Avoiding Laborious Periphrasis

Ἄνδρα—he had me at ἄνδρα. Well, maybe that is an exaggeration. But if not at ἄνδρα, the first word of The Odyssey, then certainly by πολύτροπον, the fifth. By πολύτροπον I was definitely hooked. The he here is Homer, of course, whoever he (or she, or they) was (were)—though, my favorite legend is that he was the insightful sightless son of Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and Epicaste (or Polycaste), the princess of sandy Pylos.

In truth, the Ἀοιδός Ἀοιδῶν, the Bard of Bards, had had some help. My Greek teacher that year was the venerable Mr. John Foley, a Fordham Prep alum himself, Class of 1963. With pipe in hand [Yes, I know—but it was a different century. No judgments. Besides, it smelled fantastic], “Captain Jack” would expertly lead us onto Homer’s wine-dark sea.

Now this would have taken place mid-September 1986, early in my junior year at Fordham Prep—although my personal legend is that it actually happened on my birthday. [The dates would work{-ish}]. There in Room 244, with its window overlooking the train tracks [likely the only reason Fordham Prep and University were able to open back in 1841 in the first place {Now there’s a topic for another article!}], I received my calling in catalectic dactylic hexameter.

In all fairness, I had been considering a career in teaching, but at that moment in 1986—and with the most extraordinary clarity, at that—I understood that reading The Odyssey in the original and discussing those ancient lines with fellow-minded souls was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And, yes, my experiences at the Prep had led me to understand that this was something I could absolutely do A.M.D.G. [Not just a motto you know—then or now].

Like Latin, classical Greek has been taught here at Rose Hill in the Bronx without interruption since 1841, and every one of our thousands upon thousands of students^[1] has taken one (or both) for nearly two centuries: one of our proudest unbroken traditions. Which, of course, is not to say there have not been a few snags along the way.

As early as 1850, for instance, our fourth rector, or president, Rev. Augustus Thébaud, S.J. (1807–85), was already bemoaning the state of classical language instruction at Fordham. All the students could do, he would lament, was translate into literal English the ordinary authors of Rome and Greece, such as Caesar’s Commentaries, the Epistles of Cicero, and the Eclogues of Virgil, Xenophon’s Anabasis, and Lucian’s Dialogues.^[2] He felt it exceedingly disturbing that few graduates would be able to compose or speak Latin or Ancient Greek! [Yes, I know—but it was a different century. No judgments. Though in those pre-deodorant days {Pat. Pend. 1888, I think}, an all-boys school might not have smelled as pleasant as Foley’s pipe.]

It is interesting to speculate how Fr. Thébaud would react to the abilities of today’s college graduates in these disciplines, let alone to those of today’s high schoolers. But as far as his Old Second Division is concerned, one could hope that at the very least, perched on some cloud with his fellow 19th-century Sons of Ignatius, Father Rector is looking down on us and is somewhat comforted to know that these very works are still read in their original languages by students in the Prep Classics Department even in the 21st century—an age when so many high schools have abandoned Latin and Greek altogether.

Yet despite Father’s pre-Lincoln-at-Gettysburg grousing, both languages would continue to be taught—to the delight of every last one of our thousands and thousands of students, I’m sure^[3]—until the Disco Era, that is, when Greek almost slipped off the books, potentially forever.

According to my colleague and co-departmentalist, Christopher Lauber ’79, back during his own Prep years, for whatever reason [likely to save some χρήματα during a particularly tenuous time in school’s history], ancient Greek was not scheduled to be offered for the 1976–77 School Year.

But as he and about 45 other sophomores filed in for the same section of Latin on the first day of classes, it was apparent that someone had misscheduled far too many students for the room. [No, it was not a computer glitch; schedules were still being done by hand—it was a different century. No judgments. How did it smell? Mid-70s? Vaguely like cigarettes and Old Spice aftershave, I would guess.]

In that moment, a young classics teacher who just happened to be free that period stepped in save the day—and our Hellenist legacy, for that matter: Mr. Douglas Tobin. A St. Peter’s College graduate and former goalie for the New York Rangers’ farm team, Tobin taught passionately. In fact, he did everything passionately—whether singing his Latin translation of “Meet the Mets”^[4] in the hallways, playing his saxophone off the Faculty Room balcony, or explaining why he felt compelled to wear a black armband on the Ides of March.

He took some twenty-odd volunteers from among the overflow boys that day in September of 1976, led them off to an empty classroom, and offered Greek I. According to lore, at least, he never even sought compensation for the extra course.

Now speaking of Mr. Tobin, it would be the selfsame saxophonist who would nearly dash my career to pieces long before it had even rightly gotten off the ground.

Freshman year, mid-September 1984 [There are absolutely no legends about this having happened on my birthday {which naturally means it very likely did}]: we had just successfully passed our Greek alphabet hit-or-miss quiz—0% or 100%—no other grades were possible. For a group of geeky fourteen-year-olds, this was giddily exciting. You would have thought that we were at Hogwarts and had just learned our first spell.^[5] With a new set of majuscules and minuscules at our fingertips, we, the Greek I Honors Boys, were now masters of the arcanest [sic] of the arcane.

Greek was easy! We were on our way! There would be no stopping us—or so we thought.

Allowing us a minute or so to soar to the heights of ὕβρις, Mr. Tobin then proceeded to melt our waxen wings—for our own good, of course.

“Take out your Chase & Phillipses,” he addressed us sternly. “Today we learn diacritics. Canty, read Page Four.”

Complying, we flipped to Lesson Two of our black, clothbound enchiridia. Ned read aloud:

There are three accents:

The acute accent may stand upon any one of the last three syllables, but stands upon the antepenult only when the ultima is short.

The grave accent is written instead of the acute when the latter would naturally stand upon the last syllable of a word followed by another word in the sentence without any intervening mark of punctuation. Enclitics involve exceptions to this rule. Thus the grave accent is found only on the ultima.

The circumflex accent stands only upon a long vowel or diphthong and only upon the penult or ultima. It stands on the long penult only when the ultima is short.

A word bearing the acute upon the ultima is known as an oxytone, one with the acute upon the penult as a paroxytone, one with the acute upon the antepenult as a proparoxytone. One which bears the circumflex upon the ultima is called a perispomenon, one with the circumflex upon the penult is a properispomenon. These terms, though formidable, will save much laborious periphrasis.^[6]

Seventeen sets of mystified eyes stared up at the διδάσκαλος.

After an uncomfortable moment or two of silence, I cleared my throat and squeaked out—quite self-consciously at that, “But Mr. Tobin—what does that mean? And what is laborious periphrasis?”

“It means,” he responded with a half-smile and uncannily assuring focus, “that Greek is hard, that life is hard, and that anything worth doing and doing well is worth the struggle.”

It was a humbling and valuable lesson.

Mr. Tobin proceeded to teach diacritics. I didn’t get them the first time through—or the second, or the third—or the πεντεκαίδεκα^th time, for that matter.

* * *

September 2024 marked the fortieth anniversary of my washing up on the shores of Fordham Prep as a freshman, and therefore, of Mr. Tobin’s lesson on oxytones and perispomena. [So how does this century smell? Not too bad. No one smells of cigarettes anymore {that’s a plus}—though there is a tendency for some of the boys to overdo it with the Axe bodyspray before they show up in the morning. No judgments.]

When I returned to Rose Hill as a full-time teacher some years ago [No question here: I was a last-minute hire after the school year had begun. My first day was my birthday], Room 251 became my classroom. The floorplan had seen some rejiggering since the ’80s, but about half the space is what would have been Mr. Tobin’s room—and about half my classes are freshmen-level, as well: a full-circle situation, for sure.

It quickly became clear that as one of the Latin I teachers, there would be one question I would have to field in one form or another again and again and again: “Why do we study Latin anyway?”

Even as a newbie I could rattle off the usual litany of impressive-sounding vagueries with the rote confidence of any veteran teacher of ancient languages: improved vocabularies, SAT scores—maybe something about modern languages. But I knew I could do better.

And so I prepared a more polished response and semi-memorized it and practiced my delivery. It was an answer I believed in, an answer that validated everything—perfectly eloquent in every possible way:

While the study of classical languages will serve to hone students’ grammatical skills in their native languages, provide students with a disciplined framework for the study of other languages, and deepen students’ appreciation for the histories, literatures and æsthetics of Greco-Roman culture in particular (and by extension, of all cultures ancient and modern), these do not represent the fundamental reasons for the inclusion of classical language instruction in Jesuit secondary school education.

From the formation of the very first Society schools, Jesuit educators have recognized a unique confluence of benefits inherent in the study of Latin, Ancient Greek, and, to an extent, Classical Hebrew. These benefits are not corollaries to the philosophies and goals of Ignatian pedagogy, but rather, are the very foundations upon which the entire educational mission of the Society of Jesus has been built.

First, in their perfected literary forms, these classical languages offer students a paradigm of a clarity of expression unparalleled in colloquial idiom. In other words, the study of classical language is essential to the cultivation of eloquentia perfecta, a phrase first coined in the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, and an indispensable aspect of Jesuit educational tradition.

Second, facility in these languages is unmatched in providing students the tools to access Scripture as well as the teachings and traditions of the Church. As true today as it was in the 16^th century, all Jesuit education begins and ends in Christ as He is encountered through the Gospels and the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Finally, the curriculum of Jesuit schools has always placed an extraordinary value on the study of classical authors. Rather than eschewing the corpora of ancient Greek and Latin literatures as purely secular works alien to Christianity, the Society has always found in them quintessential examples of the goodness and beauty that is to be sought in all human endeavor. The study of Greek and Roman texts has been the backbone of the Christian humanist tradition that would become the defining characteristic of a Jesuit education. This is not to suggest that prioritizing the study of classical authors should preclude the studies of other cultures, arts, and literatures—after all, we are instructed to find God in all things. Instead, our classical inheritance from our Renaissance founders—in other words, our way of proceeding—should be seen as a cornerstone upon which our students can build all other scholarly pursuits—for the good of all souls and for God’s greater glory.

And so, I delivered it—and twenty-two sets of mystified eyes stared up at the διδάσκαλος.

A student raised his hand. “But Mr. DiGiorno—what does that mean?” [Naturally, I’m paraphrasing here for literary effect.] “Did you say there is a Rat-hole Studio-room? And what is a corpora anyway?”

After an uncomfortable moment or two of silence, I cleared my throat and corrected myself.

“It means,” I responded, “that Latin is hard, that life is hard, and that anything worth doing and doing well is worth the struggle.”

It was a humbling and valuable lesson.

Notes:

^[1]          Twenty thousand, actually, as of this article’s publication. In May 2025, at the Prep’s 179^th Commencement, Fordham Prep granted a diploma to its 20,000^th graduate, Sebastian Coli.

^[2]          Robert I. Gannon, S.J., Up to the Present: The Story of Fordham (Doubleday, 1967), 41.

^[3]          Sarcasm: From French, sarcasme, from Late Latin sarcasmus, from Ancient Greek σαρκασμός (“a sneeringly bitter remark”), from σαρκάζειν (“to gnash the teeth,” “to curl the lips,” “to strip off the flesh like a dog does from a bone”), ultimately from σάρξ (“flesh”).

^[4]          Occurrite Mettibus.

Occurrite Mettibus.

Veniamus, occurramus Mettibus.

Cum coniuge et parvulis!

Erit gaudium pro omnibus his!

^[5]          Anachronism: From Neo-Latin, anachronismus, from Ancient Greek ἀναχρονισμός (“an anachronism”), ultimately from ἀνά (“up,” “upwards,” “again”, “back”, backwards”) + χρόνος (“time”). J.K. Rowling did not begin writing her Harry Potter series until the 1990s.

^[6]          Alston Hurd Chase and Henry Phillips, Jr., A New Introduction to Greek, third ed. (Harvard University Press, 1966).

Gannon, Robert I., S.J. Up to the Present: The Story of Fordham. Doubleday, 1967.

Chase, Alston Hurd, and Henry Phillips, Jr. A New Introduction to Greek, third edition. Harvard University Press, 1966.

APA

DiGiorno, L. (2025). Avoiding laborious periphrasis. Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 1(3), 527–532. https://doi.org/10.51238/I4120h0

CMOS

DiGiorno, Louis. 2025. “Avoiding Laborious Periphrasis.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., 1, no. 3: 527–532. https://doi.org/10.51238/I4120h0. 

MLA

DiGiorno, Louis. “Avoiding Laborious Periphrasis.”Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., vol. 1, no. 3, 2025, p. 527–532. https://doi.org/10.51238/I4120h0. 

Turabian

DiGiorno, Louis. 2025. “Avoiding Laborious Periphrasis.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., 1, no. 3: 527–532. https://doi.org/10.51238/I4120h0.