Many years ago, a person who was a lot older than myself, explained to me that when he was a grammar school student in Berkeley, California, USA, in the 1920s, he was taught Latin out of the textbook Latin Grammar by Allen & Greenough. Those who are familiar with that textbook will, I think, recognize the strangeness of such a thing. I like to look through that textbook occasionally, and perhaps read in a footnote a comparison of Latin and ancient Sanskrit. And that is to say that it is a very technical Latin textbook. There are a lot of strange, crazy things going on today, of course, but that is an example of one out of the past.
Perhaps he was referring to one of the other books written by A&G., such as Select Orations of Cicero , or Exercises in Latin Prose Composition or their books of selections from Ovid or Caesar*, or he may have used the Grammar to supplement some other primary textbook. There were also textbooks written by other teachers that are keyed to Allen & Greenough. It was a required reference book for anyone studying Latin (I’m not sure about the first year students) at my college, at least back in 1969.
- All available at the Internet Archive (archive.org)
Well maybe my story is too odd to be believable, but that is what my dad told me. Not as a college student, not as a high school student, but as a grammar student he was taught Latin, and the textbook they used was Allen & Greenough. At the time he told me this, there was an old copy of Allen & Greenough around the house, as well as an old copy of a high school Latin textbook. He was familiar with both books, and was making a comparison of the two books. He said what he did because it seemed so strange to him. If there was any other book used in conjunction with the Allen & Greenough, he obviously did not remember that. Imagine how much sense a grammar school student could make out of the Allen & Greenough Grammar.
I can’t! Even at the ripe old age of 18, I found A&G pretty heady stuff and even now I am constantly discovering elements that I’ve either forgotten or misunderstood. In any event, it sounds like your Dad liked Latin enough to keep his books. I have a couple of nephews who were educated in Greece and they tell me it was customary to burn their books at the end of the school year!(Of course the books were provided free of charge by the Ministry of Education.)The official agency for distribution of textbooks in Greece at the time was namely, Agency for Distribution of Textbooks(ΟΕΔΒ).The initials ΟΕΔΒ for many students came to stand for “Όταν Εγώ Διαβάζω Βαριέμαι - Otan ego diabazo bariemai” (When I read I get bored).