university – Tribune of the Plebs

Questions of Morality, Warriorship, and Courage: A Veterinary Student’s Love for the Iliad

by Ruby Laufer

Our whole lives we are asked what we want to be when we grow up. And my answer was always the same: a veterinarian. And yet I’ve spent almost ten years of my life drawn to study Ancient Greek literature alongside microbiology, biochemistry, virology, and any other -ology you can think of.

In the STEM field, I’m constantly being asked what Classics is, and in a slightly condescending undertone: why would anyone bother studying it? It hasn’t been easy to piece together an answer. But as I’ve gotten older, I realize that the decision to be a veterinarian defines what I want to do, not who I want to be. And who I want to be is a more challenging, difficult, and ultimately more interesting question. But it’s also very hard to figure out—if you can ever even figure it out at all.

A lot of our lives are devoted to what we want to be, but very little to who. We tend to treat questions of morality and self-reflection with vagueness—we say “I want to be Good. I want to be Kind.” But we rarely take the time to figure out what that means. And it will mean something different to each person—my definition of kind and good is different from my friend’s or my parent’s. But that doesn’t mean we’re without guidance. People have been wrestling with the question of Good and Kind and Right for thousands of years. And luckily for us, they left traces of their own struggle with human nature in great works of art, in literature, in essays—in the humanities.

For myself, the older I became, the more I was driven (or haunted) by the idea of courage. How can I live my life courageously? What does it mean to be brave? What is the difference between courage and dauntlessness? I turned to Classical literature for answers, and specifically, the Iliad. The attributes and values of the warriors of the Iliad resonated with my search of courage, and I spent a year writing a thesis to create a Homeric model of warriorship. Through it, I was able to define for myself what I believed courage was—the ability to stand your ground, often invoked in the Iliad with the use of the verbs μένω, meaning to stay, wait, or remain in place, and ἵστημι, meaning to make yourself stand.

I love vet school, and my passion to be a wildlife veterinarian drives me every day. But it isn’t enough to define who I am. And through my study of Classics, I have been able to dig a little deeper at the question of who I want to be (courageous, dauntlessness, empathetic, yielding), and how that looks to me. I have loved the Iliad and the study of warriorship because there is something in that text that is fundamental to who I want to be as a person. But that particular text—the Iliad—resonates in that particular way for me alone. For someone else, their teachers could be Shakespeare, or Dostoyevsky, or Tolstoy. The point is to find out for yourself what resonates with who you want to be, and to keep digging at it. And to think for yourself—not plug into Google what courage means, but to figure out what you think it means by looking at people and actions and stories that you believe are courageous.

I’m not necessarily saying that as a vet I will refer to the Iliad to uncover my diagnosis for a case—though my friends have joked about me reading it to patients. Instead, I believe that my veterinary career and my passion for Classics are two sides of the same equation—the left brain and the right brain, if you will. My future work as a wildlife vet is what I want to wake up every day to do, the mark I want to make on the world. And my study of warriorship based on Classical texts helps me understand my values and my emotions, and prompts me to reflect on my own actions. It helps me wrestle with the deeper questions of humanity, human emotion, and gives me tools to guide my responses to the challenges I face in life. Through that, I become a more well-rounded and capable person and doctor.

So, even though I have dedicated myself to the medical field, I will continue to read Aeschylus, Euripides, and Homer. And I will continue to ask myself how I can be courageous, dauntless, empathetic, yielding, and open. Because I intend to meet the challenges of my life as a Homeric warrior would; I intend to be brave.

A Classic Anomaly?

By Grace Volante

CW: mention of sexual assault

My first foray into Classics saw me unknowingly sheltered from the wider problems of the discipline. The enthusiasm with which my teachers delivered A Level Classical Civilisation helped infect me with the same enthusiasm, as did learning Latin with a big outreach organisation led by student volunteers. In this way, I remained blissfully unaware of the realities of how the field operated. It was leaving that protective setting that first made me feel like an anomaly.

My first inklings that I was an anomalous classicist arose at lectures and discussions by prominent academics, run by said outreach organisation for their benefactors and beneficiaries. At the first event I attended, during a panel on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the head of the charity remarked that mortal women being sexually assaulted by gods (as often happens in Ovid) was actually a good thing for the women (though Natalie Haynes was quick to contradict him). At the second event, he praised Enoch Powell’s oratory, classical learning and character.

Anyone experiencing this may have concluded that these bigoted opinions were one-offs, and did not represent anything significant about the classical discipline; but the strange power dynamic which operated at these events was part of the reason that I never reached that conclusion. Being heralded into the pristine Royal Society, where the benefactors look like they’re mates with the royals, and where the benefits of outreach are extolled on a distant stage, is an uncanny dynamic to enter as one of the charity’s beneficiaries. Encountering the apparatus that funded my Latin experience, seemingly run by and for the most privileged, first gave me the feeling of being one of the odd ones out. I became acutely aware that many facets of my background did not fit neatly into this oddly specific and prevalent élite atmosphere.

At school, it wasn’t seen as weird that I was applying for History and Classics at uni, and I had no reason to think that it was until I started the course. I was interested in A Level Class Civ because I liked the stories, both mythical and historical, and I applied to study it at university for the same reason.

When I got to university, I had already been told by a member of the Classics Society that I was “well-spoken for someone from a comprehensive school” within the space of a week. Looking back, this comment buys into the endlessly erroneous idea that Classics is “for” private school kids who inherit it, and have done so for centuries, and that students from state schools studying Classics are somehow exceptional in getting in and fitting in.

My second personal impression of this idea was formed at a pub in the summer of my first year, when an Etonian who had studied Classics at uni relentlessly quizzed me on why I was interested in Classics if I hadn’t studied Latin from a young age. I told him why I’d picked the subject, but he just could not get his head around why I might be motivated to study it in the first place. But what drove you to pick it for an A Level if you hadn’t done Latin before? I got the sense that, had I started learning Latin from age 11 (and therefore probably have been to a private or grammar school), he would not have felt he had to ask me these questions. This awkward interrogation only cemented the idea that some people, probably without even realising it, view it as inherently anomalous and just puzzling to be in Classics without having come to it through the “traditional” route. In this pub conversation, I was evidence of deviation from the norm, not just interested in Classics in the way that other people can be interested in other subjects.

In second year, this unsettling feeling returned when I encountered the patronising statement that I had “worked soooooo hard to get here” having come from a state school, which was followed by nods and mumbles of “well done” by the other boarding school kids at the party. I felt instantly humiliated and slightly disgusted by this little incident, in a way that is difficult to describe. This was the final nail in the coffin, the proverbial coffin being my sense that many saw my state school peers and me as anomalies in our uni setting and as classicists, regardless of statistics. The statement was said as if university was the natural course for these privately-educated people, and that I had to “work extra hard”, without really knowing anything about me. To me, this betrays an assumption about state schools and their students in general, despite the multiple facets and intersections of every state-educated classicist’s background. Just how many of these innumerable factors go into one’s applications and acceptance into Classics at university? The lack of nuanced perspective here betrays the narrative and ideology that goes into these assumptions.

What is the wider significance of all these scattered anecdotes, I hear you ask, which, fortunately, I can still count on one hand? For me, they are not just a few dodgy comments from drunk university students and aged patrons of hallowed charitable institutions. The import for me is that they reflect various realities about the demographics of Classics courses at university, and the experiences of students. It is true that it is much harder for many state-educated people to go to university, and to even come to know what “Classics” is, let alone study it. By the time I had compiled the experiences that dominate this blog post, I was becoming more and more aware of the overall situation regarding UK universities and state-educated students, and some of the differences in their experiences and opportunities. It seems one must have Herculean bravery to take on a new ancient language (don’t worry, all classical references used ironically), considering how the university systems favour those who have already had the chance to learn them at selective or fee-paying schools. And, of course, the state-private / selective-comprehensive education disparities are by no means the beginning and end of the élitism within Classics, and will combine with many other factors to keep selecting for the Boris Johnsons of the world as long as they exist.

But if I’m an “anomaly” according to this traditional view, then so are my peers at university, and those participating in projects that attempt to celebrate and encourage the diversity of classicists, such as this blog. In the way that the Boris Johnsons in Classics are a numerical minority in society, they are ever becoming just one group in the field of ancient studies, as opposed to the sole demographic, and that in itself will change the dominant presentation and narrative of the field.

On that note, we should not rest on our laurels, and we should not forget how far the discipline has still to come, but I do appreciate how antithetical to these élitist comments the rest of my experience at university has been, with its engaged and friendly students, and always welcoming staff. It is very heartening to witness the increasing transparency of the issues touched upon here, and to see many people engaged in widening access through outreach, research, and public-facing Classics (as much as I have various bones to pick with Mary Beard). We are finally seeing the presence of more than just a few hackneyed sides of the ancient world in popular culture (cf 300, and Homer and Aristotle as “the founders of ‘Western civilisation’”), this process fleshing out our collective picture of the ancient world and its reception. These cultural phenomena, from ITV’s Plebs to Lizzo, will hopefully mean that the popular perceptions of the ancient world and those who study it will change, along also with the methodology and practices of the still-exclusionary discipline itself – in so doing, the field will come to better represent and welcome everyone, regardless of background and education. There is so much more to be done, but I have confidence in the burgeoning movements which are slowly making the plebs feel less like anomalies.

It’s all Greek to Me: Life at Uni for a Tick-Box

*Image credit: The Scream 1895/Edvard Munch*

By Molly McDowell

Arriving at university was for me, as for everyone else, a very overwhelming experience. New city, new flatmates, new responsibilities, new friends, new experiences (so many Big Cheese nights), the list goes on.

No one really quite knows what they sign up for in terms of their degree until the first week but I had the added pressure of having picked a subject I knew only from reading fiction books as a young teen (take three guesses as to which American demi-god had inspired me…). Now, this was slightly more stressful than what I imagine the average uni experience for many other people looked like, who already knew the basics about the subject they chose.

However, I didn’t really notice how much I didn’t know in comparison to my peers until quite far into first semester. I took Latin 1A with a bunch of other beginners (I met my best friends and flatmates in this course) so we all knew nothing pretty much; all in the same boat. My other 2 modules were both ‘world’ courses, Greek and Roman World 1A. This is where I suddenly noticed a difference.

Unlike most of my peers, I didn’t go to private school. I should preface this with that this is not a criticism of people who do come from this background, it is just not my personal experience. I had not read the Iliad and the Odyssey (still haven’t finished the second, I’ll be honest). I didn’t have basic foundational knowledge of anything Classics related really- if it hadn’t been in Horrible Histories or Percy Jackson I was stumped.

At no point in the uni application process had it occurred to me what my teachers had warned me about would be correct- that I would be competing with people who had been learning this since they were 11. The only time this was brought up to me was almost a joke: a teacher was trying to tempt me into Oxbridge application and when I said I wanted to apply for Classics replied, ‘well you’ll be a great tick-box for them!’. This was meant in the greatest sincerity I’m sure but it didn’t affect my desire to do the subject or my lack of motivation to go through the Oxford application process (sorry Miss Bryden!), in fact I did not think about this at all until approximately two years later.

This makes it sound much more dramatic than it was, like I suddenly had an epiphany and everything stopped around me as though I was in the movies. Obviously this didn’t happen and it wasn’t that big a deal, which is precisely the point. Whilst I was aware sometimes of my knowledge deficit (not always helped by some lecturers’ implicit assumptions that if they referenced Homer, for example, we would all understand), very rarely was I actively at a genuine disadvantage in first year. You do manage to catch up pretty quickly even if, like me, you did very little of the supposedly compulsory lecture reading (not recommended!).

Don’t panic! Whilst people with private school backgrounds may seem to have this amazingly in-depth knowledge of all these stories/concepts/events you’ve never heard of, it actually matters very little in the long run. You will all be equals by the time you get to honours when you start to specialise. Although, keeping up with the language courses are another matter altogether…