The Moral Landscape of Stories

It is the sheer magnitude of words and the long-proclaimed drama that makes the epic so enduring, but what of the moral infrastructure upon which these stories are propped? Each line, each image, each hard-forged maxim serves as a blueprint for how to measure one’s life, how to see the world and say—yes, this, this is the truth. The Greeks and the Romans did not write tales merely to entertain or to fill pages, but to shape souls, to form minds, to make men who could stand firm in the face of fate.

At Cincinnati Classical Academy, we embrace this inheritance, recognizing that the study of great literature is no idle pastime, no mere exercise in textual dissection, but a vital moral endeavor. Consider, for instance, Homer’s Iliad (required reading for our high school freshmen). It is a monument to martial fury, yes, but more importantly, a crucible of honor, wrath, and mortality. It is no crude glorification of war, no simplistic tale of blood spilled and battles won, but a deep inquiry into the forces that drive men to destruction—and to glory. 

The Greeks did not ask what a man did in battle, but why he fought. Was it revenge, was it duty, was it the insatiable hunger for renown? And beyond that—what of his soul? Could it be redeemed after it had stared into the abyss of war and death? Such questions are not relics of a distant age. They remain essential to the education of the young, who must learn not only the history of Achilles, but the nature of wrath itself. After all, a hero is not defined by the battles he fights or the monsters he slays, but by the moral architecture he constructs in the face of temptation, loss, and doubt.

Yet where is such an education today? The world has changed since the days of Homer, and with it, the landscape of our stories. Too often, literature in the modern classroom is treated as an artifact—something to be “comprehended” and then filed away, its wisdom left unexamined. 

At Cincinnati Classical Academy, we reject this sterilized approach. We do not teach books merely for comprehension; we teach them for transformation. This is why we guide our students through not only Homer but other great classic works, each in its own way grappling with the great moral questions. What does it mean to be brave? To be honorable? To be just? Robin Hood (read in fourth grade) raises questions of law and morality, of whether justice and legality are always aligned. Pinocchio (read to students in first grade) is a profound meditation on character, choice, and the long road to virtue. The Wind in the Willows (read in fifth grade), beneath its pastoral charm, explores friendship, loyalty, and the consequences of folly. And then there is The Count of Monte Cristo (read in sixth grade), a story not just of revenge but of transformation, of the soul’s struggle between vengeance and redemption. These novels are not just stories; they are moral crucibles, places where young minds are tested, where students come face to face with the choices that define human life.

This is the challenge before us: How do we teach young minds not merely to think, but to live? How do we form souls, not just studious humans? The answer lies in the stories themselves. They are not mere diversions; they are forges, places where the steel of one’s moral sensibilities is hammered into shape. This is why we return to the great works—because they contain the distilled wisdom of ages, wisdom that speaks to the timeless nature of the human struggle.

To teach in this way is to insist that education is about formation. It is to proclaim, without apology, that the best stories do not merely inform—they transform. And in this transformation, in this return to what is good, true, and beautiful, we find our purpose. This is the challenge, one that we, at Cincinnati Classical Academy, have taken up.

Torches Up!