As an indication of the popular feeling in Egypt towards ancient culture, it may be mentioned that when the chairs of Latin and Greek were created at Cairo, a journalist wrote in an Arabic newspaper: "Why should Egyptian students learn Greek, the language of grocers and sardine-sellers?"
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, May 05, 2014
The Language of Grocers and Sardine-Sellers
W.G. Waddell, "A Teacher of Classics in Egypt," Classical Journal 28.7 (April 1933) 489-496 (at 489, n. 2):