Deep Thought: Managing Our Ignorance

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Deep Thought: Managing Our Ignorance

A man checking his iphone in front of the Hooverville public library.
The world behind you,
nonsense before you.
I sometimes wonder if perhaps Rome was started by exiles from Troy. It's not completely out of the question.

– Elon Musk

The following weird anecdote is dedicated to the beleaguered Classicists of Twitter/X.

As I locked the office door I glanced over my shoulder and saw a couple of my Latin students, lurking outside the science auditorium where we had class (much to the annoyance of the science faculty, who couldn't figure out why so many students wanted to take Latin that the language department, of all insignificant people, should be allowed to use their auditorium).

One of them opened the door and hissed, 'It's okay! He's back!'

I was puzzled. I'd only missed one class. When I needed to go out of town for a conference – I was writing a Sunday School quarterly, of all things, and the publishers were in Nashville – I'd been planning to cancel class. But my colleague from the mathematics department had been so keen on teaching a Latin class for once that I'd okayed the substitution. After all, how many people volunteer to teach Latin? I'd figured they'd be okay. Apparently, I figured wrong.

My best student met me at the door. 'Don't ever do that to us again!' he lamented.

'It was horrible!' wailed another student. 'Dr Smith outlined the whole Aeneid for us!'

'That sounds kind of interesting,' I said mildly. Their looks were scornful.

'You have no idea what he's like in class!' said the first student. 'He rocks on his feet. He jingles all the change in his pockets. And he told us everything we never wanted to know about Latin hexameters!'

I apologised. Then we had our usual class. Note to self: do not let a numbers theorist loose on your Latin class. It's taking interdisciplinary studies a bridge too far.

I am not a Classicist and know almost as little about Virgil's scansion as I do about Riemann geometry. I'm a language person and a medievalist. I taught them the rudiments of Latin, a bit of Roman history, some mythology (I'm a folklorist on the side), and the Greek alphabet. I helped them figure out how to use basic Latin and Greek roots to simplify vocabulary acquisition in specialty fields, thus upping their scores on graduate-level entrance exams. They appreciated. In between, we told jokes.

I come from 400 years' worth of generalists and have the knowledge-collecting instincts of a squirrel. Once, in a discussion, one colleague asked me, 'How do you know this?' to which my department head added, 'Why do you know this?' I shrugged.

The science geeks couldn't figure out why students were taking Latin. I knew why. Two semesters of language were required for graduation. Latin didn't have a language-lab component. The baseball team loved it: one of their number had been to parochial school. The rest cribbed off his memory of what he'd learned from the nuns. Also, I was cool if they cut class to get to away games.

The rest of the time, I taught smaller classes in German and English for foreign students. One memorable year, I also taught Biblical Greek. German classes were bigger in night school because the local German-owned firms paid their workers' tuition. I kept it practical, most of the time.

One night, I got overenthusiastic about all the ways to tell time in German: half-this, quarter-before and quarter-after. When I got to 'fünf nach halb vier', one burly Southern bank employee had had enough.

'Ah'm jest waitin' for some German to ask me what tahm it is,' he growled.

What I'm saying here is: people know different things for different reasons. Often our ignorance clashes. Take Elon Musk, for instance: his tweet about the origins of Rome set off howls from the Classicists, who have been having an eventful couple of weeks on Twitter. But it caused some people to ask intelligent questions.

Backing up a bit: a few weeks ago, a furore arose when some nincompoop on the site criticised Emily Wilson's new translation of the Iliad on the grounds that women shouldn't translate ancient Greek epic poetry, or some such nonsense. Also, her translation is too 'modern', which Dr Wilson says probably means 'not as boring as I expected.' This got more people talking about the Iliad and Odyssey than on a normal Tuesday. It also caused a lot of meme pictures of Brad Pitt with no shirt on.

I was enjoying this respite from political moaning when somebody started the discussion about whether 'men think about the Roman Empire at least once a day.' It must have been a slow week on the conspiracy front because even the Daily Mail got in on this one. It also led to more memes: historians of other periods wondering how often men/women/cat people thought about, say, the Defenestration of Prague. You know, burning issues like that.

Apparently, knowing next to nothing about a subject beyond having watched the latest miniseries is no bar to having a strong opinion on said subject. But scarcely had the 'thinking about the Roman Empire' discourse bubbled down to a slow simmer, when Mr Musk, who leaves no idle thought unuttered, weighed in on the possible Trojan origins of Rome. This led to epic exchanges. Classicists were naturally ironic. But the general public had something intelligent to say.

Isn't this a legitimate theory, though not trying to give any credit to Elon, but I was listening to In Our Time by the BBC the other day and they were talking about the Iliad and they mentioned something about this as well

– Glubtubous Wepple

(And if that doesn't sound like the name of a character who lives on Squornshellous Zeta, I don't know what does.)

Mr Wepple asked a good question. He got a good – and respectful – answer.

It's the subject of the Aeneid, a piece of fan fiction on Homer, written by Virgil in the 1st century CE, under Augustus, conveniently explaining how Caesar (and hence Augustus) are the legitimate heirs of Troy and leaders of Rome. It's a story, not a history.

– Stephan Schulz

I note three things: one, 'fan fiction' is a wonderful way to explain the Aeneid. Two, I hope that somewhere on this planet, a former Latin student of mine reads that and nods knowingly. If you do, please mentally thank Dr Smith. He knows more than I ever want to about dactylic hexameter. (All I know is that I do not want to read 10,000 lines' worth of it.)

And three: it's okay not to know things. We can enlighten each other. We can have meaningful discussions across different areas of expertise. We can pool our knowledge. We can also use our discernment to sift the wheat from the chaff. So here's to making the world a better-informed place, one respectful, entertaining conversation at a time.

PS: Okay, four: the Aeneid was written in the 1st Century BCE. But the rest of the info is good.

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

09.10.23 Front Page

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