MASTER NEGA TIVE NO. 91-80249 > .. I-d'^rJu^Kn.V MICROFILMED 1991 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 1 7, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR : JOHNSTON > H.W. TITLE: TEACHING OF VERGIL PLACE: CHICAGO DA TE : 1901 •» COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT « DIBLIOGRAPHIC MrCROFORM TARHFT Master Negative // Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliogra phic Record i BKS/PROD Books FUL/BIB NYCG91 -B75664 Acquisitions i NYCG-PT Record 1 of - Record added today • T I0:NYC691-B75664 RTYP:a ST:p FRN: MS: EL: A0:08-21-91 CC:9668 \ BLT:am OCF:? CSC:? MOD: SNR: ATC: U0:08-21-91 CP:nyu L:eng INT:? GPC:? BIO: :? FIC: :? CON: :??? PC:r PD:1991/1901 REP:? CPI: •9 > * FSI: •9 ■ • ILC; :???? HEI:? II:? HMD: OR: POL: DM: RR • COL: EML. GEN: BSE: 040 NNC^cNNC 100 10 Johnston, H. W. 245 14 The teaching of Vergil in high schooISrh[microf orm]. 260 Chicago, rbScott, Forseman & Company ,{:cl901. 300 13 p. LOG ORIG 1 QO 08-21-91 • • Restrictions on Use: FILM SIZE:_3^i3^>^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lAOlA) ID IID DATE FILMED:,, FILMED BY: RESEARi iX TECI-INICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO:..!!^?^ INITIALS -&^- H PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODI3R1DGE. CT r Association for Information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 €4K4 ^ ««? Centimeter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 iiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiiiiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiiiiiil 8 iiU III iiiiiiii li I 9 10 llllllllllllH 11 12 13 14 15 mm iiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiil I I Inches 1 1 1 1 1 1 TTT 1.0 1^ 12.8 1.4 2.5 22 I.I 2.0 1.8 1.6 1.25 TTT T MfiNUFPCTURED TO PIIM STRNDRRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGEt INC. %^\,..4^ ^^ .^ ^ ^? CMARLIS KNAP? UBKARY 1937 riTi ■Mnfinmoi 61VX> LIBRARY tvffltJ^i^ THE • i • • • • f » •• • •• » » t • • • « • «• TEAcHrN(i:i.;.d:K:'.yERGi l • • • • • * < * • • • « ' • • t • 4 « * • » . » ..^ IN. » t » » ■ y • • • » • t • • • • » t f » « HIGH SCHOOLS RBAD BBPORB THB CLASSICAL SBCTION OP THB INDIANA STATE T8ACHBRS' ASSOCIATION AT INDIANAPOLIS, DBC. 28, 190O BY H. W. JOHNSTON, L H. D. PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE INDIANA UNIVERSITT )• CHICAGO SCOTT, FORESMAN & COMPANY 1901 ■■'■"* ■** --—-■— -^n^-- - - L-,, — --■•' -^ ~»t , .-.."^ ' rr i rrufc- i i! ;•/ • • • .•• ••• • • • • • • » • •, ••• ••• •• « • • •••••• • • • •• ••••• • • •• ••••• • «•• • •• ••• 4 • • • • • • • • • • • ' V.5 \ The Teaching of Vergil . in High Schools. In this paper it is assumed that Vergil is the first Latin poet to be read in the High School. This is the case in most of our commissioned schools and there are good reasons why it should be so, but four-fifths of what I have to say will apply as well to the study of Ovid, and what remains may be ignored by the teacher who takes up Ver- gil after the use of Ovid for a term. I speak from the standpoint of a college teacher, of course, but I must be allowed to say that I taught Vergil for fifteen years in a secondary school and therefore speak not as one of the scribes. What Vergil stands for to the scholar and man of let- ters is fitly set forth in the well-known poem of Tennyson, written for the celebration of the nineteen-hundredth anni- versary of Vergirs death. But to the High School teacher, in his professional capacity at least, Vergil is merely the introduction to the study of Latin poetry. This is the important thing to keep in mind, the key to the whole situation, the clue that the teacher must follow through all the windings of the labyrinth. His business is simply to make the pupil to know and to feel the differences between classical poetry and classical prose. All things else are unimportant in comparison. If these fundamental and characteristic differences are mastered in the High School once for all, the pupil has acquired a knowledge of great value to him in the study of his own language, even if he never looks into a Latin book again, while, if he is to cross the threshold, he has received the best pos- sible preparation for the study of Horace and Terence and 4 THE TEACHING OF VERGIL Plautus and also for the study of the prose of Livy and Tacitus as distinguished from that of Caesar and Cicero. On the other hand, if these differences are not to be mas- tered in the High School, the pupil had better read no Latin poetry at all, but take with him to college instead a broader knowledge of the two great prose writers of classic times. Vergil's poetry is distinguished from the prose of Caesar and Cicero by the metrical form and by the diction. I shall speak of the form first because many of the peculi- arities of the diction cease to seem arbitrary and unreason- able as soon as the pupil really understands the construc- tion of the verse and the difficulties inherent in it. That Vergirs verse is the "stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man" we may believe on the authority of Tenny- son, himself the greatest master of meter that has written in English, but it is far more important for the pupil to realize that the hexameter had come from Greece too recently to be completely naturalized by Vergil's time. The teacher does well who tries to bring his pupil to feel in Vergil's verse what Tennyson has aptly called "the ocean-roll of rhythm" that sounds "forever of imperial Rome," but he will do better if he first makes him under- stand the full meaning of a favorite phrase of mine, the "Shackles of the Meter," which I shall explain hereafter. For, between ourselves, nobody knows today — ^Tennyson himself did not know — precisely how Vergil's "ocean-roll of rhythm" sounded in the ears of Augustus when he listened to the majestic verses in the sixth Aeneid, but any schoolboy can be made to see how the "Shackles of the Meter" restrained the natural choice of words, and forms, and constructions, and arrangement, until they made almost a new language out of the Latin the boy thought he was beginning to understand. IN HIGH SCHOOLS. 5 You will not be surprised now if I say very plainly that I attach very little importance to the reading aloud in the class room of large portions of Vergil's verse. Leav- ing out of view the vexed question of how Latin verse is to be read aloud, I still think that much of the time devoted in some of our schools to oral scanning might be spent to better advantage on the analysis of the verse without pronouncing it at all. The one object should be to make the pupil absolutely familiar with the normal structure of the verse, and in only less degree with the deviations from the normal form that Vergil allowed himself, the so-called metrical licenses. The things the pupil needs to know are given in every school grammar, but to ground the pupil thoroughly in them requires a good deal more than the study of rules and the halting scansion that the ordinary method gives. I want to urge, therefore, that the pupil be required to write out verse by verse a full book of the Aeneid in the way I am about to describe. Nothing less than a full book will do, but it makes very little difference what particular book is selected for the purpose. Still, as the language depends largely upon the meter, the pupil should not be made to translate much until he has scanned much, and I should recommend that the scanning commence with the translating, and go on with it hand in hand, and that no more text be assigned for a lesson than what the student can study from the metrical as well as from the linguistic side. Now, when the pupil has worked through the introduc- tion to his Vergil and is ready to begin the study of the text, let him procure a suitable note book and write on the first page, in a large, bold hand, "The Scanning of the First Aeneid." Then let him rule off the odd pages, 3, 5, 7, etc., with seven columns to the page, writing at the top of 6 THE TEACHING OF VERGIL the first column "Vs.," for verse and numbering the remain- ing columns i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Then no matter where he opens the book he will have a blank page on the left and on the right one that looks like this : Vs. 1 2 8 4 6 6 Then let him write in the verse column the number of the verse he is to scan, and after it the succession of light and heavy syllables that the verse presents, each foot in its own column under the corresponding number. Let us sup- pose, for an example, that he is working on I, 270, Imperio explebit regnumque db sede Lavini, his book will show Vs. 1 2 3 4 5 6 270 — ou — — ■ — uu — — When he is called upon to recite he will read from his note book : "Vs. 270, dactyl, three spondees, one dactyl, one spondee." The teacher will then ask whether he has noticed any peculiarity in the verse. The bright boy who is using Greenough's edition will say at once that the a in Lavini must be short, though Greenough has it long in his vocab- IN HIGH SCHOOLS. J ulary. The teacher will refer him for confirmation to Lewis* School Dictionary and will have the whole class write on the blank page opposite the verse in their note books something like this: "270', Ld/vini: the a is short in Vergil in the name of the town, cf. I, 258, although it is long in the derived, adj. Lavinius, cf. L 2. Correct Green- ough accordingly. See Lewis s. v." Or suppose the verse happens to be I, 308, Qui teneant (nam inculta videt) hominesne feraene, the book will show: Vs. 1 2 3 4 6 6 808 KHJ — ou — uu — uu — u Across the page the bright pupils will have written and the teacher will have the others write: "308*, Wd^^' diastole, see A, 359 f (or B, 367 2 ; or G, 721 ; or H, 608 V)." Then when they come to verse 651, Pergama cum peteret inconcessosque hymenaeos, the note book need read merely: "651*, pete/ret : cttn/ det, 308*," for the license is the same and the explanation has been noted once for all. The lemmata of the notes should be written precisely as above. Thus, "651*, pete I ret" shows at a glance that the note is on the long e in the first syllable of the third foot. Every mark means something. Of course the larger number of verses will show no peculiarities, but it is worth while to write them out in full, if only to make sure of the fact and to impress the long vowels upon the memories of the pupils. After one 8 THE TEACHING OF VERGIL full book has been scanned in this way the teacher may introduce oral scanning at his discretion, but the pupil should be required to enter in his note book the full scanning of all irregular verses he meets, always referring to the last preceding verse which shows the same irregularity, or in the case of something new, to the grammar, dictionary, or other authority. When the first book has been finished it is time to intro- duce another exercise. Select from the later books of Vergil, or from any source you may prefer, two or three easy hexameters that show no irregularities, no elisions even, and dictate them to the class, reading the words in any order except that given in the verse. Then direct the class to rearrange the words regardless of the sense so that they will scan. Take for example III, 403, Quin ubi transmissae steterint trans aequora classes. You may get the Vergilian order the next day or you may get Aequora transmissae steterint trans quin ubi classes, or Aequora transmissae classes steterint ubi quin trans, or still others ; the more versions there are the better for your purpose. Then in a week or two you may assign verses showing elisions, and gradually you may introduce the more difficult licenses, always warning the pupil of their pres- ence. Finally you may venture to set irregular verses, merely saying that they are irregular, but not naming the particular irregularity shown. You will find this exercise one of unusual interest and very profitable. Now it seems to me to need no argument to show that Latin versification studied in this way becomes a real thing to the student, much more real than by the method of oral scansion only. I should not plunge deep into the mysteries of caesura and diaeresis; such refinements may be reserved for the formal study of metrics in college. But the rough framework of the verse ought to be clearly understood. IN HIGH SCHOOLS. •. 9 I do not mean that I would never read verse aloud to my pupils and have them read to me, but I would make the oral work subordinate to the other if I lacked time to do them both as I should like. The second point to be emphasized is VergiFs diction; Vergilian grammar it might be called, or better still, per- haps, poetical usage. For we are not concerned nearly so much with what is Vergilian as with what is not Caesarian or Ciceronian. It is simply the difference between the Latinity of prose and poetry that we must make clear, the difference, that is, between the form or construction that the pupil finds in the text of Vergil, and the form or con- struction that he would use himself to express the same thought in the Latin he has learned from Caesar and Cicero. Let me illustrate my meaning with examples. Before you assign your class their lesson of the first ten lines in Bk. I, suppose you dictate a few short English sentences to be turned at once into Latin. You will of course furnish the needed vocabulary yourself, but you must be careful not to let the pupil model his translation after Vergil. Three sen- tences will be enough for the first day : 1. Caesar came from the shores of Troy. 2. Caesar came to Italy. 3. Caesar drove the hero to encounter dangers. For the first the boy will write : Caesar ab oris Troiae venit; and for the second: Caesar ad (perhaps in) Italiam venit, Vergil, too, has written ab oris, but he has no preposition before Italiam, It is clear that you need waste no time on ab oris, but you do need to explain the omission of the prep- osition before the name of a country, for this is a purely poetical usage. You could find no better place, either, to press the point, for the very next verse shows litora with- 10 THE TEACHING OF VERGIL IN HIGH SCHOOLS. II out a preposition and this is carrying the construction as far as it goes. For your third sentence the boy writes: Caesar znrum impulit ut Idbores adiret. Vergil has adire, and here the pupil finds the infinitive used to express result, the very thing that you have been marking him down for during three long years. Surely these ten lines with at least three other constructions that Caesar would not have used are enough for the first lesson. What is true of constructions is true of the forms. In III, 354, the pupil meets aulai (gen.) for aulae; in I, 636 dii (gen.) for diei; in I, 257, metu (dat.) for metui; in I, 95, quis for quibus; in IV, 493, ferveo is third conjugation; in IV, 493, the pres. inf. pass, ends in -ier. And besides scores of Latin forms as strange as these, brought back by Vergil after they had gone out of use, the pupil must learn to decline dozens of Greek proper nouns, with which he gets none too much help in the school grammars and commen- taries. These things and things like these must be emphasized on the grammar side, but these things only. It is time now to take for granted the ordinary prose constructions, and the teacher should notice those only that the translation or the scanning shows to have been misunderstood by the pupil. Or course you will find in Vergil good prose constructions that must be explained as carefully as purely poetical con- structions, but these are those only that have not occurred often enough in Caesar and Cicero to be recognized at a glance. For example, the subjunctives vocasses and tulisset in IV, 678, 679, are good Ciceronian Latin, but they do not occur in the orations usually read in our schools. On the other hand such things as the ablative of means, agent, abso- lute, specification, the dative of possessor, agent, indirect object, may surely be passed now as we pass a friend whom we meet a dozen times a day, with a smile of recognition but without stopping to shake hands. It is intolerable to find these things harped on so late in the course in books otherwise good. If Greenough lets a single ablative of means in the first book go by without a chat and a smoke I have failed to notice it. I have taken pains to make sure that on the first 21 lines he has ten notes with elaborate grammatical references on such things as the abl. of time, abl. abs., abl. of specification (twice !), subj. of purpose, subj. with dum, infin. with word of saying and primus with ad- verbial force. If the pupil still halts on these things after three years* drill in lessons, composition, Caesar and Cicero, it is too late to help him. He was either naturally dull on the language side and ought to have dropped Latin long ago, or he has been poorly taught and the superintendent ought to drop the teacher now. If the pupil is trying to read Vergil without these three years of preparation the Board ought to drop the superintendent. Something must drop somewhere. But where do my "Shackles of the Meter" come in? Everywhere. Once let a pupil understand the difficulty there is in constructing a Latin hexameter, a difficulty that he will understand only after such a drill as I have sug- gested, once let him know that over the free choice of words, the logical arrangement, the usual forms, and the regular constructions ruled the despot meter, and it becomes evident enough to him why Vergil called up forgotten forms from the dead, imported constructions from a foreign land, and broke boldly all the laws of grammar that even Caesar rec- ognized as binding. In I, 57 sceptra is plural ; did Aeolus have more than one scepter? In I, 276 impius Furor has his hands bound behind his back, post tergum, singular, while in II, 57, Sinon has his bound, post terga, plural ; did Sinon have more backs than Furor? In III, 540, four horses are called "these droves,"/ia^c armenta, plural ; did two horses make a drove in prehistoric Italy? In all these places the t^N 12 THE TEACHING OF VERGIL IN HIGH SCHOOLS. 13 ii logically correct singular ends in -tn, and is followed by a word beginning with a consonant. This would make its final syllable heavy where Vergil needs a light syllable, and there- fore rather than hunt up another word or recast his v^rse he has changed the singular to a plural, "The Shackles of the Meter." The same thing changes voice (III, 61), mood (I, ID, 17), tense (I, 49, 300), it rides over everything. Certain words are absolutely shut out of hexameter verse; what could Vergil do with the pluperfect or future perfect tense of moneo, or with any word that contained a light syl- lable between two heavy ones? The "Shackles of the Meter" again. Even in such cases as Italiam and litora (I, 2 and 3) he omits the preposition only because he has no room for it in his verse; in I, 68, he writes in Italiam as Caesar would write it, because here the extra syllable is needed in the verse. Take an extreme instance: in I, 707 and 748, the verse begins with the words nee non et. The , nee and the non make no sense, they simply neutralize each other, but they do make a handy little spondee, and Vergil has . used them in several places to fill out his verse when the words he wanted did not come to him at call. Perhaps if he had lived to finish his Aeneid he would have replaced these stop gaps with fitting words (they are found only once in the Georgics, I, 112), as well as have filled up the broken verses that occur occasionally. Now, these two things, the study of the versification and the study of poetical usage, are the essentials of secondary work in Vergil. If they are done well to the exclusion of all else, the year's work will not have been in vain. If they are not done well, no matter what else is done, it is worse than vanity to pretend that the student has studied Vergil. As a matter of fact there will really be plenty of time to do much more, and there are many things worth doing in addi- tion to these essentials. The teacher can bring home to the pupil the freer range of order and vocabulary in English poetry as compared with English prose by allowing him to follow in his translations the Latin order much more closely than would be permissible in a translation of one of Cicero's orations. He may send the pupil back to the sturdy English of the Bible or the prayer book for words that are no longer used in modem prose, because the pupil is translating poetry and in our modern poetry we too use ancient forms. He may encourage the pupil to essay little translations in verse, for these things give zest to the daily bread and potatoes. He may show how many of the constructions originally made necessary by the "Shackles of the Meter" were first endured, then pitied, then embraced, and taken over into prose to the great enrichment of the style of Livy and Tac- itus. He will acquaint the pupil with the story of Troy, which has inspired so large a part of the imaginative litera- ture of three thousand years. He will make him familiar with Homer in good English translations, and start him in the study of Greek Mythology, and give him his first glimpse of the vague views of man's destiny that it was left for Christianity to dispel. He will have the pupil commit to memory the poem of Tennyson to which I have referred, and will help him to feel the wondrous sympathy of the Laureate of England for the Laureate of Rome. And with all this he will give him a conception of the power and majesty of Rome that can be had in no other way, and will prepare him to understand the essential weakness of all the World Powers that time has ever known. All these things ought ye to do, but not to leave the others undone. They are all well worth the doing, but they are but the fringe and the tassels. The warp and woof of the Teaching of Vergil in the High Schools is the never relaxing drill on the structure of the verse and the usages of poetry. i* LATIN COURSES IN. THE INDIANA UNIVERSITY. Summer Session, The Summer Session of the Indiana University lasts for six weeks. There are no tuition or contingent fees, the only charge being one dollar for the use of the library. Professor H. W. Johnston, head of the department of Latin, will give three courses daily. One is intended especially for teachers in high schools. It will consist largely of lectures, discussions, and quizzes on approximately the fol- lowing subjects : Mondays : Caesar's Indirect Discourse, Tuesdays : High School Latin ; the course of study ; read- ing Latin in its order ; teaching Latin Composition ; teach- ing Vergil; the equipment and pay of the teacher. Wednesdays: Five lectures on Roman Life; the family, marriage, education, dependents, the house, clothing, meals, etc. Thursdays: The Subjunctive Mood in one of Cicero's Orations against Catiline. Fridays: The pros- ody of Vergil or Ovid. Further information may be had of Professor Johnston. Circulars showing courses offered in all departments of instruction will be sent on application to the Registrar, Bloomington, Ind. V ■ 1 II (