As something of an enthusiast for the Latin language, I am often subjected to that fearful question: why? Like many others, I have learned the typical responses: I learn Latin because it helps with my grammar skills and it teaches me to think logically. In addition, it improves my writing skill and reading comprehension in English. All these reasons may be offered and more could be found if needed, yet I think there is a better answer to the question of why we study Latin.  

We learn Latin because it is a form of necromancy. It is not a form of necromancy in the cheap dollar-store novel kind of way; students of the Latin language are not memorizing chants that summon the dead or performing rituals to resurrect Julius Caesar (we do sometimes memorize chants). Unfortunately for those classicists who would like to raise the dead, our magic is less complex but far more mystifying. Latin, quite simply, lets us communicate with the dead through the writings they left behind. When we translate Cicero or Caesar into English, we have found a corpse, and we chop it up, hacking it limb from limb to analyze whatever information its exhumed parts hold. But when we learn Latin, we bring these decaying corpses back to life; we resurrect them so that they can speak to us – and thus we speak to them on their terms rather than forcing these old corpses to speak on ours. 

While this may seem too mystical a description for learning a language, it is the most apt way to describe it, for reading the works of our household historical figures in their own words is indeed mysterious. When we make a translation, even if it is a good translation, we are forcing the ancients into our world. We are demanding that they be made to fit our times and to suit our worldview. When we condescend to learn Latin though, we renounce that tyranny and let the dead speak for themselves; when we learn Latin, we step within that shadowy veil which separates life from death, past from present. 

Latin is a form of necromancy in that it allows us to speak to the dead on their own terms rather than ours; yet this does not necessarily fully demonstrate the utility of Latin. If we say that the language is useful because it lets us speak to the dead, we then presume that our interlocutors have something worthwhile to say to us. We must assume that Cicero is a person worth listening to, and that Ovid, for all the baggage he brings with him, has bits of wisdom which we would benefit from hearing. And this belief in the utility of people of this sort and their writings is itself supported by the belief that human beings are consistent, that what one Roman Senator perceived still applies to us, though we live over two millennia later. 

While Latin authors may provide insights into the human condition in general, they also speak to us as members of a particular civilization. As members of a community which has a certain inheritance, we operate within a historical framework developed by our forebears and received by us. To truly engage with this generation-spanning framework, we need to engage with it as it is: in the original language. So, to learn Latin is neither a grammatical exercise nor a demonstration of snobbish superiority, but a more thorough participation in the inheritance we have already received. 

Our inheritance, or tradition, is that which we have received from our forebears. Note that they are not necessarily our literal progenitors, but those with whom we engage in dialogue. The questions they raise, the answers they posit – these things have relevance for us because they shape the world in which we live, and the eyes with which we see it. If we see clearly, then we ought to be grateful for these inherited things, both for the truth they reveal to us and for the errors they point out for us to avoid. Hence, we should be grateful for our inheritance, and what is more, we should have some sense of love for it, if we are to fully imbibe its wisdom. Without some love for our inheritance, the precepts of our tradition will remain stony rational truths, but love will move us to honor them and acknowledge that they have a share in the wisdom that will allow us to better understand ourselves. 

Given that we love our inheritance in some manner, it will not be enough for us to communicate with it second or third hand; we must speak to it face-to-face. Doing such, of course, requires that we learn the language of our inheritance, for we will otherwise be constrained to interacting through the lens of translation, which always imposes our own worldview. If we, being lovers of our inheritance, are to interact with our tradition without contorting it from the beginning, we must learn its original languages. Indeed, I would be remiss if I did not note that this process applies not only to Latin, but also to other languages that play a substantial role in the western tradition, such as ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew. It is only through these languages that we cast aside the distortions of translation and instead interact with our heritage on the terms it provides for us.

Even though we should love our inheritance in some sense, we also should not do so inordinately. Though our tradition is not some disposable cup to be tossed away after a single use, our love for it is still subject to the general rule of moderation. Rather than loving too ardently, we love our inheritance the way we love anything else: in proper proportion. Just as we love our parents and gratefully accept the truth they show us while still remaining willing to use our rational faculties and do what is right to do, not merely what we have been raised to, we should love and be grateful for our inheritance. 

As a consequence of learning Latin for the love of what we have inherited, we also resuscitate the heritage we love. Knowledge of Latin at the present moment is like the language that Grandma and Grandpa brought with them when they emigrated, but which our parents neglected to pass on to us. It was vital for those first immigrants for whom it was the native language, but only moderately useful for our parents, who did not consider it valuable enough for us to learn it. Yet the loss of this language is a loss of communicative ability; we are no longer able to form a bond with our grandparents in a manner that is equally meaningful for both of us. Hence, a reason often given to explain someone’s effort to learn a language is reconnecting with his culture or roots, for the ability to speak as an insider within a community draws him closer into that heritage. Learning Latin is the same as this, except that rather than finding our personal roots, where we as individuals come from, we discover more thoroughly the roots and origins of our own culture and community.

This is the true reason for learning Latin: that through it we shed the confining limits of our own circumstances, and we proceed towards a greater understanding of ourselves as historical creatures living with a certain inheritance within a specific community. That is, we make the dead live again so that we understand them as real people who influenced our lives, not merely names in the pages of old and dusty books. Armed thus, we fight against the forces that would constrain us to living within the parochial backwater of our own times in an eternal present which divides generation from generation. The risk of failing to understand ourselves as historical is that we cut ourselves off from prior generations, consequently severing ourselves from the inherited wisdom of those revived ancestors. Perhaps even more importantly, our developed historicity provides continuity and intelligibility to a world in which the basic ways in which people live shift almost every generation. Without the common reference point provided by the continuity of living in the same manner as everyone else in living memory, we are in danger of creating a world in which each generation has no common frame of reference with the people who came before or after them. By learning Latin, however, we are working to provide meaning and continuity to our communities even though the common stuff of life constantly shifts.

As I learned more of this language, the past, once a distant and foreign world, became comprehensible to me in the way that my family members are comprehensible: they are familiar, but this familiarity heightens my sense of how I am different from them. Similarly, what used to be “the past” becomes “our past” through the process of learning Latin; continuity and intelligibility replace historical dislocation. There are still vast differences between us and our past, but we, now that we have developed the skill to communicate with that past, can understand why those changes occurred. As learning a language results in forming a firmer connection with those who speak it, learning Latin is likewise a process of forming more meaningful connections, but with the past that makes us who we are. Thus, when someone asks why we choose to study Latin, or other supposedly impractical languages, we need not resort to the façade of some supposedly practical reason because we can rest confidently in the knowledge that studying this language is not only a journey into the meaning of the self in historical context, but ultimately a restoration of our historical and cultural inheritance.

David Cathel is a sophomore studying Latin.