Meta Description: Join Dr. David Noe and Dr. Jeff Winkle for an early morning session in the vomitorium. Discover the connection between Alfred Nobel and Guns N’ Roses, why Robert E. Lee quizzed students on Greek, and why Yale’s president preferred whittling to Anglo-Saxon.
Introduction: Early Birds and Dynamite Puns
Welcome back to “Vomitorium South,” listeners! In Episode 155 of the Ad Navseam Podcast, hosts Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe are recording in the wee hours of the morning. While they debate the existence of “morning owls,” Dr. Noe decides to wake things up with a biography of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
Did you know Nobel’s mother, Carolina, described her son in a very specific way? She supposedly said his smile reminded her of childhood memories “bright as the blue sky” and that his hair was a “warm, safe place.” If those lyrics sound familiar, you might be a Guns N’ Roses fan. Dr. Noe’s punchline? Alfred was her “Swede Child O’ Mine.” (Dr. Winkle loved it; the jury is still out on whether the “Lord of the Fries” gag needs to be retired).
The Golden Age: Part II
Moving past the puns, the hosts dive back into Carl Richard’s The Golden Age of the Classics in America. This episode focuses on the “New Hellenism” and the staggering ubiquity of the Latin language and Greek in Antebellum education.
The “Tully” Test: Getting into College
If you think the SATs are hard, try applying to Harvard in the 17th century or Brown in 1816. The requirements for John Winthrop’s nephew and Horace Mann were identical:
- Understand “Tully”: You had to be on a nickname basis with Marcus Tullius Cicero.
- Write “True Latin”: Not just reading, but composing prose and verse.
- Greek Grounding: A full command of the Greek New Testament.
This leads Dr. Noe to recount his own graduate school trauma with Latin composition. Tasked with translating “During the reign of Numa,” he clumsily wrote Inter Regnum Numae. His professor, the legendary Jack Holtsmark, gently corrected him to the proper Ablative Absolute: Numa Rege (“Numa being king”).
Whittling vs. Anglo-Saxon
As colleges expanded (from 9 to 182 by the Civil War), new subjects threatened the classics. Jeremiah Day, the President of Yale, was not impressed. When offered a course in Anglo-Saxon, he famously sighed, “It might soon be necessary to appoint an instructor in whittling.”
The hosts discuss the difficulty of defending the humanities in a modern world that equates all subjects. Dr. Noe cites Stanley Fish, who argued that you can’t dismiss the liberal arts until you’ve actually mastered them.
Classics on the Frontier & The Military
Richard’s book reveals that classics weren’t just for the Northeast elite:
- Allegheny College: The cornerstone contains mortar from Virgil’s tomb and a piece of Plymouth Rock.
- The University of Michigan: Boasted of a “constant comparison” between the ancient and modern worlds.
- Robert E. Lee: The Confederate general was admitted to West Point based on his reading of Tacitus and Homer. Later, as a college president, he personally examined students in Greek.
The New Hellenism
By the 1820s, American interest shifted from Roman order to Greek liberty, fueled by the Greek War of Independence and the Romantics. Edward Everett, the Eliot Professor of Greek at Harvard (who toured Greece with a letter from Lord Byron), captivated students like Ralph Waldo Emerson.
This era also saw the rise of the Adams Family Values—specifically, John Adams forcing his son, John Quincy Adams, to dig ditches until he learned to appreciate his Latin studies. JQA eventually loved the classics so much that his wife complained he spent too much time with Cicero.
Sponsors
This episode is supported by:
- Hackett Publishing: Keep an eye out for the upcoming Thesmo (Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae). Use code AN2024 for 20% off at hackettpublishing.com.
- Ratio Coffee: The new Ratio 4 is coming—a “glamper’s” dream. Use code ANCOJ3 (for July) to get 15% off at ratiocoffee.com.
Gustatory Parting Shot
Dr. Winkle wraps up the episode with a submission from listener Benjamin Phillips, taken from Plato’s Republic (404C). Socrates observes a tragic flaw in the epic tradition:
“Nor, I believe, does Homer mention sweet desserts anywhere.”
Not a single donut or “Ho-Ho” in the Iliad. Truly, a dark time for the Greeks.Valete! (And Numa Rege!)
