On a sunny, fall morning, Dr. Christopher Barnes and his class of five embarked on a trip across the Upper East Side to visit the ancient Greek and Roman galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Upon arriving, Dr. Barnes handed out worksheets to each student, instructing them to explore the rooms filled with ancient artifacts and collect notes and observations. As they ventured through the museum, the students considered, “What makes art ‘Greek’?”, “What, if any, influences do you detect?”, “How does the MET organize Greek art?”, “Which Greek places are more highly represented in the collection?” and “What object would you like to learn more about?” This exercise requires students to practice their observational skills — a task that mirrors the attention to detail it takes to learn and read a language like ancient Greek. For the next hour and a half, Dr. Barnes and his students explored the galleries, room by room, engaging with each other, the objects and their curiosity.
At Chapin, languages like ancient Greek and Latin have been studied since the School’s founding. These languages, Latin in particular, are embedded in the curriculum, but both have long been dead in the modern world. Why then, are they studied at Chapin and many higher education institutions around the world?
Dr. Barnes believes the study of the ancient Greeks and Romans is still relevant long after the collapse of both cultures and languages. He sees them as windows between the past and the present; a way to evaluate how and why the modern world functions the way it does through contrast, comparison and appreciation. As an example, Dr. Barnes offers America’s founding fathers. These first American politicians assumed their contemporary, and future, Americans would have a fairly comprehensive understanding of Greek and Roman political history to serve as important context for how and why they drafted the design of our system of government.
In Dr. Barnes’ FOCUS course, his students begin to open these windows as they explore the culture, language and history of ancient Greece. During this FOCUS course, students learn the ancient Greek alphabet; develop the ability to read simple stories in ancient Greek; and build familiarity with major historical events, writers, thinkers and some mythology. These new skills and knowledge will prepare them for the National Greek Exam taken in March. Within the course’s framework, Dr. Barnes tailors each year’s class to the interest of the students — this cohort of five, for example, gravitated towards the study of language, which was evident as they explored artifacts at the MET.
While absorbing information about how and why the Greeks made various ceramic objects, the students were keen to discover any ancient Greek writing on them. Having spent the first several weeks of the school year learning the fundamentals of this language, they were able to apply their new linguistic skills in the field. They discovered artists' signatures and could decipher the difference between ones denoting the potter and others identifying the artists. Occasionally, objects displayed other inscriptions, which is where Dr. Barnes illustrates the intersection between history and linguistics as well as past and present.
As the students worked to translate non-signature inscriptions in the MET, they ran into some confusing linguistic trends. While answering questions about possible translations, Dr. Barnes also explained that there was no standardized Greek alphabet at this time. In fact, the ancient Greek alphabet did not even distinguish between capital and lowercase letters. Instead, the ancient Greeks wrote in “all caps.” Writers of this period also tended to mutate Greek characters — which makes ancient Greek even harder to read for novice translators. While these strange adaptations can present additional translational challenges, they offer another window into this ancient culture.
Dr. Barnes also highlighted the linguistic connections between now and then for his students. The word “school,” for example, comes from the word “scholē” meaning leisure as opposed to work. However, it’s not only the development of these words that linger today, but the ideological and institutional concepts they pioneered, as well. The first academies were forming at the same time as the words used to describe learning and education. These academies were formed in Athens where Plato developed and taught his philosophical, love of wisdom, ideas, which evolved into the educational disciplines, including math, science and history, familiar to us today.
The legacy of learning left by the ancient Greeks led to the development of schools across the world, including Chapin. Dr. Barnes’ classes help his students decipher the connection between ancient Greece and their own place in the modern world, giving them a better understanding of everything from language to the arts to politics.
While the ancient Greeks may now live only in history books or artifacts tucked in glass display cases, they continue to fascinate and inspire generations of Chapin students.
