Brief 9: Arma virumque cano

 

People were being rude about Media Studies as a degree on twitter this week, and then it for some reason turned into ‘Media Studies Vs Classics’, as if anyone does Classics anymore, and there necessarily have to be false oppositions.

I did Classics. I think I’m more of a Media Studies guy in real life, indeed I briefly looked into doing some kind of Media Studies postgrad thing in my early 20s, but, my education and academic leaning being what it was, I classicsed it all the way.

I never loved it. You meet classicists, a pretty high percentage of those that do it, who love it. I can only say that it was my strongest academic subject, I was most at ease in it, and I had a grounding early on which meant I could coast through a lot of it, in a way that I couldn’t with other subjects.

I find with quizzes I’m doing at the moment that my classics-based knowledge, both in terms of history and language/etymology, is way off what it used to be, and that does make me a little sad.

I may not love it, but it is a good academic subject, perhaps uniquely multidisciplinarian. You do translation, literary criticism, poetry, history, philosophy, politics, linguistics, mythology, theology, the greeks, the romans, the comedies, the tragedies … it’s all in it.

The thing is … you know Boris Johnson did classics … and I kind of get that, and I shudder to think he has a mind like mine, but, I liked in classics that you didn’t have to go toooo deep into anything … it’s not about bullshitting, it’s just, it’s a bit of everything, you understand everything, but you don’t necessarily specialise in one area like in some subjects.

I mean, I think he’s a bullshitter, and maybe he’s a total bullshitter, but maybe he’s able to understand things up to a point pretty quickly and then doesn’t bother going too deep. I think that’s a bit like me … a lot of my teachers and tutors used to say I was getting by on “native wit”, whatever that is.

Well, I can safely say, if his mind is at all like mine, I do not have the skillset for running a country. But I think we differ in other ways, thankfully.

Anyway. There it is. I don’t think it’s particularly important that people do Classics, I think there are more important things to do, and it’s being thoroughly sullied by cheap quotes from Tory MPs. My favourite quote is “Italiam non sponte sequor” … Paul Gascoigne, 1991.