York Times.
--
 
.
 

​   In the April 2024 Atlantic Monthly  ARIEL SABAR  revives the controversies arising from Morton Smith’s  The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mar in which Smith  claimed to have found in a monastery in Jerusalem a passage refledcting “a secret” gospel” of Mark with shocking implications concerning Jesus’ sexuality . Many scholars have taken Smith’s claims seriously; a few have suspected a hoax. 
In either case it’s good to look back to Paul Coleman-Norton’s 1950 article “An Amusing Agraphon” in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly ( Vol. 12, No. 4 (October, 1950), pp. 439-449 ) reporting the discovery  in a North African library of an otherwise unattested addition to the ending of the 24th chapter of the gospel of Matthew.  Immediately following Jesus’ assertion that there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” the newly discovered manuscript has Simon Peter asks the Lord, “What if they have no teeth?”   To which Jesus replies, “Teeth shall be provided unto them.”  Coleman-Norton presented his alleged discovery in impeccable scholarly fashion, with countless parallels drawn from other New Testament passages, citations of eminent German and other biblical scholars, and many footnotes (including a reference to a parallel in Lewis Copeland's The World's Best Jokes (Garden City, N. Y., 1941), p. 221).
       The article was, of course, itself a joke, a spoof, and a hoax, as Coleman-Norton eventually acknowledged.  It was all good fun, though the journal and Coleman-Norton’s Princeton colleagues were not amused.
       Did Morton Smith, meticulous scholar that he was, know of this episode when he decided to publish a report of a discovery in another hard to access library of another short passage of Greek with surprising implications?  I don’t know, but publish he did.  Smith, to be sure, does not seem to have had a playful sense of humor.  On the contrary, as best I can tell -- I never met him - he seems to have been very much tied up by the miseries of his own psyche. If there is a hoax involved in the story of the “secret gospel,”, he may have been the victim rather than the perpetrator.
       What can we learn from Coleman-Norton’s article and Smith’s book?   Texts that cannot be examined by independent scholars must, surely be used only with great caution, or at least  with  a twinkle in the eye.  
 
 
 
 

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Do you remember the silly puzzle in the last Newsletter (What English word has all the vowels in order (a, e, i, o, u and y), each one occurring once and only once)?  It provoked a lot of responses, from which I learned something that surprised me.  So, before going on to thinking about the Classics, and higher ed, (and a new challenge for readers), let’s start with the puzzle and those who solved it..
And the Answer Is:
          facetiously or abstemiously.
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And the Winner Is:
Judith Hallett was first to respond with a correct answer – facetiously. We promised eternal fame as the prize, which is hereby conferred upon her. Brava!
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The Discovery That Surprised Me:
          It turns out that many respondents had used AI for an answer.  I pass no judgment on such apparent depravity, because in so doing they have taught me not one but two lessons:
First, a big generalization from a tiny data base -  we have passed a cultural divide.  We used to sit and scratch the head until we came up with a solution to such puzzles.  Now we turn to AI.  It’s a brave new world!
Second lesson: Be careful which chatbot you choose!  Some come up with implausible answers (anteriourly, indeed!) Other AI bots claimed there really wasn’t an answer.
 Some of the problems at this stage of AI  became clear in a response that deserves special mention
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Honorable Mention: Good Try!
          John Mole, a writer of always enjoyable books,  took the challenge one step further, asking for a Greek word, including all the vowels in the order in which they occur in the Greek alphabet.  It proved a good test of AI tools at this stage of their development: “Gemini failed completely,” he reports.  “Chat CPT produced seven words, none of which included omega.”  Google Gemini pontificated "While there likely aren't many common Greek words containing all six vowels, there are definitely some! Unfortunately, due to the way vowels interact in Greek, forming diphthongs (two vowel sounds combined), it's nearly impossible to have all six vowels maintaining their distinct sounds in one word.”  Blame those naughty diphthongs!
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Why Stop With Greek?
The same challenge can be posed for Latin and modern  languages.   Your German is flawless?  Proud of your French? Swahili?  Solve the same puzzle in these languages, then email your answers to [email protected].  Great fame will follow.
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What I Learned from the Puzzle:
          First, the Big Divide: Some of us scratched our head until we found a solution, but most of the respondents turned to generative Artificial Intelligence for an answer.  Was this cheating or some other form of moral depravity?   I pass no judgment, but this episode is instructive, convincing me that, like it or not, with only imperfect bots in hand, we have crossed the electronic Rubicon and entered AI territory.  That means we have to learn how to use it, alert to facile or false conclusions, but, increasingly, benefitting from what AI does best.     That’s the new puzzle we have set for ourselves.
          So what does it do best?
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What’s AI Really Good At?
          At this stage AI, as we have seen, is not especially good at the very human task of thumbing through lexicons.  I’m not even sure that it’s very much like human intelligence.    Its great strength may be in seeing things we humans recognize only very slowly, or maybe not at all.  What has really impressed me is its ability to recognize patterns in large bodies of data.  It has already, for example, detected incipient breast cancer by recognizing patterns that even skilled human observers do not notice. Or consider this breakthrough:
“It took humans 134 years to discover Norn cells. Last summer, computers in California discovered them on their own in just six weeks.  The discovery came about when researchers at Stanford programmed the computers to teach themselves biology. The computers ran an artificial intelligence program similar to ChatGPT, the popular bot that became fluent with language after training on billions of pieces of text from the internet. But the Stanford researchers trained their computers on raw data about millions of real cells and their chemical and genetic makeup.”
 Carl Zimmer in The New York Times of March 10, 2024.
Could something of comparable significance be achieved if top quality generative AI was given access to the large amount of data we now have available in electronic form about ancient Greece, or some portion thereof, e.g. Greek drama?  Could it recognize patterns we have overlooked?  My layman’s hunch is that classical scholarship may be approaching a breakthrough moment, in which AI will help us see ancient Greece (and other cultures) in fresh ways.   
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On “Breakthrough Moments”:
          When budgets for the humanities are being cut, self-appointed prophets are talking gloom and doom for liberal education, and despondent lemmings are jumping off the Cliffs of Academe, it’s time to think back to a breakthrough moment not so long ago. Classical studies in the United States experienced something of that sort in the 1970s and 1980s as ancient texts became machine readable and scholars found new ways of understanding the ancient world: “ ... it was the advent of modern technology and a young classicist's search for "terms of happiness" that provided the catalyst and impetus for the creation of the electronic thesaurus, namely the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae fittingly named after its Renaissance predecessor.”  But the TLG did not stand alone. There was also the work of the Packard Humanities Institute and the Perseus Project.  Here’s the story of the start of one of these projects. 
          The achievements of that era made it possible to access texts in a vastly more efficient way, but did not fundamentally change how one put that access to work - the questions asked, the conclusions searched for.  This time it may be different.
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And Now?
          The potential of AI is only part of the story for Classics.  A lot has been happening:  The Vesuvius Challenge is starting to make accessible a whole library of hitherto unread ancient texts.  And new discoveries underwater point to more good things to come.  Meanwhile, back at the Institute for Advanced Study “ The Krateros Project is launching a new, exploratory effort to further unlock the texts of ancient Greek inscriptions using its collection of epigraphic squeezes. “ For more information click here.  In most of these projects new technologies are making possible new approaches, and over time a deeper understanding of antiquity.
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Forbidden Words of the Month:
          Speaking plain English has become a hazardous occupation.  Say a forbidden word and you can lose a friend or get in other trouble.  Here’s an example:
          obese (adj.), obesity (n.)
Both are now forbidden, as you can see here.  The objection is etymological, for these words imply that one’s weight is tied to eating.   Drug companies now assure us that any such problem can best  be treated by anti-obesity drugs.  (“Anti-obesity” is still an acceptable term.)
They are right about the etymology.  Obese & Co. entered the English language in the 17th century, probably as a genteel Latinate substitute for blunt AngloSaxon fat.  Obese and its relatives have a long pedigree, , as Etymonline explains: “1610s, from French obésité and ... from Latin obesitas "fatness, corpulence," from obesus "that has eaten itself fat," past participle of obedere "to eat all over, devour," from ...   PIE root *ed- "to eat". (Compare Greek esthiein,  English edible.)
So, yes, it implies that being overweight has something to do with overeating.  Ban the word, say the drug companies. Use our drugs instead. But, beware, the NIH warns us: some of these treatments are risky.
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What Can Philology Do?
It can help “Keep Dead Languages Alive,” as Linguists say in Austin.  But the perspective provided by those languages can help keep our own language healthy and vigorous, even if one has only “small Latin and less Greek,” as someone said of a poet he admired.
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Verses of the Month:
          Everyone knows that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek,” but do you remember the context for that judgment? Here it is:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportion'd Muses,
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides and Sophocles to us;
From Ben Jonson “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author Mr. William Shakespeare.--
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Brush Up Your Latin / Start Testing It Now:
          The study of Latin, beleaguered at some levels, is flourishing in some pre-high school settings.  So, how’s your Latin?  See how you do on the National Latin Exam, which grammar school Latinists are using to test their progress in the language.
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Civic Discourse, and Civil, too?
Congratulations to Jed Atkins on his appointment as Director and Dean of the new School of Civic Life and Leadership  at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Political controversy has surrounded the creation of such programs at several universities, but Atkins brings to his new post a solid reputation as a scholar of Cicero and ancient political thought, and a vision of shaping this new School into living-learning communities such as Duke's Transformative Ideas program.  His real test, however, will be in guiding the selection of 10 – 20 new faculty members for whom the NC legislature has promised support, hoping for appointees willing to challenge views thought currently to dominate the campus.
In the meantime, take a close look at the Duke model.  It seems to me like an exemplary program, well designed to deal with the dread “sophomore slump.”
 
For Your Reading List:
          League of the Lexicon
“This original quiz game is hilarious and erudite, wildly entertaining and learned, zany and academic. Some of the categories addressed are a usage guide to novel punctuation, a Simpsons lexicon, delicious English words for nonsense, reduplicative words, obsolete occupations, origin stories of eponyms, phrases the English use to insult the French and vice versa, the slang and jargon of drunks and drinks, obsolete occupations, grammar jokes (who knew?), medical conditions that make pretty girls’ names, original titles of famous books, and on and on.” The New York Review
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Where Did “The Humanities” Come From?
“[I]n a law court of 63 BCE, Cicero first spoke of studia humanitatis (“the pursuits of humanity”) to highlight the learning of his adversary, the austere Stoic grandee Marcus Cato. Fundamentally, humanitas meant the human condition, but it evolved to describe both humane conduct and a liberal education — synonymous with the artes liberales. “
          David Butterfield in The Critic March 2024.  (Thanks to Michael Fontaine for calling this article to my attention.)
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How Different Things Could Be:
“Must things be this way for the Humanities in the twenty-first century? No. And I saw a brief glimpse of this last summer: on a Greek island, I was surrounded by 30 students reading Ancient Greek, speaking it to each other, amid long-form conversations about what moved them most in these texts. It was so simple, so fresh, and so incredible that the students in question had never studied Greek before, and that their attendance was philanthropically covered by full scholarships. To begin their MA in the Humanities they sat alongside two of the top five ancient linguists in the world, before returning to Savannah, Georgia, to chart the Western tradition up to the present. That institution, Ralston College, models just how different things can be if the Humanities are given the space to breathe and believe.” (This too is from David Butterfield; here’s a link to Ralston’s program of an M.A. in the Humanities.
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A Firebrand in a Hot Bed:
Stanley Fish is now teaching (Milton, et al.) at New College in Florida, a center of controversy.  Here’s a glimpse into what it’s like.
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A Decipherment:
Mark Saltveit reports that his team (including Mike Fontaine and Rachel Fickes has “deciphered nearly all of a previously illegible part of a manuscript (British Library Harley MS 2735, fol. 1r).  It turns out to be a collection of 4th-6th century Roman poetry: 8 versus recurrentes, three Christian distichs, three pagan poems, two by Claudian and one attributed to Seneca, plus five palindromes and one Christian distich comparing two of the Apostle Peter's miracles. Much of this treasure trove is otherwise unknown to scholars who now await its publication.  What to make of it as a whole? I think of it as a time capsule, the collection of favorite pieces brought together by someone who moved freely between pagan and Christian sides of Late Antiquity, and who delighted in language at play.
          Congratulations to Mark and his team.   
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Save the Date for Fireworks on the Hill:
          On April 17 the House Committee on Education and the Workforce will interrogate the president of Columbia University on antisemitism on her campus and relates issues.  (Remember what happened to the presidents of Harvard and Penn after the last such interrogation?)
          Columbia has a Taskforce on antisemitism, but it has not said how it defines the term.  This leaves an opening which will surely be exploited at the hearing.  Stay tuned!
 
A Contest:
          What’s your favorite mixed metaphor?  Here are two birds in hand to prime the pump:
“Every lemon has a silver lining,”
“A rolling stone catches the worm.”
You can do better than that! Send your entry to me at [email protected].
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Quotable:
“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of though on the unthinking.”   
John Maynard Keynes, quoted by Paul Krugman.
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Jilted? Breaking Up?
          Michael Fontaine, following the lead of Ovid’s Remedia Amoris, has some advice in How to Get Over a Breakup: An Ancient Guide to Moving On.  It’s part of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series.
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Guilt Me, Kate:
The Neologism of the Month is to guilt.
          Example, “I guilted him.”’
  The old noun guilt has now morphed into a verb, a transitive one at that, expressing the power of those who master the techniques of modern guiltification.  To ”guilt someone,” which is first attested in 1995, overlaps with old fashioned “making someone feel guilty,” but is not quite the same, since one can be guilted not for what one said or did, but simply for who one is.   
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A Missed Opportunity:
          I would have taught better if I had thought through what Adam Nicolson learned while sailing in the eastern Aegean, for example about early Greeks: “Entrepreneurial qualities governed them: inventiveness, a sprightliness of mind, a new athleticism, a certain fluidity of thought, a desire to rule themselves, to generate their own systems of law and regulate their turbulent lives and to find justice by accommodating difference.”
          Nicolson’s most recent book is How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks.
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The Magnetic Power of Grandchildren:
The tug of grandchildren is pulling us back north. Our house in idyllic Hillsborough NC has sold and we will soon move to Cataumet on the Cape.  Here’s the contact info:
Post Office Box 188
(1090 County Rad)
Cataumet, Massachusetts 02534
There will be no change in email address. Use [email protected] to send items, links, or new subscribers.
Bob Connor
P.S. Please forward this Newsletter to friends, especially rebellious younger friends who might be willing to share their perspectives, ideas, and links.
STOP PRESS: The Trojan War has just turned up in Pompeii.  Here’s the story.