PRESENT PROBLEMS OF THE HISTORY OF CLASSICAL 



LITERATURE 



BY JOHN HEXRY WRIGHT 



[John Henry Wright, Professor of Greek and Dean of the Graduate School, Harvard 

 University, b. February 4, 1852, Urmiah, Persia. A.B. Dartmouth College, 

 1873; LL.D. ibid. (Hon.) 1901; LL.D. Western Reserve University (Hon.) 

 1901; student, University of Leipzig, 1876-78. Assistant Professor of Latin and 

 Greek, Ohio State University, 1873-76; Associate Professor of Greek, Dart- 

 mouth College, 1878-86; Professor of Classical Philology, Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, 1886-87. Member and Past President of the American Philological 

 Association, Fellow and Councilor of the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, Councilor of the Archaeological Institute of America, etc. Editor-in- 

 chief of American Journal of Archaeology; editor of A History of All Nations.] 



THE comprehensive scheme of the organizers of this Congress for 

 passing in review the various branches of human knowledge their 

 past achievements, their present conditions and relations, and their 

 future prospects has provided for classical antiquity under five 

 fields of learning, in the group of sciences known as the Historical 

 Sciences, where the term " historical " and " history " are used mainly 

 in the old Greek sense of investigation. These fields are: the political 

 history of Greece and Rome; the history of Roman law; languages, 

 especially Greek and Latin; literature, especially classical literature; 

 and classical art. 



Classical antiquity, the civilization of the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans, has left a record of itself in many ways. This record was 

 made by persons, living, breathing human beings, with a wide out- 

 look; hence it has a universal and a perpetual appeal to humanity. 

 The ancients recorded themselves, their lives, works, ideas, and ideals. 

 either collectively (or in smaller collective groups), or individuals 

 among them made the record. The collective record is found pri- 

 marily in all the institutions of the social organism (religious, political, 

 and the like), and in that great social institution, as Whitney used 

 to call it. language. language as form and expression. The record 

 of the smaller collective groups or of individuals was made in the 

 various forms of individual or mainly individual expression, chiefly 

 in art. and in literature which is language as artistic form and content. 



The ancient record is in large part lost, in large part blurred and 

 become difficult of decipherment. But much has been preserved. 

 either actually and immediately, or mediately and indirectly in the 

 tokens of influences on other civilizations; and by the use of methods 

 and instruments of ever-increasing precision in philological research 

 the difficulties of decipherment are nearly met. Thus by the aid of 

 hints that we have we can discover anew in some measure what we 



