The Romans gave the inhabitants of Hellas the name Graeci but they called themselves Hellenes. In Homer Hellas is a Thessalian tribe and the Greeks are Achaeans, but in the historical period Greeks are Hellenes and Athens is the “school of Hellas.” As a people they appear on the stage of time as ordinary folks, sometimes noble, sometimes traitorous but their literature is, after the Hebrew Scriptures the most important in the West and perhaps in the world.    Their cultural dominance is the work of a mere three centuries, from Hesiod and Homer in the eighth century before Christ to the fifth century Athenian bloom, Ictinus and the Parthenon, the playwrights Euripides and Sophocles, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, Plato and, slightly later, Aristotle.     When Athens was great Rome was a marshy village by the Tiber, and Latin letters would not blossom until the first century BC with Virgil and Horace.  

The defining characteristic of the Hellenes was their language, which is to be distinguished from their subsequent written literature.  We know that Greek existed as a spoken language represented by a pattern of straight lines called Linear A and Linear B found on numerous clay tablets that were preserved when the palace at Knossos was burned perhaps about 1100.    It was long suspected that these linear scripts were Greek, but this was uncertain until Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B in1956.  As it happened Linear B was something of a bore, being mostly tax lists and other official records, but it showed that the language then existed. What caused this language to burst into the Iliad three centuries later and to be written down using an alphabet borrowed from the Phoenicians is a puzzle.   In any event when Greek begins to be written it is written in a language with not two but three voices, middle as well as active and passive; an extra mood, the optative (might, may as distinguished from the would, should of the subjunctive), and a fully developed tense structure. It was also distinguished by the absolute construction, the genitive absolute, which is the ancestor of the ablative absolute in Latin and the nominative absolute in English, these being constructions that work although their relation to the modified sentence is conceptual, not grammatical, as, “The sun having risen, they departed.”  Greek also loves participles and what I suppose we would call gerunds, words that function like substantives although they are really verbs or verbal. It was no wonder that the Athenians, possessed of such a complex and delicate language, called the Persians barbarians because their language sounded like “bar-bar-bar.”   There is nothing quite like the literature of the Hellenes; nothing like it in China or India or Persia. 

The Greeks had always been great traders and there were commercial settlements as far west as Spain. At about the time of Homer Greeks had begun to colonize southern Italy, for which see the Greek temples at Paestum near Naples, creating Magna Graecia, and there are still in Calabria villages in which Griko, a blend of Italian and Greek is spoken, a lingering result of Greek settlements in Italy.  The Greek Rite seminary at Grottaferrata is about sixty miles south of Rome, marking the limits of Greek linguistic advance up the peninsula.

The motives of Alexander the Great may have been complicated—perhaps he did have an ecumenical vision, but their effects were sure and enduring.   His conquest of Egypt Hellenized much of the lower Nile, and made Alexandria, the second city of the Roman world and a center of Greek culture.  One lasting consequence was the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek about 260 BC in the version called the Septuagint.   Their language remained influential long after the Greek cities passed into political insignificance, the most of Greece having been annexed by Rome about 150BC. Athens was always the University town, and to it Roman students were sent.

The Iliad is a great example of the anti-evolutionary nature of culture, for everything subsequent has been more regular, less complex. Plato and Aristotle are easier than Homer and Plotinus (c. 260 AD) is less difficult than Aristotle.  The Aramaic in which Matthew may have been written aside, the language of the Church was Greek and the New Testament was written in that language. The Roman Church spoke Greek until mid-third century, the first great Latin Father being Tertullian, followed soon by Ambrose, Augustine, Cassiodorus, and Boethius. When Constantine moved the capital to his new city on the Bosporus his city became a center of Greek culture and language. The conciliar debates of the fourth and fifth centuries were dominated by Greek-speakers from Constantinople and Alexandria, and there were Roman bishops with Greek names into the seventh century.  

As the ability of Constantinople to control and protect Italy gave way to Gothic power about 600 AD, as Moslem invaders seized Egypt and Syria beginning in the 640s, West and East were increasingly alienated one from another culturally and geographically with the result that the one Italo-Byzantine culture of Justinian became two, with knowledge of Greek failing in the West.   Justinian was the last emperor fluent in both languages. The scene was then set for tension and finally for schism.  Augustine was not read in the East nor John Chrysostom in the West. It would be wrong to say that knowledge of Greek language and literature perished in the West, but such knowledge was attenuated, surviving in Naples.   

Constantinople would remain an ever-embattled citadel of Greek language and culture until the fall of the city to Mehmet II in 1453. Fleeing Greek scholars would then bring Greek language to Florence and the West where knowledge of Greek would suddenly become an essential sign of learning and a culture for the generations who made the Renaissance. Erasmus wrote that all knowledge was contained in Greek literature. Thomas More, when he was Chancellor of the University of Oxford chided the colleges for persisting in the old Aristotelian way.  For the next four centuries schoolboys would be required to learn both languages, and the ability to read the Greek Testament would be one of the college admissions requirements.

Under Moslem occupation Greek did not fare well in its homeland, so that when Shelley and Keats took a romantic interest in Greece it was a backwater dominated by brigands and the Greek language was fast disappearing. When Lord Elgin hauled off the famous marbles there were no Greeks capable of resistance and the Turkish authorities settled for cash for what they probably considered infidel ruins. Reconstructing Greece was a largely British project down to providing a German prince to be the kings of the Hellenes. The old language is said to have lived on among native story-tellers, some of whom were able to recite long passages from Homer, but the Greek language itself had to be reconstructed as modern Greek. Knowledge of Greek in the West would go when the classical curriculum departed about 1870. My guess is that the generation of Eliot, Lewis, and Collingwood was the last among whom real facility in Greek existed. Knowledge of the language is limited to Protestant seminaries, graduate faculties, and specialists, so that the literature that made our civilization is as impenetrable to the average graduate as Sanskrit.  

One particularly devastating result has been the loss to political and ethical discourse of Plato’s Republic and his Laws, and Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics.

Classical Languages & Prologue of St. John’s Gospel (1: 1–14) in Greek – Dr. Madeline Wright

The Importance of the Classical Languages

The study of Greek and Latin literature has endured for two thousand years, as Horace predicted when he wrote about his own poetry in Odes, Book III, number 30:  “I have built a monument more lasting than bronze.”  (“Exegi monumentum aere perennius.”)

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern age up to the nineteenth century, Latin in particular was the essential language of scholarship in the West.  To study the Classics now is to continue a tradition that, while no longer the assured possession of every learned person, still brings the student into a fellowship with the greatest thinkers and artists of the past in a way no other field of study can achieve.

I wrote those paragraphs about 25 years ago.  I’m not as confident as I was.  Is it really important to study classical languages?  For most careers, no, obviously not.  At present I’m inclined to rely on what I heard from a freshman student of mine, in 1975, when I was a teaching assistant for first-semester Latin at the University of Texas.  On the first day of class, I asked: “Why do we study Latin?” After a bit of an awkward silence, one student spoke up.  She said: “Because it’s beautiful.”

I was stunned.  I had expected a ponderous reply about ancient authors and venerable traditions.  I was also delighted.  Latin and Greek may not be important the way they once were, but they are life-enhancing.

So, I’ll try to show how delightful it is to read a great and holy book like the Gospel of John in the original Greek.  At the very least, it is wonderful not to have to decide which translation to use!

Greek & Phoenician Alphabet

Prologue of St. John’s Gospel (1: 1–14) in Greek

John 1:1 ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος

1:2 οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν

1:3 πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν

1:4 ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων

1:5 καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν

1:6 ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος ἀπεσταλμένος παρὰ θεοῦ ὄνομα αὐτῷ ἰωάννης

1:7 οὗτος ἦλθεν εἰς μαρτυρίαν ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός ἵνα πάντες πιστεύσωσιν δι᾽ αὐτοῦ

1:8 οὐκ ἦν ἐκεῖνος τὸ φῶς ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός

1:9 ἦν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινόν ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον

1:10 ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν καὶ ὁ κόσμος δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔγνω

1:11 εἰς τὰ ἴδια ἦλθεν καὶ οἱ ἴδιοι αὐτὸν οὐ παρέλαβον

1:12 ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ

1:13 οἳ οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρὸς ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν

1:14 καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας

John 1: 1–14 King James Version

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

For Reference: Interlinear Greek-English Text: John 1 Interlinear Bible (biblehub.com).

Introduction: Dr. Louise Cowan on Poetry

(Excerpt from “Why Are the Classics Necessary?” Imaginative Conservative, July 21, 2016)

In speaking of the classics as the primary curricular need in our time, then, I prefer to designate them not as literature but as poetry, the generic term used by the ancients for mimetic (fictional) writing. Since the advent of Renaissance humanism this kind of writing has been thought of as belles lettres, or in English as literature, and given until fairly recently a privileged if narrow position—along with proper speech and table manners—in the education of the few. But since the Enlightenment, literature has been increasingly marginalized as the “real work” of the university came to be dominated by analysis, measurement, factuality, competition: the sciences.

But when the Greeks spoke of poetry, they meant not so much a graceful polish of style, an artful use of language, as an entire cast of mind. Poiesis was considered to be a making process governed by mimesis, the envisioning, or imagining, of fictional analogies, a kind of knowing different from philosophy or history and yet occupying an irreplaceable position in the quest for wisdom. “Poetry is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history,” Aristotle tells us in his Poetics. “For poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.” Hence, “it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what ought to happen.”

Poetry appeals to the imagination, that faculty of the mind which enables the intellect to know the things of the senses from the inside—in other words, to experience by empathy things other than ourselves and to make of that experience a new form. This is the action that Coleridge calls the primary imagination (“the repetition in the finite mind of the infinite I AM”). In contrast, the rational intellect, musing on things from above, sees the structure of a phenomenon with a certain detachment that prevents any knowledge of objects on their own terms. It must abstract from them, reason about them, analyze them in order to reach its conclusions. Only through the agency of the imagination, which begins always with cherishing the things of sense—with finding a fullness of being in such lowly acts as seeing and touching—can the intellect know what John Crowe Ransom has called “the true dinglichkeit, the thinginess of things.” This active functioning of the imagination is not the act of a child, a kind of make-believe; nor is it fantasy; nor is it fancy. It is a mature and vigorous act of the mind and heart, oriented toward reality, expanding the cosmos within which the knowing mind dwells.

Yet this mode of knowledge—poetry ordering the passions so as to make them “philosophical” and hence matters for reflection—is increasingly dismissed in higher education. Consequently, American colleges and universities have ceased perform­ing one of their most important functions: not to be simply a repository of past thought or a sponsor of the new, but to serve as a guide for the otherwise wayward poetic impulse always present in the human community. For if this energy is unchanneled, it tends to flow in one of two directions: toward a dionysiac frenzy or toward the banality of kitsch. Poiesis is part of the human make-up, ineradicable and yet vulnerable to debasement in the absence of tradition. We rightly sense that this wildly creative faculty, if ungoverned, will end by making golden calves or bronze serpents–or, as in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, burning down the city.

Thus, if we could imaginably discover the telos of liberal education, the underlying purpose for which communities sponsor so impractical and expensive an endeavor as a university, we might find, surprisingly, that it is not so much to further individual success or to produce “new knowledge” or even to preserve the monuments of the past. Rather, it is to give form to this creative impulse in human culture. As we have always secretly suspected, democracy has imposed upon us from the beginning an obligation to provide a liberal education for every citizen—a charge that implies not simply literacy but an ability to judge the high from the low, the genuine from the shoddy. We are now failing to perform this task, largely because our schools have discarded the great staple of our education, the poetic mode of thought.

The two fountainheads of poetic wisdom for the West have been the Greek and Hebrew writings. One speaks of nobility; the other of humility. Both are necessary. And in both, it is primarily in poetry that they communicate their hearts and enable us to find our own. The Hebrew heritage looks inward, seeking the hidden God; the Greek heritage looks outward, aspiring to divinity. Greek poetry thus shows forth—in symbol, in mimesis, in the eikon—what it is that lies behind appearances. I have written at another time of the splendor of our Hebrew legacy and the necessity of including it in today’s curriculum. What I want to emphasize now is the importance of the Greek paideia, the leading out of the soul and directing it upward.

For it was unmistakably the Greeks who discovered eros, desire and aspiration, as the path toward the highest good. It was the Greeks who saw both the poverty and the profundity of the soul, and who proclaimed, as Aeschylus put it, that we must “suffer into wisdom.” It was the Greeks who intuited the underlying generic patterns of poetry: Who gave us epic, tragedy, and comedy. Homer, in inventing the epic, invented an entire civilization; and Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides produced the most profound tragedies in existence at the moment of that civilization’s greatness, just before the decline. It was an encounter with the Greeks (through Rome, and later, Constantinople) that led diverse European peoples to know themselves and that taught the American founders the meaning of the polis. It is a return to the Greeks from time to time in history that reanimates those same peoples and allows them to remember who they are.

And the poetic process goes on. The sublime Greek writings have attracted to themselves others from various places and epochs and in response to new additions reveal fresh insights, transforming all sorts of heterogeneous texts into an organic, if polyphonic, whole. Diverse works from various cultures, such as The Divine Comedy, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Faust, The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, Madame Bovary, The Brothers Karamazov, Go Down Moses, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Beloved, among many others, strike sparks from the earlier works, revealing nuances hitherto concealed. Then these later texts themselves, after they have settled into the community of immortals, select their associates and invite them in, continuing to unlock within themselves meanings inaccessible without their fellows.

The Pully, by George Herbert (1593-1633) – Mary Conces

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.”

About the Poet: George Herbert | Poetry Foundation

Sonnet 19, by John Milton (1608–1674) – Nancy Lovell

When I consider how my light is spent,
   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
   And that one Talent which is death to hide
   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
   My true account, lest he returning chide;
   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

About the Poet: John Milton | Poetry Foundation