The Classics Alive

‘There you were,” wrote George Orwell unfondly of the Edwardian era, “in a world of pedants, clergymen, and golfers . , . and your dullwitted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags.” That was eighty years ago. Today, the schoolmasters at the Latin/Greek Institute of the City University of New York are the opposite of dull-witted, and they do not indulge in tag-sniggering. There isn’t time. They offer a simple bargain. They will teach you two years of Latin or Greek from scratch in one summer, if you surrender ten weeks of your life. “No student,” the catalogue warns, “should enroll who has any other commitment for the summer, e.g., term papers, job, family problems, etc.” Love that “etc.”

The Mephistopheles of the program is Floyd L. Moreland—a passionate young classicist, pushing forty, with the energy of four men. Moreland helped devise the methods he now employs while at Berkeley in 1967. In 1973, he brought them to Brooklyn College, which runs the program in collaboration with the City University Graduate Center.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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‘There you were,” wrote George Orwell unfondly of the Edwardian era, “in a world of pedants, clergymen, and golfers . , . and your dullwitted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags.” That was eighty years ago. Today, the schoolmasters at the Latin/Greek Institute of the City University of New York are the opposite of dull-witted, and they do not indulge in tag-sniggering. There isn’t time. They offer a simple bargain. They will teach you two years of Latin or Greek from scratch in one summer, if you surrender ten weeks of your life. “No student,” the catalogue warns, “should enroll who has any other commitment for the summer, e.g., term papers, job, family problems, etc.” Love that “etc.”

The Mephistopheles of the program is Floyd L. Moreland—a passionate young classicist, pushing forty, with the energy of four men. Moreland helped devise the methods he now employs while at Berkeley in 1967. In 1973, he brought them to Brooklyn College, which runs the program in collaboration with the City University Graduate Center.