According to L.W.B. Brockliss, who along with Dominique Julia, seems to be the main scholar of secondary and higher education in late 18th century France, "In Greek most students would only have read extracts from Aesop, Lucian, Homer, and Demosthenes. The first was read in the lower classes (if texts were studied), Lucian in the third and second, and the last two in the rhetoric. If alternatives were used at all, the list would primarily have comprised the Greek New Testament (either the Gospels or Acts) for beginners, Xenophon's Cyropaedia in the second (an appropriate choice), and a speech by Isocrates in the rhetoric, usually the Ad Nicoclen. Lucian and Homer were always on the textual menu, the first generally studied through the Dialogue of the Dead, the latter through several books of the Iliad or Odyssey. [...] Above all, no one would have had the opportunity to read the Greek historians and dramatists, except occasionally the odd life of Plutarch (1).
(1) In 1727 Rollin claimed that exercises on Plutarch were common and one exists for the Coll. de Beauvais from 1712; Plutarch was also set on several occasions for the Paris agrégation and was definitely read at Sorrèze [...]" - Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History
In other words, if he read Plutarch in school at all, it would have been one of his lives. (And he almost certainly read all of them later, whether in Greek or in translation.) To answer the question of whether he could ever have read the Erotikus, I would say it depends on how good his Greek was and/or whether there was a translation available. We know he knew Greek, but students had to be much less proficient in it than Latin, so he might not have been at the level where doing extracurricular reading in Greek would be very enjoyable. Still, you never know.
In any case, Teenage Feminist!Robespierre would be some kind of superhero. An inaccurate one, but it amuses me none the less. XD;
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-05-22 03:38 pm (UTC)(1) In 1727 Rollin claimed that exercises on Plutarch were common and one exists for the Coll. de Beauvais from 1712; Plutarch was also set on several occasions for the Paris agrégation and was definitely read at Sorrèze [...]" - Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History
In other words, if he read Plutarch in school at all, it would have been one of his lives. (And he almost certainly read all of them later, whether in Greek or in translation.) To answer the question of whether he could ever have read the Erotikus, I would say it depends on how good his Greek was and/or whether there was a translation available. We know he knew Greek, but students had to be much less proficient in it than Latin, so he might not have been at the level where doing extracurricular reading in Greek would be very enjoyable. Still, you never know.
In any case, Teenage Feminist!Robespierre would be some kind of superhero. An inaccurate one, but it amuses me none the less. XD;