Exhibits at the Chinese School of Classical Studies at Athens Photo: Wang Zhou/CSST

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In the narrow sense, classical studies in the West pertain to the research of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, with their languages, literature, histories, and philosophies forming the core of this discipline and traditionally defining the term “Classics.” However, a growing chorus of scholars now advocates for expanding the purview of classical studies to encompass other influential ancient civilizations, such as ancient China, to better grasp the full spectrum of human cultural diversity and interconnections. 

Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and professor of Comparative Literature, is a leading proponent of this shift. In this exclusive interview, Nagy emphasized that comparative analysis of the classic works of different civilizations can illuminate their similarities and differences, deepening our understanding of the concept of “Classics.” As a key initiator of the global classical studies initiative, he also discussed the evolving direction of classical studies, its role in modern times, and his past collaborations with Chinese scholars, highlighting the critical need for cross-cultural exchange and the preservation of classical wisdom and traditions in an increasingly interconnected world. 

 

‘Multicultural’ concept of the classical studies

CSST: In recent years, Western classical scholarship has increasingly embraced a “multicultural” concept of the classical. What are your views on this?

Nagy: In my research and teaching, I have embraced for many years now a multicultural idea of what is “Classical,” and what is a “Classic.” The study of ancient Chinese classical literature, as with the study of other ancient civilizations – in my case, with special reference to the Indian subcontinent – is vitally important for an understanding of what can be called global classicism. And why is it so important? It is because “Classical” Greek and Roman studies need to be viewed in a wider context. 

To promote this idea, I was one of the founders of a new open-access online journal, titled “Classical Continuum.” In the manifesto for Classical Continuum, our team has worded our “Classical” ideals this way: “Classical Continuum is designed for short and longer publication of research in the broad category of ‘classical’ civilizations–in other words, not just Ancient Greece and Rome, but Classical Sanskrit, Classical Arabic, Classical Persian, Classical Chinese, Classical K’iche’, and so on. The contributors to Classical Continuum are professors and students working at Harvard University in a variety of departments (such as Comparative Literature, Classics, Celtic Languages and Literature, Near Eastern Languages and Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Religion, Anthropology), but our team also includes participants from other institutions.”

CSST: How do you think incorporating diverse ancient civilizations, like China, could change the theoretical frameworks or interpretative methods in classical studies?

Nagy: Even though most ancient civilizations are not related to each other historically, the elements of each civilization may contain cultural characteristics that are comparable. There is a term for this kind of comparison–a term commonly used by researchers in linguistics. Linguists speak of typological comparison, where linguistic patterns that are not historically related are nevertheless structurally similar and therefore comparable. Such comparison enhances insights into the structural realities of language itself. Similarly, I argue, typological comparison of historically unrelated civilizations can help us better understand what are the ingredients, as it were, of civilization itself. 

In my case, for example, comparing the sociological as well as technological backgrounds of charioteering as a model of warfare, sport, and ceremony in ancient Chinese as well as ancient Greek civilizations helps us understand more deeply the similarities as well as differences in the world views of different civilizations about war, athletics, and even ritual itself – to use that term “ritual” in a purely anthropological sense.

CSST: What challenges or benefits might come from adopting a broader, multicultural approach to classical studies in Western academia?

Nagy: There are challenges that come naturally, given xenophobic tendencies that afflict any society, but an empirical approach to multiculturalism can help attenuate such tendencies and promote a broader understanding, by way of good research and good teaching, of the humanism that is intrinsic in all humanity. The ideals of humanism are vital for providing moral and ethical foundations for cultural interactions in our time.

 

The vitality of classical studies in modern times

CSST: Given the current global challenges faced by the humanities, do you believe the study of classical civilizations still has “vitality” in the modern world?

Nagy: I see a genuine hunger, pervading all walks of life in all societies, for the values of Classical literature and arts. But the challenge remains to break through any existing fears and aversions. Researchers and teachers must always strive to understand and relate to social realities, trying to find the best ways to illuminate the vitality of culture–including the popular cultures of verbal art and visual art, not only the Classical cultures. In working toward such ideal goals, I like to think that we need not only good research that drives good teaching but also good teaching that drives good research. 

CSST: Your work has significantly influenced our understanding of Homer and the concept of heroism in ancient Greek literature. How do you think Homeric heroism, as depicted in The Iliad and The Odyssey, speaks to modern audiences? 

Nagy: The ideal of focusing not only on traditional valor but also on resilience, empathy, and social justice is what I was trying to articulate in my 1996 book Homeric Questions, which has been masterfully translated into Chinese by my dear friend and colleague Professor Bamo Qubumo. She is a senior researcher and Director of the Division of Literary Theory and Criticism, as well as Executive Director of the Oral Traditions Research Center at the Institute of Ethnic Literature (IEL), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). I have been active in working together with scholars at the IEL, and I have high praise for the support of the IEL by the CASS. In this context, I single out my own experience in working together with Professor Bamo.

Let me quote from the English version a part of the “Epilogue”: “Throughout this work, the central aim was to reintroduce the vitality of performance, of oral tradition in general, to the conceptual framework of the Classics. This aim addresses the need to be vigilant over tradition itself, all tradition. Earlier, I had argued that the field of Classics, which lends itself to the empirical study of tradition, seems ideally suited to articulate the value of tradition in other societies, whether or not these societies are closely comparable to those of ancient Greece and Rome, given that we live in an era when the living traditions of traditional societies are rapidly becoming extinct, when many thousands of years of cumulative human experience are becoming obliterated by less than a century or so of modern technological progress. The rapid extinction of old living traditions by the same technological progress that points towards the less rapid but equally certain extinction of Nature itself is forcefully expressed in the poem of a Native American, ‘Self-portrait: microcosm, or, song of mixed-blood’ by Robert Conley.”

At a later point in the Epilogue, I have this to say about Conley’s poem: “This poem is particularly apt because it is about principles, in the literal sense of first elements. It explores the value of going back in time in order to recover fundamental truths, even when it may not any longer be clear what it is that one is recovering. The key anxiety in the poem seems to be: I do not know the ancient forms. The forms are the ritual, the ritual is the performance, the performance is the song. So, what can compensate for the ancient forms? The answer is to be found in the very use of tradition, or in what is somehow linked to tradition, which is the essence of poetry as the offshoot of performance. The ritual aspect of performance can best be symbolized in a primary form of ritual, sacrifice, and the essence of sacrifice can best be symbolized in the fires of sacrifice. The key solution to the anxiety is: my poems are my fires.”

 

Ensuring the continuity of classical studies

CSST: Passing down classical knowledge faces numerous challenges in modern society, such as cultural diversity and information overload. How can we ensure the continuity of classical studies?

Nagy: One idea that has engaged my strong support is to develop an organization that protects the agency of researchers and teachers in sharing their discoveries and discovery procedures with the public at large–without interference from artificial intelligence. That said, I also stress the usefulness of AI—so long as there exist agents of research who mediate between AI and the researchers whose original thinking can be safeguarded from misuse. A pioneer in this effort is Nikolaos Lykos, the current Executive Chairman of the Management Board of AustriaCARD, and his team in Athens, with whom I have been working closely in exploring ways of making such ideals a reality.

According to Nikolaos Lykos, the idea is to introduce a new agent, a mediation agent, between a general-purpose pre-trained AI like ChatGPT and the corpus of original material belonging to different creators. The mediation service is a software component that can use RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) and definitions from economics and game theory in particular, like the Shapley Value, to achieve the following goals. Firstly, avoid producing false answers (the so-called “hallucinations”) by focusing the pre-trained general-purpose AI into high-quality input such as the kind that is represented by the aforementioned corpus from expert creators. Secondly, attributing fair value to each one of the creators by quantifying the importance of each one's input on the generated answer(s). This can be achieved by using the aforementioned Shapley Value metric. Thirdly, allow the end user, who is the “consumer” of the answer, to go back to the original sources used from the corpus for verification and additional investigation.

In addition to fixing existing problems with AI, the mediation agent is also meant to serve as a means of compensating existing publishers of content and thus allowing them to continue doing business in the area of generative AI. This model of compensation would be life-saving for small academic publishers, who have “to continue doing business,” while “creators” like me could continue to produce content for free, open access, and open source. Open access and open source are vital for sharing classical knowledge with the public, not just with specialists in the Classics writ large. I also support new ways that make it possible for technology to increase and enhance engagement with the humanities. Such ways involve new techniques of cross-referencing and interactivity.

Edited by LIAN ZHIXIAN