Latin and Elitism

So the whole point of this site is that I'm enough of a Latin nerd to want to share my translations, rants and general Latin appreciation with anyone who stumbles onto this site. I really do love Latin literature. I think it's amazing; it gave us some of our greatest speakers, politicians and poets.

However, I've been thinking about what I call a universe-model recently - how one's model of the universe is built up - and I've been thinking about the models we are all given. I consider most, particularly in the sphere of politics, to be outright lying to us - and yet it is difficult, if not impossible, to change them or to think beyond them...It saddens me that we live in lies and may have little or no power to change that.

So what has all of this got to do with Latin? Well, part of the universe-model most of us have is that "the classics" - Greek and Roman things - are great. No question about it. And it's all bound up with what, essentially, a bunch of dead rich white guys think. They had the influence (particularly in Europe), so they dictated what the universe-models should say and passed these models down. That's what came out of discussions I was having about this, at least.

And that really got me thinking about elitism - about whether our appreciation for the classics is elitist, about whether learning Latin itself is elitist. As a Latin lover, these questions trouble me and I must do my best to answer them honestly.

There is no doubt that there are many elitist elements to Latin in that most of what we have in Classical Latin was written by, for or about the elite; Classical Latin itself was a written and declaimed language, not a spoken one, and as such it is bound to be more formal and artificial. Much poetry in Classical Latin is aimed at an educated and therefore presumably rich audience - they would get all the references to various things. Indeed, shows of erudition are very much a part of Latin literature. As it was mostly the rich who would be able to understand or write such things, then yes - Latin literature is absolutely steeped in elitism.

The teaching of Latin and its links to elitism are perhaps more well-known; it was a sign of a "good education" that the poor could not get. Oxford and Cambridge, the two most elite universities, used to require Latin for entry. I could give more examples, but you get the idea.

So far, the situation doesn't look good for Latin; the language itself is soaked through with elitism and its teaching has a long and nasty history of being very much an elitist subject. Does that mean that the study of Latin and the classics is inherently elitist? Should we all stop learning it?

I'm going to go off on a tangent now and say this: I like Roman architecture (well, what's left of it - I think it's absolutely amazing in its aesthetics and how long it's lasted) and history (powerful, rich bastards stabbing each other in the back - who needs TV?). Roman historiography is absolutely shit in terms of objectivity, though, and I don't really care for Roman art.

As for Latin literature, part of the classics and therefore regarded as great? Let me be entirely honest with you: I used to not much like classical literature at all. I found the style too clunky and heavy and just left it well alone - the same as I do with Victorian literature, for example. I don't read Greek, so I still tend to give that more of a miss than I should do (though I'd probably disagree with a lot of the philosophy, for example, I'm still missing out on a lot of ideas), but I enjoy Latin literature more now that I understand the language and can read it for myself in the original, albeit with a lot of hard slog. It's all really to do with how Latin and English are vastly different languages and how the literature reflects that; Latin uses a lot of participles and adjectives to describe and evoke a situation, while in English doing the same sounds clunky - it prefers a flowing style that in Latin might read too simply. Similarly, Latin prose (particularly Tacitus) can get mired in long sentences and complex grammar constructions meant to show erudition. In English, that wouldn't work at all - again, a flowing style and mid-length sentences to get the meaning across are more important than trying to be creative with constructions.

Now I come to the crux of my argument, a direct rebuttal of the notion that learning Latin is elitist. This rests on the idea that learning something associated with the rich is itself elitist, or that learning itself is elitist. That is fallacious and dangerous; just because something has been associated with elitism in the past does not actually mean that it's elitist, and more to the point, learning itself is not inherently elitist. Education is not elitist. It allows for upward social mobility, for a start. Even if that weren't true - even if it didn't have that effect - education itself would not be elitist, but the restriction of education to the privileged would be. See the difference?

Another argument against Latin, used in conjunction with the elitism argument, is that of irrelevance. Latin's dead, they say, and nobody uses it any more. Only toffs have any interest in it!

Well, guess what - I'm not a toff. I have a terrible, hard-edged accent and I hail from the heart of bourgeois blandness. I don't have the money or the connections that a true toff would. Relatively privileged middle-class girl? Yes. Anywhere close to the elite? No. But I have interest in Latin - enough interest to start an entire blog devoted to it!

Is that because it's actually relevant? Well...no. It's useful for learning about language, tropes, love, vulgarity and rhetoric, yes, but that's not the reason I translate and appreciate. It's because - shock horror! - I enjoy this, and I do it purely for the sake of my passion. No other reason. None at all.

There's this terrible notion in the modern world, if not before ng to grasp at scientific straws, not really.modern world came about - I really don't know enough about these things - that everything must have some kind of function or relevance. If it doesn't, its existence I spit on that notion! Not everything in life has to be relevant or have a function. Think of hobbies - painting, strolling in the green woods, playing music. Are any of these things functional? Well, unless you're going to grasp at straws, not really. We do those things because we enjoy them, not because they make us more productive or better workers. We do these things because they make us better or happier people, and our lives would be the poorer without them. The world could get by fine without the study of Latin, I suppose; our infrastructure would still work. But we'd have lost entire cultures by not understanding this language. We'd have lost Ovid, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Suetonius, Tacitus, Livy, Lucilius, Lucan, Caesar, Sallust, Cicero, Dio Cassius, Cornelius Gallus, Ennius, and so many others. That may not seem like much to you, but we'd have lost so much knowledge right there. We've lost so much already; we can't figure out Etruscan, for example. Our languages are dying out because no-one bothers to learn them anymore, and with that you lose culture and perspective. You lose a part of what makes the world what it is. Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but to a person who seeks to understand the world - a person like me - it's not just a big deal, it's a tragedy.

So no, the study of Latin is not elitist. Restricting access to it would be. As for its relevance? Unless you go on to academia, not very - but it's fun and tells us more about the world. It's something you can take with you for life, like art or music - and no-one claims that studying those is elitist. (They claim it's pointless, but they're wrong.) So if you can have your art and music, can we have our Latin?