Are Ancient Languages Necessary?

In 2021 Princeton University scrapped the Ancient Greek and Latin requirements for Classics students... and this sparked a huge debate, both within the classics community and the general classics loving public as well.

We ask: Should ancient Greek and Latin be required for Classics students? What is the future of ancient languages?

It used to be that you couldn't even enter university without knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek...but as time goes on, these language requirements have been lowered... and today they have been almost completely dropped, even in the Classics department.

Is this good? Is this bad? Should ancient Greek and Latin be required for Classics students? Or are our modern translations sufficient?

Moreover, how can those who don't know ancient languages benefit from the wisdom of these texts? Beyond academe, can the lay person enjoy the wisdom of history to live a richer life?

Featuring former Eton ancient Greek teacher, Lalya Lloyd, Alexandra Hudson of Civic Renassiance and Anya Leonard of Classical Wisdom.

Learn more about Classical Wisdom here: http://classicalwisdom.com/

And about Civic Renassiance here: https://www.civic-renaissance.com/

About the Speakers:

Lalya Lloyd is an Athens-based teacher and writer who has spent a lifetime living and teaching classics. She was raised by a classicist and studied at Cambridge under Mary Beard. In between she won a prize for the Times Literary Supplement (TLS). More recently, she taught classics at Eton. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and is working on a book about ancient and modern Greece. Other current projects include editing a forthcoming biography of Marcus Aurelius for Yale UP.

Alexandra Hudson is an award winning journalist, author, and speaker, as well as the founder of Civic Renaissance, a newsletter and intellectual community dedicated to moral and cultural renewal.

Anya Leonard is the founder and Director of Classical Wisdom, a site dedicated to bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds. Anya studied philosophy and comparative literature at St. John’s College in Annapolis, a great books program and received her MA in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. She has recently published a children’s book, Sappho: The Lost Poetess, dedicated to the life, works and remarkable recent discovery of a poem written by the 7th century Poetess, Sappho. She currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.