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"Παιδεία found its realization in παιδεραστία." This is how Henri-Irénée Marrou characterizes the relationship between paideia and pederasty. The latter fulfilles the former. Indeed, few things were so distinctively Greek as their love for boys. Thus a close relationship between an older man and an adolescent was, for centuries, the definitive form of education in Greece. Xenophon and Plutarch famously protested that in Sparta, sexual touch between men and boys was forbidden, but modern historians are not so sure. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss "Pederasty in Classical Education," the third chapter of Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity.

Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans: https://cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/xenophon/constitution-of-the-spartans.html

Plutarch's Instituta Laconica: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Instituta_Laconica*.html

Paul Cartledge's Spartan Reflections: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520231245

Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780679724698

Mary Eberstadt's Primal Screams: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781599475851

Plato's Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521295239

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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What if we find Norse myth or Greco-Roman myth more aesthetically pleasing than Christianity? Should we believe in the pagan gods instead? Is the Bible actually good art? Is Christian theology beautiful? Do Christians find their religion beautiful just because they believe it is true? In a 1944 lecture before Oxford's Socratic Club, C.S. Lewis asks and answers these questions - and more. Jonathan and Ryan follow along as Lewis asks, and answers, the question the Socratic Club put before him: "Is theology poetry?"

C.S. Lewis's Is Theology Poetry? https://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Theology=Poetry_CSL.pdf

C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060653200

James Frey's A Million Little Pieces: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780307276902

Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143038252

Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780765382030

C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565433

C.S. Lewis's Miracles: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060653019

Charles Taylor's A Secular Age: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674986916

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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THIS IS SPARTA. Xenophon said that, even in his day, the rest of the Greeks thought Sparta's laws wholly strange: "all men praise such institutions, but no state chooses to imitate them." Foremost among these strange laws, of course, were the ones concerned with the rearing and education of children. And these laws, he said, were in their own turn developed not by imitating others, but came from the mind of a single great lawgiver: Lycurgus. It should come as no surprise, then, that the strict military training regime instituted by something of a philosopher-king held out its charms to the young men of Athens who surrounded Socrates. This had, in the case of Critias and the Thirty Tyrants, disastrous results. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at Xenophon, Plutarch, and other texts concerned with the appalling and enthralling institutions of ancient Lacadaemon.

Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Previous New Humanists episode on Sparta: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17503634-sparta-before-the-reactionary-turn-episode-xcii

Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans: https://cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/xenophon/constitution-of-the-spartans.html

Plutarch's Instituta Laconica: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Instituta_Laconica*.html

Paul Cartledge's Spartan Reflections: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520231245

Pericles' Funeral Oration (from Thucydides): https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydides.html

New Humanists episode on Nietzsche's The Greek State: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/14044549-compassion-versus-classical-antiquity-episode-lvii

Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

New Humanists episode on Nietzsche's Homer's Contest: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lvi

Fragments of Critias: 

https://demonax.info/doku.php?id=text:critias_of_athens_fragments

Paul Rahe's The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300227093

Paul Rahe's Was There a Spartan Mirage?: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2016/10/06/was-there-a-spartan-mirage/

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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We think of Sparta as a grim place, more of a military barracks with some civilians attached than an actual city. Its inhumane marriage laws, nauseating eugenics program, brutal educational system, obsession with military training, and paranoid suspicion of non-Spartans all led French historian Henri-Irénée Marrou to label Classical Sparta as an ancient fascist state. But there was a time, as Marrou argues in his history of ancient education, when Sparta was the cultural center of ancient Greek life. Artists and musicians flocked to pre-Classical, archaic Sparta to find a population more appreciative of fine poetry and music than anywhere else in Greece. Jonathan and Ryan turn to the Spartan lyric poets Tyrtaeus and Alcman to investigate what Spartan education and society was like in the archaic period, before the city closed in on itself.

Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199537341

New Humanists episode on Homer's Contest: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lvi

M.L. West's Greek Lyric Poetry: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199540396

Richmond Lattimore's Greek Lyrics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226469447

New Humanists episode on Benjamin Constant: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/16302266-what-the-modern-world-lost-episode-lxxx

The Anti-Federalist Papers: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780451528841

Thomas Babington Macaulay's Horatius: https://englishverse.com/poems/horatius

Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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Plato called Homer "the educator of all Greece." But what is a Homeric education? What were the Greeks learning from their supreme bard? Furthermore, the phrase "Homeric education" contains within it a second meaning as well. What kind of education were Homer's heroes getting? In other words, how did Achilles become Achilles? In this episode, we take a close look at Chapter One of A History of Education in Antiquity, in which Henri-Irénée Marrou describes the character of Homeric education, in both its senses, focusing in both cases on "words and deeds," the two fields of excellence every hero must master. Additionally, Jonathan tries to convince Ryan that Iliad Book 9, central to Marrou's explanation of Homeric education, is a story about the triumph of rhetoric.

Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Robin Lane Fox's Homer and His Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781541600447

Robert Drews's Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780367886004

Caroline Alexander's translation of the Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062046291

Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780141191768

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Come read Homer with us. Starting in September, we launch Homer Seminar, a book-by-book sequence of courses reading and discussing Homer's epics, all in Ancient Greek: ancientlanguage.com/homer-seminar

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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Why study history? To understand ourselves? To pass on the tradition of our ancestors to our progeny? To build something new? Jonathan and Ryan compare Richard M. Gamble's and Henri-Irénée Marrou's attempts to answer these questions. They look at Gamble's introduction to his anthology The Great Tradition, and then at Marrou's introduction to his scholarly masterpiece A History of Education in Antiquity.

Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO

Evelyn Waugh's Scott-King's Modern Europe: https://amzn.to/43GcAvp

Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Eric Hobsbawm's The Invention of Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781107604674

New Humanists episode on Zwingli: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13263919-only-the-weak-desire-a-quiet-life-episode-liii

New Humanists episode on Melanchthon: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13181921-return-of-the-old-gods-in-germany-episode-lii

Henri-Irénée Marrou's The Meaning of History: https://amzn.to/4kGYbFr

New Humanists episode on Benjamin Constant: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/16302266-what-the-modern-world-lost-episode-lxxx

Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France: https://amzn.to/3TlJM5j

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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The wise man, like Abraham, does not spurn Hagar. For she is merely preparatory to Sarah. This is the analogy that the great Jewish Platonist, Philo of Alexandria, makes when discussing an education in the liberal arts versus the life of philosophy. While the liberal arts have the dignity only of the concubine, Philo says, education in the liberal arts is nevertheless a necessary step before one can ascend the ladder to Sarah, i.e. philosophic contemplation. Jonathan and Ryan discuss selections from Philo's writings on education and philosophy.

Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO

ACCS Repairing the Ruins Conference 2025: https://classicalchristian.org/repairing-the-ruins/

New Humanists episode on Justin Martyr: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10722142-justin-martyr-s-first-apology-feat-calvin-goligher-episode-xxiv

New Humanists episode on Clement of Alexandria: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17146921-christian-gnosticism-episode-lxxxviii

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/4dyxeAS

AGOGE Symposium: https://www.agogeclassical.org/notes/education-always-political-symposium

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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Clement of Alexandria was one of the many luminaries of the Catechectical School of Alexandria, one of the early church's most distinguished centers of learning and theology. His argument that all truth, whether found in the Bible or in Greek philosophy, issues from a single source, namely Christ, potentially marks him as one of the earliest exemplars of "Christian humanism." But Clement is not without some controversy, including in his attempt to appropriate the label "gnostic" for himself and bring it into harmony with Christianity. 

Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO

New Humanists episode Newman on Knowledge for Its Own Sake, feat. Dr. Robert Jackson: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/11151960

Clement's Christ the Educator: https://amzn.to/4jR8B4N

Clement's Stromateis: https://amzn.to/43rB9Mr

C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060653200

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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Niccolo Machiavelli is often held up as the paradigmatic political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. But as James Hankins argued in an earlier book, Virtue Politics, Machiavelli in fact repudiates the framework common to many of the humanists of the Renaissance. Machiavelli is an outlier. Who then can replace him as the Renaissance's paradigmatic political philosopher? In his new book, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy, Hankins proposes the little-known Francesco Patrizi, friend and protege of Pope Pius II, as Machiavelli's replacement. Hankins joins the show to make his case for Patrizi as emblematic of Renaissance political philosophy and to explain some aspects of Patrizi's life and thought.

James Hankins's Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674274709

James Hankins's Virtue Politics: https://amzn.to/4d0f0bu

Adrian Wooldridge's Aristocracy of Talent: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781510775558

The Patrizi Project: https://patrizisiena.hsites.harvard.edu/

Nate Fischer's Meritocracy Must Not Be Our Goal: https://americanmind.org/salvo/meritocracy-must-not-be-our-goal/

James Hankins and Allen Guelzo's The Golden Thread: https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Thread-Ancient-World-Christendom/dp/1641773995

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

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In his lifetime, John Chrysostom witnessed the true beginning of Christendom: the Emperor Theodosius confirmed the public standing of Christianity over that of paganism and delivered a final knockout blow to Arian heresy in favor of Nicene orthodoxy. But a religion on the upswing can attract opportunistic and ill-informed converts. Jonathan and Ryan look at Chrysostom's advice on the bringing-up of children, and the ways in which the Greek Father uses pagan tropes - Greco-Roman hero cults, wrestling, statuary - to cajole new converts into dropping their pagan habits.

Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO

Jaspreet Singh Boparai's The Man Who Translated the Bible Into Latin: https://antigonejournal.com/2021/10/saint-jerome/

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com