OXFORD AND GREEK 



By JOHN L. MYRES, M.A. 



Wykekam Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford 



Oxford's rejection of yet another proposal to dispense with 

 knowledge of Greek in the case of certain classes of candidates 

 for the B.A. degree offers occasion for brief retrospect and 

 some reflections on the whole " Greek Question." As one of 

 the newspapers put it, after the voting last November, " It 

 will be a year or two before Greek is saved from its Oxford 

 friends." As a matter of practical politics, the question is 

 shelved for the moment ; shelved indeed in all probability 

 till Oxford itself can be " saved " from constitutional obstacles 

 and diverted from the plausible pastime of "reform from 

 within." But the question is not postponed for long ; nothing 

 that official Oxford is likely to do can alter the course of 

 events elsewhere. 



The discussion has turned of late mainly round two large 

 problems which taken together are the " Greek Question " in 

 its present phase. One of these questions is theoretic — " Is a 

 good general education possible without Greek?" to which 

 belongs the supplementary question, " Is it still a good general 

 education, if the only Greek which it includes is Greek for 

 Responsions ? " The other is practical : What position does 

 Oxford wish to occupy — and therewith, what position ought 

 it to occupy — among other universities of the Empire in respect 

 to those whose education, though good enough and general 

 enough for all other universities except Oxford and Cambridge, 

 yet has not been either so " specialised " as to guarantee real 

 knowledge of Greek in boys of eighteen or so deranged as 

 to admit the modicum of crammed accidence which Oxford 

 and Cambridge accept as equivalent ? The two questions are 

 obviously quite distinct. Oxford has long since overcome 

 the momentary irritation with which it first heard itself 

 described as the "home of lost causes": many prominent 

 Oxford men, both resident and non-resident, have come to 



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