Though it is difficult to believe today, there was a time when people were ridiculed by the so-called intelligentsia if they were unable to read and write Greek. It seems almost comical to think that the gate-keepers of high culture once used literacy of Greek as a wall to hold back the swinish multitude of average people. On the other hand, I suppose it is as good a standard as any by which to keep people in their place and marginalize their accomplishments or ability. After all, Western intellectuals have had a long history of idolizing Greek culture, as though a militaristic, slave-owning group of people from over two thousand years ago had some special insight into the mysteries of the universe that the rest of us lack. This is not to say that the ancient Greeks, for all their horrible moral failings, aren't due a certain respect for their positive accomplishments, they certainly are. Greek insights into mathematics, natural science, and philosophy are remarkable - particularly given their place in history. If for nothing else, the ancient Greeks deserve an immense amount of credit for their use of reflective reasoning about themselves and their society. (Though it is often forgotten by Westerners that, for example, Confucius and Buddha both predate Socrates by over a hundred years.)
However, it is one thing to give credit where credit is due, and it is an entirely different matter to idealize ancient Greek culture as Western intellectuals seem to have so often done. I actually enjoy, for example, the stories of Greek mythology, Homer, and I even have enjoyed some Greek poetry in my time. And sometimes I wonder if it is not that intellectuals have idealized the Greeks so much as they have used them as a kind of exclusive club to which you had to gain access in order to be considered cultured and important. Traditionally in Europe, only the rich and powerful had any hope of gaining access to an education that would include Greek studies, and only if you were literate in Greek could you hope to be taken seriously by the cultural elite. Greek literacy was often your 'club card' that allowed you to rub shoulders with the rich and powerful and meant that your ideas and opinions could be taken seriously.
Take John Thelwall as a case in point. Thelwall (1764-1834) was an English radical writer, activist, lecturer, and ground-breaking speech therapist. He was a member of the great London Corresponding Society and was famously tied for treason along with Horne Tooke and Thomas Hardy in 1794. Thelwall argued against the monarchy and for a radical expansion of voting rights. He was eloquent, committed, and fearless in his pursuit of justice and equality. And of course, writing in the 1790s, a period of turmoil following the Revolution in France, Thelwall engaged with establishment's premier conservative spokesman, Edmund Burke. One of Thelwall's most famous works was entitled The Rights of Nature in which he addressed Burke's defence of the establishment head on. Because Thelwall tried, to a degree, to emulate Burke's rather grandiose literary style, The Rights of Nature is not an easy book to read and seems rather antiquated today, particularly when read beside, say, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. And, interestingly, it was partly the book's style that drew the attention of some critics (even among reformers) who thought that Thelwall was attempting to speak above his "station." Thelwall tried to invoke Socrates as a symbol of the people's philosopher who addressed regular people and symbolized long-standing principles of egalitarianism and justice. But, unlike Burke, Thelwall couldn't read and write Greek and he was ridiculed for having to rely on translations for his reflections on Socrates. In The Rights of Nature and other works Thelwall makes references to Greek culture that are essentially laughed off because they are not grounded in his own direct reading but are somehow sullied or delegitimized by the fact that they arrive from translations. This, in part, is what critics focused on rather the substance of what Thelwall wrote, and so they portrayed him as an upstart who didn't have the authority to criticize Burke because he hadn't earned his status as a proper scholar.
Of course, Thelwall was also routinely attacked (sometimes physically) for his radical political opinions. But the very fact that his status (or lack of one) as a Greek Scholar could be seen as a legitimate criticism of his thoughts and ideas about politics, is remarkable today. And Thelwall was not the only victim of this kind of bias. Keats, didn't have a classical education and the fact that he wrote classically themed poetry without having read classical works in their original language was seen by many as a perfectly legitimate reason to marginalize his poetical works. There are, of course, still cases wherein you must read works in their original language to be taken seriously. But this is generally only if you are trying to portray yourself as an expert on the works themselves. You would probably wouldn't try, for example, to write a book about Kant's Critique without being able to read German. But it would surely be perfectly acceptable to invoke, say, German Romanticism in relation to the Lake Poets without being literate in German.
But it would serve us well to remember the degree to which people are often marginalized based on their perceived weaknesses in formal education. It is surely no surprise that a white man with almost no education can become president of the United States and be taken seriously by millions of people concerning his thoughts on culture, but a black woman (even with an excellent education) is has to scream and fight to even be heard.
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