Alexandra Berardelli ’25
Chief Opinions Editor
“Did you know that Dr. Fauci was a Classics major?” Oh, yes, that’s definitely a question I never got before as a Classics major. Well, random fun fact, but I grew up on the same block as Dr. Fauci – in Dyker Heights in Brooklyn. Then, I went to his sister school…now, I’m a Classics major at Holy Cross…next stop, Cornell Med School…? Not quite.
Whether or not Dr. Fauci translates ancient Greek and Latin daily, his background as a Classicist has undoubtedly granted him a plethora of professional and interpersonal strengths—critical thinking skills, proficient research methods, and strong writing abilities, among others. Still, I can’t help but wonder how his languages are nowadays.
Historically, Classics students are expected to possess top-notch proficiency in Latin and ancient Greek to read and analyze texts of the ancient Mediterranean comfortably. While there are significant challenges in learning any language – modern or ancient – learning ancient Greek and Latin can be difficult due to the complexity of their grammatical structures, the heavy reliance on memorization of declensions and conjugations, fluid-ish word order, and a different alphabet (for Greek). Furthermore, the overall lack of speaking and listening hinders further cognitive association compared to modern spoken languages, despite the introduction of spoken Latin and reading aloud in classes.
As you work toward reading proficiency in both languages, you must learn how highly inflected languages operate. Based on my language-learning experiences, I found it most effective to memorize grammatical structures on the functions of nouns and forms of verbs, respectively, declensions and conjugations. Declensions are the categorizations of the various functional forms of a noun, pronoun, or adjective, denoting the grammatical case, number, and gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). There are six cases – nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative – in Latin and five – all are the same except the ablative – in ancient Greek, each denoting a noun’s particular function in a sentence. For instance, the nominative case is used for subjects, and the dative case is used for indirect objects. While we technically have these cases in English, our word order often allows us to make sense of the language.
Moreover, verbs are categorized into conjugations across these two languages but still indicate a verb’s person, number, voice, tense, and mood. To correctly identify the functions of nouns and verbs – i.e., correctly identify these declensions and conjugations – you must learn multiple sets of noun and verb endings, with small but mighty differences among genders and particular tenses. For example, the word puella (girl) is a feminine, first declension noun. If you want to make it the singular subject of a sentence, keep the ending -a – puella (the girl). But, if it is the plural direct object of a verb, you would change the ending -a to -as – puellas (the girls).
If you’re reading this and you think, “It’s all Greek to me,” I won’t take it personally. This is not my attempt to convince you to take Latin or ancient Greek (you should anyway) but to show that these strict grammatical rules within declensions and conjugations allow these Classical languages to be so complex. Word order can be more fluid because each word has a particular function, so you should be able to recognize and apply these grammatical rules anywhere. As you reach proficiency in reading and translation, you must actively recall all these word endings to correctly translate words in a particular function. This forces Classics students to be more critical and intentional with each word. These vital skills carry over into non-language areas essential in medicine, the legal sector, and the business world.
Once you’ve reached a somewhat proficient level in reading and translating, you can pick up some of the coolest literature written, and there’s something truly extraordinary about being able to read Vergil’s Aeneid or the Odyssey in their original languages. When you get into the nuances of a text, you can pursue meaningful inquiry into the contexts of the text itself and different possible interpretations. However, I would like to be clear that you can have productive conversations and literary analysis through already translated texts. In my upper-level Latin and Greek courses with Professor Thomas Martin of the Classics Department, I have learned to appreciate the idea of “persistent ambiguity.” This is the idea that some things are seemingly impossible to distinctly define or understand, but the pursuit of questioning and interpretation attempts to foster a better understanding. In the professional world, if we want a serious opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to this world, we have to be creative, question everything, and offer many different perspectives. These approaches are found daily in our Classics courses – especially language ones.
The success of Dr. Fauci’s medical career has its foundations in the Classical world. Naturally, he uses his approach to dealing with intricate language and interpretative questioning in his strenuous work in the medical field. For now, if you’re considering pursuing Classics –or any of the humanities disciplines in that case – but you are unsure how this will manifest itself in the professional world, know that there are plenty of productive skills thanks to the Classics, albeit millennia away from us now.
Featured image courtesy of University of Oxford
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