Pangur Bán

Well, I did say there was going to be something about an Irish monk...

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Ok, so it's about the 8th century A.D., and the scene is Reichenau Island,¹ in the very very South of what is now Germany, as seen on the map above. Specifically, we are looking at the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, founded in A.D. 724 by St. Pirmin, who may have been a Visigoth although that's beside the point. The Abbey of Reichenau is believed (to this day!) to contain the jug used at the Wedding at Cana, although that too is irrelevant to our purpose.

No, our interest today is drawn to the abbey's scriptorium, wherein we shall find a possibly bored monk.² He is busy working on a document that will become known as the Reichenauer Schulheft (Stift St. Paul Cod. 86a/1), which translates as the Reichenauer Primer. The Primer contains a general miscellany of writings, mostly in Latin, but including some Greek and bits of Old High German. It was probably intended purely as scribing practice, which may explain why the monk is bored. Here's a sample page:

One folio of the Reichenauer Schulheft. The chart on the right-hand side appears to be astronomical in nature, to judge from the constellation names. Click to see larger version.

And how do we know/suspect that the monk is finding this day's work a bit tedious? Well, we know because he has become distracted by the antics of his little scriptorium cell's other denizen. The end result of this distraction is a short poem, jotted down in the Primer in Old Irish, which we may safely assume is the monk's mother tongue. The poem is at the bottom of the left-hand page in the above picture, but here it is, in its original language, so that you don't have to squint:

Messe ocus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria saindan:
bíth a menmasam fri seilgg,
mu memna céin im saincheirdd.

Caraimse fos (ferr cach clu)
oc mu lebran, leir ingnu;
ni foirmtech frimm Pangur Bán:
caraid cesin a maccdán.

O ru biam (scél cen scís)
innar tegdais, ar n-oendís,
taithiunn, dichrichide clius,
ni fris tarddam ar n-áthius.

Gnáth, huaraib, ar gressaib gal
glenaid luch inna línsam;
os mé, du-fuit im lín chéin
dliged ndoraid cu ndronchéill.

Fuachaidsem fri frega fál
a rosc, a nglése comlán;
fuachimm chein fri fegi fis
mu rosc reil, cesu imdis.

Faelidsem cu ndene dul
hi nglen luch inna gerchrub;
hi tucu cheist ndoraid ndil
os me chene am faelid.

Cia beimmi a-min nach ré
ni derban cách a chele:
maith la cechtar nár a dán;
subaigthius a óenurán.

He fesin as choimsid dáu
in muid du-ngni cach oenláu;
du thabairt doraid du glé
for mu mud cein am messe.

Now, I confess that my knowledge of Old Irish is practically non-existent. I know that "bán" means "white," or "pale," or, in modern Irish, "blonde," and I can hazard a guess that "lebran," in the second verse, means "book," on account of us dealing with an Indo-European language. I've got some vague notions about a coupld of other words in the poem, but that's about as far as I can go, so I will step aside, and hand things over to a translation by J. Marchand (found here, with some other translations). Of all the translations of the poem that I've seen, I prefer this one, as I get the sense that it sticks quite closely to the original language.

The Scholar and his Cat

1. I and White Pangur, each of us in his special craft. His mind is set on hunting; my mind is on my special subject.

2. I love resting (better than any fame) at my book, with diligent understanding; White Pangur is not envious of me; he loves his childish craft.

3. When we are (tale without tiredness), in our house, being alone, we have an endless sport, a thing to which we may apply our skill.

4. It is usual, at times, by feats of valor, that a mouse sticks in his net. As for me, there falls into my net, a difficult rule with hard meaning.

5. He points fiercely against an enclosing wall his eye, bright, perfect. I myself direct against the keenness of knowledge my sharp eye, though it be quite weak.

6. He is happy with swiftness of movement upon a mouse sticking in his sharp paws. Which I understand a difficult pleasant problem, as for me, I am happy, too.

7. Though we may be indeed (like this) at any time, neither disturbs his partner; good to each of us is his art, each rejoices in them.

8. He himself is master of it, the work which he does every day. To bring clarity to difficulty, I am at my own work.

A more poetic translation may be found here. Anyway, there we have it. A monk at work in a scriptorium took a brain-break, and because of that, 1250 or so years later, we know of the existence (and name!) of a particular white cat. Neat, hmmm?

¹At least, it's probably Reichenau Island, or at least somewhere in the vicinity.
²It is just possible that this monk is Sedulius Scottus, but we don't know for sure.

Hooray, Manitoba!

Question: What do Cree, Dakota, Dene, Inuktitut, Michif, Ojibway and Oji-Cree have in common? Well, apart from, obviously, being Native American languages, they're about to be given official status in the province of Manitoba. Apparently, they will be recognized as Aboriginal Languages of Manitoba, and efforts will be made to preserve their use.

This is a very good and encouraging thing. Indigenous languages have become notoriously fragile things (the tsunami of 2005 irretrievably eradicated five languages in the Bay of Bengal alone), and any official intervention to forestall the loss of them is more than welcome.

So here's to Manitoba, and may we see the same sort of project undertaken in other provinces soon! Oh, and the comments section for the story linked in the first paragraph is every bit, and I mean 100%, as non-ignorant as you thought it would be.

UPDATE: The Calgary Herald story seems to have gone away. I've replaced it with something form the Winnipeg Sun.

Time Wasting Ahoy!

First of all, if you ever want to have a productive day at work again, you probably shouldn't read any further. We here at De Koboldorum Rebus will accept no liability, etc. etc.

So, anyway, Sporcle. If you have not yet encountered Sporcle, it is a site given over to a very large number of user-created quizzes, on just about any subject imaginable. The best bit is that, once you have finished the quiz, you can take a pick at which answers were most commonly missed, and how your quiz score fits in with the rest of the world.

Sporcle, we are proud to announce, has now been infiltrated by kobolds. Yes, you can take, for example, your new-found expertise in the esoterica of NHL awards over to Sporcle and put it to use! And there are other res koboldorum to be found as well, not to mention a couple coming up the pipe...

Philistines 1, Common Sense 0

So, a parent recently complained to the Menifee Union School District (Riverside County, California) that his son/daughter had been able to read about oral sex in one of the elementary school library books. The school board has therefore ordered that all copies of the offending book be pulled from the shelves "for review."

The book in question is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

To their credit, a lot of people in Menifee are very angry about this.

Cavalcade of Randomness: The Sequel to the The Sequel!

"Propertius & Cynthia at Tivoli," by Auguste Jean Baptiste Vinchon

Without further ado:

• Beginning with a bit of a soccer story: A Croatian goalkeeper rescued a cat which wandered onto the pitch during a game. Whereupon he was given a yellow card. All-in-all, it has not been a banner week for soccer referees. However, on the plus side, this blog does now have a "Medjimurje Cakovec" label!
  
  
• I think Nefertiti is going to be an indoors cat indefinitely and probably for good. I am basing this on two things: first of all, although she loves to look out the window, she shows no interest in actually going outside. Secondly, when I stepped outside last night, there were what I would guess to be about four coyotes singing to each other in the ravine a whole two blocks away. I am all in favour of urban wildlife (indeed, I stood there for a time and listened to the coyotes), but I'd rather it didn't eat Nefertiti.
  
  
• Last week saw the first meeting of a little Latin reading group that a former student of mine has set up. Although I was only able to be there for the first part of this session, I think it has great potential to be good fun! It's mostly former students of mine, with some friends and family along as well. We're reading Propertius, at least for starters.
  
  
• Those of us who follow the Oilers may remember the whole Dany Heatley nastiness from this summer. Well, a couple of local businesses have got together to commemorate the trade-that-wasn't, and have found a way to make it into a charity event as well! It's actually quite a cool idea, and for a very good cause. And I think we are all happy that the Heatley deal, didn't actually happyen, in the end...
  
  
• Speaking of the end, I think we have reached it for this post!

A Return, And A Departure

* Blows dust off blog, again *

I'm back! And where have I been for the last month? Well, toiling in the University Bookstore through the September textbook rush, for the most part. The scene below is a reasonable facsimile of the sort of job it was:

Trust me, there will be anecotes, oh my yes!

However, it is not the goings-on at the University Bookstore that concerns us today, but rather a somewhat odd news story that cropped up last week. Here it is:

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on
Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:54pm EDT By Simon Rabinovitch

LONDON (Reuters) - About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

And so, farewell, noble hyphen! Well, not entirely "farewell," as the article goes on to point out that hyphens will be hanging around in situations where confusion would result otherwise (the word "twenty-odd" is cited as an example). Furðermore, one must recall ðat ðere are æt least a handful of letters which have been þrown out of þe English language, so perhaps þe partial removal of a piece of punctuation is not such a big deal (For the record, the three obsolete letters used in that sentence are, in order, eth, ash, and thorn. We've also lost yogh and wynn). Still and all, I think I'm going to miss the ice-cream.

Latin Choices

Page from a 15th-century manuscript of Augustine's City of God

As this summer's Latin class surges towards its completion, we're once again reaching the point in the curriculum where I need to start coming up with some things for them to read. I do not believe that students should escape Latin 102 without reading at least some unedited ancient works, warts and all. Interestingly, and encouragingly, I've actually had some requests for things to read this year, in addition to my usual choices. So, what are they going to get? Well...

• Catullus 3. A yearly tradition! I send them away for a couple of weeks to come up with a really nice translation of this poem, in consultation, if they wish, with other scholarship on it.
  
  
• An excerpt from Tacitus' Agricola. Of the "big guns," there's probably not a tougher Latin prose author than Tacitus, so if they can handle him, they can handle anything. I generally roll out some part of the speech of Calgacus before the Battle of Mons Graupius (in addition to being fairly translatable, for Tacitus, it's really good).
  
  
• Something, still undetermined, from St. Augustine. This was actually one of the requests that I had this year, from the philosophy student who's working on Augustine. I still haven't decided what I'm going to give them; something from City of God is tempting, since it's full of fun bits of Roman history and mythology. However, Augustine does not take a postitive view of Roman history and mythology (Paraphrase from Book 2: "So Sallust thought that 'the good and right' in Rome derived from the character of the inhabitants rather than from legal coercion? Excellent! Let's discuss how the rape of the Sabine women fits into that notion."), and the above-mentioned speech of Calgacus probably fills this course's Rome-bashing quota. So perhaps I will go back to The Confessions, and find something there.
  
  
• I've also had a student ask to learn how to scan Latin poetry! I have never before taught that, so I'm working now at getting myself back up to speed on the topic. I'll at least get them introduced to the notion, and walk them through a couple of the more common forms of Latin poetry. I'm leaning towards elegaic couplets, which will also serve to show them how to scan a line of dactylic hexameter, and the from generally known as Phalaecean Hendecasyllabic (hello, Catullus 3!), which sounds horrible but is actually really easy to work with.

Given time constraints, I doubt we'll be able to do any more than that and still cover the required grammar. However, it should enough to get them thinking about how to do translations (and scan poetry), and that's more or less the point!

Blowing Off The Dust

Wow... nearly a full month's worth of absence!

So what's new, you ask? Well, I have a new crop of Latin students, possibly as many as 12(!) when everything gets settled and sorted out. So far, they seem to be quite promising, and willing to participate, and all those good things!

And, of course, the big news. I have decided to switch gears academically, and pursue more closely the technical side of archaeology. So, there's a lot of research being done right now on Museum Studies and related programs. Not much to report on that front so far, but there's a promising looking program at the University in His Majesty's Town (the one by the big river out East). We will see what transpires with that; it will require me to bone up on my organic chemistry and, interestingly, learn "darkroom techniques."

Anyway, expect more here! There's lots to get caught up on...

This Afternoon's Activities

Well, the future of Classical scholarship seems fairly bright at the moment! I just spent an hour and a half lecturing a group of students from one of the local high schools on a wide range of topics, including: Roman archaeology, the Roman forum, Piazza Argentina (cats!), the Mamertine prison, the Arch of Titus, Roman burial inscriptions, Roman graffiti, Mount Vesuvius, the Cortona region, the Julian calendar &c.

And they were engaged, inquisitive, and extraordinarily quick to understand things. Quicker, in fact, than some of my university classes have been. Anyway, it was a good afternoon!

Iunge Te Parti Atri...

I have a student whom I'm tutoring in Latin. He approached me a couple of months ago and asked to learn the language, as he was applying to begin pre-med this coming Fall, and pretty much figured that he wasn't going to have time to study Latin once that had begun. I agreed to teach him, and so we meet a couple of evenings a week at the coffee shop in the downtown public library, and are making our way gently through Wheelock's Latin. He's quite quick on the uptake, and I definitely got the impression that he was enjoying himself.

Turns out that impression was correct. He announced to me last week that he has been accepted... to begin a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Classical Languages. Take that, medical profession! Your are powerless in the face of the almighty Latin!

Heh. Heh. Heh.

Eureka!

The career of Chunklets, Latin Wrangler at Large, continues apace (previous adventures here). I have just undertaken to help translate a few 13th-century documents dealing with a Franciscan monastery in what is now Greece. I've got about six letters to go over, and in general the Latin isn't too bad (that's not too surprising, since some of the missives are coming directly from the office of the Pope). However, one of the letters was written by a knight named Robers de l'Isle, and the opening of it threw me a bit at first glance. It reads:

"Sachent tuit cil qui sunt e qui avenir sunt, ge je Robers de l'Isle chevaliers ai done por dieu..."

Clarity dawned when I realized that the language is not actually Latin at all, but Medieval French. I think that it translates:

"Let all who are and who are to come know that I, Robers de l'Isle, Knight, have given for God..."

I guess we're going find out how good my Medieval French is!

Update: Fixed the translation, mildly.

De Passere Catulli

So why go with a picture of a sparrow to represent the poems of Catullus over here? Well, Catullus, who lived during the first half of the first century B.C., wrote two quite famous poems (Catullus 2-2b and 3) about a pet sparrow who belonged to his girlfriend, the pseudonymous Lesbia (at least, we can assume that the bird was Lesbia's; she's never actually named in either poem). In the first of these poems, Catullus observes the bird as a source of comfort for Lesbia, and wishes that it could be the same for him (all three translations in this post are my own, and I take full responsibility for any hideous errors):

Catullus 2-2b:
Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
cui primum digitum dare appetenti
et acris solet incitare morsus,
cum desiderio meo nitenti
carum nescio quid lubet iocari
et solaciolum sui doloris,
credo ut tum grauis acquiescat ardor:
tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
et tristis animi leuare curas!
* * *
tam gratum est mihi quam ferunt puellae
pernici aureolum fuisse malum,
quod zonam soluit diu ligatam.

Sparrow, darling of my girlfriend,
Whom she is accustomed to play with, and to hold to her breast,
To whom, as you strive passionately, she is accustomed to give her fingertip
And to incite sharp bites,
When it pleases the shining object of my longing
To make some dear jest
And a small solace for her grief
So that, I believe, her grave pain may then find respite:
Let me be able to play with you as she herself does,
And to lighten the sad cares of my heart.
***
This is as welcome to me as they say
The golden apple was to the swift girl,
The apple which loosened her girdle, bound for a long time.

There are some problems with the manuscripts of this poem, but it is generally accepted that the last three lines, which refer to the myth of Atalanta, belong to Catullus 2. There my also be lines missing immediately before the last three. The poem, by the way, is a real beast to get into workable English; it's a very good illustration of the concept that reading something is not the same as translating it!

Unfortunately, sparrows don't live very long, and so Catullus 3 is a lament for the bird's death. Here 'tis:

Catullus 3:
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,
et quantum est hominum uenustiorum!
passer mortuus est meae puellae,
passer, deliciae meae puellae,
Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat.
Nam mellitus erat suamque norat
ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem;
nec sese a gremio illius mouebat,
sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
ad solam dominam usque pipiabat.
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
At uobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella deuoratis;
tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis.
O factum male! o miselle passer!
Tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

Mourn, O Venuses and Cupids,
And all the more pleasant men there are!
My girlfriend's sparrow is dead,
The sparrow, my girlfriend's darling,
Whom she loved more than she loves her own eyes.
For he was as sweet as honey, and knew
His own mistress as well as a girl knows her mother;
Nor did he betake himself from her lap,
But, hopping around now hither, now thither,
Chirped continuously to his one mistress.
He now goes on a dark journey
To that place from which they deny that anyone returns.
And may it go badly for you, evil shades
Of Orcus, who devour all beautiful things;
You have taken from me such a beautiful sparrow.
O evil deed! O poor little sparrow!
Now thanks to you my girlfriend's
Poor swollen eyes are red with weeping.

Certain scholars have argued that the sparrow in these two poems is in fact a rather crude anatomical metaphor, and that its "death" is the end of the couple's relationship. Without going into too many details, suffice it to say that I, and most Catullus scholars, reject this notion. For one thing, Catullus was never that subtle when it came to matters sexual (a fair amount of our knowledge of Latin obscenities comes from him). Anyway, I am of the opinion that the poems are to be taken at face value; they're about a bird.

The sparrow of Catullus makes a cameo appearance more than 100 years after the poet's death, in a poem by the satirist Martial (Martial 1.109). The poem is about a puppy named Issa (literally, "Herself"), and it goes as follows:

Martial 1.109:
Issa est passere nequior Catulli,
Issa est purior osculo columbae,
Issa est blandior omnibus puellis,
Issa est carior Indicis lapillis,
Issa est deliciae catella Publi.
Hanc tu, si queritur, loqui putabis;
sentit tristitiamque gaudiumque.
Collo nixa cubat capitque somnos,
ut suspiria nulla sentiantur;
et desiderio coacta uentris
gutta pallia non fefellit ulla,
sed blando pede suscitat toroque
deponi monet et rogat leuari.
Castae tantus inest pudor catellae,
ignorat Venerem; nec inuenimus
dignum tam tenera uirum puella.
Hanc ne lux rapiat suprema totam,
picta Publius exprimit tabella,
in qua tam similem uidebis Issam,
ut sit tam similis sibi nec ipsa.
Issam denique pone cum tabella:
aut utramque putabis esse ueram,
aut utramque putabis esse pictam.

Issa is more mischievous than the sparrow of Catullus,
Issa is purer than the kiss of a dove,
Issa is more affectionate than all the girls,
Issa is dearer than the jewels of India,
Issa is the darling little puppy of Publius.
If she whines, you will think that she speaks;
She feels sorrow and joy.
She sleeps resting on his neck, and takes her naps
Such that no breaths are heard;
And compelled by the desire of her bladder,
Not a single drop has befouled the coverlet,
But she awakens him with a caressing paw, and advises
That she be put down from the couch, and asks to be picked up.
There is such great modesty in the little puppy;
She does not know Venus, nor do we find
A mate worthy of such a delicate girl.
So that her last day does not snatch her away entirely,
Publius is portraying her on a painted tablet
On which you will see an Issa so lifelike
That not even she herself is so similar to herself.
And so put Issa down beside the tablet;
Either you will think that each is real,
Or you will think that each is painted.

You know that thing one does with dogs, when one ruffles the dog's ears and utters endearments to it ("Who's a good dog? Who's a good dog? Yes, she's a good dog!"), and the dog basically goes berserk with joy? Well, I think, I think, that Martial is consciously imitating that in the first five lines of the poem.

And there you have the sparrow of Catullus (also the puppy of Martial)!

Ya See, That's Why We Wanted A Coalition Government

There's an interesting little item in the federal budget this time around, under the heading "Further Developing a Highly Skilled Workforce" (it's about halfway down the page). This tidbit reveals that the government intends to raise the funding for SSHRC - The Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, which distributes grants to people working in, well, the social sciences and humanities (full disclosure time: the archaeological project with which I am most deeply involved would not have gotten off the ground in the first place had it not been for the generosity of SSHRC). Now, one's response to an increase in SSHRCC funding might very be "hooray, that's excellent!" And excellent it would indeed be, if the paragraph announcing said funding increase didn't end with this charming sentence:

"Scholarships granted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will be focussed on business-related degrees."

And that, Mr. Ignatieff, is why we didn't want you to prop up the Conservative government. Because in doing so, you and your party allow them to sneak little bits of their pernicious ideology into law through sleight-of-hand.

Arrrgh.

Fez tip to The Galloping Beaver.

HONK HONK HONK!!!!

The image above (you may click on it to make it bigger) shows a fairly famous scene from ancient Roman history. You will notice the band of men in the foreground making a pyramid in order to ascend the last bit of Rome's Capitoline Hill. They are Gauls, and they are up to no good.

It was about 389 B.C., and the Gauls, irritated by a Roman violation of international law, had managed to take the lower city of Rome and pen the survivors up in the citadel atop the Capitoline Hill. This resulted in a bit of a stalemate, until the Gauls spotted a narrow track up the hill, and snuck up it one moonlit night, as depicted in the scene above. They were so successful in their sneaking that, according to Livy, they did not even wake the dogs. However, their luck ran out at the top of the climb, when the lead Gaul attained the summit and discovered himself in the pen containing the geese sacred to the goddess Juno (they are also in the above picture). His arrival did not please the geese, which brings us to the title of this post.

The resulting expression of avian dismay woke up one Marcus Manlius (later, as a result of his exploits that night, Marcus Manlius Capitolinus), he woke up his comrades, and the Gaulish assault was thrown back. One of the more amazing aspects of this episode, again according to Livy, is that the Romans had not yet gotten around to eating the sacred geese (the food shortage on the hill was severe, and in fact eventually led to the Romans simply paying the Gauls a lot of money to go away).

I mention this episode not simply because it is one of my favourite stories from Roman history (it is), but because that particular passage of Livy (V.47) turned up on my Latin comprehensive exam last week, along with some bits from Catullus and Vergil (I elected not to try my hand and the passages from Cicero, Horace, and Tacitus). And, just yesterday, I received the official word that I passed the thing, and indeed that the examiners thought that some of it had been translated "quite elegantly." So that is that out of the way, and it is now onto the Greek, thanks at least in part to Marcus Manlius and the geese!

Ignis! Ignis!

So I snuck into a classroom this morning and taught Latin to the bemused students within! An incident of "guerilla Latin-teaching"? Not really. More a case of "filling in for a friend who's out of town" Latin-teaching. And the students were only slightly bemused. However, in the course of our discussions this morning, we wandered onto the topic of this man:

That man is Marcus Licinius Crassus, member of the First Triumvirate and putter-down of Spartacus' revolt. He was also spectacularly wealthy, at least partially because of the fact that he owned and operated one of Rome's first fire departments. And how did that work? Well, to explain the matter, here is The Official De Koboldorum Rebus Guide to Having Your Building Catch Fire in Rome in the 60s B.C.:

• Step One: Your building catches fire.
  
  
• Step Two: A number of shady-looking individuals show up with buckets. They belong body-and-soul to M. Licinius Crassus. If this were an episode of C.S.I., the phrase "tested positive for accelerants" might well come into play.
  
  
• Step Three: With your building merrily burning down in the background, the men with buckets make you an offer for the property. Of course, this offer is well below market value, on account of the building being on fire.
  
  
• Step Four: Step Four depends on whether you have the accepted the offer in Step Three. If you have, the men put the fire out. Of course, your building now belongs to M. Licinius Crassus. Perhaps he will sell it back to you, for full market value of course since it's not on fire any more. If you did not accept the offer, then the men go away, leaving you to deal with your rapidly devaluing property on your own.

As I mentioned, Crassus got very very rich off of schemes like the one above. His wealth, however, did not save him from a rather gruesome end, at least according to legend. In 53 B.C., at Carrhae in what is now Turkey, Crassus led an army into one of Rome's all-time great military disasters, against the Parthians. He was subsequently captured. According to some sources, the Parthians, who knew of Crassus' great wealth and had a bit of a sense of humour, "quenched Crassus' thirst for riches" by forcing him to drink molten gold.

Latin All Done

Well, another term of Latin 101 has come to an end. My students wrote their final on Saturday afternoon (blech!), and I didn't see anybody looking too dismayed at the end! This year they were writing in a gym, mixed in with about 400 Civil Engineering students. This meant, among other things, that it took me an hour to find one of them in the crowd. However, they were all there, and I have ended up with the right number of exams - hooray!

As usual, I shall miss my students - they were a good bunch this year!

Missing Something?

A graffito from Pompeii:

equa esiquei aberavit cum semuncis honerata a d
VII Kal Septembres Decembres
convenito Q Deciu Q l Hilarum aut L Decium L
l Amphionem citra pontem
Sarni
fundo
Mamiano

Translated (loosely):

"If somebody lost a horse loaded with saddlebags on the 25th of November, get in touch with Quintus Decius Hilarus (freedman of Quintus) or Lucius Decius Amphio (freedman of Lucius) at the estate of Mamius on this side of the bridge over the Sarno."

Nice to see people doing the right thing!

Odd...

So I trotted up to my mailbox this afternoon, and discovered therein a mysterious envelope from Newcastle upon Tyne, England. "That's strange," I thought. "I don't think I know anybody in Newcastle." Turns out that the letter was a completely unsolicited offer to publish my PhD thesis, from an outfit that knows the working title but seems unaware that the thesis has not been, you know, written yet.

My first cynical thought was "hello, vanity press!" However, I've checked out the company's website, and they do seem to be into publishing scholarly works (a three-volume edition of the works of Statius, for example). I shall have to e-mail them and find out what's up!

I shall also check around this corner of the Classical 'hood and see what the 411 is on them, yo. More bulletins as events warrant.

A Milestone And Some Other Stuff!

Dydd-Llun, Dydd-Mawrth, Dydd-Mercher, Dydd-Iau, Dydd-Gwener, Dydd-Sadwrn, Dydd-Sul.

And what are those? Well, if you guessed "the days of the week in Welsh," then good for you! That makes Welsh, I believe, the only living language which has retained the old pagan Roman system of naming the days of the week in its entirety! In Latin, they were:

Dies Lunae, Dies Martis, Dies Mercurii, Dies Iovis, Dies Veneris, Dies Saturni, Dies Solis.

It's worth noting that Cornish and Breton also maintained the pagan Roman system, while the other Celtic languages (Irish, Manx, and Scots Gaelic) had adopted some of the Christian tradition. Cornish and Breton are, of course, no longer living languages.

All this, by the way, is courtesy of one of my students. I gave them my "Roman Calendar" spiel yesterday, and today discovered that she'd sent me a long and interesting e-mail about the Celtic languages and their days of the week. I do like it when they get into what I'm talking about!

In other news, this is the 100th post on this blog! So, to celebrate, have some 100th-post-suitable music:

Inscriptions!!

When I teach Latin in the summer, I am usually placed in a so-called "smart" classroom, which has built-in multi-media capabilities. However, this fall I am in an old-fashioned classroom, and thus have to lug the multi-media in on my own. Which is why this morning found me hauling an LCD projector and laptop into the classroom and fiddling with them while my students wrote their quiz. Yes, today was their first introduction to Roman inscriptions! And here's what I showed them (Warning: Roman tomb inscriptions can be quite powerful!):



The inscription from the Pantheon in Rome! Translated, it reads "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made [this] during his third consulship." Agrippa, the son-in-law and close friend of Augustus, did indeed oversee the construction of the Pantheon in 27 B.C. However, his edition of the building burned down in A.D. 80, and was rebuilt under Hadrian. Hadrian, however, decided to go with the original inscription.



One of the inscriptions from the Arch of Titus (actually constructed by Domitian in about A.D. 81). "The Senate and the People of Rome [dedicate this] to the divine Titus, son of the divine Vespasian, and to Vespasian Augustus." The little holes in the letters are nail-holes; originally, there were inset bronze letters, but these have been looted. Interestingly, the name of the emperor does not appear here. This omission is possibly the result of Domitian trying to distance himself from his brother Titus, whom he quite possibly murdered.



Leaving aside public architecture, here we have the base of a statue from Britain. The inscription reads: "The soothsayer Lucius Marcius Memor gives [this] as a gift to the goddess Sulis." Sulis was a Celtic deity associated with the hot-springs at Aquae Sulis (literally, "Waters of Sulis"), the city now known as "Bath." What's interesting about this particular inscription is the tremendous use of ligatures, which is what you get when you combine two or more letters into one. Note, for example, the "M," "A," and "R" in "Marcius." Incidentally, we still make use of a common Latin ligature; it's "&," which is comprised of an "e" and a "t" squashed together, thus giving you the Latin word "et," meaning "and."



Most of our Latin inscriptions come from tombstones, of course (I mean, where would you go if you wanted to see a bunch of English inscriptions in one place?). Here's one that reads: "To the divine Shades and to Dionysius her most pious brother, [who] lived 21 years, Chrysopolis, his sister, made [this]." Given that we have Greek names showing up on a Latin inscription, it's very likely that both Chrysopolis and Dionysius were slaves. Obviously, though, they'd managed to salt away enough money to afford a tombstone; either that, or they had a master generous enough to pay for it himself and let Chrysopolis put her name on it. In either case, they were probably skilled slaves; field-hands or galley-slaves would not have been able to afford something like this.



This one's rather sweet, I think. We have here the tomb of a young boy. The inscription reads: "To the divine Shades of Anthus. Lucius Julius Gamus, his father, [made this] for his most sweet son." I particularly like the puppy; the Romans did keep pets (cats, dogs, birds, etc.), and if we are to judge by the image here, young Anthus had a little dog of whom he was fond.



"To the divine Shades of Minicia Marcella, daughter of Fundanus. She lived for 12 years, 11 months, 7 days." We actually know a little bit about Minicia Marcella. Her father, Fundanus, was a good friend of the writer Pliny the Younger, and thus we have the following, from a letter written by Pliny:

"Caius Plinius greets his friend Marcellinus." (i.e. "Dear Marcellinus") "I, very sad, write these things to you, the younger daughter of our friend Fundanus having died. I have seen no-one anywhere more pleasant, more lovable, or more worthy of a longer life than that girl. She had not completed 13 years, but already had the wisdom of an old woman, the dignity of a matron, and yet a girlish sweetness. How she clung to her father's neck! How both lovingly and modestly she embraced us, her father's friends! How she loved her nurses, her tutors..." The letter goes on to complete the portrayal of a well-educated, well-brought-up, and immensely beloved young lady.



And, finally, my favourite. This one's from northern England, up near Hadrian's Wall. The grammar in the inscription is a bit shaky, but, loosely translated, it reads: "To the divine Shades. Regina, freedwoman and wife, Catuvellaunian by nation, lived 30 years. Barates the Palmyrene [made this for her]." We have here the story of a man (Barates) from Syria moving to northern Britain, and one wonders how he dealt with his first British winter. There, he falls in love with one of his slaves, a Celtic woman named Regina (the Catuvellauni were one of the Celtic tribes of Britain). He subsequently frees and marries her, and I would take this opportunity to point out that neither of those would have been necessary if all he'd wanted to do was sleep with her. After her death, he commissions an enormous, elaborate tombstone (compare it to that of Minicia Marcella, whose father had been consul!). And, as a final touch, he adds, at the bottom of the inscription, a single line in Aremaic, his first language. It reads, poignantly, "Regina of the Catuvellauni, alas!" I nice little story, I think!

Anyway, the class seemed to enjoy looking at the inscriptions, which was the main thing. Hopefully, as well, it will have gone some way to reminding them that we are actually dealing with REAL people who ACTUALLY EXISTED! This message sometimes get lost when one is working almost exclusively with the canon of Latin literature.