Challenging the Classical Conservatives

Perhaps it was the eclipse, but this week I have got cross with two separate men who are bedded down deep in the British Classics Establishment.

Aphrodite's Bottom, the Opening Experience of the Exhibition

Asked to read the brochure for the imminent British Museum exhibition

Defining Beauty for Radio 3’s Free Thinking, I politely said what I thought to its esteemed Curator, Dr Ian Jenkins. It is a safe, reverential presentation of masterpieces of ancient Greek art.  The conceptual framework underlying it does not challenge the view, first promulgated by 18th-century Aryanists, that ideal male beauty was unproblematically defined for all time as white, sporty and powerful, and female beauty as white and erotic, in the  fifth and fourth centuries BC.

I don’t like the athletic, powerful Amazons being put in the ‘monsters’ section, or the Persians and Africans being  dumped in the ‘realism and character’ section rather than those on beauty or thought. There is no attempt to ask whether the Page Three girl’s ancestress was actually titillating ancient statues of Aphrodite.

But heck, the exhibition is stunning. The artworks are unforgettable, the lighting and the loftiness of the plinths admirable. I saw it today when Nat Haynes asked me to do an interview with her and Mike Squire, world champion at ancient Greek art commentary, for a TV documentary. But it could scarcely be more intellectually conservative.

‘Intellectually conservative’ is not the right way to describe the classical Luddite Harry Mount, who published a destructive article in the Telegraph complaining that ‘the high-minded, mind-expanding beauties of Greek’ have been pushed out of state schools by  the ‘easy’ options of ‘classical civilisation, or classics-lite, as you might call it’. Thus glibly are the many thousands of people who take Classical Civilisation at GCSE and ‘A’ Level across the land publicly demeaned and viciously insulted by a privileged and privately educated snob.

I have experience of teaching Greek, Latin and Classical Civilisation at every level from primary school to elite universities. Indeed, I thought I had taught Mr Mount to ratiocinate in Homer classes I ran long ago at Magdalen College Oxford.  

How different have been the dynamic dialogues I have held with hundreds of students who arrive at universities every year after Class Civ. ‘A’ Level, with their wide knowledge of ancient literature and society, art, architecture and philosophy? They are so excited that learning Greek just takes a few months. How brilliant have been the questing students I have accepted for PhDs after doing Classical Studies degrees at the Open University?

Some of The Magnificent Hackney Uni Extension Classicists!

How intellectually challenging have I found teaching the University Extension Scheme in Hackney this term alongside King’s College colleagues?*  We have faced provocative and genuinely ‘mind-expanding’ questions about ancient theatre, religion and law, posed by amazingly bright members of the public, including teenagers from local comprehensives taking Classical Civilisation. Most of them, at seventeen years old, could make mincemeat of Mr Mount’s arguments. I think they and all State Sector Classicists deserve an apology.

*Dr Matthew Shipton, who has just completed an outstanding PhD with me at KCL on youth in Greek tragedy, after an OU Masters, and Dr Henry Stead, who did a joint OU/Oxford doctorate and is now Postdoctoral Rellow on the Classics and Class project at KCL.