Just last week I mentioned Joe Paterno in my blog post responding to Rush Limbaugh’s critique of “classical studies.” I mentioned Joe because he himself was classically-educated. There is a chapter in his autobiography entitled “Joe Knows Latin.” He even patterned his football team off the Spartan army: like the Spartans each players performs for the team, not himself; a touchdown is scored by the team, by the center as much as the quarterback. Note the jerseys and helmets–no names on the jerseys, no stars and stickers on the helmets. The Nittany Lions are Lions indeed, but Spartans too.
Most of us know of the Spartans famous stand at Thermopylae–how 300 Spartans led by king Leonidas held off the huge force of advancing Persians long enough to save the rest of Greek army that was able to retreat. Leonidas and the Spartans were all killed, dying glorious deaths. It appears now that Joe is making his last Spartan stand, though his enemies have not been invaders but but a traitor within the ranks–a traitor he was not willing to bring fully to justice. And so the king of the Spartans at Penn State is falling, but not so gloriously as we had hoped. On the spot where the Spartans died at Thermopylae there was erected a stone lion and an engraved stone that reads, “O stranger, go tell the Spartans that here we lie, having fulfilled their orders.” What do we now make of the stone lion on the campus of Penn State, and what epigraph will we write for Joe?
I must conclude with a personal irony. I live in central Pennsylvania; two of my brothers-in-law are Penn State graduates. I consult with a classical school in State College. But I have never been to a Penn State football game. This Wednesday, however, I was offered a ticket for the first time ever (my father-in-law was given two). Over lunch on Wednesday, we made plans to go see the Nebraska game–my father-in-law will be taking my son Noah to this historic game–his first college football game ever. The Spartans will be there, but not their king.
My brother wrote a blog on this as well. You might be interested to read it: http://revlen.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/lessons-from-joe-paternos-legacy/.
And the Spartans sacrificed their weak and deformed and unwanted children on the hillsides. Just to enlarge the analogy.
Kathryn,
You are right to point out that as much as we may admire the Greeks and the Romans (“the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome”-Poe); there is also much that we dare not emulate but rather condemn.
Could you write a classical article about the young boys whose lives have been ruined because of many (I repeat: many) non-classical actions and ommittances?
Shouldn’t this stand as a sobering warning to us all lest we get confused and think that the method is the goal? Christian Classical Education is a means by which we seek to point the hearts of our students to the Logos. Without the Logos, whose righeousness rescues the souls of students, all of our efforts will be in vain. Praise to the Almighty that his righteousness is the Hope of the perpetrator and the victim.
The Spartans also encouraged their ‘boys’ to lie, cheat and steal — all in the name of survival of the fittest. And the reason for their ‘heroic’ warrior nature? Because they lived off the slave labor of the Helots… They lived in fear of a Helot revolt. Sorry, I cannot see anything to cheer about in this analogy.
Actually, you could enlarge the analogy even more, pederasty was a given in the male dominated, war like culture of the Ancient Greeks. So that Paterno would overlook ‘horsing around’ in order to protect his little city-state of Penn State might be saying something. There are definitely things to emulate from the Classical world but to me all that is good in Greece and Rome needs to be filtered through a Christian worldview that takes what is noble and true about it and rejects what is not.
I don’t follow football at all. I had never even heard of Paterno until this story got all over the news. We have a little classical one day a week homeschooling co-op. I was helping out in the preschool and another mother handed me the book Everyday Graces saying that it had great stories to read aloud to the kids. I opened it up and first thing I saw was a Forward by Joe Paterno. I couldn’t bring myself to read it and quietly put it down and then went and found a Children’s Bible to read aloud instead. Hypocrisy is sickening.