The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910

The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910. By Caroline Winterer. Baltimore, Md.:Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x, 244 pp. $22.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8018-7889-6.

This is the paperback edition of a book originally published in 2002, and its availability is to be greatly welcomed. Winterer writes well and concisely, and her book has a clear focus that fills some of the gap between studies of classical culture in early America and its reception in American popular culture in the twentieth century. Winterer's emphasis is on the practitioners of the classics, that is, teachers and academicians. She astutely analyzes the beginnings of the professionalization of the classics in academe, which laid the groundwork for issues and attitudes in more ways than one might suspect.

The period she surveys witnessed the shift from classics being a central component of public discourse to becoming the preserve of its professional guardians. A major theme of the book is the recurring...