New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-11-28
KIKERO OR CICEROP

This question agitates, with earthquake
throe, a school district Of Indiana. Inc
parents have withdrawn their youngllngs
from the school, stopped the teachers salary,
and appealed 10 enlightened public opinion.
They stick for Cicero. The teacher holds his
own, and maintains the OrthGpc refinement
of Kikero. He chalks it on the walls OF the
vacant schOOl-house, mutters it in his solitary
walks yells it defantly in his troubled mid
night meanderings, whispers it in his dreams.
He is infamed with scholastic, as Sayanarola
was with petistic zeal he despises preu-
dices rooted in ignorance and old error, and
stOutly maintains the orthodoxy of his new
tangled orthGpic creed. What the issue Is 10
be in this particular neighbOrhOod, we know
not. The School Commissioners may sue out
an Injunction restraining the pedagogue from
tampering with established nomenclature or
the latter may bolt the course and carry MS
learning to a more enlightened market, or
compromise may ensue resulting in the expul-
sion of both Cicero and kikerO from the
neigborhoOd curriculum. AS Richelieu said
of the sword, &" States can be saved without
"it,n so it may be said OF the sur
name of the golden mOuthed orator of
Arpinum, SCHOOLS lin Indiana) can be
"kept without it," The residuary alkaloids
of that eloquent Roman have rested peace
fully in their urn Of indeed they found one
after that fatal day when the bastard centu-
rons cut his head off and carried it to An
tony) for between eighteen and nineteen
hundred years, and it seems unreasonable that
his name. never a part of him, signifying
sound merely, an inscribed fomulary, should
come back to trouble the joy of the Indiana
parent or intercept the educational progress of
Indiana youth.
IL is not alone the Latin orator whose name
has been tempered with by meddling modern
scholarship as the Indiana parents will dis
cover if they take the trouble to inquire.
They will find out that the Greeks, gentle and
simple, actual and NEUROLOGICAL. have not
escaped similar treatment. Socrates, mild and
wise, ablest bore of antiquity, pinning all men
to the wall with piercing interrogatOries aud
watching them calmly as they squirmed, is
Socrates no more, but walks the glimpses of
the moon as SOkrates-an erroneous imprOb-
able shade, no longer respected, and likely If
in his lunar avatar he ventured query to be
arrested either on account of his X or his
curiosity and handed over to the police.
Thucydides is dead, but Cambridge and
Harvard cry long live Thukydides, and a new
historian appears as the author of an old history.
Where is Olympus Gone in its place glooming
upon the PelOpOnessus and shadowing the silver
food of astonished Arethusa, stands Oilum
pas, haunted by Olympia no more, who has
sadly yielded her ancient place to OLYMPIA
an improved but unwelcome visitant. Phe
bus is no more but in his place Pboibos rolls
with fiery discomfort through wasted floods of
light Our Indiana friends must not deem that
orthepic innovation is confined to their dis
tricts OF their schoOl-house. 1t is rife i'll all
arcades of learning. Scholars everywhere
"gnarr at the heels of men and prey by each
" cold hearth" of antiquity, and no name of
mountain or sage, of bard or warrior, of the
elder time may hope to escape their meddle-
some rehabilitation. We counsel patience to
the parents, moderation to the tutor, and an
antiphlogistic diet to both. and recite our con-
viction that if Cicero were present in the flesh
he would squeal circumstances more eloquent
than his fourteenth phlipDic at controversy
concerning any pronunciation of his name
which threatened to interrupt the intellectual
progress of the youth of Indiana.