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...

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!

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)!

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!

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.

Latin Update!

In the week leading up to the first mid-term exam, I detected a bit of trepidation among my students this time out. This is completely understandable, given that, for many of them, it was to be their very first university exam ever. However, it seemed to me that the worrying was a bit more pronounced this year, so I spent a bit more time than usual preparing the class for the exam itself.

This may, in hindsight, have been unnecessary. My poor, poor, exam...

* Pauses to console exam, which is curled up whimpering on the floor *

Here, by the way, is a photo of the infamous Dalek, as mentioned in this post.

In Which A Student Cracks Up Chunklets

So, to appreciate this, you need to think back to the iconic British sci-fi series Doctor Who, and in particular to the good doctor's implacable nemeses, the Daleks. For those of you unfamiliar with them, they were vaguely conical robotic critters who wandered around killing things and chanting "EX-TER-MI-NATE, EX-TER-MI-NATE" in a gravelly electronic voice. Here's a clip:



Anyway, I was marking my students' first quiz yesterday ("Here are two Latin verbs. Conjugate them in the present active, please"). As is their wont, some of them who had finished quickly had occupied the rest of quiz time by doodling on their test papers. The one that got me was the girl who had drawn, on the back of her paper, a little sketch of Dalek saying "CON-JU-GATE, CON-JU-GATE." It did make me laugh out loud (I took a picture of it, which I will post as soon as I can get it downloaded off the camera), and also seriously consider giving extra marks...

Amo, Amas, Amat, And So On

Another September, another group of bright young undergraduates yearning to be Latinists. Well, perhaps "yearning" is a bit strong, at least in some cases. Anyway, I met with my new group for the first time yesterday, and they seem promising. I've officially got 30, of whom 27 showed up yesterday, along with one fellow who wasn't on my class list on account of late registration. So it's a full class, which is nice. The students showed a willingness to come forward and volunteer answers, which is also a good thing.

One interesting thing came up yesterday. One of my "first class" exercises is involves giving the students the sentence "Latin is a(n)_______________ language" and asking them to fill in the blank. Then we discuss concepts like "dead," "Indo-European," and "inflected." Well, one of the suggestions offered up yesterday was "snobby." I sigh heavily at this point, but not in the direction of the particular student who gave that answer. I know exactly where he's coming from; I have had people accuse me, to my face, of arrogance and "elitism" based merely on the fact that I teach Latin. The perceived "snobbishness" of Latin has been used as a weapon to attack its inclusion in the modern curriculum, and if you wish to see that line of reasoning joyfully and deliciously beaten to a pulp, then I recommend Peter Jones' essay "Primal Scream," published in his book An Intelligent Person's Guide to Classics. The battle against the idea of "Latin as snobbery" has not been won yet, but I set out each September to do my bit.

On the other hand, the omens are good. As I mentioned some time ago, I've been tutoring a woman who is now teaching Latin at a local High School. At her first Grade 10 Latin class this past Tuesday, she had more than 35 students. This, I think, is a good thing!

In Which People Say Nice Things About The Kobold

Got the Instructor Evaluations for my summer Latin course back today. It really was a superb group of students this time around, and it was nice to find out that they seemed to feel the same way about me! A couple of comments from the evaluations:

"Chunklets is a good prof; he presents material clearly and is certainly quite knowledgeable in the subject material. The Friday activities were fantastic; it was good to do something Latin related that wasn't Wheelock. Overall great instructor and great course!"

"This is the first textbook based course I have taken where the instructor was not just an expensive babysitter for the textbook. I felt Chunklets was actually doing the teaching and the textbook helped him, not the other way around which is unfortunately typical."

There now. The ego has been nicely massaged, now on with the day!

And A Very Happy Dies Natalis To You!

So I was busy the other day attempting to come up with a bonus question for the exam I intended to inflict on my poor Latin students on Friday (Note: exam was duly inflicted). And since we had just week taken a look at some of the more interesting graffiti from Pompeii and Ostia, it seemed a good idea to give them their very own graffito to try to untangle. I should point out here that ancient Roman creators of graffiti were just as in touch with the idea of good spelling and grammar as their modern counterparts. Anyway, I think that the graffito I chose, in the end, is actually quite lovely. It's from Pompeii, and was/is located in Via della Fortuna, a street of shops and houses located North of the Forum.

Via della Fortuna

Unfortunately, very unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the actual graffito itself. However, it reads:

Iuen
illa nata
diie Satu
ora secu
v IIII Non Au

And what does it say? Well, the first line, "Iuen," is a shortened form of the name "Iuenilla," which is itself a variant spelling of "Iuvenilla," a common Roman girl's name. We know this because next to the graffito the name is spelled out in full, around a drawing of a baby. Why a baby? The next line of the graffito explains that. It translates as "that (girl) was born," with the form of the verb "to be" left out. We are dealing here with the announcement of a birth.

The third line, "diie Satu," contains a misspelling. "Diie" should, in fact, be "die," in the ablative case indicating time when, and thus meaning "on the day." "Satu" is short for "Saturni," meaning "of Saturn." Thus we end up with "on the day of Saturn" - in other words, "on Saturday." The Romans did have a seven-day week by this time, with the days named after celestial bodies, a practise that most Romance languages have followed, and that is preserved in English in the names "Saturday," "Sunday," and "Monday."

Break Time! Here's Mount Vesuvius, on a glowery sort of day.

On to the fourth line, then! "Ora" is again in the ablative case for time when. In "proper" written Latin, it would have been "hora," but the initial "h" very often drops out in more colloquial writings, and probably did so in speech as well. "Secu" is short for "secunda," also in the ablative case agreeing with "ora." Taken together, it means "at the second hour."

The last line is where it gets a bit tricky. At first glance, it would appear to translate as "nine (v IIII) days before the Nones (Non) of August (Au)," a Roman date written in the standard format. However, the problem here is that you cannot have a date written as "nine days before the Nones." The Roman month had three Named Days: the Kalends (the first day of the month, and from which we get the word "calendar"), the Nones (the 5th or the 7th, depending on the month), and the infamous Ides (the 13th or 15th). The actual date of a particular day was reckoned based on how many days it was until the next Named Day. Nine days before the Nones would be back before the Kalends, and thus the date would have been written "so many days before the Kalends of August." Therefore we must dispense for now with the "v," and read this as "four days before the Nones of August." The Nones fall on the 5th in August. However, just to be difficult, the Romans reckoned inclusively, so in counting backwards, we must count the 5th, not the 4th, as "1." And so we count off the days: 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd. Iuvenilla was born on Saturday, the 2nd of August.

*Pauses to check today's date*

Finally, we must do something with the "v" in the last line. It actually goes with "ora secu" in the line above, and stood for "vespertina," or "vesprae," or "vesperi," or "vesperis." It doesn't really matter which of them it is, as they all mean, roughly, "evening," so we are dealing with the second hour of the evening. Like us, the Romans had a 24-hour day. However, they achieved this by dividing the time between sunrise and sunset into 12 equal portions, and doing the same for the time between sunset and sunrise. This meant two things. First of all, except at the Equinoctes, the daytime hours were not the same length as the night hours. Secondly, the length of a Roman hour changed over the course of the year, ranging from about 44 minutes to about 76, with the day hours at their longest when the night hours were shortest, and vice versa. And so, after doing a bit of research on when the sun rises and sets in Italy in early August, we can say with some confidence that Iuvenilla was born at around 10:00 pm.

Artist's rendering of the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79

Ok, then, to put it all together, we end up with this:

Literal translation: "Iuvenilla. That girl was born on the Day of Saturn, at the second hour of evening, 4 days before the Nones of August."

Less literal translation: "Iuvenilla. The girl was born on Saturday, August 2, at about 10:00 pm."

Our anonymous graffito-writer has not given any indication of the year of Iuvenilla's birth. However, if we accept two completely unprovable premises, we can at least make an educated guess. First premise: that the calendar has not been distorted at any time, apart from the switch from the Julian version to the Gregorian (September 1752 for Britain and her North American colonies, incidentally), and that therefore we can actually compute accurately the days of the week for a particular ancient year. This is not, perhaps, as unlikely as it might seem. Second premise: That the graffito refers to the last August 2 to fall on a Saturday before the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. I am tentatively assuming this simply because I think it unlikely that the graffito would have survived in any legible state for very long. If I ever see a photo of it, I may revise this opinion. Assuming these two things, then, and having found an excellent day-of-the-week calculator that takes into account the change in calendar, I would submit A.D. 77 as the most likely candidate. I would repeat, however, that there are some very big "ifs" here.

Well, this has been a very long post. I would like to close it by returning to the title, and wishing a very Happy Birthday to Iuvenilla, whoever she was (and would mention, without going into detail, the there are reasons to be optimistic that she survived the eruption)!

And, Making A Cameo Appearance...

The above picture is a scene from the Battle of Varna, fought on November 10th, 1444. It ended in a decisive if costly victory for the Ottoman Turks over a combined force of Hungarians, Poles, and others. I believe that the painting (a 19th-century work by Jan Matejko) depicts the heroically stupid charge of Wladislaw III of Poland against the janissaries of Sultan Murad, a military action that resulted in Wladislaw's death and the defeat of the Europeans (it really was a case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The brilliant Hungarian general John Hunyadi had managed to rout the Ottomans and overrun their camp, and Wladislaw's charge, which Hunyadi begged him not to undertake, turned the entire course of the battle).

I've been helping a friend translate some Latin sources on the Battle of Varna, including some letters written by a certain Andreas de Palatio, a papal envoy who witnessed the battle. In describing the prelude to the battle, he describes the arrival of a potential ally to the Europeans:

"In stacione autem nostra sub urbe Nicopolii illustris Wlad waywoda Transalpine Walachie, qui et Dracula dicitur, Danubium traiecit in Bulgariam..."

"Moreover, during our vigil below the city of Nicopolis, the famous Vlad, Prince of Transalpine Wallachia, who is also called 'Dracula', crossed the Danube into Bulgaria..."

Of course, this immediately led to the mental image of...



...taking part in the Battle of Varna. Unfortunately, however, the battle was likely relatively vampire-free. The Vlad referred to here is not Vlad III Tepes, a.k.a. "Vlad the Impaler," who would later inspire Bram Stoker. It is, in fact, his father Vlad II Dracul (Stoker seems to have been ever-so-slightly confused over the names). Still rather fun to see the name in a contemporary document, though!

First note: This isn't the only fun Latin project I've embarked upon recently (leaving aside the teaching of the Latin summer course). One of the local High Schools (the covert canine's alma mater, to be precise), is set to offer Latin in the fall, and the Latin-teacher-to-be and I are frantically working to get her up to speed.

Second note: The internet is a charming place, sometimes. I found the Battle of Varna painting at a site, which I will neither name nor link to, that claims to present the history of the conflict between Islam and the West "from a neutral and factual viewpoint" (their words). It then goes on to enthusiastically endorse the forcible lobotomizing of all Muslims. Uh, that's just swell, guys...