What Happened to Latin Among the Romans?
Douglas Domingo-Forasté, California State University Long Beach
Becoming Romans
While Mr. Baker and the five women classicists of the 1880’s through the first few years of the 20th century undoubtedly did a good job teaching Latin as it was taught then, the real credit for making Los Angeles High the preeminent Latin public high school west of at least the Mississippi River and perhaps west of the Charles belongs to Walter Edwards. He was an outstanding classicist who devoted his life to the discipline and to Los Angeles High. It was he who reversed the trend of declining Latin enrollments at Los Angeles High; and as Los Angeles High went, so went the other high schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Walter Edwards’ contributions to the rich Latin heritage of Los Angeles deserve separate recognition. He taught from 1907-1938 at Los Angeles High giving up a position at Throop Institute, (later known as Cal Tech) to begin teaching at the high school. It is he that founded in 1921 the Latin newspaper Nuntius now published by Junior Classical League. He published several scholarly articles and was recognized as a teacher and mentor by students throughout those thirty years.
However, Dr. Edwards left the indelible imprint of Romanitas on Los Angeles High in another way. Until that time the school had been known as the Pioneers because of its association with early Los Angeles or sometimes The Hilltoppers because of the location of the school. But in 1915 the high schools of the city of Los Angeles decided to put on a pageant. An unnamed Los Angeles Times reporter wrote a short but laudatory report on the event.
Under the headline, “CITY SCHOOLS PAGEANT AND PARADE” the reporter noted with no apparent regard for the avoidance of hyperbole:
“These two great enterprises undertaken at the same time, constitute what was probably the greatest example of dramatic art ever undertaken by the public schools of America. Los Angeles receives credit for having done a big thing in a big way and every part of its success is due to the students and teachers of our schools, and not to professional designers and promoters.
In the pageant over six thousand students in costume presented the stately ceremonials, sports and pageantry of the Orient, of ancient Greece and Rome, and of the Age of Chivalry. The life of barbaric tribes, the march of the discoverers and explorers of the New World, and the triumph of civilization on the Pacific coast of America were presented in splendid spectacles.
Los Angeles High School, as the leading classical school of the southwest, contributed the Roman Triumph with its armed legionaries, the Roman Senators, populace, the lictors and magistrates, and the enchained slaves brought from subject provinces, the gladiators of the arena, and the vestal virgins with the sacred flame, all costumed and trained with regard to exact historic models.”
Dr. Edwards is then listed second on the faculty committee. As the leading high school of the city and its most classical, there was never a question as to who would represent the Romans in this spectacle. The other schools were assigned what were seen as lesser roles. Franklin High was, appropriately enough, the barbaric Franks. Since that time, Los Angeles High has been known not as the Pioneers, but as the Los Angeles High Romans.
