Now woke university chiefs cancel the Ancient Greeks

UNIVERSITY chiefs have removed part of an Ancient Greek poem that mentions domestic violence to avoid upsetting students.

Officials at the University of Reading cut several lines from the 2,000-year-old Types Of Women, by Semonides of Amorgos, which is taught to first-year classics students. The decision was made on the grounds that the words could ‘potentially trigger’ distress – even though no student had complained.

But critics fear that other works from antiquity may be targeted and warned of a ‘slippery slope’ towards censorship. Jeremy Black, emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter, said: ‘This is beyond naive. It is positively ridiculous and has no place in academia. If we applied this same kind of censorship to the news we would end up with a most limited and ignorant view of the world.’

The 118-line poem is controversial because of the way women are portrayed. It says Greek god Zeus created ten types of women, each represented by an animal or an element. Nine – those deriving from the pig, fox, dog, earth, sea, donkey, ferret, mare and monkey – have negative connotations, with only the female who comes from a bee considered to make a good wife.

Reading – which is ranked number 27 out of 90 UK universities – used a part of the poem in a module on Greek history, alongside works by Homer and Aristotle. Students would have been issued with a verbal trigger alert that the work was an example of ‘extreme misogyny in Archaic Greece’, but a decision was taken to remove references of overt violence towards women.

Papers obtained by The Mail on Sunday under the Freedom of Information Act state: ‘The portion of the poem now omitted involved a brief reference to domestic violence. That portion has subsequently been removed because, while the text as a whole is vitriolic, that part seemed unnecessarily unpleasant and (potentially) triggering.’

But Ewen Bowie, an emeritus fellow at Corpus Christi College and Prof Emeritus of Classical Languages and Literature at Oxford University, said ancient works needed to be ‘understood in context’.

He added: ‘When you start censoring reading lists you are putting your foot on the slippery slope down towards censoring what is being sold in bookshops.’

Students studying Ancient Egypt have also been given trigger warnings about artworks depicting battle scenes. Last night, a spokesman for the University of Reading said: ‘We do not censor academic material. Students have access to all texts relevant to their course and are encouraged to read and discuss a wide range of material. Content warnings are used to encourage discussion and study in a way that allows students to be aware of difficult or controversial material before being confronted with it.’

It is understood the entire text of Types Of Women is available to students either online or in hard copy.