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50 Years of Classical Studies at the ANU:

A Celebration hosted by the Friends of the ANU Classics Museum

 

 

Saturday 2 September: Public Lecture

 

Professor Emerita Beryl Rawson: Fifty years on: ANU Classics and the study of Rome

 

My role in today's program is to do two things: (1) to say something about the beginnings of Classics here 50 years ago and about how it has developed and changed over that period; and (2) to illustrate developments in Classical Studies more widely by taking an example from Roman history and some of my own work there.

I should make clear that I was not here 50 years ago! But I was here before the end of the first decade, and I knew all of the original staff members. I have known all 17 full-time staff members who have served in the department, as well as the part-time members.

The date of 1956 does not mark the beginning of the autonomous and separate ANU Department of Classics. That took place in 1961, and the inaugural Professor, Richard Johnson, took up duty in 1962. In 1956 Classics was part of the Canberra University College, as was all the other undergraduate teaching, a kind of regional campus of the University of Melbourne. The curriculum was set from Melbourne, and Melbourne set and marked the exams. The nearby ANU, established in 1946, was a separate institution, wholly occupied with research. Early activities of the Arts departments were in the Childers Street huts, only recently demolished. The Haydon-Allen building was soon built and Classics was one of those who moved in.

Assoc. Professor K. Masterman headed up the first Classics team in 1956. He came from Geelong Grammar and later went on to teach at Canberra Boys' Grammar School. He was joined by Evan Burge, Graeme Clarke (briefly), Rob Dyer, and, soon after, Ken McKay. The standard of the College had risen markedly by then. In 1949 four Foundation Professors had been appointed: Manning Clark, A. D. Hope, Fin Crisp, Heinz Arndt - names which still resonate today.

There were pressures for amalgamation with ANU, but also much opposition. The matter was settled by Prime Minister Menzies in 1959, who deemed Canberra too small a town to sustain two universities of any class (the population was about 50,000), and legislation for amalgamation was introduced. In October 1960 the new ANU came into being (described by one of the distinguished opponents as a 'shotgun wedding').

A Chair of Classics was established, and Richard Johnson was appointed in 1961. He took up duty at beginning of 1962.

In the early years, there was much discussion of the ideal size of the School of General Studies (SGS) (which included the Faculty of Arts). 4000 undergraduates soon looked unrealistic, as Canberra grew rapidly, public servants flocked in (especially from Sydney and Melbourne), and the role of being a 'national' university demanded new approaches. Professor Johnson, who was active in policy issues from early on, believed that at least 8000 undergraduates were necessary to enable the SGS to achieve diversity and depth of disciplines. As for Classics, he pointed out that, as opposed to single-discipline departments (and language departments mostly restricted to language and literature), Classics had to cover languages, history, philosophy, art and archaeology, poetry and rhetoric, and education over two cultures. With six staff Classics was, he argued, manifestly under-resourced.

Even with such staff numbers, Classics established a range of innovative new courses, relying on team-work and heavy teaching loads. But this was at the cost of establishing early international reputations in research. Those came later. Research was going on, and honours and MA students were accepted from the beginning. The first PhD was awarded in 1973. The Department did establish an enviable reputation for teaching quality, energy, and enthusiasm. Some more traditional departments elsewhere, of course, did look askance at some of ANU Classics' innovations, such as courses for beginners in Latin and Greek and in-translation ('Civilization') courses. Nowadays, everybody offers such things.

The Classics Museum was established in 1962, a great asset whose importance has continued to grow over time. Professor Johnson took this initiative with the active encouragement of Professor A. D. Trendall, a distinguished classicist and art historian, who was then Master of University House, and supported for many years by University funds for new acquisitions. The Museum became a valuable teaching resource (enhanced by the model of Rome, made to commission in 1976), and continues to be an instrument of outreach and active interaction with schools and the wider community. It has already inspired one benefactor to help support students in Classics.

One example of successful teamwork has been in the topic of 'The City', which several of us taught, at later-year levels, over many years. This made possible comparative analysis of Roman and Greek cities, and illustrated that 'the study of Rome (or Greece)' was not 'just' Roman (or Greek) history but an integration of different disciplinary perspectives (history, philosophy, art and architecture, literature) which different staff brought to it in different combinations in different years. 'The City' is now a thriving topic of study and research all over the world, and I have noticed how the emphasis has changed, as have emphases in Roman history more generally. Earlier, the focus was on 'great men', the great families, political and upper-class history, men's competition for office, their military triumphs, their building projects, ... BUT senatorial families were seldom more than 600 in number, out of a population of a million or more. (They ARE important, but hardly the whole city!) Where is the rest of the population? They were ignored in earlier works on 'the city'.

I chose at random a sample of half-a-dozen books on this topic published in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Only one had an entry for any of slaves, women, or children - and that one treated these groups (a large percentage of the population) only in the context of family and household! How did all of these experience their city? We know that they were all out-and-about in the streets - not secluded.

So let us try to repopulate the city streets.

(Prof. Rawson went on to discuss the role of festivals, spectacles, topography, monuments and images in the life of the city, and how different sections of the population (including slaves, women, children, and foreigners) might have experienced these. Modern Australian analogies were suggested, such as the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, and the refugees in the 'Children Overboard' episode in 2001; but also the dangers of empathy. She concluded that these problems are endemic to (Ancient) History, and difficult, but also challenging and stimulating. There is much exciting new work being done in Roman History, and in Classics more generally. These are fields of study with not only a rich past but also a bright future.)