The first lesson in Ancient Culture was conducted by Adam Łajtar – then a PhD student, today Professor of Archaeology and one of the organizers of the 27th International Congress of Papyrology in 2013. We expected a lecture on Greece or Rome and we received a fascinating conversation about Egypt, we wrote our first hieroglyphs, and we learnt – from a practitioner in reading papyri and participant in archaeological excavations – an outline of the history of Mesopotamia and the Middle East, with Classical Antiquity's chronology against that background. We also got acquainted with some Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian myths concerning the beginnings of the world, and that complemented the knowledge we gained from the lessons of Latin and Polish. The subsequent classes were devoted to the development of the writing systems, and they were vigorously conducted by Prof. (then a doctor) Małgorzata Borowska, concluding at that time her work on the *Mormolyke* handbook, and by Prof. Oktawiusz Jurewicz – an eminent linguist, the translator of Horace's corpus into Polish, long-time director of the Department (now Institute) of Classical Philology at the University of Warsaw, and finally a cherished member of OBTA, who won our respect and admiration with his vast knowledge and his pre-war gentlemanly demeanour. He made us search for connections between different languages and for the etymology of words as a key to understanding the given culture and its people. In the first year, classical mythology was present (complementarily to the Polish classes) mainly at the lessons on Greek vases, Homer, Hesiod, and ancient drama.

One of the most valuable experiences we gained from the course on Ancient Culture was the awareness that scholars might not know something and that instead of "one fundamental thesis" it was possible to deal with several theories (as, for example, on the origin of tragedy or in regard to the text transmission process). Suddenly, nothing was taken for granted, and this encouraged openness, curiosity, and the need for posing questions in a constant dialogue with the lecturer and the texts.

Of course, it was not required from us that we read all the texts under discussion, but the character of the lessons encouraged such extra-curricular engagement in further reading. A precious added value was in fact that of the bibliographical hints we received from the scholars and our teachers. Their passion and personalities had a better effect than any kind of book marketing or didactic pressure. That is how I came across, among others texts, the stunning novel about Ovid, *Nazo poeta* [Naso the Poet, 1969] by Jacek Bocheński, the poignant *Laughter of Aphrodite* (1965) by Peter Green, and the breath-taking *Story of San Michele* (1929) by Axel Munthe. It was also during the course on Ancient Culture that I came to know Tadeusz Zieliński's difficult *curriculum vitae*. Whole decades of ostracizing him by communist censorship in Poland removed him from collective memory. After 1989, his books could again be published, and in fact I had at home the first three parts of his tetralogy *Świat antyczny* [The Ancient World],58 including *Fabulous Antiquity* printed still outside of Poland (1988),59 so I could immerse myself in it as a child, but I gained the awareness of his tragic fate from my Masters whom I met at Rej High School and who preserved the memory of their Masters, *antiquorum non immemores*.60

In sum, the Classics profile was an education in Community, where all the parts involved (scholars, teachers, and students) learnt responsibility for the transmission of the ancient heritage and were presented with opportunities to develop their horizons in the study process, taking place according to the principles of *docere, movere, delectare*.

58 The fourth part, *Cesarstwo rzymskie* [Roman Empire], was republished for the first time after World War Two as late as in 1995 in Warsaw.

59 Tadeusz Zieliński, *Starożytność bajeczna* [Fabulous Antiquity], Zagreb: Wydawnictwo "Śląsk", 1988 (re-ed. of 1939; ed. pr. in Polish 1930, ed. pr. in Russian 1922–1923), with a foreword by the famous Polish historian of Classical Antiquity and popularizer of history Prof. Aleksander Krawczuk.

60 *Antiquorum non immemores* is also the title of a monograph on the history and on the remarkable members of the Polish Philological Association; see Jerzy Łanowski and Alicja Szastyńska-Siemon, eds., *Antiquorum non immemores… Polskie Towarzystwo Filologiczne 1893–1993* [*Antiquorum non immemores*… Polish Philological Association 1893–1993], Warszawa and Wrocław: Polskie Towarzystwo Filologiczne and OBTA, 1999, incl. Zieliński's biography by Jerzy Axer, 332–334. On Zieliński, see also Marian Plezia, "Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński 1859–1944", in Iza Bieżuńska-Małowist, ed., *W kręgu wielkich humanistów. Kultura antyczna w Uniwersytecie Warszawskim po I wojnie światowej* [In the Circle of Eminent Humanists: Ancient Culture at the University of Warsaw after World War One], Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1991, 38–53; Marian Plezia, *Z dziejów filologii klasycznej w Polsce* [From the History of Classical Philology in Poland], Warszawa: Polskie Towarzystwo Filologiczne, 1993, chapters: "Z młodzieńczych lat Tadeusza Zielińskiego" [From the Years of Tadeusz Zieliński's Youth], 168–180 (first published in *Meander* in 1982), and "'Dziecię niedoli'. Ostatnie dzieło Tadeusza Zielińskiego" ["Child of Misery": The Last Work of Tadeusz Zieliński], 181–235 (first published in *Analecta Cracoviensia* in 1983).

### **2.4. Prometheus "the Internet-Bearer": Our Mythical Education Today**

In December 2017, a newspaper report from a British school captured the attention of public opinion not only in the United Kingdom. Its popularity was not surprising, as the school in question stated to have found a method for teaching its students how to distinguish fake news from the facts – a competence crucial in the present-day world. This was done mainly by training young minds with excerpts from the ancient philosophers.61 The method seems reasonable all the more so as we are still in debt to the Ionian school of the philosophy of nature and the inquisitiveness of their representatives, whose rudimental questions – repeated later by Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, et al. – have never stopped guiding us through the mysteries of the world. And there are more arguments for the presence of the Classics in education, including the concept of "the Experience of the Masterpieces" as articulated by Wilfried Stroh. To renounce the legacy of Greek and Roman antiquity by eliminating it from school means to severe ties not only with the ancient masterpieces that indeed make us think deeper and more sharply (woe to fake news!), but also, due to the mechanisms of reception, with many masterpieces of post-antiquity art, literature, and thought – all still breathtaking and with the potential to inspire successive generations of artists and thinkers, as well as us – their public.

And, in fact, you cannot give up on this heritage all that easily. Ancient culture, as noticed by Sienkiewicz and Tuwim, courses through our veins. It is enough to look around. Bob Dylan dedicates a crucial part of his 2016 Nobel Prize Lecture to Homer. Helen Oyeyemi conquers the British (and not only)62 book market with her novel *Icarus Girl* (2005), in which she combines traditions of the Yoruba tribe with the Greek myth that is foundational for Western civilization. Biologists name a recently discovered gene that prevents obesity in sheep after Aphrodite Kallipygos (Venus of the Beautiful Buttocks)63 and a genus of octopus discovered in 1998 in extremely

61 Camilla Turner, "Leading Private School Uses Greek Philosophers to Teach Pupils How to Spot 'Fake News'", *The Telegraph*, 29 December 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/12/29/leading-private-school-uses-greek-philosophers-teach-pupils/.

62 In 2007 Helen Oyeyemi visited Poland (Lublin, Warsaw, Toruń, and Łódź) and met with her Polish readers within the programme *Faces & Places – New British Writing*; see [British Council], "Helen Oyeyemi w Polsce" [Helen Oyeyemi in Poland], Afryka.org, 8 May 2007, http://afryka.org/ helen-oyeyemi-w-polsce/.

63 Noelle E. Cockett, Maria A. Smit, Christopher A. Bidwell, Karin Segers, Tracy L. Hadfield, Gary D. Snowder, Michel Georges, and Carole Charlier, "The *Callipyge* Mutation and Other Genes

hot hydrothermal vents is christened in honour of the Roman god of fire, Vulcan, as *Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis*.64 The trails of Hercules can be found all over the world. Near Kraków he left his Club, as a huge limestone stack is called (Maczuga Herkulesa). The Spaniards would point out to us the Pillars of Hercules, which again, though *mutatis mutandis*, in our times of a new wave of great migrations, are a symbol of the gate to the new world. The hero also signs the Treaty of Waitangi in the artworks of the New Zealand artist Marian Maguire;65 he is called on for help in the American Wild West by Bonnie Tyler in her famous hit of the 1980s "Holding Out for a Hero" ("Where's the street-wise Hercules / To fight the rising odds?"); and he features in The Chainsmokers and Coldplay's "Something Just Like This" of 2017 (together with Achilles: "I've been reading books of old / The legends and the myths / Achilles and his gold / Hercules and his gifts"). The twenty-first century brings us ever new Classical Antiquity-inspired works, to mention only *Harry Potter* by J.K. Rowling and the *Hunger Games* by Suzanne Collins for youth, the female perspective on the ancient world in the fascinating novels by Natalie Haynes, Madeline Miller, and Pat Barker, a number of Netflix series with classical references (from the obvious *Troy* to the enigmatically Sisyphean *Before I Fall*), a moving report from Daniel Mendelsohn's journey with his father on Odysseus' trails (*An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic*, 2017), etc. I have mentioned here but a few crumbs from the great table of Homer and his ancient colleagues. There are more, and they provide us with solid nourishment at all stages of our lives. In fact, if we have a classical background, we can feed on them and draw strength from the past to create the present for the future. We can read the messages left by the great artists and thinkers in the world that suddenly proffers meaning and gives us insight into its Mystery.

Three exceptional minds, in different periods of tensions – Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1850), T.S. Eliot (1944), and J.M. Coetzee (1990) asked what was a Classic, each time arriving at the paradoxical definition that it was the work of an author who – anchored in tradition, but well aware

that Affect Muscle Hypertrophy in Sheep", *Genetics Selection Evolution* 37 (2005), Suppl. 1, 65–81, https://doi.org/10.1186/1297-9686-37-S1-S65.

64 Angel F. González, Angel Guerra, Santiago Pascual, and Patrick Briand, "*Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis* Gen. et Sp. Nov. (Mollusca: Cephalopoda): An Octopod from a Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Site", *Cahiers de Biologie Marine* 39 (1998), 169–184.

65 Marian Maguire, "The Labours of Herakles", 2008, https://www.marianmaguire.com/2008- --the-labours-of-herakles.html.

of the challenges of his/her times – would lead humankind a step forward.66 And why the Classics? The answer to this question is more complex and it is not very "comfortable". Classical Antiquity, and Greek and Roman mythology in the first place, offer us some lessons – ones difficult for both the students and the teachers who transmit them. For example, on the "Law of the Contrite Heart", as it was called by the Polish philosopher Adam Krokiewicz (1890–1977), a professor at the University of Warsaw, but earlier also a teacher of ancient languages at a Kraków middle school. He discovered this law while reading the scene of the *Iliad* (Book 24) in which King Priam comes to the tent of Achilles and kisses his hands still covered with Hector's blood. They lay down their anger and pride, and unite in grief, for there is no victory in war for those who have lost their near and dear.

There is also the "Law of the Appreciation of Life", as we may call the lesson taken by Odysseus from the ghost of Achilles at the entrance to the Underworld:

> μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα […]; βουλοίμην κ' ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ, ἀνδρὶ παρ' ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη, ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν. (Hom. *Od*. 11.488–491)

Say not a word […] in death's favour; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead.67

The next crucial law is discovered while pondering Oedipus' fate – a myth particularly important in the context of the Rej High School motto.

66 Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, "Qu'est-ce qu'un Classique?", *Le Constitutionnel*, 21 October 1850; T.S. Eliot, *What Is a Classic? An Address Delivered before the Virgil Society on the 16th of October, 1944*, London: Faber & Faber, 1945; J.M. Coetzee, "What Is a Classic?" (1990), in his *Stranger Shores: Literary Essays, 1986–1999*, New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2001, 1–16. See also the recent, most interesting study *Forward with Classics: Classical Languages in Schools and Communities*, edited by Arlene Holmes-Henderson, Steven Hunt, and Mai Musié, London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2018. See also my introductory chapter "What Is a Classic… for Children and Young Adults?", in Katarzyna Marciniak, ed., *Our Mythical Childhood… The Classics and Literature for Children and Young Adults*, Metaforms: Studies in the Reception of Classical Antiquity 8, Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2016, 1–26, and my chapter "The Ancient Tradition in the 21st Century – Cui Bono?", in Katarzyna Marciniak, ed., *Antiquity and We*, Warsaw: Faculty of "Artes Liberales", University of Warsaw, 2013, 209–281, also available online (http://al.uw.edu.pl/pliki/akt/Antiquity\_and\_We\_eBook.pdf).

67 Homer, *The Odyssey*, trans. Samuel Butler, New York, NY: Race Point Publishing, 2015, 135.

A good man who gave up his throne and accepted the life of an exile to avoid a destiny which for him meant harming his near and dear, fulfilled it to the very end. But his tragedy is not devoid of meaning. It offers us a glimpse into the divine order of the world – its *Logos*. We may not understand the complex tissue of things, but our limitations are not relevant. Maybe we are not meant to. After all, the most cursed of men brings finally a blessing to Athens, the cradle of democratic values for millennia to come.

The story of Oedipus' descendants teaches us yet another law: that we are born "to share love not hate" (Soph. *Ant*. 523: οὔτοι συνέχθειν, ἀλλὰ συμφιλεῖν ἔφυν), and that only this shared love can save us – a very particular species, as defined by Sophocles: "Numberless are the world's wonders, but none / More wonderful than man" (*Ant*. 332–333: πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀν- / θρώπου δεινότερον πέλει) – which is both the highest compliment to humankind and the highest warning we should never forget, unlike it happened to Daedalus.

There is finally the "Law of Irreversibility of a Metamorphosis", as we know it from Orpheus' myth and King Louis XIV's mythological experience with Fénelon.  Not even if you are a mighty king who has the means to send your defiant subject there.

All such laws contribute to building young people's identity and character – whereas, as Zieliński wrote, the "force of mind is not the product of an easy but of a hard school".68 In view of this, classical education has consequences – side effects in the form of constant doubts – natural when you present students with the powerful tool of the knowledge acquired from the great minds that have shaped our world and shown to us our strengths and our frailties. Young people learn to question and at the same time to respect the authorities, for the real ones will not be harmed, as Coetzee remarked. They also become part of the millennia-old mythical Community, where they are encouraged to think independently and to test and set the limits of their own freedom.

68 Zieliński, "Kilka uwag o wykształceniu klasycznym", 10, quoted also by Olechowska, "Teaching Latin and Greek in Inter-War Poland", 227. See also Barbara Brzuska, "Latin and Politics in People's Poland", in David Movrin and Elżbieta Olechowska, eds., *Classics and Class: Greek and Latin Classics and Communism at School*, Warsaw and Ljubljana: Faculty of "Artes Liberales", University of Warsaw; Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts; and Wydawnictwo DiG, 2016, 229–286 (on the situation until the school year 1993/94), and Janusz Ryba's chapter in the present volume.

Sadly, the potential of this kind of education and the experience of the Classics profile – let's admit it: difficult both for students and their teachers as freedom is a demanding value – has not been fully used after the turn of the third millennium.69 The subsequent reforms tend to eliminate the Classics from the school curriculum in Poland (a ray of hope: thirty hours as an elective course since 2020/21),70 the main argument being always the same: the necessity to give space to the most recent discoveries. Yet paradoxically, they will soon be obsolete – taking into consideration the lightspeed development of the sciences, while the base of the Classics will never change, the fundamental questions will still require answers, and the gesture of Antigone who sprinkles a handful of soil on her cursed brother's body will never be forgotten by those who have witnessed it on their education path.

Fortunately, there are ever more bottom-up initiatives to popularize Classical Antiquity at schools, such as the efforts of the Polish Philological Association on the national scale, or the Ancient League (a kind of school competition) in Toruń.71 The Classics classes are still kept (*mutatis mutandis*),72 and headmasters all over the country, also in small towns, with ever-growing support from parents, try to preserve Latin lessons. Nonetheless, the situation is very difficult. Latin as a school subject is on the verge of extinction in Poland: for now it is learnt only by 3% of high school students.73

The Classics will survive, I have no doubts. The stake here is not the future of ancient culture, but of the present generations of students who may be deprived of this source of their strength, of this, to quote Thucydides, κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ – "a possession for ever", if the educational process

69 See Grażyna Czetwertyńska, "Expectations and Disappointments: Latin and Antiquity as Components of the Education System in Poland at the Beginning of the Nineties", in David Movrin and Elżbieta Olechowska, eds., *Classics and Class: Greek and Latin Classics and Communism at School*, Warsaw and Ljubljana: Faculty of "Artes Liberales", University of Warsaw; Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts; and Wydawnictwo DiG, 2016, 287–298.

70 See the report *Nauczanie łaciny w Polsce – stan obecny* [Teaching Latin in Poland: The Current Situation] on the website of the Polish Philological Association (Polskie Towarzystwo Filologiczne, http://www.ptf.edu.pl/nauczanie-laciny-stan-prawny/).

71 Just a small observation in this context: one of the organizers of the Ancient League, Prof. Barbara Bibik from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, is a graduate of Rej High School.

72 For example, in Bartłomiej Nowodworski High School No. I in Kraków, where Dr Janusz Ryba, the author of the chapter "Greek and Roman Mythology in Classical Education in Poland after 1945" in the present volume, is currently a teacher of Latin and the tutor of the ancient culture-oriented initiatives.

73 See the report *Nauczanie łaciny w Polsce* [Teaching Latin in Poland] on the website of the Polish Philological Association.

is focused on short-term benefits only. May this volume be our cry *de profundis* to join forces, both regionally and globally, to help the shapers of the school curricula to see the value of this ancient possession.

One of the crucial roles of the *Our Mythical Childhood* programme, as I have seen it from the very beginning in 2011, is to build an international milieu to succour the Classics in education. Since the programme's stages supported by the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Grant (2012–2013) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Alumni Award for Innovative Networking Initiatives (2014–2017), we have been collaborating on a regular basis with two schools in Poland, a venture possible due to the highest engagement of the teachers and the kind consent of the school authorities and parents.74 Since 2016, the Faculty of "Artes Liberales" has been a patron of the Polish studies-Classics profile at Rej High School with the aim of continuing and developing in new circumstances the traditions elaborated by our eminent predecessors.75

Already in 2014/15 I decided to apply for an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project *Our Mythical Childhood… The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children's and Young Adults' Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges*, including the idea of citizen science also here, to make full use of this great chance for us to expand Our Mythical Community on an unprecedented global scale. The application was successful,76 and since 2016, educational activities have been a vital part of this newest stage of the *Our Mythical Childhood* programme. We come from different regions of the world – team members from Australia, Cameroon, Israel, Poland (including a colleague from Belarus), and the United Kingdom, cooperating with experts from Germany, Italy, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, the USA, and New Zealand. But we all share the same vision, or hope: together to make a change by combining research and education to create a new holistic

74 Mikołaj Rej High School No. XI and "Strumienie" High School, which in itself shows the potential of the classical Community that collaborates and teaches its members, including the students, the spirit of open-mindedness and respect for different approaches: Rej High School is a public, old educational institution in Warsaw, with Evangelical traditions, and "Strumienie" High School – a private, Catholic school on the outskirts of the capital. I wish to thank for their excellent collaboration and engagement in particular two teachers *sine quibus non*: Barbara Strycharczyk and Anna Wojciechowska, as well as the headmasters of both schools, and the teacher teams.

75 It is worth noticing that Prof. Axer's successor as the Dean of the Faculty of "Artes Liberales" is Prof. Robert A. Sucharski, who as a PhD student also gave lectures for the Classics profile at Rej High School.

76 For basic information on the project, see its website: Katarzyna Marciniak, "About OMC", *Our Mythical Childhood…*, http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/about.

model of collaboration in the humanities. Thus, we invite students to make their first steps in research work under the guidance of teachers. As a result, more than a hundred high school students have prepared their first scholarly presentations so far, and they showcased them at our key conferences and meetings.77

During the *Our Mythical Hope* conference in 2017, the students gave presentations about the reception of classical mythology in the works they reach for when in need of guidance in their coming-of-age issues. At the workshops *The Present Meets the Past* in the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH 2018), they analysed the traces of Classical Antiquity around them, in the context of some poignant events from the history of the twentieth century up to this day, and reconstructed the fate of a boy who paid with his life for his participation in clandestine education during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw in World War Two.78 In 2018/19, for the second stage of the ERC project – *Our Mythical History: Children's and Young Adults' Culture in Response to the Heritage of Ancient Greece and Rome* – we developed a collaboration with four schools: next to Mikołaj Rej High School in Warsaw and "Strumienie" High School in Józefów, the challenge was taken up by Nicolaus Copernicus University Academic Junior and Senior High School in Toruń and Bartłomiej Nowodworski High School No. I in Kraków. The students entered into the role of Publius Cornelius Nepos and chose four figures from Polish history who appreciated the classical tradition and whose lives may still serve as *exempla* in our times. The students, guided

77 These data regard Poland, but similar endeavours take place in other countries, to mention the event for children organized by Lisa Maurice and Ayelet Peer at Researchers' Night in Israel in September 2018; Daniel A. Nkemleke and his colleagues' workshops for teachers in Cameroon; Elizabeth Hale's talk at the conference of the Classical Languages Teachers Association in Australia in October 2018; and the conference *Classics and Education*, organized by Susan Deacy, Frances Foster, and Sonya Nevin at the University of Cambridge in September 2017, with its second instalment in February 2020, incl. a presentation by Hazel Pearson (English teacher at "Strumienie" High School) and Barbara Strycharczyk, "Mythology as a Source of Creative Inspiration and an Element of Interdisciplinarity", on the endeavours within the programme *Our Mythical Childhood*; see the post by Hazel Pearson, Barbara Strycharczyk, and myself: "Mythology and Education at the University of Cambridge", *Our Mythical Childhood Blog*, 19 March 2020, https://ourmythicalchildhoodblog. wordpress.com/2020/03/19/mythology-and-education-at-the-university-of-cambridge/ (accessed 28 April 2020).

78 See the school project's booklet *Okruchy pamięci: Scraps of Memory*, edited by Barbara Strycharczyk (http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/assets/images/present/4\_School\_project\_booklet\_ English.pdf).

by their teachers,79 presented the results of their task in the collection *De viris mulieribusque illustribus*.80 In 2017 we also established the Cluster "The Past for the Present: International Research and Educational Programme", to make full use of the potential of our academic work and to support teachers in various countries in developing special programmes to engage students with the Classics.81

It is worth noticing that these programmes also include artistic activities, like the staging of a fragment on Pyramus and Thisbe from Shakespeare's *A Midsummer Night's Dream* – and in Latin,82 or the video competition *Antiquity–Camera–Action!* we organize in Poland.83 In its first edition, devoted to classical mythology,84 one of the teams created a story about a modern Prometheus who gives the humans not fire, but… the Internet. Indeed, owing to this medium we can do more today85 – for example, we

82 See a clip from the event available online: "Our Mythical Childhood ERC Consolidator Grant", YouTube, 6 July 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFey\_V6RPw&t=.

83 We draw in this also on the experience of Dr Sonya Nevin, our team member, and also Prof. Ingo Gildenhard from the University of Cambridge, where a similar competition has been organized by the Faculty of Classics for several years now. By the way, this kind of exchange of experiences shows the strength of our research Community to collaborate with the aim of supporting the Classics globally.

84 See the competition's website: *Antyk–Kamera–Akcja!*, https://antykkameraakcja.wordpress.com/. The second edition (2018/19) was focused on the reception of ancient history. The theme of the third edition (2019/20) is ecology and environmental issues in relation to the ancient tradition.

85 See, e.g., the results of the panel organized by Prof. Markus Janka within the international conference *Digitale Bildung – zwischen Hype und Hybris* by the Münchener Zentrum für Lehrerbildung, on 10 October 2018, at the University of Munich.

79 Barbara Strycharczyk from "Strumienie", Anna Wojciechowska from Mikołaj Rej, Barbara Bibik from Nicolaus Copernicus, and Janusz Ryba from Bartłomiej Nowodworski High Schools. The book *De viris mulieribusque illustribus* is also available online (http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/dvm. pdf). For a presentation of the book, see the short reportage by Mirosław Kaźmierczak, "De viris mulieribusque illustribus: ERC Our Mythical Childhood & Schools (2019)", YouTube, 29 July 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVECLB5LYKs&.

80 The *mulier* from the collection is the audacious secret agent Krystyna Skarbek who might have inspired Ian Fleming in his creation of Vesper Lynd in James Bond's adventures.

81 The Cluster has been established by the Faculty of "Artes Liberales" of the University of Warsaw, the Faculty of History and Cultures and the Faculty of Classical Philology and Italian Studies of the University of Bologna, and the Faculty of Languages and Literatures of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in May 2017 and was joined by the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge in 2019. See a short reportage about the Cluster by Krzysztof Korwin-Piotrowski, "A Reportage about the Research Cluster The Past for the Present 2018", YouTube, 10 September 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfypV5PUMUc&t=. In December 2019 we also organized a school panel during the Ciceronian Congress *Cicero, Society, and the Idea of Artes Liberales* in Warsaw. The panel was excellently moderated by Caroline Bristow from Cambridge School Classics Project; see also the Congress's website: http://www.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/en/cicero-congress-schools.

are able to share the winning movies worldwide or we can try to encourage Internet users to reach for the works for youth with classical references by the means of the *Our Mythical Childhood Survey* – an Open Access database of a global coverage.86

The Internet and the opportunities offered by digital instruments provide precious support to the life of the Classics. Still, whatever method of education we choose, high-tech or rather old-fashioned, we need to remember one important factor. As the case of Rej High School and the adventures within the *Our Mythical Childhood* programme demonstrate, the Classics are a social phenomenon, one that works best if shared, revived, and experienced in a Community based on a vibrant and direct exchange of ideas, both via online, but "live", sessions (as we practise, for example, in the cycle *OBTAmistic Meetings*87), and during traditional gatherings, whenever the circumstances and the logistics permit. This is even more important the more advanced technologies we have or will have to our disposal in the future. The Classics Community is also mentioned by Sienkiewicz, who speaks of the ancient tradition that "circulates in our veins like blood", even if we are not aware of this, and by Tuwim, who addresses his poem to a "you" – potentially each one of us. Thus, instead of a "passive education" through giving instructions (be it from a computer screen or in a crowded classroom, in the big centres or in the province), it is crucial to encourage dialogue and creative engagements. And although artists usually create their works in seclusion, and many scholars appreciate the calm peacefulness of their ivory towers, the true conversations and dialogues between various milieux and generations, at least sporadically, are priceless, as the last case I wish to mention here shows.

Closing the first edition of the video competition for schools, we wanted to offer to the laureates – next to the laurel wreaths and the Oscar-like

86 See *Our Mythical Childhood Survey*, Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2016–, http://omc. obta.al.uw.edu.pl/myth-survey.

87 This cycle was inaugurated in 2014, with an online meeting with Prof. Jo-Marie Claassen from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, on "Gained in Translation: Greek and Roman Classics in Afrikaans Literature", and is continued up to now, both with the use of Internet communicators and in traditional academic format, depending on the circumstances and opportunities. For example, in 2015 we were honoured to host online Natalie Haynes and to talk about "The Amber Road, or Keeping Up with Electra & Co.", while in 2019 we hosted Dr Hamish Williams from Leiden University in the seat of the Faculty of "Artes Liberales" to discuss "Classical Worldbuilding among the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis".

Athenas (see Fig. 3)88 – something immaterial that would stay with them for a long time, if not for ever: the Experience of a Meeting. And so it happened, during the workshops *The Present Meets the Past* (see Fig. 4). We invited the victorious teams with their teachers (as it turned out, they were not only from Warsaw and the nearby centres, but also from distant villages) to practise Ancient Greek dance with us under Dr Helen Slaney's guidance. We painted Greek vases together at a workshop held by Dr Sonya Nevin and Steve K. Simons, who at the same time, still within the *Our Mythical Childhood* project, are preparing five animations based on the vessels with mythological images from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw (also to be available online).89 Summing up, during our meeting we could experience the mythical Community and, to quote Ms Anna Rogala-Goj, the tutor of the students' team from the Elementary School in Tworóg (distinguished for the movie *The Epitaph for Troy*),90 this Community offered to young people "an alternative that helps you think differently". It is significant that the words of the teacher from a school that has never been in contact with Rej High School in Warsaw fit so perfectly as to universalize also the case of the Classics profile, thus being a testimony to the potential of ancient culture in education as a tool of offering more than sterile knowledge – a tool that permits us to open new paths together and to rely on the Classics to make a step forward:

> My thirty years of work as a teacher have convinced me that much can be done if a way is shown to the students, when one turns on the light of faith in their own abilities, and above all when their passion is ignited, and their cognitive curiosity.91

88 An artwork by the young Belarusian sculptor Vitali Paliakou.

89 See the project's website, where you can already watch the first animation on *Iris – Rainbow Goddess* (published in May 2020) and also find some creative activities prepared by Dr Sonya Nevin and Steve K. Simons: "Animating the Ancient World", *Our Mythical Childhood…*, http://omc.obta. al.uw.edu.pl/animating-the-ancient-world.

90 The movie is available online: Alicja Warzecha, "Epitaph for Troy Epitafium dla Troi", YouTube, 13 April 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsDGAc3nTNA.

91 See the reportage by Mirosław Kaźmierczak, "The Present Meets the Pasts: Our Mythical Childhood Workshops 2018", YouTube, 21 June 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RizU-WYMW0Q&. I wish to acknowledge the support from the "*Artes Liberales* Institute" Foundation in covering the travel and accommodation expenses of the competition winners. Ms Anna Rogala-Goj's words are quoted from her email to me, with her permission.

Katarzyna Marciniak and Barbara Strycharczyk

**Figure 3:** *Athena* – a statue by Vitali Paliakou for the winners of the video competition *Antiquity–Camera– Action!* Photograph by Katarzyna Marciniak.

**Figure 4:** Our Mythical Community during the international workshops *The Present Meets the Past*, Faculty of "Artes Liberales", University of Warsaw, May 2018. Photograph by Robert Przybysz; used with permission.

Indeed, we do not give easy solutions or simple answers to the fundamental questions, but we try to offer an alternative, and we search for it for ourselves too. Needless to say, it does us good to leave our ivory towers. This meeting with the young people and their passionate teachers was a reward to us, too. We repeated it in 2019, within the second instalment of the video competition, during the ERC Grant conference *Our Mythical History: Children's and Young Adults' Culture in Response to the Heritage of Ancient Greece and Rome*,92 and it helped us think differently in many respects.

\*\*\*

This unexpected coda to my chapter is dictated by the coronavirus pandemic that broke out in the early months of this year. The current situation only

92 See the reportage by Mirosław Kaźmierczak, "Our Mythical History, May 2019", YouTube, 12 August 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVeEjWSCXD8.

confirms what we have learnt through our experiences of late on the sense and the ways of studying the Classics. I am writing these three paragraphs in May 2020 – in the very week when we were all supposed to have met in Warsaw for the conference summarizing the stage of the project entitled *Our Mythical Nature: The Classics and Environmental Issues in Children's and Young Adults' Culture*. With a new instalment of the video competition (its topic: *Ecology*) and three schools working on their understanding of the theme, we were avidly awaiting the students' presentations, both artistic and scholarly. And we are still awaiting them – indeed, ever more avidly. For we have changed only the course, and not the destiny of our journey. *Our Mythical Nature* will take place online, with "live" discussions open to everybody, and the deadline for the video competition and the form of the school presentations will be adjusted to meet safety measures. Nor do we complain. We are not the only ones affected. The whole world is facing this terrible challenge.

With many work groups, starting with healthcare professionals, putting themselves at personal risk to help us function in this new reality, we embrace with gratitude the opportunity they give us and thus we try to do our best to press onward – both as a research team and within a broader societal scope – in Our Mythical Community, now passing this test, as I believe, outstandingly. The school "environmental" project has manifested a new potential in the present circumstances. We are now working on a booklet showing its results thanks to the excellent engagement on the part of the teachers and students who took care to write down their reflections and discoveries. The telecommunication solutions we apply with the team members in our everyday work within the project (we are from distant continents, and yet in touch on a daily basis via emails and Internet communicators) make all the new necessary adjustments, even if not always easy, then at least not scary. We also try to support the efforts of educators at least to a small extent: within the initiative *Find the Force!* we prepare research and creative activities to be performed with pupils and students at various stages of education – or simply during family time at home, when mobility is limited. We aim to publish them in more languages in order to make their range as broad as possible across societies worldwide.93 We can see the potential

93 For now we have English, Italian, and Polish versions, expanded on a voluntary basis: "Find the Force!", *Our Mythical Childhood…*, http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/find-the-force (accessed 10 May 2020). I wish to invite all to contribute. See, e.g., the "Paint the Muses" activity (http://www.omc. obta.al.uw.edu.pl/paint-the-muses).

of this initiative and therefore wish to continue it also once the pandemic is over, as the Classics accompany us not only for worse, but for better, too.

Yet with all this focus on as constructive an approach as possible, we yearn for the next Experience of a Meeting. The year 2021 brings the tenth anniversary of the *Our Mythical Childhood* programme and hopefully an international gathering will again be safe then, or shortly thereafter. In the meantime, we are sailing, or rather surfing, with Telemachus on the waves of the Internet, and learning from the Classics the meaning of freedom in both the smaller and bigger choices between one's own wishes and the needs of our local and global communities. In short, a millennia-old journey of the γνῶθι σεαυτόν kind, with *Macte animo!* on our flag.

\*\*\*

To sum up, a combination of study and art seems to be the key to the hearts and minds of young people, and, as the process is mutual, their positive feedback strengthens the Community of the Classics, which is so much needed by all generations. Why? Because the side effect of this education is the courage to doubt and to strive for intellectual autonomy, followed by the sense of responsibility for others and respect for Nature – all this so important even in our everyday decisions that can transform the world in more ways than we think. As in Rej's motto *Macte animo!* from Statius' *Thebaid* filtred through Virgil's *Aeneid* – the poem that for ages has been posing the dire question, never voiced by Augustus loudly, about the real prize of building an empire.94 And in the darkest times, returning not that rarely in the past, many people answered this question with their lives.

From the faith in the Classics as a tool for saving the new generations from such times was the Classics profile at Rej High School born. This idea united the young people, their teachers, and the scholars from the University of Warsaw who engaged in its implementation. Within the *Our Mythical Childhood* programme we try to continue their venture and adjust it to the regional and global challenges of our times, with the aim of educating the youth who will go on to make a change and become a courageous elite

94 See Craig Kallendorf, "Historicizing the 'Harvard School': Pessimistic Readings of the *Aeneid* in Italian Renaissance Scholarship", *Harvard Studies in Classical Philology* 99 (1999), 391–403, and, more recently, Daniel Mendelsohn, "Is the *Aeneid* a Celebration of Empire – or a Critique?", *The New Yorker*, 8 October 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/is-the-aeneid-a-celebration-of-empire-or-a-critique?fbclid=IwAR2PeIQGLwgtddVYPaRZCZ2jhNdj9\_qRe7Sg-XHvtXl8\_ O7D\_h47Z1X1xq4.

**Figure 5:** Matylda Tracewska, *Our Mythical Childhood* (2013) – artwork symbolizing the programme *Our Mythical Childhood*. Reproduced with permission from the Author.

in terms of the mind – regardless of (or even contrary to) the needs of the reigning ideologies and particular interests. An approach not quite distant from the educational concepts of Fénelon and the host of his followers who felt the ancient myth clash with the absolutisms of their epochs. We all are members of Telemachus' crew. Only it is a paradox of history that today, in times of the apparent freedom of the mind, the vision of classical education again needs support – now perhaps more than ever before.

In the poem "Dlaczego klasycy" [Why the Classics] from the volume *Napis* [Inscription, 1969], Zbigniew Herbert refers to an episode recalled by Thucydides in his κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ for us – *Peloponnesian War*, Book 4. The historian describes there his expedition from Athens to Amphipolis. It ended with a disaster. Thucydides sailed to succour that colony and did not make it; Amphipolis fell into the hands of the Spartan Brasidas, and Thucydides was banished from his beloved city in punishment for his failure. In the second section of his poem, Herbert juxtaposes that ancient episode with contemporary history shaped by people without a "classical backbone", thus giving one of the simplest answers to the question of why the Classics – quite compatible with Rej's *Macte animo!* and a homage to the side effects of being educated by our ancient Masters:95

> generałowie ostatnich wojen jeśli zdarzy się podobna afera skomlą na kolanach przed potomnością zachwalają swoje bohaterstwo i niewinność

oskarżają podwładnych zawistnych kolegów nieprzyjazne wiatry

Tucydydes mówi tylko że miał siedem okrętów była zima i płynął szybko

generals of the most recent wars if a similar affair happens to them whine on their knees before posterity praise their heroism and innocence

they accuse their subordinates envious colleagues unfavourable winds

Thucydides says only that he had seven ships it was winter and he sailed quickly

95 The poem has been translated by Peter Dale Scott and Czesław Miłosz in Zbigniew Herbert, *Selected Poems*, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, 137.

## Part III

# *OUR ANTIPODEAN MYTHICAL EDUCATION*

## *MYTHS OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA: FOSTERING CLASSICS THROUGH FABRICATION, VISUALIZATION, AND RECEPTION*

## **1. Introduction: Teaching Classics in New South Wales?**

While Classics is nominally taught throughout Australia, and the Australian National Curriculum has established a framework to support the teaching of Classics and Classical Languages wherever schools can sustain a programme, the bulk of Classics teaching occurs on the east coast, and mostly in the states of New South Wales and Victoria. This chapter takes New South Wales as its focus and uses examples from Sydney Classics teachers as case studies.

Classics teachers in New South Wales work across two educational frameworks: the Australian National Curriculum, overseen federally through the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA); and the New South Wales Syllabus, overseen by the NSW (New South Wales) Education Standards Authority (NESA). The reason for this is historical: while some of Australia's six states use the National Curriculum, New South Wales uses its own state-based syllabus, which nevertheless references the Australian Curriculum. In this chapter, we will refer to both sets of standards, which were developed in consultation with Classics teachers from New South Wales and other states.

ACARA operates both at F–10 (that is, from the first year of primary school, known as Foundation, to Year 10 – age fifteen in the September of any school year) and at senior secondary school level (ages fifteen to eighteen, Years 11 and 12), thus setting consistent national standards in order to (as its website states) "improve learning outcomes for all young Australians".1 It sets out, through content descriptions and achievement

1 Australian Curriculum, https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au; Australian Government, "The Australian Education System", Study in Australia, https://www.studyinaustralia.gov.au/english/ australian-education/education-system (both accessed 8 September 2019).

standards, what students should be taught and achieve, as they progress through school. It is the base for future learning, growth, and active participation in the Australian community. While there is no set curriculum for ancient history or Classics within primary school teaching as evident in the ACARA website, senior secondary education has a section dedicated to ancient history, alongside geography and modern history. The subject of Ancient History consists of a total of four units (1: Investigating the Ancient World; 2: Ancient Societies; 3: People, Power, and Authority; 4: Reconstructing the Ancient World).2

ACARA's senior secondary curriculum for Ancient History moves beyond Graeco-Roman antiquity and includes the Celts, the Battle of Kadesh, Cao Cao (Eastern Han dynasty), and the early Christians. The curriculum itself encourages critical thinking: in unit 1 students may select two of the following topics to investigate:

Students further study at least one ancient site, event or change, individual, or group, chosen from the topics presented in Table 1.

Source: Adapted from "Ancient History", Australian Curriculum, https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ senior-secondary-curriculum/humanities-and-social-sciences/ancient-history/?unit=Unit+1%3A+Investigating+the+Ancient+World&unit=Unit+2%3A+Ancient+Societies&unit=Unit+3%3A+People%2C+Power+and+Authority&unit=Unit+4%3A+Reconstructing+the+Ancient+World) (accessed 8 September 2019).

2 See detailed analysis for Senior Secondary Level at "Ancient History", Australian Curriculum, https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/senior-secondary-curriculum/humanities-and-social-sciences/ancient-history/?unit=Unit+1%3A+Investigating+the+Ancient+World&unit=Unit+2%3A+Ancient+Societies&unit=Unit+3%3A+People%2C+Power+and+Authority&unit=Unit+4%3A+Reconstructing+the+Ancient+World) (accessed 8 September 2019).

The New South Wales Ancient History curriculum, as set out by the NE-SA,3 aims at precisely enhancing students' critical skills and strives for equity and excellence by focusing on diversity in the ancient world. The curriculum targets North African, Near Eastern, Chinese, and Celtic civilizations. New South Wales curricula have a global perspective with regard to the study of the ancient world rather than Eurocentric one, since Australia's geographic position and demographics are rather global.4

While no strand is specifically dedicated to classical myth, aspects of myth appear in all of these areas, and are able to be taken up by teachers and students who are interested. Students in New South Wales who are interested in Classical Antiquity, myth, and language can encounter classical mythology through a number of strands, including Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE), Languages, and English Literature.

Students across global school curricula are gradually encouraged to think of Greek and Roman history and culture in terms of classical reception. This chapter advances the argument by showing how creative fabrication and visualization, as well as classical reception, are tools and methodologies that informally facilitate the teaching of Greek and Roman myth in Australian schools. Focusing on school curricula and teaching practices within the state of New South Wales, we show first that classical myth is not taught in the upper high school levels, but that there are literature classes and junior classes that use myth. As in earlier anglophone educational models (UK, USA), the teaching of classical myth in New South Wales does not compose a module on its own, but it accompanies the study of Greek and Latin language; it further features sporadically in subjects such as drama and English. While the school curriculum in New South Wales does not formally include mythology, this chapter argues that Greek and Roman myths are indeed taught in innovative and creative ways, while deeply rooted within Australian history and culture.

3 NSW Education Standards Authority, https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/ nesa/home (accessed 8 September 2019).

4 Australians of British descent comprise 67.4% of the population. This is followed by other European ethnicities: Irish (8.7%), Italian (3.8%), and German (3.7%). Those of Chinese ethnicity represent 3.6% of the population, and the Aboriginal and Indigenous Australians comprise 3% of the population. Other ethnicities can also be found, though in smaller numbers: Indian (1.7%), Greek (1.6%), Dutch (1.2%), and Other (5.3%). The "Other" ethnicity includes individuals from many countries, particularly European and Asian. See Amber Pariona, "Demographics and Ethnic Groups of Australia", WorldAtlas, 18 July 2019, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/ethnic-background-of-australians.html (accessed 8 September 2019).

What follows in this chapter is an explanation of some contexts at the state level, and then an examination of how individual teachers have used both their creativity and their understanding of children's needs to teach classical myth. Often myth plays a role in supporting students' understanding of ancient culture, aspects of daily life, religion, literature, art, and language. Rather than being an end in itself, it appears as a taster, in a curriculum that is necessarily crowded, and becoming more so, in an educational culture that is increasingly expanding to take in multicultural views of antiquity, emphasizing creative and communication skills and literacy rather than in-depth, textbook knowledge.

## **2. Teaching Classics in a New South Wales Context: Fabrication, Visualization, and Reception**

New South Wales classical educators feel they are participating in a venerable culture, and support it through an energetic Classics association scene, especially in Sydney, led through the three large city universities,5 and in the regions by the Universities of Newcastle and New England. The Australasian Society for Classical Studies meets annually, in venues in Australia or New Zealand. There is a New South Wales Classics association, and the universities support public lectures, language and literary competitions, and more. The Classical Languages Teachers Association meets annually in Sydney. Reading competitions, performances in classical languages, and new initiatives, such as the Rusticatio (that is, a full-immersion living-language workshop, usually held in the countryside) and other living-language educational elements, mean that learning Latin and ancient cultures is alive and well in New South Wales.6 Often, an approach to language is driven by the specific textbook being used, with teachers generally preferring to use the *Oxford Latin Course*.

These choices are usually driven at a state level, following negotiation with NESA (combining staff from NESA and advisors from the universities and schools). Classical subjects are studied within specific subject areas, and are elective, meaning that students are largely enrolled owing to interest.

5 Sydney, New South Wales, and Macquarie.

6 See John Kuhner, "Rusticatio", Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum, 7 October 2016, https://latin.org/wordpress/rusticatio/ (accessed 8 September 2019).

In what follows, we discuss some case studies of how individual Australian teachers of classical languages, culture, and literature use mythology and develop innovative approaches to the classroom to work within a conservative system that nevertheless offers room for individual ideas. In the teaching of classical myth, as we argue here, individual teachers are often inspired by methods deployed by the cultural heritage and the entertainment industry: scientific reconstructions most precisely. Rather than concentrating on the properties of digital representations as such, students are encouraged to think in terms of creative fabrication, visualization, and reception of antiquity. This new creative expression of antiquity integrates more traditional modes of understanding and enables diversity.

## **3. Fabrication**

Learning in practice with LEGO, storytelling, filming, painting, and other acts of making are generally referred to as fabrication. Fabricating as a process of learning can help engagement with the world and creating connections between people through experimentation and play where both critical and creative practices are intertwined.7 Learning through making signals a desire to connect two modes of engagement: (a) critical thinking, typically understood as verbally explained through primary and secondary scholarship; and (b) physical "making" – goal-based material work.8 Any fabricating project ideally includes literature review and a compilation of relevant concepts and theories. Ideas then are sketched into material prototypes and explored through fabrication. While it is nowhere stated in the curriculum that fabrication is in fact part of the learning process of the teaching of Classics, groups of students have the freedom to jointly design and assemble a collection of materials (short film, online pages). This methodology aims at connecting student knowledge and communication skills, eventually providing the means for conceptual creative exploration and to enhance their own critical skills. The final iterative process of visualization and reflection in the classroom involves a negotiation of the visual aesthetics that express, critique, and extend relevant concepts, theories,

7 David Gauntlett, "The LEGO System as a Tool for Thinking, Creativity, and Changing the World", in Mark J.P. Wolf, ed., *LEGO Studies*, New York, NY: Routledge, 2014, 189–205.

8 Matt Ratto, "Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life", *The Information Society* 27 (2011), 252–260, https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2011.583819.

and models of historical knowledge. One example of "fabrication" within the Australian Curriculum is Anthony Gibbins's Legonium.

## **3.1. Anthony Gibbins's Legonium**

Legonium, where Latin meets LEGO, is the Latin-instruction website of Anthony Gibbins, Latin Master at Sydney Grammar School.9 Set in a LEGO world, Legonium uses storytelling combined with short sentences, repetition, illustrations, and an engaging storyline to help students read and learn Latin. The Legonium site features *fabulae*, ongoing original tales that are in turn illustrated with images of LEGO figures, posed in a LEGO set. A new episode is posted on the first day of every month.

Legonium's core story is of a daring jewel-heist by Jessica, a mysterious woman in black, who appears on a rooftop in the first episode. Gibbins uses the LEGO Modular City layout as a backdrop for his story, and the name Legonium combines the words LEGO and Londinium. He creates a humorous fantasy space, where the inhabitants of Legonium both act out scenes from everyday life (cleaning a clock, playing pool, buying a painting) and solve an ongoing mystery. Gibbins explains that he was inspired by reading a number of modern Latin novels, including the Harrius Potter translation. Legonium incorporates brightly coloured photographs of the Legonium characters. In encouraging students to try out conversational Latin, Gibbins is part of a worldwide movement: in 2018 he organized the first Rusticatio Australiana, an immersive programme of conversational Latin, developed in association with SALVI (Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum; the North American Institute of Living Latin Studies).

Working with LEGO, Gibbins is part of a lively community of Sydney classicists who use LEGO for outreach and for fun, including Sydney University's Nicholson Museum, and the LEGO classicist Liam Jensen. Gibbins uses Legonium in his classes, and reports that other teachers enjoy using the website, challenging their students to read and compose in response (see Legonium blog). Legonium also provides LEGO versions of major classical texts, such as the *Aeneid*, developing LEGO figures of the main characters. In this, Gibbins is firmly in line with the Australian Curriculum's approach: not emphasizing mythology above other aspects of Latin, but incorporating

9 Legonium, http://www.legonium.com/ (accessed 8 September 2019).

it where relevant, and enjoying its creative and playful qualities. He noted that his students enjoy playing with mythology – working out family trees and tracking down curious or obscure gods and monsters.

While Legonium does not as yet have a mythological focus, in its Twitter feed (@tutubuslatinus [*tutubus* = YouTube]), Gibbins shares information about Roman mythology, including the origins of naming conventions (the days of the week), events and festivals during the year, and puzzles and quizzes, such as a recent survey: "Just curious: Hermes suddenly appears with three competing goddesses. It's up to you! To whom do you give the golden apple?" (@tutubuslatinus, 1 November 2018),10 which as of 2 November 2018 had elicited 966 votes, with 13% going to Hera, 59% to Athena, and 28% to Aphrodite. Athena's popularity may be because Gibbins's sample population is biased towards the intellectual, or because, as CatzMeow (@emilinalala) comments, "Athena is armed, so that's an easy call", or because, as (((Nate))) (@natroniks) comments, "I've no doubt [Athena would] concoct a plan to make the other goddesses believe they'd won". Such light-hearted unscientific quizzes invite audience participation, are useful for classroom discussion, and promote a wide community of Classics students, scholars, and teachers enjoying participating in a playful encounter with myth and classical learning.

#### **3.2. LEGO Pompeii, Sydney University's Nicholson Museum, the Brickman, and Lego Classicists**

One of the main Legonium characters, Claudia, is described as a *femina docta*, interested in antiquity ("[S]aepe placet loqui de monumentis antiquis", see Season 1, Part 2), and so Gibbins arranged for an episode of Legonium (Season 1, Part 12) in which Claudia visits the LEGO version of Pompeii, housed in Sydney University's Nicholson Museum (which houses the largest collection of classical antiquities in the Southern Hemisphere). Claudia writes to her friend: "Heri in Italiam adveni. Volans super Pompeios aeroplano, totum oppidum pulcherrimum despicere poteram". This large-scale LEGO reconstruction of Pompeii was made by Ryan "The Brickman" McNaught,11

10 Legonium (@tutubuslatinus), "Just Curious: Hermes Suddenly Appears with Three Competing Goddesses. It's Up to You! To Whom Do You Give the Golden Apple?", Twitter, 1 November 2018, https://twitter.com/tutubuslatinus/status/1058070540861108224 (accessed 2 November 2018).

11 Brickman, http://www.thebrickman.com/ (accessed 8 September 2019).

the only LEGO-certified professional in the Southern Hemisphere, who leads a team of artists and craftspeople to build models. The Brickman Wonders of the World exhibition, for instance, tours the Southern Hemisphere, showcasing scale LEGO models of famous buildings and artefacts, including a large LEGO Trojan horse. McNaught's LEGO models of the Acropolis and the Colosseum have toured the world and were initially commissioned by the Nicholson Museum, under then Director Michael Turner, as part of a drive to draw children to the Museum.

LEGO Pompeii (and its predecessors LEGO Acropolis and Colosseum) demonstrate the power of fabrication and play, combined with aspects of classical reception, to attract the public; LEGO Pompeii is notable for its inclusion of aspects of its modern, as well as its ancient, history, including sections where archaeologists and famous classicists can be seen, such as minifigures of a bicycling Mary Beard and a busy "Indiana Bones", that is, Estelle Lazer, University of Sydney, whose groundbreaking application of medical imaging to Pompeii casts has enhanced understanding of Pompeii's demographics.

These LEGO fabrications are not precisely mythological in intent, but with them we can see the Brickman and the Museum engage with a different type of mythology, that is, the mythology of the star researcher, the popular classicist, whose expertise underpins an ability to communicate widely and enthusiastically, and whose profile adds to the field's ability to perform outreach. It also has much to do with the power of the LEGO brand, which has grown exponentially in recent years, owing both to aggressive marketing, development of collectables and a wide range of novelty sets, and to the development of LEGO clubs, enthusiasts, and educational outreach. Indeed LEGO operates a LEGO Ideas platform, to which Gibbins has submitted ideas, such as a Roman villa set; as well as encouraging educational experimentation through its STEM-based educational platforms.

Liam Jensen, another Sydney-based LEGO enthusiast, taps into another aspect of LEGO play, with his Lego Classicists project, in which he devises custom-made LEGO figurines of select classical scholars from Australia and beyond. His first LEGO classicist was Associate Professor Tom Hillard (Archaeology, Macquarie University), himself a popular archaeologist. Jensen studied at Macquarie and began his collection of LEGO classicists there: since then it has grown considerably, and he presides over a lively Facebook site, and Instagram and Twitter feeds, in which a playful approach to Classics is characterized by jokes, puns, and memes. For instance, a recent Halloween LEGO joke showed a "zombie Caesar" tapping an alarmed Brutus on the shoulder, with the caption "Zombie Caesar's revenge: 'Now you, Brutus'".12 Jensen's LEGO Mary Beard appeared on the BBC news site.13 Each of Jensen's LEGO classicists is highly personal and carefully constructed, emphasizing the serious side of play: classicists who find themselves immortalized in LEGO are often delighted by the honour.

Cora Beth Knowles writes in her *Classical Studies Support* blog that LEGO is an "important academic tool".14 She identifies Legonium and the Lego Classicists among a worldwide movement of educators using LEGO for teaching and outreach purposes, including the UK group Brick to the Past, who recreated Hadrian's Wall, and a number of creators who film stop-motion LEGO re-enactments of Greek drama and epic battles. Knowles observes that "LEGO has great potential; but it is under-utilised by the Higher Education sector as a whole. […] maybe the world is not yet ready for the LEGO Revolution!"15

## **4. Creative Textbooks: Emily Matters's** *Eureka! An Introduction to Classical Greek for Young Australians*

Moving away from the idea of fabrication, but retaining concepts of play, creativity, and experimentation, we turn to an innovative classical Greek textbook, devised by Emily Matters (Classics, North Sydney Girls High School) and written in collaboration with two former students, Emily Kerrison and Alexander Anstey. Matters has been a stalwart proponent of classical learning at school in Australia. She founded the Classical Languages Teachers Association and was its long-term president, and was part of the group of teachers consulted in the ACARA and NESA curriculum process. She has advocated for the discipline for decades. Under the name Emily Frenkel, she wrote a novelization of the *Aeneid*, entitled *Aeneas: Virgil's Epic Retold*

12 Lego Classicists (@LegoClassicists), "Zombie Caesar's Revenge 'Now You Brutus!' Happy All Saints' Eve (AKA #Halloween) Everyone from Lego Classicists", Twitter, 31 October 2018, https:// twitter.com/LegoClassicists/status/1057532262449864704 (accessed 8 September 2019).

13 "Lego Model of Cambridge Classicist Prof Mary Beard Created", BBC News, 27 January 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-42816995 (accessed 8 September 2019).

14 *Classical Studies Support*, https://classicalstudies.support/ (accessed 8 September 2019).

15 "The Wall: Rome's Northern Frontier", Brick to the Past, http://www.bricktothepast.com/ the-wall.html (accessed 8 September 2019).

*for Younger Readers*.16 *Eureka! An Introduction to Classical Greek for Young Australians*, published in 2017, may be unique in the world in not only using the classical myths of Ancient Greece to introduce young readers to classical Greek, but to do so in an Australian context. With her co-author, Kerrison, and illustrator, Anstey, she situates the learning of classical Greek in modern Australia, through a frame narrative in which four young Australians from diverse backgrounds decide to learn Ancient Greek in order to enter a competition to travel to Greece. Explanatory sections show the influence of classical Greece in Australia – through language, architecture, and works of public art – and the textbook further contextualizes the mythic imagination by detailed explanations of parallels with Indigenous Australian myth from the Dreamtime, and important legends from the formation of the modern Australian nation. It is an ambitious and interesting work that aims to situate the learning of classical Greek in a unique modern context.

*Eureka!* shares ten stories, drawing from myth and history, beginning with the creation myths, and working through recognizable elements of gods, men, heroes, stars, and science. The myths presented in *Eureka!* are referred to as "Stories" (that is, "The First Story", "The Second Story", etc.) and include the creation myth; the birth of Zeus; the stories of Prometheus, Pandora, Deucalion and Pyrrha, the Pleiades, Perseus and Medusa, Hercules and the Hydra, Jason and the Argo, and the story of Archimedes. Each Story is illustrated by Anstey, and accompanied by Greek grammar and vocabulary instruction, as well as letter charts, explanations of specific constructions, exercises for reinforcing skills in reading and writing, such as find-aword exercises, puzzles, and more.

This emphasis on the Australian context and readership of its production makes *Eureka!* unusual, if not unique. In finding parallels between Greek and Indigenous Australian myths, and making those parallels explicit through explanatory pieces, images, artwork, and more, the book notes that the Australian Aboriginal culture is at least as "ancient" as that of Ancient Greece, and encourages students to think comparatively about their notions of culture and antiquity. Parallels between these myths would be comparatively well known in Australia: thus, the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the Aboriginal Dreamtime Flood myths, encourage students to reflect on the ubiquity of flood myths worldwide. The story of the Pleiades has significant

16 Emily Frenkel, *Aeneas: Virgil's Epic Retold for Younger Readers*, Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1991.

parallels to the Aboriginal Seven Sisters myth. Greeks and Aborigines are among a number of cultures who developed stories about that constellation, which is visible on the horizons of both hemispheres – known, for instance, in New Zealand as Matariki and in Japan as Subaru.

Dane Drivas, Latin teacher at Cranbrook School, a private school in Sydney's East, who has used *Eureka!* in the classroom, shared that its use of mythology provided an easy entry for students, who enjoy "discussing the various mythological traditions for each of the stories, analysing their meaning, and debating which version is 'best'".17 Drivas leads discussions that encourage comparison of myths across cultures, such as the flood myths: Deucalion and Pyrrha, the Rainbow Serpent, Noah's Ark. Drivas noted that students come to the subject already having a lively interest in mythology: for example, the more "interesting" stories of the *Cambridge Latin Course Book 2,* in comparison with the perceived dryness of *Athenaze*, led one bright student to stay with Latin rather than moving to Greek.

*Eureka!* was written following the 2015 roll-out of the ACARA National Curriculum for Classical Languages, and the slightly later NESA revision of its Ancient History curriculum, both of which emphasize the understanding of a broad range of ancient history from a number of cultures. For example, the NESA Ancient History Stage 6 Syllabus gives case studies including the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Tutankhamen's Tomb, Deir el-Medina, Alexandria, Thera, Troy, the Roman Games, the Celts, Boudicca, Ancient Australia, the Shang Dynasty, Ashoka, Nineveh, Persepolis, Masada, Palmyra and the Silk Road, Teotihuacan, and the Emergence of Early Societies.18

This emphasis on cultural diversity acknowledges that high school teachers need to be able to teach across a broad range of topics, and also shows a growing understanding of the diversity and wealth of ancient cultures. For instance, based on its consultation with teachers of classical and non-modern languages, the ACARA board decided to establish a framework that would allow teachers to propose courses in a number of different classical languages, beyond Latin and Greek (that is, Hindi, Hebrew, and more). These proposed courses (and the broad suite of modern languages programmes developed through the ACARA's parallel board on modern languages) reflect the growing diversity of Australia's population. *Eureka!*'s inset narratives,

17 Dane Drivas, personal communication, 7 November 2018.

18 See the 2017 NESA Ancient History Stage 6 Syllabus, 36–53, available online as "Framework for Classical Languages", Australian Curriculum, https://australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/languages/framework-for-classical-languages/ (accessed 24 June 2020).

written by Kerrison, provide a fictional framework intended to ease Australian students into understanding the contexts of Ancient Greek. They show that diversity in conversations between four Australian teenagers: Shona, an Aboriginal girl; Andrew, who is Australian of Greek descent; Wendy, who has Chinese ancestry and is "from another great civilisation with unbroken ties to its ancient traditions"; and Liam, a "typical Aussie with a laconic cando attitude to new adventures", who represents the traditionally dominant culture of Australians of Anglo-Irish descent.19 In their conversational frame narratives, these child characters come to grips with the history of Ancient Greek, globally, and in Australia.

Images of Greek heritage and the influence of the Greek diaspora as an integral part of Australian culture are scattered through the textbook: extracts of Greek-language Melbourne newspapers, and photographs of Greek- and Roman-inspired architecture in parts of Sydney. In the first of the mythical stories discussed, about the Creation and the Titans, Echidna, the mother of all monsters, is discussed alongside a description of the Australian Echidna, a spiny monotreme – a mammal that lays its young in leathery eggs (like the more famous platypus), and that takes its scientific name from the mythical figure.20

*Eureka!*'s approach to myth is playful and allusive. It rewards the reader who enjoys the way that myths flow into one another, inviting discussion of parallels and counterpoints. Australian readers will appreciate the contextualization and discussion of different aspects of their society, the identification of influences and echoes, and more. The book concludes by returning to its title, the word *eureka* referring to the scientist Archimedes' famous discovery of the principle of water displacement. The word *eureka*, of course, is now synonymous with ideas about discovery and invention. While not a myth, Archimedes' is a story so well known as almost to be a myth, and its connection to the tenets of philosophy, and through that to the principles of democracy, is drawn out by its connection to a famous story from Australian settler history. In the state of Victoria in 1854, in the height of the Australian Gold Rush, at a place known as Eureka, miners rebelled against the colonial authority's taxation system. It is considered

19 Emily Matters, *Eureka! An Introduction to Classical Greek for Young Australians*, Sydney: Sydney Press, 2017, ix.

20 Ibidem, 14: "The Aboriginal Dreaming story of 'Bigibila, the first echidna' is given: a story in which young hunters take revenge on an older hunter named Bigibila for eating a woman at the river, and hurl spears, which stick in his back".

a major act of political democracy in Australia, and the word *eureka*, applied first in Australia to a miner's discovery of gold, now has this additional sense for Australians, as *Eureka!* points out.21

The word *eureka* could also be applied to the joy one feels in learning Ancient Greek, and the volume is a text that plays with mythology – for serious reasons, and in a respectful manner – balancing a respect for learning Ancient Greek with a respect for the more than equal antiquity of Aboriginal cultures, an interest in Australian history and in Australian legends, and the application and reception of Greek culture.

## **5. Visualization**

Visualizations of the ancient world come in a variety of forms. They can range from LEGO reconstructions22 to simple graphs to word clouds, to film and games, or geospatial, time-interactive maps; there is, further, a large amount of online data about the ancient world. The imminent assessment and representation of historical data has admittedly challenged the boundaries of historical knowledge and generated new research questions.23 The process of reconstructing, visualizing, and rendering historical data has equally developed together with technology. This is the case in both academic and outreach, citizen science contexts.

Visualizing myth in a secondary school class is often the result of more creative, interactive, fabricating, and playful teaching, surpassing the myth of classical stuffiness. A prime example of using visualizations of ancient myth is Dane Drivas (Cranbrook School), who "incorporate[s] a lot of gamebased learning and team challenges", such as a "Capua gladiatorial school activity, in which the class progresses (in full costume and with props) through the various stages of a gladiator's journey. From being examined and bought in the slave-market, to training in the gladiatorial school, to ultimately fighting before the emperor in the arena".24 Drivas involves the

21 Ibidem, 85.

22 See LEGO reconstructions of the Parthenon in the new Acropolis Museum: "Scenes from the LEGO® Acropolis Model", Acropolis Museum, https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/content/ scenes-legor-acropolis-model (accessed 8 September 2019).

23 Johanna Drucker, "Is There a 'Digital' Art History?", *Visual Resources: An International Journal on Images and Their Uses* 29.1–2 (2013), 5–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2013. 761106.

24 Dane Drivas, personal communication, 7 November 2018.

whole class in this activity, giving each student a role to play. He is also incorporating exercises in spoken Latin in the classroom, ranging from simple question-and-answer activities, to teaching grammar in Latin, and encouraging sustained conversations in Latin, using Latin texts to stimulate discussion.

Drivas is not alone in this kind of engaging work, as Matters notes: the Classical Languages Teachers Association, based in Sydney, hosts a "range of student-centred activities" in evening functions, such as "a classical quiz for Years 7 to 10 (ages 12–16) and a Latin reading competition for Year 9, with individual and choral sections interspersed with Latin community singing". Each summer, children in Year 8 "can attend a weekend Classics camp with a very full and varied programme. There are indoor activities (bingo with Latin numbers, film snippets, trivia quiz), crafts, outdoor exercise (bushwalk to the 'Underworld', ancient athletics), role-play (gladiatorial school) and drama (mythology plays)".25 This camp has been held annually since 1976, and is one example of the lively outreach and extension activities organized by Classics teachers and academics (including summer schools in ancient languages, conferences, lecture series, and more). Wellknown Australian children's author Ursula Dubosarsky, whose young adult novels often incorporate classical themes and intertextual references, wrote a series of short plays retelling classical myth, published in the New South Wales *School Magazine* (and soon to be republished as a collection through Armidale-based Second Look Publishers, under the title *The Boy who Could Fly and Other Magical Plays*).

Teachers who are not classicists also incorporate some mythology into their classroom. For example, Helen Foster, who teaches at Bronte Primary School, a public school in Sydney's East, gives daily readings from the *Odyssey*, and involves classical myth and learning in class exercises in a variety of subjects. She emphasizes the role of classical languages in English etymology, and asks students to write "eyewitness reports" of famous classical events or to make composite monsters inspired by the monsters of classical mythology. Foster incorporates thinking about the "golden ratio" in mathematics classes: "I use a scenario where the students are tailors, measuring different aspects of their partner to approximate the golden ratio, to produce imaginary clothing". Foster states that her goals in incorporating classical mythology into primary learning are:

25 Matters, *Eureka!*, 52.

In all of these exercises, Foster emphasizes collaborative learning and group work.

## **6.** *Winged Sandals*

As Matters notes, the state of Victoria has a lively Classics scene, and more mythical work outside of the classroom could be seen in the 2003 *Winged Sandals* animation and game collaboration between Chris Mackie27 and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). At the time, the ABC was expanding its online presence and developing educational games, drawing on mythology and other forms of storytelling. The *Winged Sandals* website, which can be viewed now only through the Wayback Machine web archive, comprised games, puzzles, and short animated videos retelling different classical myths.28 Presiding over all is an animated Hermes, who flits around the site, wearing the winged sandals of its title. *Winged Sandals* provides a brief introduction to key figures from Greek mythology, providing statistics-cards, retelling some of the stories through animation, and through games and quizzes. Participants can "make" their own Greek vase, or submit questions to the Pythian oracle. Though *Winged Sandals* is no longer hosted on the ABC's website, it represents an innovation in collaboration between tertiary educators and a public broadcaster.29

26 Helen Foster, personal communication, 21 September 2018.

27 Then of Melbourne University, now at Latrobe University, also in Melbourne.

28 Perseus and Medusa, Demeter and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice, how Apollo got his oracle.

29 *Winged Sandals*, ABC New Media and Digital Services and University of Melbourne, 2004, http://www.abc.net.au/arts/wingedsandals/sandals\_fixed.html. Currently only available at Wayback Machine, 22 October 2004, https://web.archive.org/web/20041022074943/http://www.abc. net.au:80/arts/wingedsandals/sandals\_fixed.html (accessed 8 September 2019).

## **7. Conclusions**

While the New South Wales State School Curriculum does not formally include the teaching of classical myths, myths are consciously taught through the lens of diversity and in connection to Australian contexts. Meaning-making of ancient myths is achieved through fabrication and visualization in Australia. First, thinking of Classics through the lens of diversity is highly encouraged in the curriculum, and, as a consequence, the study of ancient civilizations is not limited to Greek and Roman myth/religion and society. Second, there is a stark lens of classical reception: while Australian schools are geographically remote from the Mediterranean, Australian audiences have access to the same popular culture as the rest of the anglophone world, which facilitates teaching of Classics through a common lens of classical reception. Third, the educational landscape of New South Wales encourages individual and group creative activities, evident in the fabrication, storytelling, and visualization of the ancient world (Legonium, *Eureka!*). This creative assemblage of all things ancient facilitates a visualization of ancient myth and a direct engagement in praxis.

Moreover, more traditional forms of Australian and largely colonial education have given way to a form of playful postcolonialism: a revision of Classics that aims to challenge colonialism.30 Justine McConnell has recently examined how within postcolonial contexts Classics often become playfully diverse: "Postcolonial responses to the ancient world are a vital part of the reception of Classics, and form an ever-expanding body of material and performances".31 In *Eureka!*, for example, emphasis is given in collecting the cultural landscape of Greek diaspora in Melbourne and at the same time in positioning Greek and Roman myth against Indigenous Australian contexts. Connecting Greek culture to a New South Wales context, inclusive of diasporas and indigenous cultures, *Eureka!* aims at familiarizing students with an ancient context by analogy. In conclusion, while teaching myth does not constitute a separate strand of the New South Wales curriculum, it is sensibly taught through New South Wales pupils' experiences, contexts, and needs, and relies on diversity, reception, and fabrication as methods to understand ancient myth in a classical context.

30 Lorna Hardwick and Carol Gillespie, eds., *Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds*, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296101.001.0001.

31 Justine McConnell, "Postcolonialism and Classics", APGRD Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama, http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/learning/short-guides/postcolonialism-and-classics (accessed 8 September 2019).

## *ODYSSEUS DOWN UNDER: CLASSICAL MYTH IN NEW ZEALAND SCHOOL EDUCATION*

Classical Studies, taught in translation, is a very popular subject at New Zealand high schools.1 A number of schools also offer Latin classes. In 2013– 2017, over 10,000 students in New Zealand took the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) exams in Classical Studies each year. Student numbers for Latin NCEA for the same time period range from 245 to 175.2 As part of both subjects, mythical topics are taught. However, when trying to determine which myths are taught in New Zealand schools and with which learning outcomes, one feels somewhat like Odysseus, trying to find the way, as each school or even individual Classics teacher in New Zealand chooses which myths to teach and in which ways. The reason for this is the way the New Zealand curriculum is conceptualized: it only provides high-level directives and prides itself on giving teachers and schools the freedom to fill in the details of what exactly is taught, depending on the needs and interests of their students or the strengths of their teachers:

1 In New Zealand, high schools are called "colleges", but in this chapter I will refer to them as high schools to avoid confusion with "college" referring to tertiary education in North America. I would like to thank all the teachers and students who kindly told me which myths they are teaching or have been taught at school, especially Belinda Gibson of St Mary's School and Kim Tattersall of Wellington College. I would also very much like to thank Rebecca Essery – Senior Policy Analyst, Schooling and System Policy at the Ministry of Education, Kay Hancock – Literacy Consultant for Ready to Read and *Junior Journal*, and Catherine Edser – Senior Data Analyst and Report Writer, Psychometrics, Reporting and Statistics at New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) for providing information for this chapter.

2 This data was supplied to me by NZQA on 24 April 2018. Since I wrote this chapter, unfortunately, the situation for Latin and Classics NCEA is likely to change. In February 2020, the Ministry of Education has proposed to abolish Latin as a subject at all levels of NCEA. Latin is the only subject which is to be abolished. Classical Studies is proposed to be dropped as an independent subject in NCEA level 1. At this level, if the proposal is accepted, Classical Studies can only be taught as a very small possible topic in level 1 NCEA History. See "Review of Achievement Standards (RAS): Provisional NCEA Level 1 Subject List", Kōrero Mātauranga, https://consultation.education. govt.nz/ncea/ras-provisional-subject-list/consultation/intro/ (accessed 21 March 2020). Classics will continue to be taught as an independent subject at NCEA levels 2 and 3.

The national curriculum provides the framework and common direction for schools, regardless of type, size, or location. It gives schools the scope, flexibility, and authority they need to design and shape their curriculum so that teaching and learning is meaningful and beneficial to their particular communities of students. In turn, the design of each school's curriculum should allow teachers the scope to make interpretations in response to the particular needs, interests, and talents of individuals and groups of students in their classes. […] [I]t is a framework rather than a detailed plan. This means that while every school curriculum must be clearly aligned with the intent of this document, schools have considerable flexibility when determining the detail.3

Before delving into more detail about Classics teaching, a short overview of the structure of the New Zealand school system should be helpful. In New Zealand, children generally start school on their fifth birthday, or the first school day thereafter. New Zealand primary schools can cover six or eight years. Children who attend primary school for six years go on to intermediate school for Years 7 and 8. College (high school) lasts from Year 9 to 13.

While many high schools offer Classical Studies and some Latin, Ancient Greek is not taught in New Zealand schools. It depends on the school how many years of Classical Studies or Latin students can take, ranging from five years to only one year. For instance, at Wellington College, boys can take Latin for all five years of high school (Years 9 to 13), while other schools merely offer one or two years of Classical Studies. This chapter will discuss which myths tend to be taught in New Zealand schools, why specific myths are chosen, and with which learning objectives in mind.

To return to the flexibility of the New Zealand curriculum, teachers are encouraged to use local contexts for their teaching and internal assessments, as this approach has been shown to lead to higher levels of success in exams. This allows them the freedom to take into account, when choosing texts or topics for the classes, such factors as culture, gender, literacy needs, specific learning differences, and styles. They may consider changing the content they teach from year to year, depending on students' needs and interests. The following two examples are mentioned in the Ministry of Education's subject guide for Classical Studies:

3 *The New Zealand Curriculum*, Ministry of Education, 2007, 39, available at New Zealand Curriculum Online, http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum (accessed 22 June 2020).

The actual topics to be taught and assessed are thus not only variable from school to school and teacher to teacher, but also from class to class. In keeping with this ideology, the curriculum guidelines only propose high-level learning outcomes, such as: "Demonstrate understanding of ideas and values of the classical world", "Demonstrate understanding of the relationship between aspects of the classical world and aspects of other cultures", or "Analyse the impact of a significant historical figure on the classical world".5 The learning objectives for Classical Studies are summarized as follows:6

Students will gain knowledge, skills, and experience to:

Level 6

#### **Thinking critically about sources**

Understand how social, political, artistic, and technological aspects of the classical world influenced the lives of Greeks and Romans living in those times;

#### **Examining values**

Understand that ideas and values of the classical world have influenced other cultures, including New Zealand.

4 Subject guide for Classical Studies (version of 1 July 2010), 21, available at "Classical Studies", New Zealand Curriculum Guides: Senior Secondary, https://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Social-sciences/Classical-studies (accessed 19 March 2018).

5 Ibidem, 22–23.

6 Level 6 refers to approximately Year 11, but ranges from Year 9 to 13, Level 7 approximately Year 12, Level 8 up to Year 13. Cf. the "Years and Curriculum Levels" chart at New Zealand Curriculum Online, https://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/content/download/1110/11995/file/Charts1.pdf (accessed 25 April 2018).

#### Level 7

#### **Thinking critically about sources**

Understand the relationships between social, political, artistic, and technological aspects of the classical world and how these aspects influenced the lives of Greeks and Romans living in those times.

#### **Examining values**

Understand that ideas and values of the classical world have influenced other cultures, including New Zealand.

#### Level 8

#### **Thinking critically about sources**

Understand the complexity and diversity of social, political, artistic, and ideological aspects of the classical world and how these aspects influenced the lives of Greeks and Romans living in those times.

#### **Examining values**

Understand that ideas and values of the classical world have influenced other cultures, including New Zealand.7

This flexible approach has not only positive, but also less desirable effects. While it is positive that teachers are able to play to their own strengths and to follow students' interests, such an approach also means that the wheel is re-invented by each school, or even each teacher. It also results in each class focusing on different aspects of a topic, which can be a disadvantage for the students sitting scholarship exams (additional, voluntary national exams for the best students, through which they can win financial help towards university study), and it means that university lecturers cannot assume that all their students who are starting a Classics degree at university will arrive with similar knowledge, even if they have taken the subject at high school. For this particular chapter, the fact that each Classical Studies and Latin class in the country may discuss different myths means that parts of my discussion are based on anecdotal information, as I was able to obtain it. It is, however, possible to determine general trends; and the Ministry of Education's subject guide for Classical Studies lists the following subject areas as ideas from which teachers can choose and which they can adapt to fit their own preferences:

> Classical studies is the study of the people, places, and events of the classical world and how they influence the modern world.

7 Subject guide for Classical Studies, 28.

Classical studies is an interdisciplinary subject: students engage with literature, languages, art, history, science, technology, religion, and philosophy.

Students explore community, cultural identity, values, and perspectives and think critically about human behaviour and relationships to appreciate the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome, understand the past and the present, and to imagine possible futures.8

The subject guide for Latin in the New Zealand Curriculum emphasizes that "Latin needs to be studied as a language with communicative intent […] situating the language use within sociocultural contexts, increasing the focus on 'texts', and exploring values across cultures and […] over time".9

In both subject descriptions, the importance of providing students with a broader context is stressed, including links between ancient and modern civilizations. More detail is provided in the list of key concepts, that is, ideas which students are hoped to retain long-term after being taught Classical Studies in high school:

#### Citizenship and society

The interaction of status, gender, family, rights, responsibilities, and freedom and their importance to wider society.

#### Culture and identity

Social conventions and values, role models, mythology, and belief systems in relation to cultural and social identities, ranging from political and religious to scientific and philosophical ideologies.

#### Empire and power

The rise and fall of individuals and groups; the reasons for cultural, economic, and political imperialism; the causes and consequences of social and political change; the importance of place and environment to individuals and societies.

#### Conflict

The contesting relationships between individuals, groups, and ideas, in both historical and literary contexts and the way that conflict can be a force for both continuity and change.

8 Subject guide for Classical Studies, 2.

9 Subject guide *Latin in the New Zealand Curriculum*, 2013, 1, available at "Latin in the New Zealand Curriculum", New Zealand Curriculum Guides: Senior Secondary, http://seniorsecondary. tki.org.nz/Learning-languages/Latin (accessed 19 March 2018).

#### Art and aesthetics

The perception of beauty, ideals of harmony and balance, design, creativity, and invention; the influence of classical literature; how art, literature and aesthetics inform cultural values and traditions.

#### Heritage

How and why the ideas and values of the classical world have influenced other cultures.10

The guidelines suggest a large range of possible context elaborations, some of which include the study of mythical connections: the exploration of heroism (for instance, in the mythological figures of Odysseus, Heracles, Perseus, Theseus, and Achilles); justice and conflict (as is portrayed in mythological texts, such as the *Odyssey*); the role of the gods, creation and foundation myths and their impact on cult and religion; the influence of classical mythology on modern cinema,11 performance and literature; and the question "What makes a good story?" in reference to literary texts, including those dealing with myths.12 The subject guide recommends inquiry-based learning.

New Zealand is a bicultural society, so it is central to teaching any subject that *tikanga Māori* (Māori culture) is taken into account. In the section on creating an inclusive learning environment and suggested approaches for *kaupapa Māori* pedagogy, the subject guide, among other examples for comparing Ancient Greek and Roman ideas with Māori concepts, mentions classical myth: "The underworld [could be] compared with modern cultural beliefs about life after death, such as Māori ancestors, Pasifika myths and legends, Christian notions of heaven and hell: what possibilities are there for life after death?"13

To provide an example of the variety of topics a Classical Studies course might focus on, this is the description of such a programme of study, taken from Wellington College's 2018 subject area online guide (which does not mention mythology as such, but it would not be possible to teach a number of the topics without examining the relevant myths):

10 Subject guide for Classical Studies, 4.

11 David Frauenfelder, "Popular Culture and Classical Mythology", *The Classical World* 98.2 (2005), 211, lists a number of movies in which themes from classical myth are alluded to. His study focuses on teaching at university level, but most of these films would also be known by or suitable to watch by high school-aged students.

12 Subject guide for Classical Studies, 30–41.

13 Ibidem, 16.

Students undertake an in-depth study of historical, literary and art historical aspects of the Greek and Roman worlds. Topics covered at Year 12 include: Roman Social Life, Roman Politics at the time of Caesar, Homer and Greek Art and Architecture. At Year 13, students study the career of Alexander the Great, Socrates, Virgil or Aristophanes, Greek Vase Painting or Roman Art and Architecture.14

Since every Classical Studies class in New Zealand may cover different content, the only way to gather more specific information was to ask teachers and students about which myths they have been teaching or have been taught in their classes. Since the following discussion is based on individual responses, it is important to keep in mind that these are examples only and there may be Classical Studies classes in New Zealand which focus on different myths. Despite this caveat, it is clear that teachers favour certain myths.

From the responses I received, it appears that, except for the occasional topic on the Greek and Roman gods,15 myth is not usually taught as a specific unit. Only very few schools responded that they had a unit on a specific god or mythological character. A Classical Studies class at Newlands College focused on Dionysus and one at Hutt Valley High on Oedipus. Year 11 Latin students at Wellington Girls' College study either the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice or that of Theseus and Ariadne, as told by different Latin and English authors. Like in these examples, usually mythology is integrated into units on ancient literary texts, art, and sometimes history. The *Odyssey* and *Aeneid* appear to be the texts most commonly taught in Classical Studies, sometimes also the *Iliad*. In Latin, Ovid's *Metamorphoses* is a popular choice of text. Mythical connections are made to these texts. Sometimes certain mythical characters in literary works are the focus, for instance, a former Onslow College student remembers that her class studied the mythological characters of the Cyclops and Calypso in great detail, as part of a wider unit on the *Odyssey*. Many Classical Studies programmes focus strongly on ancient art/material culture, and mythology becomes necessarily a part of such units. In connection with art, mythology can be employed by topic, for example, in a unit on death in antiquity with a strong component about the god Hades and associated myths, as taught at Samuel Marsden Collegiate

14 Wellington College's subject area online guide, https://www.wellington-college.school.nz/ about-us/learning-areas/learning-languages (accessed 5 April 2018; no longer active).

15 A former Onslow College part-time teacher tells me that, in 2013, as part of a Social Studies class, she taught a unit on Egyptian gods.

School, or linked to specific art works. At St Mary's College in Wellington, Year 12 Classics students, for one of their internal exams, are asked to choose a myth and find an ancient piece of art or vase painting relating to the myth. In addition, students find two modern interpretations of the myth and discuss similarities and differences in the depiction of this myth in their chosen work of art, including possible reasons for the artist's choice of depiction of certain elements of the myth. From this, students draw conclusions about ancient culture and values. The learning objectives are to link art and myth and for students to gain a better understanding of ancient life and culture.

A very popular high school unit in ancient history is on Alexander the Great. A former Newlands College student recalls that his Classical Studies class, as part of this particular unit, discussed the myths and legends connected with this historical figure. Mythology is also part of the Latin curriculum. Myths are studied as part of the work on ancient literary texts, in comparison with English versions of the myths, as general mythological topics (such as Roman gods in Year 9 Latin at Wellington Girls' College) and as specific research assignments on mythological topics (for example, in Year 10 Latin at Wellington Girls' College in 2018).16

Myth, then, does feature prominently in Classics teaching at New Zealand secondary schools, even though it is usually not taught for its own sake, but embedded in and linked to wider topics. Certain myths are often taught because of and with a focus on their classical reception. While the teaching of mythology at universities in recent decades has been focusing more and more on theories of myth,17 school teaching tends to teach the myths as stories to help students understand the ways in which Ancient Greeks and Romans thought and lived and to interpret the literature and art works which they created.

In New Zealand pre-secondary education, the focus is on Māori myths rather than on classical myth. In both early childhood and primary education, Māori myths are taught as part of the bicultural curriculum, for instance, the popular myth explaining the origin of the Matariki festival

16 "Wellington Girls' College Year 9 & 10 Course Booklet (2018 Junior Courses)", Wellington Girl's College, http://wgc.school.nz/sites/default/files/2018%20Junior%20Courses.pdf (accessed 10 April 2018; no longer active). For the 2020 course booklet, see "Wellington Girls' College Year 9 & 10 Courses 2020", 2020 Junior Courses, Google Drive, https://drive.google.com/drive/ folders/1uCn-\_dI3Rgnb9EviO5pj6BXmZLizfxa3 (accessed 28 June 2020). In 2020, Year 9 Latin still covers the Roman gods and goddesses as the course's mythological topic. Year 10 Latin only discusses religious festivals, but not mythology in its own right.

17 Gregory A. Staley, "Myth and the Classical Tradition", *The Classical World* 98.2 (2005), 206.

(referring to the Pleiades constellation)18 which is celebrated at the end of May or in early June.

The New Zealand Ministry of Education publishes its own series of earlyreader booklets, called Ready to Read, which are followed by the *Junior Journal* and *School Journal* for more advanced readers. Ready to Read booklets generally feature one single story with a focus on teaching literacy rather than specific content. As students' reading ability increases, the stories often consist of several chapters, while *Junior* and *School Journals* contain a number of different texts, often centred around certain topics. As with the secondary curriculum, primary school teachers, too, have very much freedom to decide individually which reading booklets they use, based on their own interests and that of their students. According to the online list of Ready to Read books available in 2015 and 2017 and the information kindly provided by Kay Hancock, Literacy Consultant of the series, there are no booklets on Greek and Roman myth. One booklet, however, *The Lion and the Mouse*, and the play *The Ant and the Grasshoppers* deal with Aesop's fables (Aesop, *fab*. 146 and 373 Perry).19 The play is followed by the story "The Ants and the Grasshopper: The Sequel", which sets the fable in a New Zealand context, including local insects, such as wētā and huhu, as characters.20 Furthermore, a new Ready to Read booklet, entitled *Crow Tales: Two Stories from Aesop*, has recently been published.21 The stories in this booklet are "Silly Crow" (about a fox tricking the crow by flattery to drop her piece of cheese, based on Aesop, *fab*. 124 Perry) and "Clever Crow" (about a crow dropping stones into a water-jug until she can reach the water, based on Aesop, *fab*. 390 Perry). A number of other Aesop's fables were retold in older *Junior Journals* which are not included in the online catalogue and do not seem to be used in schools anymore. Some Ready to Read and *Junior*/ *School Journals* deal with Māori and Indian myths and under development

18 See also Claudia C.J. Fratini's chapter in this volume: "Crossing the Parallel Universe(s): An Experimental, Multicultural, and Interdisciplinary Approach to Using Mythology in the South African Classroom", 419–442.

19 Kate Boyle, *The Lion and the Mouse*, Ready to Read, Wellington: Learning Media, 2009 (reprint of ed. pr. 1995); Dawn McMillan, *The Ant and the Grasshoppers*, Ready to Read, Wellington: Learning Media, 2004.

20 Dave Armstrong, "The Ants and the Grasshopper: The Sequel", *School Journal* (June 2014), 2–9.

21 Tricia Glensor and Giselle Clarkson, *Crow Tales: Two Stories from Aesop*, Ready to Read, Wellington: Ministry of Education, 2018. I am very grateful to Kay Hancock for making this booklet available to me before its publication.

are a Ready to Read booklet about a Chinese myth of the moon goddess. The mixture of international myths and folk tales used in the booklets reflects the striving for inclusive teaching, of both Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent) and Māori students as well as children of recent immigrant families from Asian countries.

In primary schools, anecdotally, neither ancient history nor ancient myths are usually taught as "topics", but sometimes they feature in intermediate school teaching. An exception seem to be private primary schools, especially those which do not use the New Zealand curriculum, but the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP; for Years 1 to 6) curriculum, which is based on a transdisciplinary framework of units of inquiry which change throughout the school year.22 In a similar way to the New Zealand curriculum, PYP teachers are encouraged to choose the specific contents of these units of inquiry, following students' interests. In the last few years, I have been invited to speak to a number of classes at single-sex boys' Scots College Preparatory School and co-educational St Mark's Church School, both of which use the PYP curriculum, and all girls' Samuel Marsden Collegiate Primary School, which follows the New Zealand curriculum. In all these classes, the children were keenly interested in antiquity, and, in some way or another, aspects of ancient mythology came up every time. In Year 3 at Scots College I talked with the students about the Greek and Roman military, in Year 4 about Archimedes' inventions, and in Year 5 about Greek drama, at St Mark's in Year 0 and 1 about Roman houses and in Year 2 about archaeology and Roman artefacts, and at Marsden Years 3 and 6 about various aspects of ancient technology. When telling the Year 3 students at Scots College about ancient armour, I mentioned that a common decoration for shields was the face of the Medusa. It turned out that most students were familiar with the basics of the myth from having seen the *Percy Jackson* movies and were very keen to learn more about it. The final activity I had planned for them was making their own Roman helmets from cardboard and Christmas tinsel. The students used sharpies to decorate their helmets with decorative patterns which we had discussed earlier. The boys were still so fascinated with the Medusa myth that most children chose to draw an image of the Medusa – complete with snake hair, large eyes, and tongue sticking out – on the front of their helmets and kept talking about the myth while they were working.

22 See the IB website: "Primary Years Programme", International Baccalaureate, http://www. ibo.org/programmes/primary-years-programme/ (accessed 25 April 2018).

The Year 3 boys at Scots College are no exception in their love of classical mythology. Many children of primary and intermediate school age have in the last two decades been introduced to ancient myth by books and movies such as Rick Riordan's *Percy Jackson* series and the *Harry Potter* novels, and they find the subject fascinating. As Miriam Riverlea points out, "Young adult literature has come to play a crucial role in the dissemination of myth in the modern age".23 Primary schoolers already know the basics of many myths and are very eager to learn more. While in a 1963 survey of students and teachers from primary school to university levels in the United States, conducted by Lloyd Jeffrey, the fact stood out that primary school teachers were some of the strongest supporters of teaching classical myth in order to help students understand modern literature,24 this attitude towards teaching classical mythology in primary schools seems either to have changed over the last decades or happens to be different in this part of the world. New Zealand primary schools, as we have seen, do not usually teach classical myth, not even comparatively to Māori myth. This is the case even though children of this age group clearly are fascinated by the subject.

The student interest in Classics (including classical myth) is, however, reflected in the large number of students who choose Classical Studies or Latin in high school. Both Classical Studies and Latin courses always include some myth. Myths connected to famous Greek and Roman heroic epics (the *Odyssey* and *Aeneid*) appear to be the focus in most Classics programmes at high school. These are likely chosen because they are some of the most famous works of ancient literature, as well as for their engaging stories of heroes on adventurous quests and for their accessibility to modern students. Moreover, mythology is frequently taught as a form of classical reception, and for its use in ancient art. The focus is both on well-known myths, which will help students recognize frequent allusions to these stories in Western culture, and on relevance, that is, myths which lend themselves to be compared to young adults' own lives and aspects of New Zealand culture.

As this discussion shows, myth has an important place in the New Zealand school curriculum, at least for high school students who choose to study Classical Studies or Latin. There are many reasons why students will study classical myth. An education in ancient myth is still vitally important.

23 Miriam Riverlea, "'Icarus Is Seventeen, Like Me': Reworking Myth in Young Adult Fiction", *Melbourne Historical Journal* 40.2 (2012), 26.

24 Lloyd N. Jeffrey, "The Teaching of Classical Mythology: A Recent Survey", *The Classical Journal* 64.7 (1969), 311–312. The survey this article refers to was started in 1963.

"[W]hen we study classical myth, we also study the roots of Western culture. Ancient works of art play a valuable role in helping students visualize mythical figures and events as the ancients themselves did".25 Furthermore, classical mythology has recently also been shown to offer unique ways for providing an inclusive education for children with special needs.26 Mythology, unsurprisingly, is an aspect of Classics that attracts large numbers of students, as can be seen clearly at university level where large myth courses are the bread and butter for many Classics departments all over the world as well as in the enthusiasm for classical myth shown by children of both primary and secondary school ages.27 Most importantly, classical mythology is full of gripping and thought-provoking stories, which provide modern readers of all ages with immense pleasure. The popularity of the reception and retelling of ancient myths in recent books for children and young adults shows that classical myth is still speaking to us in an engaging way. In this vein, I would like to conclude with a quote from Klaus Bartels's advocacy for Latin at schools:28

> Anders als etwa das alte Ägypten ist die Welt der Griechen und Römer *unsere* Alte Welt. Sie ist uns nahe genug, uns einiges zu bedeuten, und zugleich fern genug, uns auch einiges zu sagen.

> Unlike, say, ancient Egypt, the world of the Greeks and Romans is *our* ancient world. It is close enough to mean much to us and at the same time distant enough to tell us a thing or two.29

25 Barry B. Powell, *Classical Myth*, 6th ed., New York, NY: Pearson, 2009 (ed. pr. 1995), ix.

26 See Susan Deacy's project on mythology and autism: *Autism and Classical Myth*, https:// myth-autism.blogspot.co.nz (accessed 25 April 2018), and pages 479–482 of Lisa Maurice's chapter "Classical Mythology and the Israeli Educational System" in this volume.

27 Kenneth F. Kitchell, "The Role of Myth Courses on College Campuses", *The Classical World* 98.2 (2005), 187. See also the chapter by Emily Gunter and Dan Curley in this volume, "'The Greatest Stories Ever Told': US Classical Mythology Courses in the New Millennium", 325–348.

28 In Germany, Classics is only taught in the form of Latin and Ancient Greek classes, not in classical studies courses in translation.

29 Klaus Bartels, "'Jung seid ihr allesamt…'. Ein Plädoyer für den humanistischen Unterricht", *Antike Welt* 32.6 (2001), 672. My translation and emphasis.

## Part IV

## *OUR AMERICAN MYTHICAL EDUCATION*

Emily Gunter and Dan Curley *"THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD"*

## *"THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD": US CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY COURSES IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM\**

## **1. Introduction**

In 2005, the academic journal *Classical World* featured a special pedagogy section entitled "Teaching Classical Mythology". In the introductory article, "The Role of Myth Courses on College Campuses", Kenneth Kitchell asserted that mythology was important "to the lifeblood of most Classics departments"1 and presented testimonials on the capacity of mythology courses to recruit majors and minors.2 He conceded that the understanding of these courses was, at that time, largely anecdotal, and called for a data-driven approach:

> There is surprisingly little written on what we should be teaching in such courses, how they should be taught, and how all this relates to our role as classicists in the twenty-first century.3

Kitchell framed the need for data with a series of questions, noting that "the profession could serve itself well by conducting a survey […] relevant to these issues".4 Among his questions were the following:5

\* Thank you to Lisa Maurice for inviting an essay on US myth courses and providing guidance. Thanks also to Skidmore College's Faculty-Student Collaborative Summer 2017 Research Program for supporting our project, and to Kelly Platt (Skidmore Class of 2018), our stalwart third reader. Above all, we express our utmost gratitude to the instructors who so generously shared their time, thoughts, and syllabi with us. Their support and collegiality were invaluable to this project.

1 Kenneth F. Kitchell, "The Role of Myth Courses on College Campuses", *The Classical World* 98.2 (2005), 187.

2 Ibidem, 189.

3 Ibidem, 187.

4 Ibidem, 191.

5 Here we paraphrase Kitchell's longer series of questions (ibidem, 191–192).

Heeding Kitchell's call for data and taking guidance from his questions, we have conducted a census of mythology courses after collecting syllabi from institutions of higher learning in the United States. In addition to addressing many of the issues raised above, we consider which departments offer myth courses; the structures of the courses themselves; which Graeco-Roman gods, heroes, and myths are taught; and what themes and motifs are addressed. We also discuss some current and emerging trends that define, or have the potential to define, the twenty-first-century mythology classroom.

## **1.1. Designing Our Database**

Our first task was to compile a list of colleges and universities in the United States where classical mythology courses are or have been taught. Our initial list was derived from the US Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) website, which encompasses over 7,000 higher-learning institutions. The database tracks seventy-one variables, including the degree(s) an institution offers; its classification as public, private not-for-profit, or private for-profit and as a four-year or two-year institution; an indication if it is a historically Black college or university or a tribal college; its geographic status as city, suburb, town, or rural; and the institution's student population. The IPEDS database also includes different levels of Carnegie Classification data, which recognize the diversity and variety of US colleges and universities. The Carnegie data track undergraduate profiles, instructional programmes, and enrolments, as well as institutional size and setting. Overall, the IPEDS data enabled us to filter our initial list of 7,000 institutions and reduce it to a master list of about 3,000. One important filter was institution type: most focusing on nursing, law, cosmetology, veterinary practice, rabbinical studies, or the like were excluded on the grounds that classical mythology courses historically or practically have not been taught there.

## **1.2. Typologies of Institutions and Courses**

For the remaining 3,000 colleges and universities, we searched online course catalogues for key terms ("myth", "Greek", "Greece", "Roman", "ancient", "hero", "gods", and "legend" – common descriptors in titles or summaries) to identify the presence of myth courses in the curricula. Based on these search results, we categorized each school into one of four types (see Appendix, Table 1). Type 1 schools have independent Classics departments that offer majors and/or minors. These include traditional liberal-arts colleges like Skidmore College as well as research institutions like Columbia University. Type 2 schools house Classics programmes in larger departments or offer only a minor, such as the University of Alabama, where the Classics programme is a part of the Department of Modern Languages. Type 3 schools offer Classics-themed courses, but have no department, programme, major, or minor affiliation. An example is Northwest University in Washington state, which, due to its Christian affiliation, offers Greek language and ancient history courses, but has no formal Classics curriculum; many community colleges also fall into this category. Type 4 schools offer no other courses with substantial classical content, apart from those featuring classical mythology. Ultimately, we identified 1,143 institutions that offer classical mythology courses among all four types.

Reviewing the catalogues, we sorted the mythology courses themselves into three categories: (a) traditional classical mythology surveys, here defined as courses that cover exclusively Graeco-Roman myth and focus on the creation of the universe, major gods and goddesses, major heroes and heroines, and various kinds of saga; (b) classical mythology courses with a specialized focus, such as gender in myth or myth in ancient art; (c) Western and non-Western mythology surveys covering both classical myths and myths from around the world. We discuss each category of course further in sections 2–4, taking stock of content and format.

### **1.3. Requesting and Quantifying Syllabi**

After categorizing schools and sorting courses, we began to request syllabi via email. Requests were addressed to the instructors or (when the instructors themselves could not be identified) to department chairs, administrative assistants, registrars, or divisional deans. Each request shared a brief overview of the project and asked for the syllabus of a specific course listed in the catalogue. For institutions where no specific myth courses were found, but where there was evidence they might be taught, we requested syllabi of any courses featuring classical myth.

The response from across the country was largely enthusiastic and is reflected in our response rate (54%). Emails were sent out to the first half of our mailing list during Summer 2017, and to the second half during Fall 2017. The response rate remained virtually unchanged between these two terms (55% and 53%, respectively). From these responses, we received 589 syllabi, far more than expected.6 The syllabi date from the years 1993 through 2018 (Spring), with 398 (68%) from 2016 onward. Thus, the majority of the documents offer very recent information about myth courses at US institutions.

As we received syllabi, we undertook the process of sampling and reading them. We developed a list of 250 distinct variables in order to quantify the documents and to extrapolate the contents of the courses themselves. We refined or added variables throughout the reading process. The list of variables encompasses not only course content, but also other kinds of information, including:

The variables were entered into a spreadsheet, with numerical values representing our interpretation of the courses' contents and formats, usually (1)s or (0)s. When a variable was unknown, or not easily deduced from the syllabus, we left a blank. Three different syllabi readers were responsible for populating the spreadsheet. The number of readers was small enough to minimize variation of interpretation, but large enough to maximize the

6 Of the 589 syllabi we received, a substantial number (219 or 37%) were repeats or revisions of prior courses by the same instructors. We incorporated around 40 repeat syllabi into our reading process for control purposes.

number of syllabi read. We made every effort to read syllabi from as many different institutions as possible, and from every region of the country.

## **1.4. Limitations to Our Approach**

First, human error. Though we coordinated the reading process and normalized it among the three readers, quantifying the syllabi was an empirical, and therefore a subjective enterprise. Second, geographical sweep. Our initial goal was to cover mythology courses in all of North America, including Canada and Mexico, but time constraints made this goal too daunting; hence we have limited our focus to the United States. Third, sample size. We performed keyword searches on all 589 syllabi, and read and quantified a significant portion of them (40%). Nevertheless, our data, though helpful for identifying major tendencies and trends, should not be read too prescriptively.

## **2. Survey Courses**

The most common kind of classical mythology course is the survey, an overview of the major stories, characters, and themes of Graeco-Roman myth. The fullest surveys often follow the overarching chronology of the myths themselves, from the creation of the cosmos, to the rise of Zeus and his fellow Olympians, to adventures of heroes and heroines, to various kinds of saga, to the founding of Rome. Surveys are offered at every type of institution, especially Type 1 and Type 2. They are found at Type 3 institutions as well, but in the absence of a Classics department or programme they are (a) likely to be offered as English literature courses; and (b) less common than courses on global mythology (see section 4, below). If a Type 1 or Type 2 institution offers just one classical mythology course, it is likely to be a survey. Typical survey titles, which speak to the broad nature of such courses, include "Classical Mythology", "Greek Mythology", "Graeco-Roman Myth", and "Myths of the Greeks and Romans". Surveys may be cross-listed with other departments or programmes, such as English or religious studies, and they typically fulfil, in addition to Classics major or minor requirements, humanities requirements within their broader institutional curricula.

### **2.1. Survey Courses: Content**

Instructors of survey courses draw heavily from primary and secondary authors. Our study tracked as many Graeco-Roman authors as possible, from staples like Hesiod and Ovid to outliers like Pherecydes and Plautus, in order to get the fullest view of the sources that inform mythology courses at US colleges and universities. The two most popular authors in survey courses are Homer (71%) and Euripides (58%). In addition, half of all surveys (45–55%) incorporate Hesiod, the *Homeric Hymns*, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Ovid. Some survey courses (between 20% and 40% of them) rely on a second tier of primary sources, including Plato, Apollodorus, and Virgil. Primary sources are almost always encountered in English translation. Of course, upper-level Greek and Latin courses will cover the authors and texts mentioned above and many others, but such courses are rarely advertised as mythology courses *per se* (the lone exception in our study is a specialized Latin course: "Ovid and Classical Mythology", Lucas Herchenroeder, University of Southern California, Spring 2017). Note that primary sources are not limited to classical literature: ancient and modern art as well as contemporary screen media (movies and television programmes) are also fixtures of mythological surveys.