Published just under a decade ago, many readers will find the contours and topics of this book to be more relevant and poignant than they perhaps would have when it first came out — and when politics seemed not (quite) so vitriolic and to be composed only of thrashing ideologies. It should be said at the outset that contemporary politics is by no means the focus of this book, which is about the cultural influence of Greece and Rome in antebellum America. But there is, undoubtedly, a relevance in nearly every chapter with respect to the texture and content of political debates as we are now so thoroughly experiencing.
Written by Carl J. Richard, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, The Golden Age of the Classics in America closely examines the role and influence of Greco-Roman culture in American thought. The influence of the classics in America is a long-standing interest of Richard’s; a previous book, written in 2008, looked at the relationship between the ancients and the Founding Fathers. One of his contentions in this book is that, contrary to a scholarly strand of opinion which sees the Revolutionary era as the “golden age” for the classics in America, it is, rather, the antebellum period which saw the highest, and broadest, point of engagement. This is an interesting argument, and a compelling case is presented for it. This matter of primacy, however, is not something which readers must be privy to in order to appreciate the wealth of information contained in this book. Richard is a clear and articulate writer, capable of showing with both detail and readable prose how antebellum America had a deep and wide-ranging interaction with the classics.
As Richard shows in the book, such interaction took place at virtually all levels of society and in all spheres of life, including politics, religion, art, literature, and more. Richard breaks down the book into similar categories, showing how the classics informed and influenced — and sometimes appalled and outraged — Americans of the antebellum period.
The voices in this book come primarily from elite figures, but Richard does, at times, include a fuller cast of perspectives (though some chapters clearly achieve an array of voices more effectively than others). Richard writes in the preface, “It is unfortunate that the historical evidence for the classical interests of the antebellum middle class…often comes to us secondhand from aristocrats, but it is unavoidable.” While this seems true enough, it doesn’t negate the slightly nagging feeling one might start to get when certain voices — aristocratic or not — seem to dominate too much of the story of the classics in antebellum America. As illuminating as John Quincy Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson may be, for instance, they are still just two voices — and certainly highly educated and distinctive ones, even if they often mirror common sentiments.
Having noted the above — which is one of the very few weaknesses of the book (along with a slight largesse of quotations, some of which don’t feel wholly necessary) — Richard presents an enlightening picture of how antebellum America constantly interacted with the ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
In developing this picture, Richard first takes the reader inside the American home and its surrounding environment, showing how a love and learning of the classics frequently cut across gender, class, and region. Much unlike today’s colleges and universities, where the study of dead languages and the classics has seen considerable decline while a STEM-focused education reigns supreme, the study of Latin (and in time Greek) was viewed as an essential ingredient to an educated and enlightened mind. This brand of education was put on such a pedestal, in fact, that “[s]tudents who pursued…nonclassical options were generally regarded as lacking in intellectual ability or ambition.” And even some women, not just men, pursued the study of classical languages. “Between 1810 and 1870,” writes Richard, “more than half the catalogs of female academies advertised the teaching of Greek, Latin, or both.”
This was no temporary fashion, either; not only was this classical-oriented education a continuation from colonial times, but attempts to alter or replace courses in the classics was met with strong resistance. Furthermore, as the number of educational institutions increased throughout the antebellum period, schools “preserved the traditional classical curriculum.” Such infatuation with the classical languages and the cultures from which they originated could be seen in myriad other ways: the appearance of neoclassical structures; numerous place-names referencing ancient cities and figures (there was, and still is, a River Styx in Ohio); a wider availability of cheap translations of the classics; and even the formation of reading clubs to discuss historical novels and tomes on ancient history. This vigorous zest for the classical past, experienced by many and in quick expansion, “could not help but filter down into the rest of American society, which, in turn, reinforced the conditioning.”
For all the above reasons, and more, Richard argues that the antebellum period saw a “relative democratization” of the classics; whereas in prior periods the study of the classics was prominent only in the lives and education of a relative few, this period, in sharp contrast, saw more and more people “consider [the classics] relevant to their daily lives.” It’s from this vantage point — an increased number of people (and from a greater demographic) engaged with the classics in some capacity — that Richard gives the commanding title of the “golden age of the classics in America” to the antebellum period.
This claim is further articulated and drawn out in each chapter of the book as Richard examines specific domains and topics in antebellum America, including democracy, nationalism, and slavery. Accordingly, each chapter fleshes out certain strands of thought and sentiment pertaining to the topic at hand, helping to illuminate how antebellum Americans employed the classics in conjunction with present-day issues. As readers will discover early on, however, for virtually every issue, contention, or cultural movement, the classics were used as both a bulwark and a wrecking ball. That is, Greco-Roman antiquity and its pantheon of artists, playwrights, rhetoricians, and philosophers could be could drawn upon by both proponents and detractors for one and the same issue. (It’s this kind of history-as-exploitative-tool that makes many chapters of this book resonate so strongly with America’s current political scene.)
Indeed one of the many things Richard does very well in this book is to demonstrate how the marriage between antebellum America and the classics was far from an easy or straightforward one. To be sure, there were times when the classics could be engaged with in a relatively uncomplicated way; but when it came to some issues — like nationalism or slavery — the classics became a center of contention. Aristotle, a figure so central in the slavery debate, was consistently employed as defense of the institution. Ancient slavery itself was brought into the debate as both sides interpreted both its occurrence and significance in often wildly (and irreconcilably) different ways.
Richard highlights this same kind of phenomenon in each of the chapters (and indeed it’s one of the most interesting aspects of the book). This tug-of-war game over the classics showed itself not least in the sphere of Christianity, as some found the content of pagan mythology and its morals (or lack thereof) to be totally at odds with a Christian ethic. (The matter of nudity in classical sculpture was also a hot-button issue). Richard uses Emerson as a central figure in this chapter to show how the classics and Christianity, despite having a tangled relationship for millenia, “generally trod the path of reason and virtue together.”
Richard looks at the topics of democracy, pastoralism and utilitarianism, and Romanticism with equal perspicuity as in the topics mentioned above; there is much in every chapter that will inform readers as well as give them pause to consider how antebellum America’s interaction with the classics has influenced the America of today. As Richard remarks in the epilogue, the classics never held quite the same venerable status after the Civil War; but, as he also remarks, the classics — and the civilizations of Greece and Rome more generally — have never stopped captivating us to one extent or another. Richard’s fine book, along with providing a close, enlightening analysis of the classics in antebellum America, offers insights into our modern psyche. For both these reasons, this book is well worth reading.
Spectatio 