Livy

[Geoffrey S]

Modern work can consolidate, not only using texts but archeological evidence to back things up and discover everyday aspects classical scholars may not have seen the need to mention but which can make all the difference. I certainly wouldn't advocate not using classical texts, but I often find it useful to have a more modern work at hand (or preferably, more than one!) that can shed more light on an issue through a consolidation of sources and the use of additional research. Frequently, it makes it a lot easier to put old texts into perspective. Admittedly it might not add much new information, but a modern work makes it possible for us who haven't (yet) had any formal training to create a solid foundation from which to try to understand the past without years of experience.

Besides. It has been said that only one in many modern works is useful. Was it truly different in the classical times? Even the greatest works are often fragmentary, but there must have been many, many more works now completely lost which weren't of as high a level.

[oudysseos]

As Gene Rodenberry once said, "Sure, 90 % of television is crap. 90 % of everything is crap." Not every single one of Aristotle's works or Shakespeare's plays are fantastic. Just being old doesn't make something better.

[SigniferOne]

Teleklos,

I'm a bit surprised you wrote so much against Plutarch re: Sparta, when I in my post have disregarded Plutarch on the very first line (well not disregarded, but showed how much more other than him there is, to Spartan history). I have no argument with you that Plutarch's account is somewhat idealized, although it's not wildly exaggerated (the story with Archilochus being only a stretch, not fabrication), and contains nuggets that cannot be found anywhere else (Life of Pelopidas, the sayings of Spartans, sayings of Spartan women, and sayings of Great Commanders which contains some from Spartan leaders).

But putting Plutarch completely aside, as I suggested we do, on the very first line, there's so much more we can read about the Spartans: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, Aristotle, even Old Oligarch (pseudo-Xenophon), Aristophanes, Demosthenes, etc. If we read these works, as accurate and truthful as possible a picture of Spartans will be acquired. Furthermore, their style, judgments, and ancient nearness to their subject matter, make these writers engrossing and their judgments weighty. At best, Cartledge can read derive his views from these, but he cannot derive his views from other than these sources. Archeology can find precious remains of Spartan coinage but cannot explain why we find so few of them, or what accounts for the physical remains of Sparta proper being so pathetic, nor can it believe that these pathetic remains once housed the conquerors of those who built the Parthenon.

So Cartledge will have to base his judgments entirely on the written literature that survived about the Spartans, and derive his answers from those works. To be better, he will have to overcome their style, their arrangement of content, and their antiquity. But I wasn't even talking about Cartledge in my "sweepingly generalizing" post. It is possible for him to produce a work of excellent style and weighty judgment in competition with the ancients, on their own subjects (as Gibbon demonstrated). The point is, that most Classicists today, don't. I'm not even considering Cartledge here, along with VDH, Green, and handful of others. I'm talking about the rest, not "all of classicists" as you characterized it, but merely Classics profession as a whole. They don't translate the Iliad in heroic English style as Alexander Pope did, but publish "Gay Achilles" instead. That's what the profession has come to.

Classicists, although from Petrach's time limited by having to reinvent and retread old ground over and over, used to provide valuable content by summarizing ancient works, providing good ways to learn it, and teaching it to all. We may disagree on our personal experiences, but the classicists I see nowadays are completely opposite of that. My Greek professor is writing a book entitled "Concordia and Discours in Aristophanes' Clouds". The title is not an accident, as the rest of the book (presented before us as a preliminary paper) is equally incomprehensible. And here's the worst part: there are good classicists who still carry themselves with old-fashioned dignity, but they are in retreat, hiding away, defeated and slowly disappearing from modern academic culture (and from Western society as a whole). So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, although I have of course nothing but utter respect for you personally.