THE "grand old fortifying classical curriculum", as Matthew Arnold termed it, came up for examination yesterday on the penultimate day of the Leaving Cert, as students sat papers in classical studies and Latin.
Classical studies required students to write eight essays, on topics as varied as "Athens at War" and "Roman Art and Architecture", but the papers at both levels were generally well received. They were enhanced by a selection of glossy illustrations to complement the questions.
Students in Belvedere College, Dublin, found, however, they didn't have enough pictures to go around. In an admirable demonstration of the gentlemanly art, they alternated their use of the illustration sheets.
"The most positive thing is the quality of the illustrations and it is most welcome," said Mr Michael Barry, ASTI convenor for the classics and a teacher in St Patrick's Girls Secondary School, Cork. He described the paper as "very time consuming" but said it was "finely balanced" at the end of the day.
Topic 5(ii), on Aristophanes Frogs, was more fitting for university students, he said. The questions on Medea and Oedipus the King in this section were straight forward, he added. Topic 6(i), on Odysseus as a leader of men, was a little narrow, he said. "There was something for nearly everybody but not something for everybody," he concluded.
"Students in the High School came out happy at the end of the exam," said Mr Robin Miller, a teacher in the Rathgar, Dublin, school. "The questions on all topics allowed them to show off their knowledge and they were very fair." Some questions were more, challenging for students, he said, but they were not limited in any topic.
"There were certainly three questions in each topic they could comfortably answer," he said. Students of both Greek and Roman art and architecture were equally happy with their options, he added.
Mr Joe Thuillier, a teacher in Belvedere College, Dublin, where more than 40 students sat the exam, said the papers were well received, with very few complaints. He thought topic 7, in writers of the Augustan age, was challenging. "I think they found it so precise," he said. There was no problem in the other sections, he said, and "the boys came out quite happy".
At ordinary level, Mr Thuillier described the paper as straightforward. Mr Barry said that by and large students would have had no great difficulty with a "particularly good paper".
Latin
Mr Thuillier said Latin was not as well received as its sister subject. At higher level, he said, the headings above the passages, which provide students with a guide to the themes, were "very poor and didn't tell them very much at all". He was also critical of the punctuation in the Cicero passage in question 2.
Question 3, meanwhile, contained some comprehension questions on the Virgil passage which were "really too demanding" for the 30 marks on offer.
The history section was fair and straightforward, Mr Thuillier said, though he noted the absence of an internal choice in the questions compared to previous years.
Finally, in Section B, students were given a photograph of a dog which had been preserved in ash in Pompeii following the volcanic eruption. Students had to identify the town from which the dog came in order to answer a question on Pompeii as a source of information on Roman wall painting, but Mr Thuillier felt the awkward angle from which the picture was taken might have been a bit too clever for students.
"I wouldn't regard the higher level paper as straightforward," he concluded. "It was difficult."