By Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.
When British-American writer Christopher Hitchens died of complications from esophageal cancer in 2011, he garnered praise from across the political spectrum.
"Everything he said was brilliant," conservative Christopher Buckley wrote in The New Yorker. "It was a feast of reason and a flow of soul." The Nation said Hitchens had both "the distinctive voice that is the hallmark of a real writer" and the storehouse of knowledge to back up his words. "He seemed to have read everything and remembered most of it."
The nearly universal admiration for Hitchens makes perfect sense to historian and PJTV contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Even though the contrarian Hitchens had a history of alienating liberal friends and infuriating conservative rivals, he impressed them all because his rhetoric and his writing came from a wellspring of knowledge in classical literature.
"He made it a point to read as much as he could and to learn new methods of expression," Hanson said. "... When you picked up something Christopher Hitchens wrote, it was captivating." He understood that the method of writing actually strengthens the message.
Contrast Hitchens' mindset with the "you kinda get what I mean" concept of modern communication, and you get to the heart of Hanson's own message in his PJTV lecture "Why Read Classical Literature – from Homer to Augustine?" "We are losing the ability to think and express ourselves logically, not to mention in a way that's beautiful," he said.
Written over a 1,200-year period during the Greek and Roman empires, the classics include everything from Homer's "The Iliad and the Odyssey" to "The City of God" by Saint Augustine of Hippo. They were typically written in Latin but sometimes in Greek or both languages.
The classics remain important because they have withstood the tests of time (2,500 years) and space, Hanson said. They are beautiful, moving and raise great or unique issues. His PJTV lecture covers three reasons people should study the classics:
They require discipline to read them. Written in a foreign language that is often translated into difficult English, the classics require an investment of time. "Picking up The New York Times, picking up a comic book, picking up Time magazine or Newsweek does not require the same level of discipline, learning and education as picking up a treatise in Latin," Hanson said.
They demand a good foundation to understand them. Modern references to the beauty of the Parthenon and concepts like habeas corpus or ad hominem attacks are lost on people who are not grounded in the classics. "You won't know what they're talking about as a learned person unless you've had this foundation in classical Greek and Roman literature and culture, art, history," Hanson said.
And the classics result in a breadth of human knowledge spurned in an era when students are undeclared or major in topics like contemporary modern poetry. The classics, by contrast, "gave the student a sense of belonging and discipline and self-awareness of where he was, where he'd been and where he wanted to go as far as education," Hanson said.
The classics remain relevant in our times, he said, because they help readers understand humanity. Endure a breakup? Euripides wrote all about jilted women. Scorned by politics or prejudice? You may identify with Achilles, the best of the Greek heroes but not the most kingly or well-connected. Looking for a feminist hero? Try Antigone, who finds nobility in her struggles against male leaders to get a respectable burial for her brother Polynices.
Reading their stories "makes us humble and appreciate that we're not unique," Hanson said. "It's a way of grounding us. ... Human experience is pretty predictable."
The classics also lacked something that is abundant today, to the aggravation of many – political correctness. Unlike the writers of Greek literature, Hanson said, writers today censor themselves. "There are some very blunt, stereotyped, mean things in classical literature, but they seem to ring true."
Visit the PJ Store to buy a copy of "Why Read Classical Literature?" It’s a great way to kick-start your own classical education.