A Greco-Latin Odyssey, on the Shores of the Wine-Dark Sea

Who knows the motto of New York. Excelsior! What does it mean! Upward (although nobody thinks in terms of "excelsior taxes.") 

What’s written on the Great Seal of the United States, on the back of the dollar bill? That’s “ Annuit Coeptis,” which means “God has favored our undertaking.” Below the pyramid is “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” or “the new order of the ages.”

What unites them? They’re all in Latin. That language is literally in our wallets and on New York and other state flags.

These thoughts come to mind since the study of Latin and Greek has been in the news lately at my alma mater (Latin phrase), Princeton University. This spring, Princeton announced this: 

In classics, two major changes were made. The “classics” track, which required an intermediate proficiency in Greek or Latin to enter the concentration, was eliminated, as was the requirement for students to take Greek or Latin. Students still are encouraged to take either language if it is relevant to their interests in the department. The breadth of offerings remains the same, said Josh Billings, director of undergraduate studies and professor of classics. The changes ultimately give students more opportunities to major in classics.

The discussions about these changes predate [President] Eisgruber’s call to address systemic racism at the University, Billings said, but were given new urgency by this and the events around race that occurred last summer. “We think that having new perspectives in the field will make the field better,” he said. “Having people who come in who might not have studied classics in high school and might not have had a previous exposure to Greek and Latin, we think that having those students in the department will make it a more vibrant intellectual community.”

The announcement generated a lot of commentary pro and con. I avidly followed it because for one brief time in the Bicentennial summer 1976, as a new high school graduate heading to Princeton, I mused (from the Greek Muses, get it?) on the notion of majoring in classics at Princeton, which had a world-class department.

I had always liked reading Greek and Roman mythology. The interest spread from literature to languages. From my church years, I knew two of the four Greek words for love: "agape/ ἀγάπη" and "eros/ἔρως." (Note that you can visit many Agape Baptist Churches, but I couldn't find any Eros Baptist Churches, for reasons I didn't quite understand until I reached a more mature understanding of life. Still, "Eros Baptist Church" shows great potential in a branding sense.) 

The Latin interest became clear in a journal entry from May 1972, involving my 8th grade science teacher, Mrs. Morris. By the way, the passage also reveals the manic and growing confusion in my religious identity, between Christianity and Judaism:

Before taking the test I asked Mrs. Morris to sign my annual with something in Latin, because on the Convention trip she said she knew it. She gave me a phrase ‘ego amo tu” to figure out on a slip of paper. She wound up writing no Latin on my annual, just modern English. I wrote in Latin on hers that she passed around. It started ‘Iesus Nazaranium, Rex Judeaum’ with some English stuff and finished with Shalom.

With no background at all in Latin or Greek, I set my mind on learning Greek that glorious summer. I didn’t know an alpha from an omega, so I checked out “Introduction to Greek” from the Mission Public Library and diligently applied myself. I still have a page of my efforts to learn the Greek alphabet, as written on May 2, 1976. The page of exercises begins, appropriately, with the ominous word “nemesis.”

Learning Greek, summer 1976

I never took Latin or Greek at Princeton. I instead opted for Spanish, which I had studied in high school. Once I met the language requirement, my study of languages ended. Ended at Princeton, that is.

\Still, my interest in the classical world remained. Honeymoon in Rome 1989, Latin everywhere! In 2005, on a whim, I bought Wheelock’s Latin, a classic textbook, and I thumb through it every now and then to see what I missed at Princeton. In 2012 I published a memoir with a classic reference right in the title: “A Kosher Dating Odyssey.” In the text, I used the names of Greek mythological figures as code names for women I met. One was Hecuba, the Queen of Troy and mother of Hector, Paris and Cassandra (the real Hecuba lives in a country on the shores of the wine-dark sea, to borrow a phrase from Homer. Another was Calypso, the dangerous and alluring nymph who held Odysseus captive for seven years.

Still worth flipping through.

In recent weeks, Latin and Greek and the classical world came at me like a minotaur. First I read “The Order” by Daniel Silva, followed immediately by “The Last Odyssey” by James Rollins. Both begin with ancient documents housed in the super-ultra-secret Vatican Library, then branch out to secret societies with world-changing agendas. The Order, concerning a plot by European right-wingers to appoint the next pope, has more Latin, including passages from "Evangelium Secundum Pilati," or "The “Gospel of Pontius Pilate.” The Last Odyssey, which treats the journeys of Odysseus as factual, starts at the “Holy Scrinium,” the private library of the popes and reads like a classical version of the movie “National Treasure,” the one with the treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

The Last Odyssey has a satisfyingly bonkers conspiratorial plot that could easily accommodate the conspiracy cult in The Order, you'll need to read them both to get the point.

I can't say I'll be donning my toga and poring over my Wheelock anytime soon. I've got a couple of languages of more pressing relevance ahead of that Latin—Spanish, Portuguese and Hebrew, the ones that power the music I like to listen to on the Latin Alternative, Kol Cambridge and Israel Hour Radio podcasts). 

Still, I like the idea of Greco-Latin awareness. This is my modest attempt to tend to the roots of Western Civilization. Somebody's got to do that. Meanwhile, back at my alma mater, the motto remains "Dei sub numine viget," technically meaning "Under God's Power She Flourishes." Of course, every Tiger knows it really means "God Went to Princeton," where the Almighty no doubt aced all those challenging Latin and Greek classes.