TodHistories

Various Classics and historical programs have denied my application on the grounds that I do not know the “ancient languages.” This is a SHAM, and all of academia should be ashamed of it. I did not apply to be a reader of Latin or of Greek but to be a historian. Oh, you might say, but how can you read Livy if you cannot read Latin? The answer is obvious! Livy, like every other ancient writer, has been translated time and time again. Perhaps you needed Latin to read him back in 1807 but no longer: now any man, woman, or child can purchase Livy or any other classical text in English at their local bookshop. So why do programs still insist on the classical languages? To keep people out. Professors pretend that Latin and Greek matter because they know Latin and Greek and most people do not. It makes them feel elite and special and important. It lets them pretend that ordinary people who don’t know Greek could never do what they do, when that is a LIE.