In 1869 all candidates for admission to the Fourth Class (first year) of the College of Letters had to pass a satisfactory examination in Latin Grammar, four books of Caesar, Aeneid I–VI, six orations of Cicero, Greek Grammar, and three books of Xenophon's Anabasis (besides examinations in algebra, geometry, English Grammar, geography, and United States history). These represented high-school studies; the University did not offer primary courses in Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, and Xenophon.
"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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Thursday, July 20, 2017
Entrance Examination
Joseph Fontenrose (1903-1986), Classics at Berkeley: The First Century 1869-1970 (Berkeley: Department of Classics, History Fund, 1982), pp. 1-2: