its commitment “to publish an authoritativernversion of an author’s work assuresrnthe reader that only after thorough researchrnand study is a text selected forrnthis series.” What can this statementrnmean in our context?rnMany years after leaving the WhiternHouse Jefferson had occasion to writernNathaniel F. Moore (September 22,rn1819) concerning the pronunciation ofrnGreek. I forbear to quote here the hashrnmade of his words at that point. I will report,rnthough, that only recently and byrncomparing earlier published versions—rnthemselves messed up—have I been ablernto make any sense of what the text says,rnthough I know both ancient Greek andrnits modern descendant. It should be ofrngreat interest to any reader to know whatrnan intelligent observer thought aboutrnthe pronunciation of ancient Greek onrnthe very eve of the Greek War of hidependence,rnwhich broke out in Marchrn1821. I present here what Jefferson mustrnactuall}’ have written (using h to representrnthe Greek eta and transliteratingrnthe Greek; I also give upsillon for upsilon,rnnot knowing whether this is Jefferson’srnspelling or the editor’s—it does notrnaffect the sense):rnWhen at Paris, I became acquaintedrnwith some learnedrnGreeks from whom I learned thernmodern pronunciation. But Irncould not receive it as genuine inrntoto. I could not believe that thernancient Greeks had provided sixrndifferent notations for the simplernsound of (‘, iota, and left the fivernother sounds which they give to h,rnu, ei, oi, us, without any charactersrnof notation at all. I could not acknowledgernthe u, upsillon, as anrnequivalent to our v, as in Achilleus,rnwhich they pronounce Aehillevs,rnnor the g, gamma, to our y, as inrnalge’, which they pronounce alye.rnJefferson’s choice oialge has its interest.rnThe word is not a modern Greek word,rnbut occurs in the second line of Homer’srnIliad. Jefferson must, therefore, haverntested his Greek friends’ pronunciationrnof the ancient language on the first linesrnof the Iliad. Did he have a text of thatrnpoem with him, or did he quote fromrnmemory? Either would be interesting.rnNo doubt Jefferson’s manuscript isrndifficult to read, and he probably usedrnligatures not familiar to contemporaryrnreaders of Greek. No doubt as well arntrained scholar could elicit the correctrnreading from the manuscript. Apparentlyrneditors and publishers over thernyears have not felt the matter sufficientlyrnimportant. The new edition of ThernPapers of Thomas Jefferson, edited by J.P.rnBoyd (Princeton, 1950), will no doubtrncorrect this insouciance.rnAgain the Library of America hasrncopied errors, errors first (to my knowledge)rnintroduced as long ago as 1854 inrnH.A. Washington’s The Writings ofrnThomas Jefferson. It was Washington asrnwell that printed ulere in the letter tornMadison, an error repeated since. Thisrnerror is the more unforgivable in that hisrnwork was “published by the Order of thernJoint Committee of Gongress on the Libraryrnfrom the original manuscripts depositedrnin the Department of State.”rnEven Gongress seems not to care for accuracyrnof representation.rnJefferson would not have agreed.rnThough he viewed education as basicallyrnscientific, he thought of languages asrnuseful toward acquiring “the eminentrndegrees of science.” In a letter to Dr.rnJoseph Priestley (January 27, 1800) hernwrites:rnTo all this I add, that to read thernLatin & Greek authors in theirrnoriginal, is a sublime luxury; and Irndeem luxury in science to be atrnleast as justifiable as in architecture,rnpainting, gardening, or thernother arts. I enjoy Homer in hisrnown language infinitely beyondrnPope’s translation of him, & bothrnbeyond the dull narrative of thernsame events by Dares Phrygius; &rnit is an innocent enjoyment. Irnthank on my knees, him who directedrnmy early education, forrnhaving put into my possession thisrnrich source of delight; and I wouldrnnot exchange it for anythingrnwhich I could then have acquired,rn& have not since acquired.rnHe makes similar remarks in his letter tornJohn Adams of March 1819, in whichrnhe also discusses the pronunciation ofrnGreek.rnJefferson has not been well served byrnhis editors, apparently from the very beginning.rnAnd did the Oxford studentsrnreally yell “Give ’em hell, Harricum” atrnOxford (McGullough, p. 957)? If theyrndid, Latin learning is in a bad state evenrnat Oxford. Harricum, a pseudo-Latinrndiminutive of Henricum, Henry, is inrnthe accusative case, as it was and shouldrnbe in the Latin citation where Harry isrnthe object of the verb. The studentsrnshould—of course—have used the vocative,rnHarrice. O tempora, O mores.rnWilliam F. Wyatt, jr., is a professor ofrnclassics at Brown University.rnTaboos andrnBlasphemiesrnby Daniel R. Vining, Ji.rnAcademic CensorshiprnWhen I first read that the now laternAyatollah Khomeini had sentencedrnSalman Rushdie to death, I, likernmost of you, reacted with both horrorrnand disgust. The leader of Iran sent outrnan order to kill a citizen of the UnitedrnKingdom for something he wrote aboutrnMohammed. This was as clear a violationrnof freedom of speech as I knew of.rnBut then I came to the realization thatrnwe have taboos and blasphemies in thernWest just as they do in the Muslimrnworld. Our taboos and blasphemies arernsimply different from theirs. Let mcrngive you two examples that I know ofrnfrom working in academe.rnThe first concerns mass murder. Inrnthis century, there have been five majorrn(I better say “alleged” here) mass murders:rnone, the killing of Armenians byrnTurks around 1915; two, the deathsrncaused by Stalin in the period 1928-rn1939, and perhaps even later; three, thernJewish holocaust before and duringrnWorld War II; four, the deaths of manyrnGhinese under Mao during the GreatrnLeap Eorward around 1960; and five, therndeaths caused by the Khmer Rouge inrnCambodia in the period 1975-1978.rnThere have also been “smaller” killings:rnthe slaughter of Bahutu in Burundi inrn1972; the mass killings in East Timor byrnthe Indonesian army in the mid-I970’s;rnand the mass killing of Kurds by SaddamrnHussein’s army between 1988 and 1991,rnetc.rnThere is not much literature aboutrnthe mass murder of the Armenians becausernthe data kept by the Ottoman Empire,rnwhich controlled Turkey at therntime, are not very good; because thern46/CHRONICLESrnrnrn