New Humanists

Send us Fan Mail

In the 4th century AD, two Christian friends - Basil and Gregory - travelled from Cappadocia to Athens to go study Greek literature with Libanius, the leading rhetorician of the time. While there, these two young and wealthy Cappadocians befriended a fellow student named Julian, the nephew of the Emperor Constantine. There in Athens, the three young Christians mastered Greek philosophy and rhetoric at Libanius' feet. Later on, Basil went on to become the bishop of Caesarea, one of the architects of orthodoxy's victory over the Arian heresy, and was later named a "Doctor of the Church." His friend Gregory of Nazianzus rose to become one of the foremost preachers and theologians in church history. And their friend Julian became Emperor - and having repudiated the Christian faith, attempted to turn the newly Christian Roman Empire pagan again. Clearly, as the example of Julian the Apostate shows, pagan mythology and literature pose a danger to Christian faith. But can pagan learning serve Christian faith as well? Jonathan and Ryan are joined, once again, by the Rev. Calvin Goligher to discuss St. Basil of Caesarea's "Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature," in which he answers heartily in the affirmative, and explains how to use Greek poetry, philosophy, and history for the edification of young Christian students. 

St. Basil's Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature01.htm

Frederick Morgan Padelford's Introduction to St. Basil and the Address to Young Men: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature00.htm

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

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

NH episode on Athanasius: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/9827740-athanasius-on-the-incarnation-feat-calvin-goligher-episode-xv

Robert Louis Wilken's The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300105988

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

We tend to think of the Athenians as philosophers, architects, and mathematicians. But their highest devotion was rather to sports and to music. These priorities are evident from their system of education, in which young Greek men were trained to compete in the Olympics as well as to sing and dance in the chorus. They were jocks. Think of the tragic playwright Aeschylus, who despite his literary accomplishments was remembered in his epitaph merely as a warrior at the Battle of Marathon. A man's man. So when Socrates and the sophists came around, the defenders of old-style musical and athletic education scoffed at the sickly, ugly, and weak men that philosophical and rhetorical training produced: in other words, a bunch of nerds. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan discuss what the comic Athenian poet Aristophanes called ἡ ἀρχαία παιδεία, i.e. that old-time education of Athens.

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

NH episode on Homeric education: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17406673-how-to-raise-an-achilles-episode-xci

Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780684827902

Aristophanes' Clouds: https://amzn.to/46GYaeK

Cato's De agri cultura: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/A*.html

Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://amzn.to/4gHQEox

Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781617206047

New Humanists episode on Alcuin and Charlemagne: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/15992673-the-barren-contemplative-life-episode-lxxviii

Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Everyone knows "The Lost Tools of Learning." But did you know Dorothy Sayers delivered another, longer, and even more interesting lecture on education, all about learning Latin? Sayers recalls beginning Latin lessons with her father at the tender age of 6, but laments that after 20 years of study, she was left barely able to read a line of Latin - and not for lack of trying or talent. Sayers contrasts this with her success in learning French, and concludes that what she needed in Latin was a conversation partner and easier, intermediate texts, or in other words: spoken Latin and lots of comprehensible input. Sayers also relates a conversation with C.S. Lewis about what medieval Latin texts he'd give to an intermediate-level Latin student to read.

Dorothy Sayers's The Greatest Single Defect of My Own Latin Education: https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/greatest-single-defect-my-own-latin-education/

NH episode on Dorothy Sayers's The Lost Tools of Learning: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10347912-the-trivium-according-to-dorothy-sayers-episode-xx

Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: https://amzn.to/3hoLz7V

Mary Beard's What Does the Latin Actually Say? https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons-life/what-does-the-latin-actually-say

Hans Orberg's Latine Disco: https://amzn.to/3JWgKIl

J.R.R. Tolkien's Letter 43: http://web.archive.org/web/20160308065444/http:/glim.ru/personal/jrr_tolkien_42-45.html

C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565396

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

"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.

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Support the show