Classics

[Hibush]

We often contrast the culture of Ancient Rome with that of the Goths and the Vandals. Whether or not they were barbarians, we don't have much of a legacy of art, architecture, literature or philosophy from them. Those are the things that mostly get taught in these ancient world courses, apart from a history of the battles. Another reason we end up focusing more on Greece and Rome. You can do a bit with the mythologies of other cultures, but even then, what we have about them is often written by the Romans.

It would be fun to expand what gets taught -- maybe a section on cooking, farming and agriculture, for example. But it is hard to find much info on those sorts of things.

If you are studying texts, you are limited to the cultures that left texts behind. Plain old survivor bias. Some cultures' texts have been lost due to the medium or migration, some never made them in the first place. But we can't assume that they didn't have any artists, philosphers or inventors.

Do texts remain from the Asian cultures that were invaded by Greece or Rome, that identify those armies as Barbarian?

[marshwiggle]

We often contrast the culture of Ancient Rome with that of the Goths and the Vandals. Whether or not they were barbarians, we don't have much of a legacy of art, architecture, literature or philosophy from them. Those are the things that mostly get taught in these ancient world courses, apart from a history of the battles. Another reason we end up focusing more on Greece and Rome. You can do a bit with the mythologies of other cultures, but even then, what we have about them is often written by the Romans.

It would be fun to expand what gets taught -- maybe a section on cooking, farming and agriculture, for example. But it is hard to find much info on those sorts of things.

If you are studying texts, you are limited to the cultures that left texts behind. Plain old survivor bias. Some cultures' texts have been lost due to the medium or migration, some never made them in the first place. But we can't assume that they didn't have any artists, philosphers or inventors.

We don't have to assume that. But obviously we can't learn from them if they didn't leave a record. History doesn't have to be some sort of popularity contest, where the "winner" is the one that gets the most "likes". Society will benefit the most by looking for good ideas wherever they are. And also by seeing cautionary tales from wherever they are. There is not, nor has ever been, any totally good or totally evil culture. But some have developed ideas and practices which have been widely adopted by others, which indicates that people not from that culture have seen value in it.

[mamselle]

Ah, I just realized something here.

Visual sources can function as texts as well. (I'm not of the tribe that calls them all that, all the time--it's too limiting a characterization of their multivocality, for one thing--but they can be treated as such and 'read' thus.)

So, if you're only thinking of verbal, written, alphabetical, phonemic, or pictographic texts, those are indeed more limiting than the broader net cast by those who consider material cultural objects and visual art products from more than one stance, as well.

That might help us out of part of the tangle.

Or it could lead us further in...

M. 

[Ruralguy]

One of our classicists a few years ago specialized in visual art of the civilization she studied.

[kaysixteen]

Classics is an area study.   Some classicists are literary scholars, others classical linguists, still others ancient historiand, and also archaeologists.   Three of these subfields were available to speciailize in for PhD studies at my grad school dept-- I was ancient history myself--  but all classicists learn enough about all four to at least teach lower-level undergrad courses in them.

[Hibush]

There seems to be some disparity in thought about whether Classics uses texts exclusively, or whether it uses all tools of inquiry to understand cultures of the Classic Era.

[Ruralguy]

From what I have observed in my own colleagues as just an observer (though I have had to evaluate promotion cases and internal proposals), its closer to being all tools as a  discipline, though perhaps a majority are primarily textual/lingual.

[marshwiggle]

From what I have observed in my own colleagues as just an observer (though I have had to evaluate promotion cases and internal proposals), its closer to being all tools as a  discipline, though perhaps a majority are primarily textual/lingual.

Wouldn't it kind of be the case that the non-textual things are employed to provide illustration and/or insight to the understandings from the text? I would guess interpreting things from a culture with little to no writing but a fair amount of art would be much more difficult than the other way around.

[downer]

There seems to be some disparity in thought about whether Classics uses texts exclusively, or whether it uses all tools of inquiry to understand cultures of the Classic Era.

Really? I can't imagine anyone thinking that scholarly study only uses texts for historical work. I'm no expert but I've read a number of books and they all combine examination of texts with archaeological evidence, and whatever else could be relevant.  Milman Parry famously used Slavic oral traditions of story telling to interpret Homer.

There's a distinct question, whether texts should be the main topic of study, or whether classics also investigates non-textual culture. There the traditional answer is that texts are primary. But iconography and daily life are also subjects of study by more modern scholars. Mary Beard has done a great deal to both popularize and expand the field.

[artalot]

If we're talking about a textual record, ancient Chinese philosophers and historians left behind a voluminous textual record, but Chinese is not included amongst classical languages. Ditto for ancient India (Sanskrit texts date to as early as c. 1500 BCE). There are several known written languages in ancient Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ge'ez from Ethiopia/Eritrea, which we see as early as the 9th century BCE.

So, the way these programs are usually framed is reductive, anachronistic and Euro-centric.

And, as an art historian, no, objects are not employed to illustrate texts. Objects are primary sources in and of themselves that can tell us about the past. Objects are, in many cases better than texts, as they can tell us about cultures that left behind little/no written record. The Romans were very sketchy on where, exactly, China was (the Chinese were pretty clear on Rome and its vassal states), but objects tell us a lot about contact between these empires.
An Indian statuette was found in ruins at Pompeii and Roman coins have been found in India and China. The Romans loved Chinese silk and the Chinese prized Roman glass. We have found Song dynasty porcelain in sub-Saharan Africa, and any gold you see in Roman or ancient/medieval European art comes from gold fields in West Africa.

Lecture over.

[Ruralguy]

That was very informative and appreciated.

[marshwiggle]

If we're talking about a textual record, ancient Chinese philosophers and historians left behind a voluminous textual record, but Chinese is not included amongst classical languages. Ditto for ancient India (Sanskrit texts date to as early as c. 1500 BCE). There are several known written languages in ancient Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ge'ez from Ethiopia/Eritrea, which we see as early as the 9th century BCE.

So, the way these programs are usually framed is reductive, anachronistic and Euro-centric.

Wouldn't this be the case anywhere? (At least as regards the "Euro-centric" part.) For instance, in a Chinese university course on ancient Greece and Rome, wouldn't they frame it in terms of how it related to China? Wouldn't an Indian university frame it in terms of how it relates to India?

It seems to me that at some level it can't be otherwise; since people have been immersed in their own culture then any other has to be framed in relation to it  to be comprehensible.

Teaching fish about birds is going to have to contrast air with water, and teaching birds about fish will require the opposite.

[dismalist]

If we're talking about a textual record, ancient Chinese philosophers and historians left behind a voluminous textual record, but Chinese is not included amongst classical languages. Ditto for ancient India (Sanskrit texts date to as early as c. 1500 BCE). There are several known written languages in ancient Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ge'ez from Ethiopia/Eritrea, which we see as early as the 9th century BCE.

So, the way these programs are usually framed is reductive, anachronistic and Euro-centric.

And, as an art historian, no, objects are not employed to illustrate texts. Objects are primary sources in and of themselves that can tell us about the past. Objects are, in many cases better than texts, as they can tell us about cultures that left behind little/no written record. The Romans were very sketchy on where, exactly, China was (the Chinese were pretty clear on Rome and its vassal states), but objects tell us a lot about contact between these empires.
An Indian statuette was found in ruins at Pompeii and Roman coins have been found in India and China. The Romans loved Chinese silk and the Chinese prized Roman glass. We have found Song dynasty porcelain in sub-Saharan Africa, and any gold you see in Roman or ancient/medieval European art comes from gold fields in West Africa.

Lecture over.

That was very informative and appreciated.

What Ruralguy said.

This leads to a brilliant idea --  a course in Comparative Classical Empires! :-)

[downer]

I'm not a big defender of department of Classics. But is it anachronistic that they don't study Asian culture? There are departments of East Asian Studies, which include courses on ancient cultures. Some places have departments of South Asian Studies. And there are departments of Near or Middle Eastern Studies. We might worry that Asian culture doesn't get studied enough.  But if Classics is implicitly the study of ancient Mediterranean and Western Asian culture, isn't a good deal of the world map then covered?

There is the question of whether these departments are thriving in the modern university. We already know that Classics is gradually fading away. I'm not sure how those other other areas of study are doing.

[artalot]

Wouldn't this be the case anywhere? (At least as regards the "Euro-centric" part.) For instance, in a Chinese university course on ancient Greece and Rome, wouldn't they frame it in terms of how it related to China? Wouldn't an Indian university frame it in terms of how it relates to India?

Yes, except, if we're talking about the US or Canadian systems, we're not in Europe. In the ancient Americas, the Olmec developed hieroglyphs in the 7th century BCE and the Maya were using a developed script by at least the 3rd century BCE. I'm not as knowledgeable about the Americas, but the Maya were working with luxury materials like jade and gold, building immense temple complexes and had a complex system of city-states similar to ancient Greece. The Moche (Peru) did not leave a written record, but they discovered the process of electrochemical plating for their metalwork around 500 CE (maybe earlier?) and in general their metal-working techniques are considered to have been far more advanced than those in Europe (or Asia or Africa). 

If we're going to be geographically biased, let's bias towards our actual geography, not to a culture we've tried to impose upon our geography.