These words were not spoken by a classicist with an axe to grind, but by a scientist addressing his fellow scientists at the 1961 meeting of the British Association. The reminder was timely. A few weeks later the first of the ‘new wave’ of universities opened its doors to students at Brighton. There is an important period of development ahead. What is disturbing is that in the plans so far announced by the new institutions there should be no apparent provision for the study of antiquity, and in particular of the civilization of Greece and Rome. Yet even if the study of the ancient world for its own sake is considered too unpractical to be acceptable in the universities of the sixties, one may still ask what school of European or social studies can make its work a fully intelligible and fruitful whole if it tends only the branches of the tree and neglects the roots, or what links can be established between diverse disciplines if their common background is ignored. To an extent that no one can yet determine our language, literature, religion, superstitions, and institutions of every kind, even our social attitudes and our very cast of thought, are all profoundly influenced by our inheritance from the past. They will be fully understood only when they are fully illuminated by what we can learn from that past, whether medieval, classical, or even prehistoric. In this sense there is no study more topical or more useful than the study of antiquity; and no humane study, certainly, in which greater advances and more revealing discoveries are waiting to be made.

The fourth century saw a withdrawal of philosophy to its more secluded haunts, but it was only a partial withdrawal. There remained and developed a certain antithesis, physical and topographical as well as spiritual and philosophical, between the stoa (and the agora) and the garden.

The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which Aeschylus may have altered the forms or emphases of the traditional plots which he used in the Oresteia and the Supplices and to decide whether we are justified in interpreting any such adjustments as a commentary on recent or contemporary politics. Much of what follows is not, of course, new; but a fresh analysis of the old evidence will, I hope, show that rather than take sides strongly in political disputes, Aeschylus chose to suggest how men ought to approach problems of public life and solve them in the best interests of all.

TheAdelphi is Terence's best-known, though not necessarily his best, play. It tells how a timid young man, Ctesiphon, son of a strict and parsimonious father, Demea, falls in love with a slave-girl, Bacchis. His brother, Aeschinus, who has been adopted and brought up by his easygoing uncle Micio, abducts the girl on Ctesiphon's behalf, thereby causing much distress both to Pamphila, to whom Aeschinus is secretly betrothed, and to Micio himself, who is afraid that his indulgent attitude towards his adopted son's youthful escapades has encouraged him to go too far. However, the whole misunderstanding is sorted out: Micio gives his consent to the marriage of Aeschinus and Pamphila, and Aeschinus swears to Micio eternal gratitude, while Demea is persuaded to put aside his anger at the behaviour of the two young men and come in to the marriage feast. In the next scene Demea comes out and declares that he is going to change his attitude to life and do his best to win popularity by affability and generosity. He proceeds to put this idea into practice by a display of friendliness towards Syrus, Micio's steward, who had taken a leading part in the intrigue, to Geta, the loyal slave of Pamphila, and to Aeschinus himself, whom he encourages to break down the wall between Micio's house and Pamphila's to enable him to bring home his bride more easily; he then persuades the staunch bachelor, Micio, to marry Sostrata, Pamphila's mother, and to give a farm to Sostrata's old family friend, Hegio, in these two instances being stoutly supported by Aeschinus.

‘M. Tvllivs … etiam in hoc opere [i.e. philosophia] Platonis aemulus exstitit.’ There is a fallacy underlying Quintilian's judgement here—he is not by any means at his best in this famous chapter—which is interesting in that, with very different consequences, it also underlies the almost total neglect of Cicero's philosophical works prevalent in this country in our own day. (That Cicero's philosophical works were once popular everyone knows; but many would, I fancy, be surprised to learn how much serious and scholarly attention they are still receiving in America, France, and Germany.) The fallacy which is the common basis of Quintilian's approbation and our neglect is the belief, explicit or implicit in much modern criticism, that Roman literature is to be assessed by comparison, man for man and genre for genre, with Greek. Some such comparisons can be made, and with profit for those who do not prejudge the issue of the investigation and, since the Roman writers often seem deliberately to invite such comparisons, for those who are equipped with the necessary understanding of what ‘imitation’ means in the context of ancient literature. But these comparisons are silly and fruitless when conducted with the kind of naïveté which can see in Cicero's philosophical writings only a ‘poor man's Plato’. To compare Cicero and Plato in this field is to compare incomparables. This becomes clear if we forget our presuppositions and ask, as I propose to do, (1) what was Cicero in his philosophical writings trying to do and was it worth doing, and (2) how did he set about his task, and were his methods the right ones ? Only then can we attempt, as I shall do briefly in concluding, an estimate of his achievement.

We have most of us been surprised when, after reading the history of the late Republic, we first discovered that in the year 50 a motion was proposed in the Senate that Pompey and Caesar should both lay down their commands, that it was passed by 370 votes to 22, and that it was disregarded in the interests of the optimate leaders. Who were these 370 men, and why do we not hear more of them? We have read, of course, that the Senate consisted of this or that number at this or that time; and then we read all about the Claudii and Metelli, with scarcely a word about the massed ranks behind them. Yet there they are, and the picture is incomplete without them. It is likely that we shall never complete it satisfactorily—there are so many of them we do not know, and the few we do know are quite likely to be exceptional in some way—but we can at least make a start by considering the numbers involved and the likely divergence as well as the unity of their interests.

In the preface to his third volume of Thucydides, dated January 1835, Thomas Arnold referred to ‘what is miscalled ancient history, the really modern history of Greece and Rome’. The great headmaster went on to express the hope that ‘these volumes may contribute to the conviction that history is to be studied as a whole and according to philosophical divisions, not such as are merely geographical and chronological; that the history of Greece and Rome is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and forgotten institutions, but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much for the curiosity of the scholar, as for the instruction of the statesman and the citizen’. Today, with education so subject to the demands of utility, it is a vital duty for us to stress these claims. If we are to preserve in our schools the study of antiquity we must show how it can help us to face the problems of modern life.

Many people wish that they had learned Latin or are sorry to have forgotten it; but, being past school age, they shrink from beginning over again. How can we help or encourage these doubters?—Let us say:

1. Latin is not such a hard language as most people think. The belief in its difficulty has grown up from several causes, (1) In many schools Latin is the first subject that calls for serious effort. The approach to Mathematics is much more gradual nowadays than it was about 1900. The newer methods of teaching modern languages disguise or postpone many of the difficulties. (2) In many schools only three or four schoolhours a week are given to Latin, so that the pupil forgets his grammar in the intervals. (3) Pupils are made to read authors far too advanced for them, e.g. Caesar or Livy in the third year's course. This leads to discouragement. (4) Latin texts are nearly always cramped and awkward to read. The disuse of j and v adds to the beginner's confusion. (5) In many girls' schools Latin is taught as an odd subject by ill-informed teachers. Yet as a language Latin is not much harder than German: only the strangeness of an ancient tongue and the different way of thinking make progress slower.

It is over fifty years now since the formation of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology, and the presentation of its Report and it seems to be high time that teachers of languages considered, first, how successful they have been in carrying out its recommendations, and secondly, what modifications are called for in the light of more recent knowledge. The Committee was a strong one, with E. A. Sonnenschein in the chair and R. S. Conway as the original secretary, both representing the Classical Association; the Modern Language Association, the English Association, and various educational bodies sent equally distinguished representatives. Their recommendations, apart from a few reservations by individuals on comparatively minor points, were unanimous, and have on the whole won fairly general neglect, not as a rule through disagreement with them, but simply because it was less trouble to go on using whatever terms one had been in the habit of using before, however inconvenient, confusing, or inexact they might be. Before discussing the recommendations it seems desirable to glance at the history of the ‘old’ terminology in order to see what was unsatisfactory about it and why it needed to be changed.