[B-Greek] A 17th-century assessment ...

frank boumphrey koinebible at gmail.com
Sun Mar 8 13:53:42 EDT 2009


Perhaps if some of those in power today had studied the classics, and
realized that there really isn't anything 'new under the sun'; that the
Roman empire was destroyed by well-document greed and hubris; that the works
of Homer and Horace are timeless, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in! Even
as a scientist I still think my classic education is the best thing that
ever happened to me, keeps things in perspective.
Frank
www.biblegreek.net
P.S. Samuel Butler was known in his day for being an idiot!

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:14 AM, Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>wrote:

> of ancient Greek and the utility thereof -- is offered in his
> yesterday's blog-entry by the old curmudgeon Michael Gilleland, the
> self-styled Laudator Temporis Acti, in his citation of a note by the
> 17th-century poet Samuel Butler (http://tinyurl.com/d6mo3e), to wit:
> =======
> Samuel Butler, Characters and Passages from Note-Books, ed. A.R.
> Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), p. 286:
>
>     The Greek Tongue is of little use in our times, unless to serve
> Pedants and mountebanks to smatter withall; to coyne foolish Titles
> for Medcines and Bookes of all Languages, and furnish Preachers with
> Sentences to astonish the Ignorant, and loose time withall in
> translating it over again into the vulgar and Nonsense. It is in
> itself a very untoward Language that abounds in a Multitude of
> Impertinent Declinations Conjugations Numbers, Times, Anomulas and
> formings of verbes, but has little or no Construction. And though no
> language is so Curious in the Contrivance of long and short vowels,
> yet they are so confounded by the Accent, that they are render'd of no
> use at all, And in verse, the Accent is again so confounded by the
> quantity of the Syllable, that the Language becomes another thing.
> =======
>
> Apart from the spelling, the sentiment seems pretty "modern" to me.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)
>
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