New Humanists

• That Other Dorothy Sayers Lecture | Episode XCVI

  Send us a textEveryone knows "The Lost Tools of Learning." But did you know Dorothy Sayers delivered another, longer, and even more interesting lecture on education, all about learning Latin? Sayers recalls beginning Latin lessons with her father at the tender age of 6, but laments that after 20 years of study, she was left barely able to read a line of Latin - and not for lack of trying or talent. Sayers contrasts this with her success in learning French, and concludes that what she needed in Latin was a conversation partner and easier, intermediate texts, or in other words: spoken Latin and lots of comprehensible input. Sayers also relates a conversation with C.S. Lewis about what medieval Latin texts he'd give to an intermediate-level Latin student to read.Dorothy Sayers's The Greatest Single Defect of My Own Latin Education: https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/greatest-single-defect-my-own-latin-education/NH episode on Dorothy Sayers's The Lost Tools of Learning: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10347912-the-trivium-according-to-dorothy-sayers-episode-xxHans Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: https://amzn.to/3hoLz7VMary Beard's What Does the Latin Actually Say? https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons-life/what-does-the-latin-actually-sayHans Orberg's Latine Disco: https://amzn.to/3JWgKIlJ.R.R. Tolkien's Letter 43: http://web.archive.org/web/20160308065444/http:/glim.ru/personal/jrr_tolkien_42-45.htmlC.S. Lewis's The Four Loves: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565396New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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• Ahh, the Greeks! | Episode XCV

  Send us a text"Παιδεία found its realization in παιδεραστία." This is how Henri-Irénée Marrou characterizes the relationship between paideia and pederasty. The latter fulfilles the former. Indeed, few things were so distinctively Greek as their love for boys. Thus a close relationship between an older man and an adolescent was, for centuries, the definitive form of education in Greece. Xenophon and Plutarch famously protested that in Sparta, sexual touch between men and boys was forbidden, but modern historians are not so sure. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss "Pederasty in Classical Education," the third chapter of Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity.Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans: https://cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/xenophon/constitution-of-the-spartans.htmlPlutarch's Instituta Laconica: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Instituta_Laconica*.htmlPaul Cartledge's Spartan Reflections: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520231245Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780679724698Mary Eberstadt's Primal Screams: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781599475851Plato's Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521295239New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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• Is Christianity Kitsch? | Episode XCIV

  Send us a textWhat if we find Norse myth or Greco-Roman myth more aesthetically pleasing than Christianity? Should we believe in the pagan gods instead? Is the Bible actually good art? Is Christian theology beautiful? Do Christians find their religion beautiful just because they believe it is true? In a 1944 lecture before Oxford's Socratic Club, C.S. Lewis asks and answers these questions - and more. Jonathan and Ryan follow along as Lewis asks, and answers, the question the Socratic Club put before him: "Is theology poetry?"C.S. Lewis's Is Theology Poetry? https://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Theology=Poetry_CSL.pdfC.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060653200James Frey's A Million Little Pieces: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780307276902Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143038252Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780765382030C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565433C.S. Lewis's Miracles: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060653019Charles Taylor's A Secular Age: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674986916New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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• Sparta: Appalling and Enthralling | Episode XCIII

  Send us a textTHIS IS SPARTA. Xenophon said that, even in his day, the rest of the Greeks thought Sparta's laws wholly strange: "all men praise such institutions, but no state chooses to imitate them." Foremost among these strange laws, of course, were the ones concerned with the rearing and education of children. And these laws, he said, were in their own turn developed not by imitating others, but came from the mind of a single great lawgiver: Lycurgus. It should come as no surprise, then, that the strict military training regime instituted by something of a philosopher-king held out its charms to the young men of Athens who surrounded Socrates. This had, in the case of Critias and the Thirty Tyrants, disastrous results. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at Xenophon, Plutarch, and other texts concerned with the appalling and enthralling institutions of ancient Lacadaemon.Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149Previous New Humanists episode on Sparta: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17503634-sparta-before-the-reactionary-turn-episode-xciiXenophon's Constitution of the Spartans: https://cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/xenophon/constitution-of-the-spartans.htmlPlutarch's Instituta Laconica: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Instituta_Laconica*.htmlPaul Cartledge's Spartan Reflections: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520231245Pericles' Funeral Oration (from Thucydides): https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydides.htmlNew Humanists episode on Nietzsche's The Greek State: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/14044549-compassion-versus-classical-antiquity-episode-lviiPlato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080New Humanists episode on Nietzsche's Homer's Contest: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lviFragments of Critias: https://demonax.info/doku.php?id=text:critias_of_athens_fragmentsPaul Rahe's The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300227093Paul Rahe's Was There a Spartan Mirage?: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2016/10/06/was-there-a-spartan-mirage/New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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• Sparta Before the Reactionary Turn | Episode XCII

  Send us a textWe think of Sparta as a grim place, more of a military barracks with some civilians attached than an actual city. Its inhumane marriage laws, nauseating eugenics program, brutal educational system, obsession with military training, and paranoid suspicion of non-Spartans all led French historian Henri-Irénée Marrou to label Classical Sparta as an ancient fascist state. But there was a time, as Marrou argues in his history of ancient education, when Sparta was the cultural center of ancient Greek life. Artists and musicians flocked to pre-Classical, archaic Sparta to find a population more appreciative of fine poetry and music than anywhere else in Greece. Jonathan and Ryan turn to the Spartan lyric poets Tyrtaeus and Alcman to investigate what Spartan education and society was like in the archaic period, before the city closed in on itself.Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199537341New Humanists episode on Homer's Contest: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lviM.L. West's Greek Lyric Poetry: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199540396Richmond Lattimore's Greek Lyrics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226469447New Humanists episode on Benjamin Constant: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/16302266-what-the-modern-world-lost-episode-lxxxThe Anti-Federalist Papers: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780451528841Thomas Babington Macaulay's Horatius: https://englishverse.com/poems/horatiusPlato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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