Download Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/

Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribe

Pop culture. Cancel culture. Judeo-Christian culture. Everyone likes to talk about "culture," but what actually is it? One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, the poet and essayist T.S. Eliot, wrote a short book, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, attempting to answer exactly that question. Written in the latter days of World War Two, as the Allied nations began to realize that Germany's surrender was imminent and that it was up to them to rebuild European culture, Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture was part of a broader anxiety among European and American elites about what the postwar world would look like. 

In Chapter One, Eliot proposes three necessary ingredients for the existence of high culture: the durability of social classes, regionalism, and the balance of unity and diversity in religion. He also gestures towards two possible definitions of culture: first, simply that which makes life living, and secondly, the incarnation of the religion of a people. Jonathan and Ryan discuss Chapter One, as well as related matters, such as California cuisine.

Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651

T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351

Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568

C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920

Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199538744

H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Why I Am Now a Christian": https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/

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

When the Loeb Classical Library was launched, the greatest language teacher of the age, W.H.D. Rouse, wrote an essay meant to promote the Loebs by extolling the magnificence of Greek literature and Latin literature. And boy did he. "Your mind cannot live without them. All the great intellectual impulses begin in Greece; the modern world only grows crops from the Greek seed." While Rouse admitted that his space was short, and so he had to "be dogmatic," this essay, "Machines or Mind?" is a worthy read, not least because of its response to the utilitarians who'd prefer we abandon the humanities and instead bend all of our time, effort, and resources to making more machines. One of Rouse's 21st century heirs, Senior Fellow of Classical Languages at New Saint Andrews College and founder of Picta Dicta, Timothy Griffith, joins the podcast to discuss the essay, Rouse's place in the tradition of humanist education, and whether the Aeneid can properly be called an epic.

W.H.D. Rouse's Machines or Mind?: https://antigonejournal.com/2024/11/machines-or-mind-loebs-rouse/

Picta Dicta: https://pictadicta.com/

W.H.D. Rouse's Latin on the Direct Method: https://scholalatina.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Rouse-Appleton-Latin-on-the-direct-method.pdf

C.S. Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195003451

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

Liberal education is for the man of leisure: Either a gentleman engaged in politics, or a philosopher engaged in contemplation. What role, then, can liberal learning have in a mass democracy? In the lecture "Liberal Education and Responsibility," the political theorist Leo Strauss defends his statement that "Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the necessary endavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society." Along the way, he also discusses religious education, the distinction between the gentleman and the philosopher, and the insufficiency of the great books movement. Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos rejoins the podcast for another dive into Strauss.

Leo Strauss's Liberal Education and Responsibility: https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation/Strauss-LiberalEducationResponsibility/

NH episode on Leo Strauss's What Is Liberal Education?: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/18277048-big-bad-leo-strauss-feat-pavlos-papadopoulos-episode-ci

Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781451683202

Jonathan Swift's The Battle of the Books: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781507890530

Mark A. Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780802882042

Greg Lukianoff's and Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780735224919

Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780063215054

Robert R. Reilly's The Closing of the Muslim Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781610170024

Allan Bloom's translation of The Republic of Plato: https://amzn.to/49ZMPIs

Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America (trans. Harvey Mansfield): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226805368

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/4buKd7W

C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944

Josef Pieper's Leisure The Basis of Culture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781586172565

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

What do you think of laryngeals? How should we refer to the Anatolian languages? Where do you stand on Gimbutas and Renfrew? In this episode of New Humanists, Dr. Colin Gorrie helps guide us through the Indo-European family tree. We follow the various branches as they spread out across Europe and Asia: Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic, Italic, and more. This episode covers the second half of Laura Spinney's introduction to the field of Indo-European studies, Proto.

Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586

Colin Gorrie's YouTube interview with Laura Spinney: https://youtu.be/_nVIV-qaHHY

M.L. West's Indo-European Poetry and Myth: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199558919

Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226458120

Colin Gorrie's "Dead Language Society" Substack: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/

Calvert Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195085952

Ekho, the ancient language audiobook app, is coming soon. Check here for more details: https://ancientlanguage.com/ekho

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

Supposedly, about half of the world population speaks languages that all come from one root language: Proto-Indo-European. How do we know, and where did "PIE" come from? Ukraine, Anatolia, or somewhere else? Did the Indo-Europeans spread out in a massive, peaceful migration of farmers? Or as small bands of shepherds, stealing livestock and killing anyone standing in the way? How do we even know what a prehistoric language sounded like if we don't have any record of their language? In this episode, Colin Gorrie joins us to discuss the opening chapters of Laura Spinney's Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, a fascinating and enjoyable survey of the current state of research into Proto-Indo-European, and a useful introduction to the fields of historical linguistics, archaeology, and paleogenetics, and how they relate to the question of Indo-European origins.

Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586

Colin Gorrie's YouTube interview with Laura Spinney: https://youtu.be/_nVIV-qaHHY

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

Erwin Rohde's Psyche: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780415225632

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

The classical education revival movement began in the 1980s as a DIY, grassroots attempt to recover the medieval liberal arts, most notably the Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. However, the classical ed movement also frequently drapes itself in the garb of Plato: leading students out of the cave, employing Socratic techniques in the classroom, and ensuring its students do not lead unexamined lives. But what if classical education, both in its love for the Trivium (and Quadrivium) as well as its institutional character, borrows more from the great enemy and rival of Socrates - sophistry? In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read H.I. Marrou's chapter from A History of Education in Antiquity on the sophists and the birth of classical education proper.

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

Plato's Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521682985

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

What is liberal education? It's the prompt that has launched one thousand essays, and in a 1959 lecture at the University of Chicago, the (in)famous Leo Strauss gave his answer. Despite fleeing Nazi Germany and coming to the United States, Strauss wasn't afraid of criticizing the positivism, historicism, and relativism of the American academy. And as is evident in reading his lecture "What is Liberal Education?" neither was he afraid of calling into question the value and feasibility of modern democracy. Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss Strauss, his relation to the Great Books movement, and his views on the relation between liberal education and mass democratic society.

Leo Strauss's What Is Liberal Education? https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation/Strauss-WhatIsLiberalEducation/

Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis of Culture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781586172565

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

In celebration of the 100th episode of New Humanists, we do an extended episode that is a retrospective, discussing the history of the Ancient Language Institute and the New Humanists podcast, has some updates on what we're up to at the moment, and a peek behind the curtain so listeners can find out what is upcoming at ALI and on the podcast. We also welcome both Colin Gorrie and Luke Ranieri to the show to discuss Ekho: The Ancient Language Streaming App.

Alan Jacobs’s The Year of Our Lord 1943:  https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651

Jacques Maritain's Education at the Crossroads: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781685953423

W.H. Auden's Vocation and Society: https://www1.swarthmore.edu/library/auden/documents/vs.pdf

C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944

Simone Weil's The Need for Roots: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780415271028

T.S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture: https://amzn.to/4p5ubVo

Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781402782831

Introduction to Latin Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/intermediate-latin-ii/

Introduction to Ancient Greek Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/ancient-greek-intro-poetry/

Introduction to Old English Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/intermediate-old-english-ii/

Colin Gorrie's Ōsweald Bera: An Introduction to Old English: https://ancientlanguage.com/vergil-press/osweald-bera/

Learn Old English at ALI: https://ancientlanguage.com/register-for-old-english/

Learn Old Norse (through Old English) with ALI: https://ancientlanguage.com/old-norse-through-old-english/

Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586

Colin Gorrie's interview of Laura Spinney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVIV-qaHHY

Luke Ranieri's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri

The Ranieri-Roberts Approach to Ancient Greek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vwb1wVzPec

Apuleius' The Golden Ass: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780253200365

Xenophon's An Ephesian Tale: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781514295557

Benjamin Kantor's The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780802878311

Lucian's Assembly of the Gods: https://amzn.to/4peTcxB

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

Socrates taught his students contempt for the gods, how to defraud creditors, and useless trivialities about flea-jumping. Or at least, that's how Socrates appears in the comedy Clouds. If you want to understand something of the Athenian hostility to the great philosopher which eventually reached its climax in sentencing Socrates to death, it helps to see how he was lampooned in front of Athenian audiences by his contemporary, the comedian playwright Aristophanes. But Clouds is more than just (dirty) jokes. It is a profane and self-critical attack on educational innovation, and a call to return to the old ways, the ways which produced heroic men like Aeschylus, who with his fellows turned the Persians back at Marathon and saved Greece. The new form of education, in Aristophanes' view, threatens to reduce Athens to a pathetic bunch of weak and impious nerds. But even in his mockery of the new, Aristophanes seems well aware of the inner weakness of the old ways and the reason for their defeat. So it shouldn't be too surprising that his conclusion simply seems to be: Burn it all down.

Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by Alan H. Sommerstein: https://amzn.to/4hEaykY

Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by Peter Meineck: https://amzn.to/4o7lr0R

Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by William James Hickie: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0241%3Acard%3D1

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

Hesiod's Works and Days: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674997202

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

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

Leo Strauss's "The Problem of Socrates" (in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226777153

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support the show

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.

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

Support the show

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

Support the show

Can Christians read and appreciate pagan literature? The vexed relationship between the Church and a world that hates it has generated many different responses. The most popular recent proposal is Rod Dreher's "Benedict option" - Dreher counsels Christian retrenchment and quasi-monastic self-sufficiency. But the great saint of late antiquity and compiler of the Vulgate, Jerome (aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus), proposes a different option, drawn from the Mosaic Law. Jonathan and Ryan look at three different letters from Jerome's voluminous correspondence, each taking a different angle on literature and learning.

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

Recommended edition of the Vulgate: https://amzn.to/3FFjqaR

Athanasius' On the Incarnation: https://amzn.to/42h3ww9

Apuleius' Metamorphoses: https://amzn.to/4429DWz

Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780735213302

Passion of Perpetua and Felicity: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0324.htm

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

In the final chapter of Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons distinguishes between the "skills" and the "content" arguments for classical study, and says that the skills argument is in fact the stronger. Content, Simmons says, can be learned by reading translations - or even from scanning Wikipedia (or asking A.I.!). What is irreplaceable about true classical study is the formation of the mind and the skills acquired from long years of intense training in reading and writing in Greek and Latin. The death of this educational program caused European literary culture to rot, just as critics and poets like W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis had warned: they were the last generation to receive this education, and so it should be no surprise that they were the last generation of Anglophone writers even to approach greatness.

Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507

New Humanists episode on Albert Jay Nock: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10528217-should-everyone-be-educated-episode-22 

J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics: https://jenniferjsnow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/11790039-jrr-tolkien-beowulf-the-monsters-and-the-critics.pdf

Plato's The Last Days of Socrates: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140449280

Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780393320978

ALI's Latin for Kids program: https://ancientlanguage.com/latin-for-kids/

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

Classical education has declined and fallen before - as the Roman Empire succumbed to internal weakness and external threats, so did its bilingual educational regime. Humanists in the Renaissance revived the ancient world's Greek and Latin literary paideia, or at least created a new system of education modelled on it, which flourished for centuries, well into the modern era. But it fell apart once again after the catastrophe of the First World War. In Chapter Two of Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons give an account of classical education's many lives.

Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991743

John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780268011505

Micah Meadowcroft's Classical Education's Aristocracy of Anyone: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/classical-educations-aristocracy-of-anyone

David Sider's Greek Verse on a Vase by Douris: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/uploads/media/hesperia/41012854.pdf

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

A truly classical education is centered on the study of the Classics: the ancient languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. The adjective "classical" is thus a misnomer for a school that strays promiscuously from the true Classics into the "Great Books" or the "Great Tradition." So argues Tracy Lee Simmons in his landmark book, Climbing Parnassus. Jonathan and Ryan dive into Simmons' book and debate whether classical education is, as he says, a lost cause.

Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507

Micah Meadowcroft's Classical Education's Aristocracy of Anyone: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/classical-educations-aristocracy-of-anyone

John Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity: https://minio.la.utexas.edu/webeditor-files/coretexts/pdf/163020model20of20christian20charity.pdf

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

The Renaissance humanist Biondo Flavio dedicated his massive book Roma Triumphans, a historical investigation of what made Rome great, to his fellow humanist Pope Pius II. He contended that central to the story of Roman greatness was Roman religion, and that the Roman Catholic Church was the heir of the Roman Empire, correcting its faults even as it carried its legacy into the modern world. As James Hankins discusses in Virtue Politics, the main policy position that Biondo advocated for, in order for Europe to recapture the spirit of ancient Rome, was a renewal of the Crusades, so that the dominion of the Catholic Church could encompass the territory of the Roman Empire.

James Hankins' Virtue Politics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674278738

New Humanists episode on Irving Babbitt, feat. Eric Adler: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/15574729-humanism-with-or-without-god-feat-eric-adler-episode-lxxiv

Biondo Flavio's Roma Triumphans: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674055049

Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300240023

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

Representative government, freedom of religion, the right to privacy - these are just some of the liberties of the modern world which we cherish. But at what cost? After the French Revolution and the subsequent rise and fall of Napoleon, the French classical liberal Benjamin Constant undertook an examination of ancient liberty as compared to modern liberty, in a bid to defend the modern liberal project against its detractors. But Constant is honest about the downsides of the modern liberal regime, and explains what rights and powers from the ancient world modern men can no longer exercise.

Benjamin Constant's The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/constant-the-liberty-of-ancients-compared-with-that-of-moderns-1819

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780141191751

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

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

Stendhal's The Red and the Black: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140447644

Julius Caesar's The Gallic War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674990807

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

When civilization is crashing down all around you, what do you do? Retreat to the hills, build a monastery, and preserve what you can. That is exactly what Cassiodorus did in the 6th century when he founded the Vivarium, an Italian monastery dedicated to copying, emending, and preserving the classics of Greek and Roman literature. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan take a look at the proposed curriculum and list of great books and authors that Cassiodorus recommended for his students.

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

Rule of Saint Benedict: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780375700170

Athanasius' Life of Anthony: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780809122950

Virgil's Georgics: https://amzn.to/417pzFK

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

This week, Jonathan and Ryan discuss two early medieval selections from Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition, one taken from Gregory the Great, perhaps the most significant pope in the history of Christendom, and another from Alcuin of York, adviser to Charlemagne and architect of the Carolingian Renaissance. Both Gregory and Alcuin were churchmen, statesmen, scholars, and are linked closely to the Christianization of Britain. Jonathan and Ryan discuss the relation between rational thought and proper grammar, the Great Books according to Medievals, and whether education properly belongs to the contemplative life or the active life.

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

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140445657

New Humanists episode with Tim Griffith on Latin Teaching: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/14692390-the-art-of-language-teaching-feat-tim-griffith-episode-lxiv

Andrew Beck interview in Align: https://www.theblaze.com/align/interview-beck-stone-co-founder-andrew-beck

New Humanists episode with John Peterson: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/12698279-education-that-makes-aquinas-look-modern-feat-john-peterson-episode-xlvi

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

He who teaches the truth finds himself locked in battle against all those who teach falsehood. With what tools will you equip him? That is the question motivating "Education of the Clergy," a 9th century treatise written by one of the great students of Alcuin: Rhabanus Maurus. The stereotype of the "dark ages" - the narrowness of mind and dogmatic intolerance of the early medieval period - is shown up to be mere mythmaking by the broad, even humanistic cast of mind Rhabanus Maurus brings to the question of education.

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

Jonathan Roberts's Classical Schools Are Not Really Classical: https://ancientlanguage.com/classical-schools-not-classical/

Rhabanus Maurus' De inventione litterarum: https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/04z/z_0788-0856__Rabanus_Maurus__De_Inventione_Linguarum__MLT.pdf.html

Vegetius' De re militari: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2014rosen0061/

Derrick Peterson's Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781532653339

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

What if the true heir of the Roman Empire was not Rome, but Florence? Over the course of his life and career as a scholar and politician, the great humanist Leonardo Bruni made this argument multiple times, and in a variety of ways. In doing so, he gave novel accounts of liberty and virtue, and eventually moved away from an appeal to Florence's Roman roots and appealed instead to her Etruscan roots. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for the preeminent Italian political thinker commonly associated with the birth of modernity: Niccolò Machiavelli.

New Humanists episode on Leonardo Bruni's letter to Battista Malatesta: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/14460440-mediocrity-versus-glory-in-the-renaissance-episode-lxii

James Hankins's Virtue Politics: https://amzn.to/3UiQpp3

Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674005068

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

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781107612235

Donatello's Saint George: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George_(Donatello)

Roberto Valturio's De re militari: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=315

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

The Iliad was more popular than the Odyssey beginning in ancient times, and continued to be all the way up to World War One. Then, something changed. Now the Odyssey leaves the Iliad in the dust in terms of which poem gets assigned more frequently in school, in book sales, and simply in the stated preference of readers. What happened? Ryan and Jonathan read Edward Luttwak's essay, Homer Inc., about the thriving industry of Homer translations, the ancient redactors of Homer, the historicity of the Trojan War, and one of the perennial questions any humanist must answer - and to which Luttwak gives his own idiosyncratic response: Why does Homer matter?

Edward Luttwak's Homer Inc.: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n04/edward-luttwak/homer-inc

NH episode on Melanchthon and Homer: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/13181921-return-of-the-old-gods-in-germany-episode-lii

NH episode on Weil and Homer: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/10429309-the-iliad-or-the-poem-of-force-episode-xxi

NH episode on Nietzsche and Homer: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lvi

Stephen Mitchell's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781439163382

Robert Fagles's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140275360

Emily Wilson's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781324001805

Richmond Lattimore's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226470498

Peter Green's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520281431

Robert Fitzgerald's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780374529055

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

For the first time, a collection of Irving Babbitt's and Paul Elmer More's correspondence has been published. Eric Adler, the editor of the collection (titled "Humanistic Letters") joins the show to discuss the collection, New Humanism, and the question that caused more controversy between Babbitt and More than anything else: Do humanists need to believe in God? 

Eric Adler's Humanistic Letters: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780826222909

Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780197680810

Irving Babbitt's Literature and the American College: https://amzn.to/3YIP0Ml

New Humanists episode Can Humanism Replace Christianity? https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/12494774-can-humanism-replace-christianity-episode-xliv

Justin Garrison and Ryan Holston's The Historical Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781438478432

Ryan Holston's Irving Babbitt and Christianity: A Response to T.S. Eliot: https://www.academia.edu/43227260/Irving_Babbitt_and_Christianity_A_Response_to_T_S_Eliot

C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944

Norman Foerster's Humanism and America: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.88302/page/n5/mode/2up

Luke Sheahan's The Intellectual Kinship of Irving Babbitt and C.S.Lewis: https://www.pdcnet.org/humanitas/content/humanitas_2016_0029_0001_0005_0042

C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920

Paul Elmer More's The Greek Tradition: https://amzn.to/4dxbXGQ

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

Love for Cicero, attention to rhetorical form, use of pagan wisdom for political thought - these are all hallmarks of the Renaissance humanists. But not their invention. In fact, you find the same things among some medieval thinkers. Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss selections from the Policraticus and the Metalogicon, two works by the 12th century bishop of Chartres, John of Salisbury, who was an exemplar of this medieval brand of humanism.

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

Homer's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780374529055

Homer's Odyssey: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780374525743

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991743

New Humanists episode on Leonardo Bruni: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/14460440-mediocrity-versus-glory-in-the-renaissance-episode-lxii

S.A. Dance's Authentic Grammar in Classical Schools: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/05/authentic-grammar-in-classical-schools

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

Thomas Aquinas is also known as the "Angelic Doctor," but he was quite capable of coming down from the heavens and getting practical. In two selections from his work included in Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition, we find some of Thomas' advice and outlook for students and teachers, including a discussion of whether teaching is an inherently contemplative or active pursuit.

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

New Humanists episode Education that Makes Aquinas Look Modern, feat. John Peterson: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/12698279-education-that-makes-aquinas-look-modern-feat-john-peterson-episode-xlvi

Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html

Augustine's De Magistro (The Teacher): https://amzn.to/4cUbVZ4

A.G. Sertillanges's The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462

Homer Camp: https://ancientlanguage.com/homer-camp/

Bible Camp: https://ancientlanguage.com/bible-camp/

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

The things of God belong to a heavenly kingdom. But politics is taken up with what is earthly. Surely, therefore, Christians should keep politics at a distance as much as possible. Right? Even while defending the life of contemplation and retreat from the earthly, Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Bocaccio laud Christian involvement in public life. Petrarch goes so far as to dream of a Julius Caesar reborn in medieval Europe and baptized a Christian, who goes on to conquer Egypt from the Muslims and present her as a gift - this time not to Cleopatra - but to Christ.

James Hankins's Virtue Politics: https://amzn.to/3UiQpp3

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199535699

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

Calvert Watkins's How to Kill a Dragon: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195144130

New Humanists episode on Leonardo Bruni: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/14460440-mediocrity-versus-glory-in-the-renaissance-episode-lxii

Sallust's Catilinarian Conspiracy: https://amzn.to/4chKY1C

Henry David Thoreau's Walden: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780460876353

Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780385486804

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

Imagine that you are the leading figure in a movement to renew the study and appreciation of classical literature, but you have come to the end of your life and not only has the educational and political situation not improved - it has gotten worse. Such was the vista spread out before Petrarch in his twilight. Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss some of Petrarch's correspondence, recording the meditations of the great humanist as he wrestled with civilizational decline, the possibility of rebirth, and the awareness of how little time he had left.

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

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991743

Tim Griffith's The Case for Classical Languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UquUv7wzAgQ

Ryan Hammill's Saints Versus Statesmen: https://americanreformer.org/2024/04/saints-versus-statesmen/

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

Are the liberal arts for everyone? We tend to think that the liberal arts can be helpful and edifying for anyone. But even amidst the humanist enthusiasm for the study of letters, the Renaissance writer Pier Paolo Vergerio denied that the liberal arts could improve a corrupt soul. In his mind, the liberal arts are proper only for those born free from the demands of moneymaking and furthermore, possessing a liberal temper. What is a liberal temper? And what are the liberal arts anyways? Jonathan and Ryan discuss Vergerio's treatise "The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth" which, even before the printing press, was a sensation in Europe, and was copied and re-copied many times.

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

I Tatti Renaissance Library's Humanist Educational Treatises (containing Pier Paolo Vergerio's entire treatise, The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth, in Latin and English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674007598

Sallust's Catilinarian Conspiracy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674996847

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991743

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

We think we know what a "republic" is, but what did the Romans mean with their phrase "res publica"? What about the Italian humanists? And how did they distinguish a republic from a tyranny? We take a look at two more chapters from James Hankins's book, Virtue Politics, a groundbreaking examination of Renaissance political theory. These chapters focus on the question of legitimacy: What makes a government legitimate? What makes it illegitimate?

James Hankins's Virtue Politics: https://amzn.to/3UiQpp3

Francesco Petrarch's Invectives: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674011540

New Humanists episode on Nietzsche and slavery: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/14044549-compassion-versus-classical-antiquity-episode-lvii

Cicero's De Officiis: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199540716

Robert Harris's Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780743498661

Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300126891

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

A pandemic. A changing climate. A hopelessly divided country. Christianity threatened by Islam. Universities completely out of touch with normal people. Late medieval Italy was a basket case. All the while, a small group of men was dreaming of the Roman Empire - maybe emulating Rome was the way to save Italy? In his book Virtue Politics, James Hankins elucidates the neglected political thought of the humanists of the Italian Renaissance, which he names "virtue politics." Jonathan and Ryan outline Hankins's arguments.

James Hankins's Virtue Politics: https://amzn.to/3UiQpp3

N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780800626815

Augustine's City of God: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140448948

Thomas Aquinas' De Regno: https://isidore.co/aquinas/DeRegno.htm

Dante's De Monarchia: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781502885555

Desiderius Erasmus' The Praise of Folly: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780691165646

New Humanists episode on T.S. Eliot's Praise for Privilege: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/9884564-t-s-eliot-s-praise-for-privilege-episode-xvi

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

The poet of Joan of Arc, and a notable example of a female writer in the premodern period, Christine de Pizan took a turn at the popular humanist genre of the mirror to princes in her book "The Book of the Body Politics." Jonathan and Ryan take a look at her characterization of virtue, corporal punishment, and what it takes to educate a Caesar.

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

Christine de Pizan's The Book of the Body Politic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521422598

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

Christopher Schlecht's "Did Dorothy Sayers Get Education Wrong?": https://youtu.be/--gjw3gaG-U?si=7OLZ-SlExk8_QMp2

Joris-Karl Huysmans's Against the Grain: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199555116

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

In his essay "On Educating Children," a follow-up to his denunciation of pedantry, Michel de Montaigne warns that "natural affection makes parents too soft" and incapable of properly disciplining their children, or even of letting their children take the risks and encounter the dangers they ought to. Book-learning, in Montaigne's essay, takes a backseat to the development of real virtue; erudition is ornament, not foundation.

Michel de Montaigne's Complete Essays: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140446043

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

Rhetorica Ad Herennium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674994447

New Humanists episode "The First English Conversation, feat. Dr. Colin Gorrie": https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/11362004-the-first-english-conversation-feat-dr-colin-gorrie-episode-xxxii

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

When Tim Griffith was coaching soccer and reading ancient Roman rhetorical theory, he realized he had stumbled across a pedagogical goldmine. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan talk with Tim about raising kids as native Latin speakers, the roles that comprehensible input vs. grammar instruction play in the language classroom, prescriptive versus descriptive grammar, and Roman rhetoric. The product of years of experience and study, Tim’s approach to teaching Latin has borne fruit in his students at New Saint Andrews College, in his curriculum projects at Picta Dicta, and in no small way in the influence he has had on the Ancient Language Institute.

Rhetorica Ad Herennium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674994447

Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory (Volume I): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674995918

Picta Dicta: https://pictadicta.com/

Shop Picta Dicta at Roman Roads Press: https://romanroadspress.com/latin

Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Familia Romana: https://amzn.to/3hoLz7V

W.H.D. Rouse’s Latin on the Direct Method: https://books.google.com/books/about/Latin_on_the_Direct_Method_By_W_H_D_Rous.html?id=oMXxMgEACAAJ

New Saint Andrews College: https://nsa.edu/

ALI Latin classes for adults: https://ancientlanguage.com/register-latin/

ALI Ancient Greek classes for adults: https://ancientlanguage.com/register-greek/

ALI Latin for Kids Program: https://ancientlanguage.com/latin-for-kids/

ALI Latin for Kids Self-Study Course: https://ancientlanguage.com/latin-curriculum/

Erasmus' De Copia: https://amzn.to/3Phf9MH

Paul Distler's Teach the Latin, I Pray You: https://amzn.to/4cflhPC

Support the show

We threw off the monarchy... now what? Having established a republic on American soil, the Founding Fathers were faced with the question of how to educate a new generation of people who would protect American liberty. The most underrated of the Founding Fathers, Dr. Benjamin Rush, devoted considerable time and attention to this question. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan are joined by Clifford Humphrey to discuss Rush's "Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic."

Clifford Humphrey's Are "Merely Christian" Colleges Enough?: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/02/are-merely-christian-colleges-enough

Carl Trueman's Mere Christianity on Campus: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/02/mere-christianity-on-campus

Clifford Humphrey's The Ends of "Mere Classical" Schools: https://americanreformer.org/2023/04/the-ends-of-mere-classical-schools/

Our American Stories' episode on Benjamin Rush: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/podcast/history/founding-father-benjamin-rush

Benjamin Rush's Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic: https://explorepahistory.com/odocument.php?docId=1-4-218#

Ian Dagg's Regime and Education: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9783031373824

Plutarch's Greek Lives (includes Lycurgus): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199540051

Joseph Addison's Cato: A Tragedy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780865974432

Eric Nelson's The Hebrew Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674062139

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

Leonardo Bruni was the titan of Renaissance historians and a prolific humanist. In a long letter to an aristocratic Italian woman, Battista Malatesta, he lays out his philosophy of humanistic education, which is meant to help the student achieve glory. But laziness or ineptitude, he says, threatens the student always, and will drag her down to crawl alongside other mediocrities. Bruni insists on deep reading of the greatest orators, poets, and historians, alongside biblical and theological study.

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

I Tatti Renaissance Library's Humanist Educational Treatises (containing Bruni's entire letter in Latin and English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674007598

Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People (Volume I): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674005068

Donald Phillip Verene's The Art of Humane Education: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780801440397

C.S. Lewis's On Stories (includes The Parthenon and The Optative): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062643605

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

Michel de Montaigne was a native Latin speaker in modern Europe and yet a great innovator in French letters; among other things, he invited the genre known as the essay. His elegant, searching essays are intended to expose the reality of his own soul - and that of his readers. In "On Schoolmasters' Learning," this most studios of men wonders aloud whether education is actually good for you. After all, look at all the people obsessed with books and yet completely useless for anything productive. Maybe study actually harms your soul?

Michel de Montaigne's Complete Essays: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140446043

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/49k1zjc

Aristophanes' Clouds: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780801485749

The Cost of Glory | Lucullus I: https://share.transistor.fm/s/4ef111e2

Plato's Hippias Major: https://amzn.to/3SI8PA6

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

Aeneas Silvius was an accomplished Renaissance humanist, author of erotic literature, and influential aide to emperors and popes (and an antipope). Then, he became a pope himself. As Pope Pius II, he then added memoirist, urban planner, and antiquarian to his list of accomplishments. He contributed to the popular Renaissance "mirror of princes" genre in a letter to a young boy-king in Central Europe, where he makes the case for reading pagan poetry as a Christian.

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

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

Jonathan and Ryan turn to a set of selections from the Prince of Humanists himself, Desiderius Erasmus. In Liber Antibarbarorum, Erasmus pillories the precious Christians who refuse to read pagan authors on account of their own squeamish consciences. In Education of a Christian Prince, and On the Education of Children, Erasmus gives principled arguments for humanistic education and practical advice for those responsible for carrying it out.

Roland Bainton's Erasmus of Christendom: https://amzn.to/3v8NlTC

Desiderius Erasmus' Praise of Folly: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780691165646

Desiderius Erasmus' Education of a Christian Prince: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521588119

Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780664241582

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

Eric Adler on The New Thinkery: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eric-adler-on-the-new-humanism/id1524739522?i=1000638422051

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

"As only the Catholic and communist know, all education must be ultimately religious education." So argues T.S. Eliot in his essay "Modern Education and the Classics," in which he contrasts three different camps in the world of education: the radical, the liberal, and the orthodox. Eliot seems to say that the only hope for continued erudition in the Greek and Roman classics is a rebirth of Christendom. Jonathan and Ryan discuss Eliot's provocative thesis, along with the lessons he offers to would-be educational reformers.

T.S. Eliot's Modern Education and the Classics: https://muse.jhu.edu/document/615

T.S. Eliot's Selected Essays: https://amzn.to/3GD5mft

Eric Adler's Humanistic Letters: https://amzn.to/41kvlSb

John Peterson's College Is Too Late: https://americanmind.org/features/how-to-save-higher-education/college-is-too-late/

Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780735213302

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

In The Greek State, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that the Greek polis existed in order to hold the many in slavery so that the Olympian few could give birth to the beautiful Helen known as Greek culture, and that the Greek state had to be periodically renewed by war so that it could continue to create geniuses. This, he says, is the esoteric meaning behind Plato's Republic. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at this "preface to an unwritten book" and examine the ethical, metaphysical, and historical implications of Nietzsche's argument.

Friedrich Nietzsche's The Greek State: https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Nietzsche-Greek-State-text.pdf

Jacob Burkhardt's The Greeks and Greek Civilization: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780312244477

C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920

T.S. Eliot's Vergil and the Christian World: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27538181

Jacob Burkhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy: https://amzn.to/49RKXk1

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

Why was it that the Greeks, the most humane of all peoples, also possessed such a tigerish lust for blood? Why did the Greeks so delight in Homer's depiction of cruelty and death in the Iliad? That is the question animating Friedrich Nietzsche's preface to an unwritten book, "Homer's Contest." Nietzsche turns to the dark Hellenic past, the "womb of Homer" for an explanation, and finds it in Strife, the double-souled goddess lauded by Hesiod.  

Friedrich Nietzsche's Homer's Contest: http://www.northamericannietzschesociety.com/uploads/7/3/2/5/73251013/nietzscheana5.pdf

Lee Fratantuono's Madness Unchained: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780739122426

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

Hesiod's Theogony, Works and Days: https://amzn.to/467Nh3l

Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-death-throes-of-the-republic-series/

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

Jacob Burkhardt's The Greeks and Greek Civilization: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780312244477

René Girard's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780804722155

New Humanists episode on Simone Weil's "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-iliad-or-the-poem-of-force-episode-xxi/id1570296135?i=1000557727910

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

Thomas Elyot wrote "The Boke named the Governour," the first book about education written in the English language, an outstanding example in the crowded field of Renaissance-era mirrors for princes. The mirrors for princes were works designed to instruct and train future kings, nobles, and leading men. Machiavelli and Erasmus wrote famous mirrors for princes, but what does the English tradition of this genre have to show us?

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

Thomas Elyot's The Boke named The Governour: https://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/gov/gov1.htm

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199535699

Desiderius Erasmus' The Education of a Christian Prince: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521588119

Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/463xl2y

Plutarch's Parallel Lives (inc. Lycurgus): https://amzn.to/3YbAPxk

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

"Simple necessity has forced men, even among the heathen, to maintain pedagogues and schoomasters if their nation was to be brought to a high standard." In his address "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany," Martin Luther exhorts Germany's civic leaders to establish public schools for the education of all German children. Foremost among his priorities in his proposed educational program is instruction in ancient languages, something that, according to Luther, Satan wants to suppress. We dive into German education, ancient language instruction, and the eternal debate over public schools versus homeschooling.

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

Plutarch's Parallel Lives (inc. Numa and Lycurgus): https://amzn.to/3YbAPxk

Andrew Cuff's Marcus Aurelius, Uncensored: https://beckandstone.com/created/marcus-aurelius-uncensored

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

Ulrich Zwingli was one of the towering figures of the Reformation, a committed humanist, and a warrior who ultimately fell in battle. He despised the idea that Christianity could render men passive, and in a short treatise from 1523 to a young nobleman, he sketches the outlines of his ideal education for the creature called man: "We are set between the hammer and the anvil, half beast and half angel."

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

Davenant Institute Ad Fontes podcast on Zwingli: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/zwingli-we-hardly-knew-ye/id1557560666?i=1000545490988

Bruce Gordon's Zwingli: God's Armed Prophet: https://amzn.to/43zIOVN

New Humanists episode on T.S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t-s-eliots-praise-for-privilege-episode-xvi/id1570296135?i=1000549689865

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

In the opening lecture of his course on Homer, the Professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg, Phillip Melanchthon, first invokes the aid of the gods and declares that to Homer belongs "the highest and noblest place." Further, Melanchthon proclaims that Homer "alone snatches away the palm of victory from all poets that any age has brought forth, and he leaves them all far behind." Jonathan and Ryan take a look at Melanchthon's encomium for Homer and defense against the many varieties of Homeric critics, both ancient and modern.

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

C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781107604704

Homer's Iliad (Greek-English): https://amzn.to/3O2sBEd

Homer's Odyssey (Greek-English): https://amzn.to/46DbOPe

New Humanists Episode on T.S. Eliot's Vergil and Christian World: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/was-virgil-divinely-inspired-episode-xxxiii/id1570296135?i=1000582748821

Daoiri Farrell's The Valley of Knockanure: https://youtu.be/lu-FG92a9Cw

New Humanists Episode on Simone Weil's The Iliad, or the Poem of Force: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-iliad-or-the-poem-of-force-episode-xxi/id1570296135?i=1000557727910

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

Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta Oratio: https://amzn.to/3JS7y4D

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

A stern prophet of the new and harsh doctrine of predestination. A bloodthirsty tyrant burning people at the stake. A narrowminded dour Puritan. The magnitude of the popularity of these Calvinist stereotypes is matched by their massive distance from the truth of the man. In his affection for the pagan authors, Calvin reveals a deeply humanistic soul, attuned to truth no matter which rock he might find it under. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan examine a particularly illustrative passage from his Institutes as well as a short passage from his commentary on Titus.

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

Bruce Gordon's Calvin: https://amzn.to/3NQ4UPa

John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780664220280

Alister McGrath's C.S. Lewis - A Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781496410450

C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920

New Humanists episode on C.S. Lewis' Introduction to Athanasius' On the Incarnation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c-s-lewis-on-old-books-episode-xiv/id1570296135?i=1000546657094

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

How do you prepare a royal princess for the throne? In this episode, we look at the writings of two giants of Reformation humanism: Johannes Sturm and Roger Ascham, and in particular, their correspondence about Ascham's work training the future Queen Elizabeth I in Latin and Greek. Ascham himself variously tutored and served as Latin secretary to Lady Jane Grey, the woman who ordered her execution (Queen Mary), and the woman who replaced Queen Mary (Queen Elizabeth). If you think speaking dead languages is a new-fangled approach to language learning, you might be surprised at what Princess Elizabeth was doing in class.

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

Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1844

Roger Ascham's Toxophilus: https://www.archerylibrary.com/books/toxophilus/

New Humanists episode on Ælfric's Colloquy: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-english-conversation-feat-dr-colin-gorrie/id1570296135?i=1000581249310

C. P. Wormald's "The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and Its Neighbours": https://www.jstor.org/stable/3679189

C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944

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

Shakespeare's The Tempest: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780743482837

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

King Tarquinius secures his hold on power by expanding the Senate, but encounters a roadblock to strengthening the military in the person of a famous augur. Tarquinius is ruthless, productive, and the first great Roman promoter of "bread and circuses" (among other things, according to Livy, Tarquinius builds the Circus Maximus). Despite his political saavy, however, he comes to a violent, borderline slapstick end.

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

Virgil's Aeneid: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143105138

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

Strange omens, plague, occult religious rites. King Tullus Hostilius' reign collapses in something like supernatural madness. The great Ancus Marcius takes over, but is finally deceived by a rich, mysterious newcomer to Rome: Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. Join Jonathan and Ryan as they outline how the first of the Tarquins takes the throne after first disinheriting his own nephew, and then effectively disinheriting the sons of Ancus Marcius, whom Lucius was bound to protect.

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

Rene Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightning: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781570753190

Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana: https://amzn.to/3qgEcWN

Fustel de Coulanges's La Cité Antique (French): https://amzn.to/3yzATuZ

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City (English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

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

Lysander is a troubling figure. As a child, he was a charity case who excelled his more affluent peers; he never cared for wealth, and yet overlooked the rapaciousness of his friends, allowing money and luxury into Sparta, corrupting it. He liberated the Greek world from the yoke of Athenian imperialism, but then installed oligarchic juntas to rule with an iron fist. He conquered Athens itself, but campaigned at a war council to spare the city from destruction. But once inside the city, he threatened the Athenians with extermination if they didn't obey him. Alex Petkas, the host of the Cost of Glory podcast, joins Jonathan and Ryan in discussing Plutarch's account of the extraordinary Lysander.

Alex Petkas's Cost of Glory podcast (Lysander 1): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lysander-1-death-of-democracy/id1580153815?i=1000565510664

Ancient Life Coach: https://ancientlifecoach.com/

Speak Lead Retreat: https://ancientlifecoach.com/retreat/

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

Isocrates' Evagoras: https://amzn.to/40NyCaP

Pindar's Olympian Odes: https://amzn.to/429sk6m

Plutarch's Parallel Lives, including Lysander (Loeb edition): https://amzn.to/3HjDnC8

Plutarch's Parallel Lives, including Lysander (Penguin edition): https://amzn.to/44amYK5

University of Chicago's Penelope Parallel Lives: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/lives/home.html

Euripides' Electra: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226035598

Xenophon's Anabasis: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780307906854

Andrew Roberts's Napoleon: A Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143127857

Sean McMeekin's Stalin's War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781541672796

Alex Petkas's Cost of Glory episode 1 on the Anabasis: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/xenophon-anabasis-i-power-highlights/id1580153815?i=1000597494893

Xenophon's Hellenika: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400034765

Steven Pressfield's Tides of War: https://amzn.to/3oQF9Eq

Paul Cartledge's Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta: https://amzn.to/3LDaFi3

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

In his wise and humane Didascalicon, the teacher, canon regular, and mystical theologian Hugh of St. Victor lays out his advice and instructions for teachers and students engaged in liberal study. The heir of centuries of thought in Christendom on the liberal arts, Hugh and his contemporaries were on the precipice of a revolution--the western rediscovery of Aristotle and the subsequent revolution of theology and philosophy, championed above all by Thomas Aquinas. University of Dallas professor John Peterson joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss the Didascalicon and its role in liberal education.

Classical Education Graduate Program at the University of Dallas: https://udallas.edu/braniff/academics/ma/classical_education/

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

Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon (Latin): http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1096-1141,_Hugo_De_S_Victore,_Didascalicon,_LT.pdf

Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon (English): https://archive.org/details/didascaliconmedi00hugh/mode/2up

Bruce A. Kimball's The Liberal Arts Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780761851325

Ryan N.S. Topping's Renewing the Mind: https://amzn.to/41xlb08

W.H. Cowley's The Seven Liberal Arts Hoax: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27565196

New Humanists episode on Giambattista Vico: https://podcasts.apple.com/hr/podcast/messing-up-your-kids-education-episode-xxxviii/id1570296135?i=1000591833664

Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion 3.0: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781119712619

John Peterson's Review of Teach Like a Champion 3.0: https://www.pdcnet.org/principia/content/principia_2022_0001_0001_0119_0123+

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

Augustine's Confessions: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199537822

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

Jacob Klein's The Idea of Liberal Education: https://www.scribd.com/document/46831695/The-Idea-of-Liberal-Education-Jacob-Klein

Martianus Capella's The Marriage of Philology and Mercury: https://amzn.to/41NZh8t

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

Does Plato, and philosophy more generally, belong in schools? In a lecture, professor and Davenant Institute VP Colin Redemer suggests that Plato is too dangerous to be allowed into classical schools. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at this lecture and at the response it received, focusing on esoteric writing, reason versus revelation, and the Platonic-Christian-American synthesis.

The Davenant Institute's Reforming Classical Education: https://davenantinstitute.org/reforming-classical-education

Austin Hoffman's Awkward Family Dinner: A Review of Reforming Classical Education: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/02/awkward-family-dinner-a-review-of-reforming-classical-education/

Colin Redemer's Revisiting Platonic Education: The Ever Shareable Feast: https://adfontesjournal.com/web-exclusives/revisiting-platonic-education-the-ever-sharable-feast/

Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226777115

Plato's Theages: https://amzn.to/3UE4DRl

T.S. Eliot's Second Thoughts About Humanism: https://muse.jhu.edu/document/408

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

Irving Babbitt was the architect of New Humanism. He was also T.S. Eliot's mentor at Harvard. But in 1928, the newly Anglican Eliot's essay criticizing his old mentor's humanistic project was published, which provoked a terse, and sharp, rebuke from Babbitt. What is the relationship between traditional religion and humanistic learning? Can humanism provide society with the standards needed for democratic life? In this episode, we take a look at Babbitt's and Eliot's writings on the subject.

T.S. Eliot's The Humanism of Irving Babbitt: https://muse.jhu.edu/document/374

T.S. Eliot's Second Thoughts About Humanism: https://muse.jhu.edu/document/408

Irving Babbitt's Democracy and Leadership: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780913966556

Jay Parini's Irving Babbitt Revisited: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3856831

The Davenant Institute's Reforming Classical Education: https://davenantinstitute.org/reforming-classical-education

T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html

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

The duel between the Horatii brothers and the Curiatii brothers seemed to settle the Roman-Alban dispute and give Rome authority over Alba. But wily Mettius Fufetius has a trick or two up his sleeve. Meanwhile, the one surviving Horatius brother strikes down his sister in cold blood, an incident Jacques-Louis David drew but never ended up painting. The civilized three-on-three duel now threatens to give way to an all-out war of extermination between Rome and Alba. This is the sixth episode of "No Republic Was Ever Greater," a podcast series examining the rise of the Roman Empire through the work of Livy and Machiavelli. 

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

Fustel de Coulanges's La Cité Antique (French): https://amzn.to/3yzATuZ

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City (English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_the_Horatii

Nicolas Poussin's Rape of the Sabine Women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women#/media/File:L'Enl%C3%A8vement_des_Sabines_%E2%80%93_Nicolas_Poussin_%E2%80%93_Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre,_INV_7290_%E2%80%93_Q3110586.jpg

Arlette Clavet's Unpublished Studies for 'The Oath of the Horatii': https://www.jstor.org/stable/1552932

Corneille's Horace: https://amzn.to/41zF1Iy

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

After the long peace of Numa's reign, Rome gets a new king, even more ferocious than Romulus: Tullus Hostilius. As soon as he comes to power, he begins looking for a way to start a war (while keeping a good conscience about it). This is the fifth episode of "No Republic Was Ever Greater," a podcast series examining the rise of the Roman Empire through the work of Livy and Machiavelli. 

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

Fustel de Coulanges's La Cité Antique (French): https://amzn.to/3yzATuZ

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City (English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140449235

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780547928210

Hesiod's Theogony: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199538317

Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_the_Horatii

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

Abraham Lincoln spent less than 1 year of his life going to school. Nevertheless, he became a lawyer, a surveyor, and one of the greatest statesmen in American history. He also carried on correspondence with one of the country's leading Shakespearean actors about the relative merits of different plays and speeches in Shakespeare's dramatic oeuvre. In no speech is the self-educated Lincoln's close attention to the Bard more in evidence than in his political comeback speech, the Peoria Address denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. What do the veiled Shakespearean references in that speech reveal about Lincoln and the crisis that slavery posed to free government?

Abraham Lincoln's Peoria Speech: https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/peoriaspeech.htm

Ted J. Richards's Lincoln and Shakespeare at Peoria: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10457097.2021.1983355?journalCode=vpps20

Lewis E. Lehrman's Lincoln at Peoria: https://amzn.to/3WXKW6p

Lord Charnwood's Abraham Lincoln: A Biography: https://amzn.to/3wXmTdw

Folger Shakespeare Library's Hamlet: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780743477123

Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69379/an-essay-on-criticism

Harry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226391182

Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781538114322

John Channing Briggs's Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered: https://amzn.to/3xnDyqV

Diana Schaub's His Greatest Speeches: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781250763457

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

When Romulus dies, the city of Rome is riven by ethnic conflict between Romans and Sabines, and class conflict between senators and plebeians. The city cannot agree on its next king; an interregnum ensues. The stalemate is eventually resolved in favor of Numa Pompilius, who is crowned king of Rome in a mysterious, mystical ceremony which almost seems like a human sacrifice. This is the fourth episode of "No Republic Was Ever Greater," a podcast series examining the rise of the Roman Empire through the work of Livy and Machiavelli. 

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

René Girard's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780804722155

Plato's Republic: https://amzn.to/3H2XOU1

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

John Milton's clarion call to educators to "repair the ruins of our first parents" has inspired countless teachers and parents in the classical education movement and beyond. But is Milton really the classical education ally he appears to be? In "On Education" he pays lip service to grammar, logic, and rhetoric - the three components of the Trivium - but he also disparages scholasticism, ignores metaphysics, and deplores medieval education. Join Jonathan and Ryan as they discuss Milton's education manifesto.

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

John Milton's Of Education: https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/of_education/text.shtml

Johann Heinrich Alsted's Loci Communes: https://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vd17/content/titleinfo/5175418

Jan Comenius' Orbis Pictus: https://amzn.to/3vQb08A

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

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

Giambattista Vico was a Renaissance Man after the Renaissance, but he was largely forgotten for centuries. As a professor of rhetoric, he often had the occasion to speak and write about the education of the young. We take a look at some of his orations on the topic, which are a mine of profound insight. Vico has some complaints that will sound very familiar, like, "Parents all just want their kids to become lawyers or doctors and get rich."

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

New Humanists episode on A.G. Sertillanges: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/me-an-intellectual-episode-xxvi/id1570296135?i=1000568461907

New Humanists episode on Donald Phillip Verene: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-humane-education-episode-iv/id1570296135?i=1000529006912

Donald Phillip Verene's History of Philosophy: https://amzn.to/3HK7zYa

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

After reading Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, a member of the French National Assembly wrote to Burke, asking for more of his analysis on the revolution then underway. In reply, Burke wrote a long letter which included a sustained attack on the preeminent philosopher of the revolution: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This analysis identifies that at the heart of the uprising in France lies an attempt to totally transform education - and in particular, its role in forming norms around sexual behavior.

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

Richard Price's A Discourse on the Love of Our Country: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/price-a-discourse-on-the-love-of-our-country

Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199539024

Edmund Burke's Letter to a Member of the National Assembly: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15700/15700-h/15700-h.htm#MEMBER_OF_THE_NATIONAL_ASSEMBLY

C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944

Rémi Brague's God as a Gentleman: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/02/god-as-a-gentleman

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

What if you gathered a bunch of friends, went out to the desert of Arizona, and built the greatest city that the world had ever seen? That is what Romulus does, and what Livy chronicles (except it's not in Arizona). We explore the challenges a founder faces in a startup city, how to fill it with people, and how to unify the inhabitants into one, cohesive people.

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

William Golding's Lord of the Flies: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780399501487

Fustel de Coulanges's La Cité Antique (French): https://amzn.to/3yzATuZ

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City (English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

Saint Augustine's City of God: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140448948

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

This is the second episode of our series about Livy's "Ab Urbe Condita," called "No Republic Was Ever Greater." The story of the founding of Rome continues with the story of twin brothers Romulus and Remus, as they escape certain death in a coup against their grandfather, grow up as shepherd bandits, and stage a counter-coup to return their grandfather to power. 

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

Fustel de Coulanges's La Cité Antique (French): https://amzn.to/3yzATuZ

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City (English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

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

This is the first episode of a new series on New Humanists, called "No Republic Was Ever Greater." We are walking through the masterpiece, "Ab Urbe Condita," by Ancient Roman historian Titus Livy and the great commentary on Livy, Renaissance philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses. In this episode, we consider the lessons that founders and leaders can learn from Livy's account of the Trojan hero Aeneas.

Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: https://amzn.to/3gYwtbh

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: https://amzn.to/3NtNBSj

Paul Cantor's Lecture 1 of 3 on Romeo and Juliet: https://youtu.be/XnaSBpwQDhY?t=3124

Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-death-throes-of-the-republic-series/

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

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

Barack Obama's Remarks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-chicago-council-global-affairs

Fustel de Coulanges's La Cité Antique (French): https://amzn.to/3yzATuZ

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City (English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

Euripides' Helen: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199537969

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

The late antique and medieval Church saw Virgil as a pagan herald of Christ, due to the seemign messianic prophecies in Eclogue IV. In a 1953 essay titled "Vergil and the Christian World," T.S. Eliot argues that the Christian sympathies in Virgil's poetry go even deeper than that single poem, and in fact suffuse the entire Virgilian corpus.

T.S. Eliot's Vergil and the Christian World: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27538181

Vergil's Eclogue 4 (Latin): https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/vergil/ec4.shtml

Vergil's Eclogue 4 (English): http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/eclogue.4.iv.html

Virgil's Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid (Latin-English): https://amzn.to/3VlnUqr

Fustel de Coulanges's La Cité Antique (French): https://amzn.to/3yzATuZ

Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City (English): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542

Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: https://poets.org/poem/waste-land

Plutarch's On the Obsolescence of Oracles: https://amzn.to/3RVk4kW

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

Ælfric's Colloquy is a dialogue between a teacher and his students, written both in Old English and Latin, designed to teach Latin to Anglo-Saxon schoolboys. It is also the earliest record of a (relatively) realistic English-language conversation. In celebration of the Ancient Language Institute's new Old English program, Dr. Colin Gorrie joins Jonathan and Ryan to walk through the Colloquy and to talk about language learning, education, and literacy in medieval England.

Ælfric's Colloquy (Old English): https://www.kul.pl/files/165/history%20of%20english/texts2009/aelfriccolloquy-translation.pdf

Colloquium Ælfrici (Latine): https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/12358426/colloquium-aelfrici-1-nos-pueri-rogamus-te-magister-ut-doceas-nos-

Ælfric's Colloquy (modern English translation): https://www.kentarchaeology.ac/authors/016.pdf

David Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty One Day": https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a1419/talk-pretty-0399/

Eleanor Dickey's Learn Latin from the Romans: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781316506196

C. P. Wormald's "The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and Its Neighbours": https://www.jstor.org/stable/3679189

Watch an Old English Beginner Lesson with Dr. Gorrie: https://youtu.be/YwECgGWCwis

Old English at the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/old-english/

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

Are classical educators dooming their students to poverty? Even back in the early 1800s, that accusation was gaining steam. Edward Copleston was a titanic figure at Oxford's Oriel College in the early 19th century, and inspired John Henry Newman, among others. Facing attacks by utilitarian critics of Oxford, Copleston launched a defense of classical education in his “Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review Against Oxford.”

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

Augustine’s Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin: https://amzn.to/3U7vrsn

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

Is knowledge its own end? Or is it a means to something else? In Discourse Five of his The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman juxtaposes Cato and Cicero as opponents on this question, but Newman’s juxtaposition is not without its own difficulties. Jonathan’s old teacher, Dr. Robert Jackson of the Great Hearts Institute, joins the podcast to talk Newman, knowledge, and education.

John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780268011505

Great Hearts Academies: https://www.greatheartsamerica.org/

Great Hearts Institute: https://greathearts.institute/

National Symposium for Classical Education: https://classicaleducationsymposium.org/

Cicero’s Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/3QxfSbe

Aristotle’s Metaphysics: https://amzn.to/3Cc9pyf

New Humanists Episode XI: Benedict in Regensburg: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/benedict-in-regensburg-faith-reason-and-the/id1570296135?i=1000542008795

G.E.M. Anscombe’s Modern Moral Philosophy: https://sites.pitt.edu/~mthompso/readings/mmp.pdf

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

Milton and Shakespeare? Or Homer and Virgil? Why should our students study Greeks and Romans when we have English-language poets, philosophers, and historians worthy to be placed on the same level as the ancients? Maybe because the “ancients” aren’t really so ancient after all… 

So argues Thomas Arnold in his defense of the classical curriculum he instituted at Rugby School. Jonathan and Ryan use Arnold’s “Use of the Classics” essay, his defense of classical education, to distinguish between two things that are nowadays often conflated: a “classical” curriculum and a “Great Books” curriculum.

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

Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199555017

Helen Andrews’s Boomers: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780593086759

Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays: https://amzn.to/3vEZNYQ

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

The intellectual life can’t just be reading all day. Eventually, you have to sit down and do the work. According to A.G. Sertillanges, the intellectual vocation finds its fulfillment in creation. Jonathan and Ryan wrap up their reading of Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life as they walk through the final three chapters.

There was a software problem with recording this week. Apologies for the occasionally scratchy audio quality.

A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462

New Humanists episode on Seneca and reading: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-read-too-much-episode-xix/id1570296135?i=1000554117391

Nicolás Gómez Dávila’s Aphorism #2,223: http://don-colacho.blogspot.com/2010/11/2223.html

Jonathan Roberts’s Review of Kirk MacGregor’s Luis de Molina: https://web.archive.org/web/20210804195625/http://calvinistinternational.com/2016/04/01/luis-de-molina-catholic-theologian-kirk-macgregor/

Carl Trueman’s Lectures on the Reformation: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4sbg6ng23C61k2K5J-A9Prw8cy6rAXnM

Jonathan Schaffer’s On What Grounds What: http://www.jonathanschaffer.org/grounds.pdf

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

Jonathan and Ryan continue their discussion of A.G. Sertillanges’s marvelous The Intellectual Life. In chapters 4 -6, Sertillanges touches on, among other things, sleep, the pursuit of wisdom in everyday life, and breadth of study in service of depth. 

A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462

Editorial Note: The mention of the “dies academicus” refers, not to our episode on Eric Voegelin (as we mistakenly said), but to our episode on Pope Benedict XVI: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/benedict-in-regensburg-faith-reason-and-the/id1570296135?i=1000542008795

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

The French Thomist A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., is most famous for The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. The book is a moving and handy meditation inspired by Thomas Aquinas’ Letter to Brother John about what it will take to devote your life to contemplation. This is the first episode in a three-part series on The Intellectual Life in which Jonathan and Ryan examine their own lives to see how Sertillanges can help them out.

A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462

The Ad Fontes Podcast, episode feat. Ryan: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-youre-talking-my-ancient-language/id1557560666?i=1000559442987

Robert Cardinal Sarah’s The Power of Silence: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781621641919

Plato’s Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991842

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

Who is at the helm of the ship of state? Is the United States doomed to go the way of the Titanic? In the essay “Academic Leadership,” Paul Elmer More expounds on the crucial role that humanistic study plays in cultivating a natural aristocracy that guides and protects the body politic. More, along with Irving Babbitt, was a luminary of the New Humanism movement and an essayist, prolific letter-writer, editor, and Christian Platonist.

Paul Elmer More’s Academic Leadership (free): https://jkalb.freeshell.org/more/leaders.html

Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568

Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Book Named the Governor: https://amzn.to/3977IWO

René Girard’s A Theater of Envy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781587318603

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

Was Socrates a Christian? Did Plato meet Jeremiah? Are pagan myths based on garbled versions of the Hebrew prophets? Welcome to Justin Martyr’s First Apology, a plea to the Roman Emperor to stop killing Christians, a philosophical defense of Christianity, and a master class in biblical exegesis. ALI Latin & Greek Fellow Calvin Goligher returns to New Humanists to discuss the poetry, philosophy, and revelation in Justin Martyr with Jonathan and Ryan.

Justin Martyr’s First Apology (free in English): https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm

Dennis Minns and Paul Parvis’s Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies (critical edition): https://amzn.to/3GJOMtp

Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0128.htm

Pliny-Trajan correspondence on Christians: https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html

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

Yoram Hazony’s The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521176675

Matthew W. Bates’s The Birth of the Trinity: https://amzn.to/3taSZ3U

Cicero’s De Officiis: https://amzn.to/3x9TGwT

Ambrose’s De Officiis: https://amzn.to/3Nc3j3C

Robert Louis Wilken’s The Christians as the Romans Saw Them: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300098396

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

Where is Geatland? Beowulf has been taken as a founding poem for England, yet England never appears in the poem. Linguist Colin Gorrie joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss this heroic and tragic Old English masterpiece, the history of scholarship surrounding the poem, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s titanic contribution to modern understanding of it.

Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780393320978

Dick Ringler’s translation of Beowulf: https://amzn.to/3sv1yWQ

J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation and commentary on Beowulf: https://amzn.to/3w81O09

Colin Gorrie’s Why the Grammar-Translation Method Does Not Work (And What Does): https://ancientlanguage.com/why-grammar-translation-method-does-not-work/

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Monsters and the Critics: https://amzn.to/3FE4rdo

Tom Shippey’s Lecture 1 of 3 on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: https://youtu.be/FPBt05KUfzg

Norton Critical Edition of Beowulf: https://amzn.to/3McPv8y

Virgil’s Aeneid: https://amzn.to/3FMLAN9

Colin Gorrie’s website: https://www.colingorrie.com/

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

Making humanistic education democratic and freely available was its downfall, at least in the eyes of Albert Jay Nock, as he discusses in The Theory of Education in the United States. Taking a cue as well from Plato’s Republic, Jonathan and Ryan address the apparent tension between the excellence of the tradition and the equalitarian, democratic mores of American life. Should everyone be educated? Can they be?

Richard Gamble’s Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568

Albert Jay Nock’s The Theory of Education in the United States: https://amzn.to/38v94tR

Albert Jay Nock’s Memoirs of a Superfluous Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781610160353

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

Dorothy Sayers’s The Lost Tools of Learning: https://www.pccs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LostToolsOfLearning-DorothySayers.pdf

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

“The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force,” wrote Simone Weil. And yet, she said that Homer’s poem is “the purest and loveliest of mirrors.” How can a poem that revels in the visceral description of death and that chronicles the destruction of a great city be so pure and lovely? Jonathan and Ryan take a look into this epic mirror and into Weil’s justly famous essay on it.

Simone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (free English translation): http://biblio3.url.edu.gt/SinParedes/08/Weil-Poem-LM.pdf

Simone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (bilingual French-English critical edition): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780820463612

Homer’s Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780374529055

Aeschylus' Oresteia: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140443332

Sophocles' Theban Plays: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156027649

Ovid’s Metamorphoses: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156001267

Virgil’s Aeneid: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780553210415

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

The Lost Tools of Learning, a 1947 lecture delivered at Oxford by Dorothy Sayers, was largely ignored at the time and in England until decades later in the United States, when it became a foundation text of the Classical Christian Education movement. Despite being the lecture that launched 1,000 classical schools, Dorothy Sayers appears to undermine the classical tradition and repeatedly side with educational progressives. Jonathan and Ryan dig into the lecture, its impact on the CCE movement, and some pedagogical alternatives.

Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568

Dorothy Sayers’s Lost Tools of Learning: https://www.pccs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LostToolsOfLearning-DorothySayers.pdf

Dorothy Sayers’s translation of Dante’s Inferno: https://amzn.to/36yr31C

Jonathan Roberts’s Classical Schools Are Not Really Classical: https://ancientlanguage.com/classical-schools-not-classical/

C. Stephen Jaeger’s The Envy of Angels: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780812217452

J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories”: https://coolcalvary.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/on-fairy-stories1.pdf

C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944

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

In one of his many letters to his nephew Lucilius, the famous Stoic philosopher, playwright, and statesman, Seneca, advises his nephew to avoid reading too much. Jonathan and Ryan take up the philosopher’s advice and consider what dangers there are, if any, in reading too much or too widely. 

Seneca’s Epistle 2 (free in English): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_2

Seneca’s Epistles 1-65 (English - Latin): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674990845

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780812968255

Joseph Keegin’s What is College? https://fxxfy.net/2021/09/08/what-is-college/

St. Thomas Aquinas’ Question 166: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3166.htm

C.S. Lewis’s Learning in War-Time: https://bradleyggreen.com/attachments/Lewis.Learning%20in%20War-Time.pdf

Cicero’s Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/3KLj8fT

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

Should teachers teach their pupils what to think? Or how to think? The great English philosopher Michael Oakeshott says it’s not so simple. Students certainly must learn how to think, but can only do so by learning about things in particular - in other words, by learning what to think. Jonathan and Ryan are joined to discuss this excellent Oakeshott lecture on learning and education by Dale Stenberg.

The Davenant Institute: https://davenantinstitute.org/

Pilgrim Faith Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pilgrim-faith-podcast/id1494222569

Pietas Classical Christian: https://pietasclassical.com/

Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568

Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781433556333

Alastair Roberts’ blog: https://alastairadversaria.com/

Donald Phillip Verene’s The Art of Humane Education: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780801440397

C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781107604728

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

Long before the New Humanists podcast was born, Irving Babbitt helped found the movement now known as New Humanism. University of Maryland Professor of Classics Dr. Eric Adler, along with his former student (and current ALI Fellow) Katherine Bradshaw, join the podcast to discuss the original New Humanist and what we might stand to gain from him in our debates about education, the humanities, and the canon.

Irving Babbitt’s “What Is Humanism?”: http://www.nhinet.org/lac1.htm

Irving Babbitt’s “What I Believe: Rousseau and Religion” from Spanish Character and Other Essays: https://amzn.to/34ZP9RH

Dr. Eric Adler’s The Battle of the Classics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780197518786

Dr. Eric Adler’s Classics, the Culture Wars, and Beyond: https://amzn.to/36a7V9H

Dr. Eric Adler’s Valorizing the Barbarians: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780292744035

C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944

Alan Jacobs’ The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s First Discourse: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780312694401

George MacDonald’s The Princess and Curdie: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781952410475

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060935467

Robert E. Proctor’s Defining the Humanities: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780253212191

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