Drinking, Orgies and Boris Johnson

The Tab’s recent drug and sex survey has sourced some brilliant statistics, but as a  Classicist, I was shocked to find out we have the second highest percentage of virgins than any other University course. We’re so used to hearing “I came, I saw, I conquered,” but what’s happened to the “I saw, I conquered, I came?”

Classic classics banter.

Imagine the typical Classicist. Socially reclusive, wears Fila trainers under their toga, takes a strong interest in Hadrian’s Wall, likes to dust pots, and most importantly, is most probably going to die alone as a librarian in a small suburb of Surrey.

Wrong (well, partially).

The typical examples we often use for ‘cool’ Classicists are usually Frank Lampard and J.K.Rowling, since they break our traditional hermit stereotype, but even Karl Marx and Oscar Wilde were scholars of the subject. There’s not many things sexier than being that intellectual (well, apart from Frank Lampard topless). Even the fabulous Classicist Mary Beard, who was named as a magazine’s Pin-Up Woman of the Year, said she was “devastated”, and “didn’t believe” this statistic could be true. Amen, Mary.

Prof. Beard was equally sad to hear the news.

Perhaps it’s poster boys like Boris Johnson putting people off. Despite his questionable, political decisions, he does constantly campaign very loudly for our beloved dead languages and is also, essentially, a massive tit. His prattish behaviour may be unamusing to some, but we can’t deny that he makes us laugh. Isn’t laughter the easiest way to get someone to bed?

Try and tell me you’d kick that out of bed.

However funny Classicists may be, our socially questionable humour maybe the route of some of our problems. Although ‘Things Classics Students Don’t Say’ is hilarious to us, there is a time in life when we must accept that nobody else apart from us really gets is. Until the beautiful day when witty banter consists of quoting Latin poetry, let’s not waste our jokes and better choose our audiences. Classics jokes are left best to the socials, and not to the bedroom.

Surely however, we can all appreciate the amusement of 69 other people liking this..

I still find it hard to believe that we can be that sexually inactive however, when daily we read about nothing but drinking, orgies, and to quote our wonderful Roman World lecturer, “a lot of fucking.” But could this be the real problem? Perhaps we spend so much time writing and talking about sex, that we almost enter a zone of sex saturation and fear, whereas the need to do it is overridden by the need to write an essay on it. Come on guys, get out of your room and into the club. Or the library.

No-one’s expecting you to go all Catullus 16, but I’m sure not many would dispute a bit of Amores 1.5. Let’s leave The Vestals Virgins to what they do best, and get back out there. Carpe diem, comilitones, carpe fucking diem.

I hear all Classicists are this well endowed. Wink wink, nudge nudge.