Thanks to unflagging support from the administration and JBS Parents' Council, the Classics Department has steadily and systematically assembled an excellent collection of resources to use both as ancillary material in its teaching and as enhancements to the learning space within classrooms and without.
The walls of the Classics suite of rooms are adorned with a varied and interesting series of framed prints, maps, and reconstructions of the ancient world; from them one may gain everything from a bird's-eye view of Constantine's Rome to the extant ruins in Olympia to the ramifications of Greek mythological characters on a vast family tree. Prints of modern European and North African locales, many of which once fell within the boundaries of either Alexandrian or Flavian empires (or both), lend perspective to the third floor corridor. Finally, as one ascending the staircases to the third floor by either staircase will find reproductions of Roman wall painting on the one hand, or views of Greece on the other. In the classrooms themselves bare wall-space is scarcely evident: photographic prints of ancient artifacts and more maps provide a visual context for the languages and cultures introduced to students in our classes.
Over the years the Department has also been building its own library of books pertinent to the language, literature, culture, and Nachleben of Greece and Rome. These volumes support the faculty in its own teaching and research, and are also available to students for consultation as sources for (say) the term paper assigned in World Civilizations I (ninth grade).
A recently formed and still growing collection of realia likewise flesh out instruction in our courses. Several reproductions of Roman portrait busts--the tyrant Julius Caesar, the emperor Caesar Augustus, and the King Elvis Presley--gaze benignly upon our educational program. Avery Springer has, since joining the Department, rendered us signal service by building an excellent collection of ancient coins. We wish to offer our sincere and particular thanks to the JBS Parents' Council in this respect, without whose support this effort could neither have begun nor be maintained. Click here to see digitized images of the Department's coin collection.
For years now the Department has been accumulating photographic slides to use as visual instructional aids; these come from pictures taken by faculty members both during school trips abroad and on private sojourns. Thanks to the effort of the Department's prefect, Brooking Gatewood ('01), we are gradually converting this collection to digitized form for the purposes of better archival records and easier retrieval and classroom use. The Department also has a site license for the digital library known as the Perseus Project.
Well might Pericles of Athens, the prime mover behind the glorious complex of buildings on the Acropolis, have exhorted his fellow citizens in his funeral oration of 431 B.C. "to fix [their] eyes on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and...fall in love with her." Thanks to the indefatigable support of the School, the Classics Department has made an effort, though the acquisition and use of diverse media, to let the ancient world come alive for our students, so that they, too, might fall in love with learning about it, now and for the rest of their lives.
JBS Classics Department Coin Collection
The photographs of our coins will, hopefully, make up in detail what they lack in accurate color representation. Information given represents what we have from the dealers; anyone who can augment or correct said information is cordially invited to contact the Dept. Chair with said information (jlowe@jburroughs.org; [314] 993-4040, ext. 338).