Home ~ Classics Apologetics

Apologetics => pl. n. [treated as sing. or pl.] reasoned arguments in justification of a theory or doctrine.

The Greek and Latin Classics ought to require no apology whatever – no ‘defence’ for their existence or their relevance to the things of today. But the world has moved on since the spacious days of Victorian and earlier curricula, and in the world of books – electronic or otherwise – a few words may pardonably be shared to justify the Classics to a modern and largely untutored readership.

The initiated will at once recognise and echo the sentiments offered by the authors listed below. And if they beg to differ, even better: Cogito (et disputo) ergo sum.

English ‘apologetics’ (from Greek ἀπολογία) is itself a delicious irony: as if Socrates might have been expected to apologise for the manner of his life, before the ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι at his trial in 399 BC!

The unapologetic sentiments expressed under the links below, in defence of the Classics and of classical avenues of thought, are intended to be merely suggestive.

Edith Hamilton – The Greek Way [Book, 1930]

Charlotte Higgins – It’s all Greek To Me [Book, 2008]

Dorothy L. Sayers – The Lost Tools of Learning [Talk at Oxford, 1947]

Tracy Lee Simmons – Climbing Parnassus [Book, 2002]

Virginia Woolf – On Not Knowing Greek [Essay, 1925]

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