"It has always seemed to me a pity that the young people of our generation should grow up with such scant knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, its wealth and variety, its freshness and its imperishable quality"
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Loeb is doing something slyly old-fashioned here: using regret as a prestige signal. The line presents itself as a gentle lament about education, but its real force is normative. Calling classical literature “freshness” and “imperishable” isn’t just praise; it’s an argument that some works don’t merely survive history, they outrank it. The “pity” is less about individual students missing out and more about a culture misplacing its standards of seriousness.
The subtext is class-coded, but not purely snobbish. Loeb was a businessman, not a don; he’s staking out a model of the cultivated modern elite where commerce doesn’t excuse intellectual thinness. In the late 19th and early 20th century, classical languages were rapidly losing their monopoly in Anglo-American schooling as science, modern languages, and practical curricula rose. His phrasing (“our generation”) frames the shift as a collective diminishment, not a personal gripe. It’s a rhetorical move that turns curriculum politics into a moral weather report: something is deteriorating, and we should feel it.
Context sharpens the intent. Loeb’s name is attached to the Loeb Classical Library, a project built precisely to solve the problem he identifies: giving access to Greek and Latin texts even when readers lack the languages. That makes the lament less nostalgic than strategic. He’s legitimizing translation, public access, and cultural continuity by insisting the classics are not relics but reusable tools - and that forgetting them isn’t progress, it’s amnesia.
The subtext is class-coded, but not purely snobbish. Loeb was a businessman, not a don; he’s staking out a model of the cultivated modern elite where commerce doesn’t excuse intellectual thinness. In the late 19th and early 20th century, classical languages were rapidly losing their monopoly in Anglo-American schooling as science, modern languages, and practical curricula rose. His phrasing (“our generation”) frames the shift as a collective diminishment, not a personal gripe. It’s a rhetorical move that turns curriculum politics into a moral weather report: something is deteriorating, and we should feel it.
Context sharpens the intent. Loeb’s name is attached to the Loeb Classical Library, a project built precisely to solve the problem he identifies: giving access to Greek and Latin texts even when readers lack the languages. That makes the lament less nostalgic than strategic. He’s legitimizing translation, public access, and cultural continuity by insisting the classics are not relics but reusable tools - and that forgetting them isn’t progress, it’s amnesia.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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