I believe in honesty in advertising.
To demonstrate my commitment to this principle, I have written a promotional sales letter for a classical Christian curriculum. I am authorizing all headmasters of schools that promote the classical Christian curriculum to use this to send out to prospective parents. It is especially relevant to mothers, since they want to understand what classical studies are.
Because of the true nature of what classical history was -- above all, in Athens -- I thought this would help Christian mothers understand what the foundation of classical education was from the beginning.
This promotional is for the real deal, not the whitewashed version given by headmasters to the students.
I have written about this for 20 years. Start here: //www.garynorth.com/public/3155.cfm. You will then be ready for this.
Dear Christian Parents:
We teach classical Christian education.
Classical Christian education must begin with classical culture. We are committed to a faithful presentation of classical culture to your children, no later than puberty.
You have heard that classical civilization left a great legacy to the West. We are dedicated to teaching children what made classical civilization great. That is why our curriculum is built on the five pillars of classical culture.
1. Polytheism: the dead spirits of male family heads, plus fertility gods
2. Slavery, which alone made classical culture possible
3. Warfare, with The Iliad as the central cultural document
4. Human sacrifice 5. Pederasty, which brought teenage boys and mature men together (the gymnasium)
Polytheism was basic. This began with the home fire. The wife kept it burning. This was the family's secret fire. It was not allowed to go out. It honored the deceased male heads of household: household gods.
Then there were food offerings and wine offerings to the dearly departed males. If these were not offered, the ghosts of the dead would bring negative sanctions on the family. This is covered in the great book by Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City. It has been common knowledge among classically educated people ever since 1864.
Fertility gods were basic to classical religion. We start with the statuary of Greece. The best place to begin, we believe, is with Priapus. Here is a Wikipedia article on this god. There are lots of pictures. We make sure that our teenagers get access to these pictures, including the girls. We teach classical religion here. We make sure the kids read this. Check out the statue on page 55. Of course, we talk about the statues of Hermes that were everywhere: crossroads, temples, front doorways, etc. These statues were a head, a square torso, and a smaller head, so to speak. You could not go anywhere in Greece and Rome and not see what mattered most in classical religion.
Slavery, of course, was basic to the ancient world. Classical civilization believed that you can't have a civilized culture without widespread slavery. Athens knew this. So did Sparta. So did Rome. We read on Wikipedia:
It is certain that Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, on average three or four slaves per household. In the 5th century BC, Thucydides remarked on the desertion of 20,890 slaves during the war of Decelea, mostly tradesmen. The lowest estimate, of 20,000 slaves, during the time of Demosthenes, corresponds to one slave per family. Between 317 BC and 307 BC, the tyrant Demetrius Phalereus ordered a general census of Attica, which arrived at the following figures: 21,000 citizens, 10,000 metics and 40,000 slaves.
A metic was a foreigner.
But let's not forget Rome. Wikipedia reports:
Estimates for the prevalence of slavery in the Roman Empire vary. Estimates of the percentage of the population of Italy who were slaves range from 30 to 40 percent in the 1st century BC, upwards of two to three million slaves in Italy by the end of the 1st century BCE, about 35% to 40% of Italy's population. For the Empire as a whole, the slave population has been estimated at just under five million, representing 10-15% of the total population. An estimated 49% of all slaves were owned by the elite, who made up less than 1.5% of the Empire's population. About half of all slaves worked in the countryside, the remainder in towns and cities.
This was the economic foundation of classical civilization. Kids need to know this and respect it.
Where did they get these slaves? In warfare. Warfare was constant in ancient Greece. We see this best in the central document of classical Greece, The Iliad. The poem begins with an argument between King Agamemnon and Achilles. Who was going to get sexual rights to the kidnapped beauty, Brisius.
Agamemnon had taken a woman named Chryseis as his slave. Her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo, begs Agamemnon to return her to him. Agamemnon refuses and Apollo sends a plague amongst the Greeks. The prophet Calchas correctly determines the source of the troubles but will not speak unless Achilles vows to protect him. Achilles does so and Calchas declares Chryseis must be returned to her father. Agamemnon consents, but then commands that Achilles' battle prize Briseis be brought to him to replace Chryseis. Angry at the dishonor of having his plunder and glory taken away (and as he says later, because he loved Briseis), with the urging of his mother Thetis, Achilles refuses to fight or lead his troops alongside the other Greek forces. At this same time, burning with rage over Agamemnon's theft, Achilles prays to Thetis to convince Zeus to help the Trojans gain ground in the war, so that he may regain his honor.
The honor of rapists to have free reign with young women: here is a story to make young men brave. We want our students to get the picture early. Great literature must have great themes.
Then there was human sacrifice. The Greek fleet was trapped at the beginning. The goddess Artemis was outraged because a Greek killed a pregnant hare. It was a sacrilege. So, she stopped the wind from blowing. The priest Chalcus tells Agamemnon that if he sacrifices his daughter, the winds will blow again. So Agamemnon has his daughter Iphigenia brought to him. He sacrifices her. The winds then blow.
Lord Acton wrote a detailed article on human sacrifice in 1863. It was an answer to the great historian Macaulay, who denied that human sacrifice was basic to classical civilization. That article silenced Macaulay, but its message never got into the textbooks. We make sure that our children know what made classical culture great. No more cover-ups!
Then there is pederasty. This was central to classical education. Teenage boys competed naked in the gymnasium, just as young men did in the Olympics. You can't have great education apart from pederasty!
In classical antiquity, writers such as Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Athenaeus and many others explored aspects of same-sex love in ancient Greece. The most widespread and socially significant form of same-sex sexual relations in ancient Greece was between adult men and pubescent or adolescent boys, known as pederasty (marriages in Ancient Greece between men and women were also age structured, with men in their 30s commonly taking wives in their early teens). Though homosexual relationships between adult men did exist, at least one member of each of these relationships flouted social conventions by assuming a passive sexual role. It is unclear how such relations between women were regarded in the general society, but examples do exist as far back as the time of Sappho.The ancient Greeks did not conceive of sexual orientation as a social identifier as modern Western societies have done. Greek society did not distinguish sexual desire or behavior by the gender of the participants, but rather by the role that each participant played in the sex act, that of active penetrator or passive penetrated. This active/passive polarization corresponded with dominant and submissive social roles: the active (penetrative) role was associated with masculinity, higher social status, and adulthood, while the passive role was associated with femininity, lower social status, and youth.
We know that there are mothers out there who know none of this. These poor women have had deficient educations. They have led sheltered lives. Their children will not be sheltered at our school. We introduce them to the foundations of classical education.
The rite of passage undergone by Greek youths in the tribal prehistory of Greece evolved into the commonly known form of Greek pederasty after the rise of the city-state, or polis. Greek boys no longer left the confines of the community, but rather paired up with older men within the confines of the city. These men, like their earlier counterparts, played an educational and instructive role in the lives of their young companions; likewise, just as in earlier times, they shared a sexual relationship with their boys. Penetrative sex, however, was seen as demeaning for the passive partner, and outside the socially accepted norm.An elaborate social code governed the mechanics of Greek pederasty. It was the duty of the adult man to court the boy who struck his fancy, and it was viewed as socially appropriate for the younger man to withhold for a while before capitulating to his mentor's desires. This waiting period allowed the boy to ensure that his suitor was not merely interested in him for sexual purposes, but felt a genuine emotional affection for him and was interested in assuming the mentor role assigned to him in the pederastic paradigm.
The age limit for pederasty in ancient Greece seems to encompass, at the minimum end, boys of twelve years of age. To love a boy below the age of twelve was considered inappropriate, but no evidence exists of any legal penalties attached to this sort of practice. Traditionally, a pederastic relationship could continue until the widespread growth of the boy's body hair, when he is considered a man. Thus, the age limit for the younger member of a pederastic relationship seems to have extended from 12 to about 17 years of age.
We teach the old classical values, just as Aristophanes did in his play, Clouds.
CHORUS LEADER [addressing the Better Argument]
First, you who crowned our men in days gone by
with so much virtue in their characters,
let's hear that voice which brings you such delight--
explain to us what makes you what you areBETTER ARGUMENT
All right, I'll set out how we organized
our education in the olden days,
when I talked about what's just and prospered,
when people wished to practise self-restraint. . . .At the trainer's house,
when the boys sat down, they had to keep
their thighs stretched out, so they would not expose
a thing which might excite erotic torments
in those looking on. And when they stood up,
they smoothed the sand, being careful not to leave
imprints of their manhood there for lovers.
Using oil, no young lad rubbed his body
underneath his navel--thus on his sexual parts
there was a dewy fuzz, like on a peach.
He didn't make his voice all soft and sweet
to talk to lovers as he walked along,
or with his glances coyly act the pimp.
When he was eating, he would not just grab
a radish head, or take from older men
some dill or parsley, or eat dainty food.
He wasn't allowed to giggle, or sit there
with his legs crossed.
Ah, the good old days! Inspirational! Those days were long gone when Socrates taught, and Athens built its empire, based on trade and war.
Anyone doubting all this needs to read this section from the Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World (p. 160).
The primary source documents are all here. We make sure your children will read lots of them.
We teach classical education here -- not the G-rated censored version that our competitors palm off as classical education. They are pandering to the little old Christian women of both sexes. We don't pander here. We provide the real deal. We say that when you teach that classical culture is the basis of art, liberty, and higher values, you should teach what the classical masters did and said. Our competitors, with their G-rated version, refuse to do this.
We don't sugar coat classical culture in order to fool parents who have never studied classical Greece and Rome, and who have heard about how great a classical Christian curriculum is. They want to baptize an expurgated version of classical culture. They say that classical culture was consistent: religion, sexual mores, slavery, politics, and war. We agree. It was. But that culture had nothing to do with the G-rated, expurgated version that is taught in the Christian schools that advertise a classical Christian education. They want to fuse the Bible and classical culture. That is because they are unfamiliar with classical culture.
In our school, we teach unadulterated schizophrenia. Send your children here.
We know you want your children to be taught the truth. That's what we teach here.
There is, of course, a marketing problem. We hope Tom Cruise isn't you.
Update in 2015: //www.garynorth.com/public/14403.cfm
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Posted on January 31, 2022. Published originally on July 12, 2014. Recommended by MNR1867.
The original is here.
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