On Teaching and Aeneas
Classes start tomorrow. The room is tidied; Moby Dick's fishbowl got a thorough scrubbing; I've re-organized the book shelves (which feels productive, even though they look exactly the same from across the room). As I start revamping lesson plans, I'm considering the nature of this calling--teaching.
There are many things I love about my profession. Here's one: each year it feels new, because although I'm teaching the same material, I'm teaching it to a new group of students. That matters a lot. Students aren't replaceable knowledge-receptacles, cycling in and out of a heedless stream of knowledge like the buckets on a water wheel. The teacher-student relationship is more like the flow of a stream. There are headwaters that must find the ocean, but the course both changes with and cuts the terrain.
There's an inherent reciprocity to teaching. A double-vision. Teaching looks both at content and at students. It looks backward at a tradition and forward to a future. In a sense, teaching combines the best of a conservative outlook with the best of a progressive outlook. The teacher stands in front of a group of young people and says, here are things from our past which are worth preserving. And says, the future can be better than the present if you will approach it this way.
This double-orientation is beautifully expressed in Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas is fleeing the destruction of his home city, Troy, and has been called by the gods to establish a new city promised to his descendants. So Aeneas leads his family and a band of survivors through the burning city, avoiding the ransacking enemy, toward the boats that will carry them to their new homeland. Here is the image Virgil gives us of this flight. Aeneas says:
These are, in order, a 1595 Italian engraving, a 1650 painting by the Fleming David Tenniers II, a 1654 painting by the Englishman Henry Gibbs, a 1729 painting by the Frenchman Carl Vanloo, a 1752 painting by the Italian Pompeo Batoni. They are beautiful works, but they miss a key detail from the lines above. For comparison, here is a 2nd century Carthaginian altar relief and a 2nd century Roman coin:
Do you see the important detail? Virgil tells us that Aeneas carries his father on his shoulders, and leads his son by the hand.
I'm not nitpicking: this is important. The adjective most often used to describe Aeneas, the honorific by which he is known, is "Pious Aeneas." For us today, "pious" may have unfortunately thin connotations: watery-eyed devotion, pale asceticism, a slightly vacant other-worldliness. For the Romans (and thus likely for the New Testament writers), piety meant something far more robust. Piety meant dutifully meeting all the obligations of one's life--to the gods, the state, and the family--and feeling proper reverence toward those things.
And here's why the detail is important: Virgil is clear that pious Aeneas has, feels, and meets obligations toward both his ancestors and his descendants. He carries a tradition on his shoulders, but he also leads a child by the hand. And that is the posture of the teacher. We each carry some body of knowledge, some set of skills, some collection of stories, that are worth preserving. But if we keep both hands and all our attention on that, we're going to lose the child in the winding and smokey alleyways.
And the child is, after all, the true heir of the promised city. Aeneas has much toil before him -- "so hard and huge a task it is to found the Roman people" -- but the reward is not something he himself will see. That iron pagan stoicism, that piety which drives us to do difficult things because it is our duty, is leavened by the Christian virtue of hope. We trust that no labor is lost which is done in service of God's kingdom.
So as the school year starts, I'm looking forward to leading a new group of students through terrain that's familiar to me (though there's always more to learn), but to the extent that I hold their hands and pay attention to them, I get to see it through their eyes. It's always a little bit different, each year. I wish all my fellow teachers success in their endeavors. Don't drop Anchises, don't lose Iulus, and I'll see you down by the boats.
There are many things I love about my profession. Here's one: each year it feels new, because although I'm teaching the same material, I'm teaching it to a new group of students. That matters a lot. Students aren't replaceable knowledge-receptacles, cycling in and out of a heedless stream of knowledge like the buckets on a water wheel. The teacher-student relationship is more like the flow of a stream. There are headwaters that must find the ocean, but the course both changes with and cuts the terrain.
There's an inherent reciprocity to teaching. A double-vision. Teaching looks both at content and at students. It looks backward at a tradition and forward to a future. In a sense, teaching combines the best of a conservative outlook with the best of a progressive outlook. The teacher stands in front of a group of young people and says, here are things from our past which are worth preserving. And says, the future can be better than the present if you will approach it this way.
This double-orientation is beautifully expressed in Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas is fleeing the destruction of his home city, Troy, and has been called by the gods to establish a new city promised to his descendants. So Aeneas leads his family and a band of survivors through the burning city, avoiding the ransacking enemy, toward the boats that will carry them to their new homeland. Here is the image Virgil gives us of this flight. Aeneas says:
“Come then, dear father, clasp my neck: I willThis is a beautiful and powerful image: Aeneas carrying his elderly father Anchises and leading his young son Iulus, fleeing the wreckage of the city they have called home. It's an image that artists through the ages have loved to recreate. But it's striking to me that so many of them miss an absolutely essential detail.
carry you on my shoulders: that task won’t weigh on me.
...
You, father, take the sacred objects, and our country’s gods,
in your hands: until I’ve washed in running water,
it would be a sin for me, coming from such fighting
and recent slaughter, to touch them.” So saying, bowing my neck,
I spread a cloak made of a tawny lion’s hide over my broad
shoulders, and bend to the task: little Iulus clasps his hand
in mine, and follows his father’s longer strides. (transl. Kline, II.707-23)
These are, in order, a 1595 Italian engraving, a 1650 painting by the Fleming David Tenniers II, a 1654 painting by the Englishman Henry Gibbs, a 1729 painting by the Frenchman Carl Vanloo, a 1752 painting by the Italian Pompeo Batoni. They are beautiful works, but they miss a key detail from the lines above. For comparison, here is a 2nd century Carthaginian altar relief and a 2nd century Roman coin:
Do you see the important detail? Virgil tells us that Aeneas carries his father on his shoulders, and leads his son by the hand.
I'm not nitpicking: this is important. The adjective most often used to describe Aeneas, the honorific by which he is known, is "Pious Aeneas." For us today, "pious" may have unfortunately thin connotations: watery-eyed devotion, pale asceticism, a slightly vacant other-worldliness. For the Romans (and thus likely for the New Testament writers), piety meant something far more robust. Piety meant dutifully meeting all the obligations of one's life--to the gods, the state, and the family--and feeling proper reverence toward those things.
And here's why the detail is important: Virgil is clear that pious Aeneas has, feels, and meets obligations toward both his ancestors and his descendants. He carries a tradition on his shoulders, but he also leads a child by the hand. And that is the posture of the teacher. We each carry some body of knowledge, some set of skills, some collection of stories, that are worth preserving. But if we keep both hands and all our attention on that, we're going to lose the child in the winding and smokey alleyways.
And the child is, after all, the true heir of the promised city. Aeneas has much toil before him -- "so hard and huge a task it is to found the Roman people" -- but the reward is not something he himself will see. That iron pagan stoicism, that piety which drives us to do difficult things because it is our duty, is leavened by the Christian virtue of hope. We trust that no labor is lost which is done in service of God's kingdom.
So as the school year starts, I'm looking forward to leading a new group of students through terrain that's familiar to me (though there's always more to learn), but to the extent that I hold their hands and pay attention to them, I get to see it through their eyes. It's always a little bit different, each year. I wish all my fellow teachers success in their endeavors. Don't drop Anchises, don't lose Iulus, and I'll see you down by the boats.
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