History of Greek Life
Everyone agrees college can be one of the best times of your life - the best time to grow and find out who you are and how you can reach your potential. What can make this experience even better? For more than two-hundred twenty-five years, thousands of students have seen its been fraternity and sorority life. Learn more about the history of Greek Life:
Secret Societies come to the New World
The idea of secret fraternal societies began 7,000 years ago with the ancient Egyptian mystery cults, which worshiped the moon and performed fertility rites. Later, in Greek and Roman times, the Eleusinian mysteries attracted such celebs as Homer, Socrates, and Plato. The craft guilds of the Middle Ages led to the semisecret friendly societies of eighteenth-century England, which, among other social ventures such as partying, invented the concept of group health insurance.
By 1776 several chapters of the Social and Benevolent Order of Freemasonry (Masons), an outgrowth of the friendly societies, had been formed on American shores. Within fifty years, chapters of the Oddfellows, The Ancient Order of Foresters, and the Knights of Pythias, among others, would follow.
All had secret rites of passage (rituals and initiation ceremonies) for their new members, a concept that goes back to the tribal rites of manhood in primitive cultures. Early American college students were often familiar with these societies and rituals, since there was not much else to talk about before the invention of color television and football.
Pre-Revolutionary College Life
America, under British rule, had founded fifteen colleges by 1776. Each had about fifty students and basically taught rich, fifteen-year-old WASPs how to write full sentences and to become clergymen or "lettered and mannered gentlemen."
The typical student's day went like this: Up at 5:30, prayer, recitation of Greek and Latin for ten hours, more prayer, bed. This did not a fratman maketh.
The faculty lived and ate with the students and watched them like hawks for twenty-four hours a day. One writer described school as "a dreary day of fast days, early chapel, severe punishments, and bad board." It was so bad in fact that in 1776, 155 Harvard students were expelled for splitting breakfast and eating in town, because, they claimed, "The butter stinketh." The one good thing about school was that "small biere" (i.e., beer, half the proof of today's brews) was served at lunch and dinner. This would a fratman maketh.
The Founding of PHI BETA KAPPA
On December 5, 1776, six months after the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Heath and eight fellow students of Williams and Mary gathered together in the Apollo Room of Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern and took a step that would affect the lives of six million future college students. Over a few brews and dinner, and under a motto painted on the wall, which read Hilaritas Spientae Et Bonae Proles (roughly translated, "Jollity, Wisdom, and a Long Good Life"), they decided to form a secret fellowship of "sincere friend(s)" and "unalienable Brothers" dedicated to the freedom of discussion of any issue - moral, political, or philosophical - unrestrained by the strict codes of the college, and in an atmosphere of conviviality and general good times (not too good, however; there was a ten-shilling fine for intoxication). For "a fraternal prosperity," they also decided to "invoke the Deity" at every meeting in some manner.
For the sake of secrecy (and fun), like societies that preceded them, the members developed an oath of initiation, a motto, a member's medal, and a secret handshake to bind them together and to assure their discussions would remain undisclosed.
On one side of the member's medal (a square watch fob, later to evolve into a "key" shape) was the founding date of the brotherhood and the engraved letters SP, probably standing for Societas Phlosophae, which many historians think was the name members first referred to themselves by and which has been translated either as the Philosophical Society, the Society of Philosophers, or the Science of Philosophy, among other things.
On the medal's reverse side was pictured a hand pointing to three stars, which symbolized the three guiding principles of literature, morality, and friendship. In the center were the Greek letters Phi, Beta, and Kappa, which were later revealed to stand for the group's motto, some form of the phrase "Philosophy, the guide of life." (Different chapters translated it differently - e.g., "Philosophy [is] of life the governour.") Within several years the fraternity would be known by these three letters exclusively.
What made PBK different from other literary societies of its day and what places it at the foundation of Greek history, was a decision made three years after it was founded to establish branch chapters - to expand "to the wise and virtuous...of whatever country" - a decision possibly arising from a desire to help unite the thirteen American States, then at war with England. It was this that allowed Phi Beta Kappa to survive the war, to spread Greekdom throughout the country, and to continue to this day.
