Classical Antiquity

References to ancient Greece and Rome abound in Victorian literature and culture. Although classical studies are often associated with the elite, there is evidence in sources from textbooks to periodicals to the popular stage that Greek epic and tragedy, Roman history, and artifacts and accounts of archaeological discoveries reached a wide audience. Fascination with Greek culture developed in the Romantic period as a reaction against Augustanism and remained strong throughout the century, with cultural critics such as Matthew Arnold insisting on the relevance of Hellenism to the concerns of the present day. Victorian authors also found new significance in the Roman inheritance. Writers such as Matthew Arnold, W. M. Thackeray, Alfred Tennyson, A. H. Clough, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and A. C. Swinburne, among others, studied Latin and Greek for years at school or university and reworked their classical learning in poetry and fiction. A distinctive feature of the Oxford Greats syllabus was that it encouraged students to compare Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and history with the work of modern thinkers, and to comment on parallels between the ancient and modern worlds. The classical curriculum shaped public life: politicians and imperial administrators interpreted the challenges facing modern Britain in terms of Athenian or Roman examples. Largely self-taught Hellenists such as Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and George Eliot achieved a remarkable degree of proficiency in Greek with little assistance, since Greek literature, philosophy, and history seemed to offer them tantalizing access to unparalleled sources of truth and knowledge. A wider readership also shared in the richness of the classical inheritance through translations and adaptations of classical literature, history, and myth. Greek epics and tragedy were appropriated by the authors of dramatic monologues, novels, and theatrical burlesques to engage with contemporary concerns about marriage and divorce, the role of women, and the idea of heroism in the modern world. The predominance of Latin and Greek in formal education was beginning to be questioned toward the end of the century, as debates about issues such as the applicability of Greek culture to education in an industrialized society stimulated controversy; in the late Victorian period classical culture was increasingly scrutinized using new approaches based on anthropology, archaeology, and sociology, which broadened the disciplinary base of classics and informed transgressive tendencies in the Hellenism of aesthetic and decadent writers.