The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Home, and the Antebellum United States (review)

Abstract

Richard, Carl J. 2009. The Golden Age of Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and Antebellum United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. $45.00 he. xiii + 258pp.A professor of history at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Carl J. Richard has written many books on importance of classical antiquity to historical development of culture. In this approachable, information-rich, and useful book, Richard takes reader on a brisk and thoughtful tour of numerous ways that classics informed and also shaped intellectual and cultural life of antebellum United States. Scholars of period will have frequent reason to consult and search through this work, filled as it is with a tantalizing assortment of thinkers making distinct uses of classics and instances in which classics seemed almost to have an independent life of their own in shaping of identity.While importance of classical Rome to nation's founders has been amply documented, what remains less discussed and, if anything, even more interesting is turn to ancient Greece - the Greek Revival - in antebellum period. In first chapter, Classical Conditioning, Richard discusses impact of classics on education, home life, and society. One of biggest shifts was that educators had increasing access to classical grammar books, anthologies, and dictionaries actually produced in United States rather than Europe. Replacing despised, clunky, and generally unhelpful anthology Graeca Majora, English-language edition of Friedrich Jacobs 's vastly superior Greek Reader became a widely used standard text. Another notable figure, Charles Anthon, a Columbia University professor of Greek and Latin who drew on German scholarship, published nearly fifty editions of classical texts (10). Enhancing fervor of New Hellenism was Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman Empire, which certainly caught imaginations of many. (I don't believe that Richard mentions this, but one of legendary tales attributed to Edgar Allan Poe about his own exploits was that he joined Greek army in his youth, a story that has never been substantiated, to say least.) One of benefits of Richard's perspective is that South doesn't get short shrift it so often does in cultural studies of nineteenth-century America. Richard sheds a great deal of light on importance of Greek revival to Southern culture, especially and unfortunately slavocracy.One of notable moments in study is Richard's discussion of key role classics played in intergenerational life of families. He charts importance of classics to Presidential family John Adams, his son John Quincy Adams, and then to his grandson, George Washington Adams. Throughout, Richard's touch is subtle: Masters continued to give their slaves classical names, though none named them Spartacus (32). The classics seeped into every aspect of culture, crossing class boundaries; foreign visitors were wonderstruck by fluency with classics evident even among yeoman laborers (40). As Richard observes, [throughout nation, from Canadian border to Gulf of Mexico, from Atlantic to Pacific oceans, state capitols, governors' mansions, courthouses, customs houses, colleges, banks, hotels, private homes, and even churches, synagogues, and jails were constructed in neoclassical form (35). The first major democracy of world history, fifth century BCE Athens loomed over developing United States: American statesman learned that they could make classical references before even least educated audiences and still be understood (41). Important to antebellum politicians, references to Athenian democracy allowed them to appear erudite without seeming aristocratic (46).The classics also crossed gender and racial lines. …