equi notissimi

Here are 5 famous horses from antiquity:

Incitatus was the horse of the emperor Caligula. Caligula loved his horse so much that he fed it oats mixed with gold. It lived in a stable made of marble, ate from an ivory manger, slept under purple blankets (purple dye was very expensive at the time), and wore a collar of precious gems. Caligula also tried to make his horse consul (the highest political office)- though this was possibly only because it seemed like a better option than the rest of the Roman aristocracy around at the time.

Bucephalus was the horse of Alexander the Great. Alexander succeeded in taming this fearsome horse when he was only 10 (or possibly 12) years old. Bucephalus served Alexander well in battle, but was eventually fatally wounded at the battle of Hydaspes, where Alexander established a city, called Bucephala (in modern day Pakistan) in honour of his faithful horse.

Pegasus was a mythical winged horse, which sprang from the neck of the monster Medusa when the Greek hero Perseus chopped off her head. Pegasus helped another Greek hero Bellerephon in his fights against the Chimera and the Amazons.

The Mares of Diomedes were four uncontrollable, fire-breathing, person-eating horses belonging to the giant king of Thrace, which Hercules had to steal as one of his 12 labours. Eating made the horses somewhat calmer, so Hercules killed Diomedes and fed him to his own horses. Bucephalus is said to have been descended from these (mythical) horses.

The Trojan Horse was, of course, not a real horse, but a wooden one. It was built by the Greeks after they had tried unsuccessfully for ten years to capture the city of Troy. The Greeks sailed away from Troy leaving it on the shore, and when the Trojans found the horse they assumed that the Greeks had built it as an offering to the gods and took it inside their city. Unfortunately for the Trojans it was filled with armed soldiers, who snuck out at night, killed the guards and opened up the city to the Greeks who had sailed back under cover of darkness.

[This post is dedicated to Madeline in my year 8 class, the biggest hippophile I know.]

Nicholson Museum

My year 9 class visited the Nicholson Museum at Sydney Uni yesterday. Their collection focuses more on Egypt and Greece than on Rome, but they have a lot of interesting things there (including a great collection of mummies). Their hands-on program for students is particularly good. They take you down in to the depths of the museum and give you a tray of objects such as coins, bits of pottery, canopic jars, oil lamps, votive statues and tools, and you get to play at being a real archaeologist. They get you to do a quick sketch of an object, then to think about what it’s made of, what it might have been used for, who might have used, and what can it tell us about life in the ancient world.

The museum also has a few interesting Latin inscriptions. Here’s one of them:

DEPOSSIO HILARES QVE
VIXIT ANNUS VII M VNO D
XIII DEPOSITA DIAE VII IDUS
SEPT RICOMEDE ET CLYARCO CONS

This means something like:

The burial of Hilary, who lived 7 years, one month, 13 days, buried on the 7th day before the Ides of September, during the Consulship of Ricomedes and Clearchus.
It’s an interesting inscription for a few reasons. Firstly it doesn’t start as most grave inscriptions do with a dedication to the spirits of the underworld (DM for DIS MANIBUS). This seems to be because the family were Christians. We know this not only from the lack of dedication, but also because the gravestone includes a chi-rho, and a picture of a dove (a common Christian symbol). The words depossio and deposita (from which we get the English word ‘deposit’) also imply the Christian belief that the body has been laid aside for safe keeping until the resurrection. Secondly it gives a precise date (7th September AD 384- when Ricomedes and Clearchus were consuls), which is not all that common, and thirdly, it’s got a couple of spelling mistakes in it (QVE for QVAE and DIAE for DIE), showing that it's not only school students who sometimes get their endings wrong.

Latin Exam part II

My year 12 class sat their extension Latin exam yesterday. Their set theme was philosophy, and we have been reading selections from Lucretius' De rerum natura III and various works of Cicero, loosely connected by the idea of 'the soul'. I personally found it a pretty tricky theme to get a handle on, but I was quite pleased with the actual exam.

Again for anyone interested here's one of the questions they had to answer:

Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una
crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem.
nam velut infirmo pueri teneroque vagantur
corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis.
inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus aetas,
consilium quoque maius et auctior est animi vis.
post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi
corpus et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens;
omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt.
ergo dissolui quoque convenit omnem animai
naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aeris auras,
quandoquidem gigni pariter pariterque videmus
crescere et, ut docui, simul aevo fessa fatisci.

(Lucretius, De rerum natura III.445-458)

[What's more, we see that the mind is born at the same time as the body, and matures alongside it and grows old at the same time. For just as boys wander around with their weak and fragile bodies, so the thoughts of their minds are correspondingly fragile. Then, when age ripens their physical strength, their wisdom too is greater, and the power of their minds is increased. Later, when one’s body has been shaken by the mighty power of age, and the limbs droop with their powers blunted, the intellect limps along, the tongue raves and the mind totters. Everything breaks down and fails at the same time. And so it comes about that the whole nature of the soul is also dissolved, just like smoke on the high breezes of the air, since we see that it is born at the same time, at the same time grows and, as I have taught, likewise becomes weak, worn out by old age.]

O vitae philosophia dux, o virtutis indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita hominum sine te esse potuisset? Tu urbis peperisti, tu dissipatos homines in societatem vitae convocasti, tu eos inter se primo domiciliis, deinde coniugiis, tum litterarum et vocum communione iunxisti, tu inventrix legum, tu magistra morum et disciplinae fuisti; ad te confugimus, a te opem petimus, tibi nos, ut antea magna ex parte, sic nunc penitus totosque tradimus. Est autem unus dies bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus peccanti inmortalitati anteponendus. Cuius igitur potius opibus utamur quam tuis, quae et vitae tranquillitatem largita nobis es et terrorem mortis sustulisti?

(Cicero, Disputationes Tusculanae V.5)

[O philosophy, guide of life, o explorer of virtue and banisher of vices. Without you what would I be, indeed what would the whole of human life be? You have given birth to cities, you have called scattered people into communal life, you have joined them together, firstly in dwellings, and then in marriage, then in the mutual sharing of language and literature, you are the founder of our laws, you the mistress of our customs and morality; to you I flee, from you I seek help, to you I dedicate myself, as I have done greatly in the past, so now fully and totally. Moreover, one day spent well and according to your teachings is to be preferred to an eternity of wrong-doing. And so on whose aid should we rely rather than yours, you who have not only bestowed upon us the tranquillity of life, but have also lifted from us the fear of death?]

Contrast and evaluate the literary methods the two authors use to present their philosophical material in these extracts. (10 marks)

Archimedes

My year 9 class having been investigating medicine and science in the ancient world recently, and yesterday we looked briefly at the Greek inventor Archimedes. Over at Rogue Classicum you can find a series of articles about modern attempts to recreate his most legendary invention, the death ray (also here, and a related article about space elevators) with which he is said to have set fire to the Roman navy which was besieging his home town of Syracuse (on Sicily).

HSC Latin Exam

My year 12 students sat their HSC Latin exam yesterday. I thought it was a bit of a tricky paper- particularly the comment questions on both Livy and Virgil. For anyone who's interested, here are two of the questions:

"Romulus" inquit, "Quirites, parens urbis huius, prima hodierna luce caelo repente delapsus se mihi obuium dedit. Cum perfusus horrore venerabundusque adstitissem petens precibus ut contra intueri fas esset, ""Abi, nuntia"" inquit ""Romanis, caelestes ita velle ut mea Roma caput orbis terrarum sit; proinde rem militarem colant sciantque et ita posteris tradant nullas opes humanas armis Romanis resistere posse."" Haec" inquit "locutus sublimis abiit." (Ab Urbe Condita I.16.6-8)

[‘Citizens of Rome’, he [Julius Proculus] said, ‘Romulus, father of this city, having come down suddenly from heaven, came to meet me at today’s first light. As I stood there, filled with dread and full of reverence, asking in my prayers that it might be right for me to gaze upon his face, he said, “Go forth, announce to the Romans that heaven wishes it to be so: that my Rome shall be the head of the whole world; accordingly they should foster the art of warfare, and they should know and accordingly hand down to posterity that no human power can resist Roman might.” Having spoken these things,’ he said, ‘he ascended on high.’]

[obviously the translation was not included in the exam- I've given it here for those unfamiliar with the passages]

Explain how the themes and literary techniques in this extract illustrate Livy's approach to writing history. (5 marks)

This seems to me a slightly odd choice of passage to choose to discuss Livy's approach to history, especially in terms of literary techniques. I suppose the main technique here is characterisation, which tells us a few things about Livy's approach to writing history- he wanted to write something entertaining, but also morally improving, and felt quite comfortable including (or indeed inventing) stories of dubious truthfulness. The passage also shows an unashamed patriotism, another important element in Livy's approach to writing history.


sed te qui vivum casus, age fare vicissim,
attulerint. pelagine venis erroribus actus
an monitu divum? an quae te fortuna fatigat,
ut tristis sine sole domos, loca turbida, adires?'
Hac vice sermonum roseis Aurora quadrigis
iam medium aetherio cursu traiecerat axem;
et fors omne datum traherent per talia tempus,
sed comes admonuit breviterque adfata Sibylla est:
'nox ruit, Aenea; nos flendo ducimus horas.
hic locus est, partis ubi se via findit in ambas:
dextera quae Ditis magni sub moenia tendit,
hac iter Elysium nobis; at laeva malorum
exercet poenas et ad impia Tartara mittit.
'Deiphobus contra: 'ne saevi, magna sacerdos;
discedam, explebo numerum reddarque tenebris.
i decus, i, nostrum; melioribus utere fatis.
'tantum effatus, et in verbo vestigia torsit.
(Aeneid VI.531-547)

["But come, tell me what chance has brought you here alive. Do you come driven by the wanderings of the sea, or on the advice of the gods? Or what fortune torments you that you approach these sad halls without sun, these troubled places?"

While they were speaking, Dawn in her rosy chariot was crossing the middle of her airy course; and perhaps they would have spent all the time allowed them in such things, but the Sybil cautioned them and spoke briefly to them: "Night rushes on Aeneas; we spend hours in weeping. Here is the place where the road divides itself in two parts; on the right it stretches beneath the battlements of the mighty Dis- by this route lies our journey to Elysium. But the left hand side leads to punishment for the evil, and sends them down to unholy Tartareus."

Deiphobus in reply says: "Do not be angry, great priestess; I shall withdraw, I shall fill up my number, and I shall return to the darkness. Go! Go, our great glory: enjoy a better fate."

So much he spoke, and as he spoke he turned in his tracks.]

Explain how Virgil uses contrast in this extract to emphasise the significance of this point in Aeneas' journey. (7 marks)

Aeneas' journey is obviously an improtant theme in book VI, and one that we spent a lot of time talking about, but I wasn't quite sure what the examiners were getting at with the idea of contrast. There are a few different things to say about contrast in this passage (day/night, living/dead, Elysium/Tartarus), but to make that into an answer worth seven marks is (I think) a bit of a stretch.

Classical Plurales

Part of my quest to reinstate Latin as the lingua franca of the modern world involves bringing Latin plurals back into common usage. Here are five simple rules to ensure that you are never embarassed in polite company.

1. Words ending in -a change to –ae

one formula, two formulae
one antenna, two antennae
one banana, two bananae

2. Words ending in –us change to –i (see exceptions below)

one focus, two foci
one locus, two loci
one walrus, two walri

3. Words ending in –um change to –a

one datum, two data
one referendum, two referenda
one alpacum, two alpaca

4. Words ending in –x change to –ces

one appendix, two appendices
one index, two indices
one box, two boces

5. Words ending in –is change to –es

one crisis, two crises
one thesis, two theses
one iris, two ires

Exceptions

People often try to apply rule #2 to the words platypus, octopus and hippopotamus. These words are obviously of Greek origin, and so applying Latin plurales to them is problematic. The correct form for the first two is of course platypodes and octopodes (pus/pod- means 'foot' and is the same word that you find in podiatrist). Hippopotamus is a bit trickier. As you should know hippo is Greek for ‘horse’ and potamus means ‘of the river’. Therefore the correct plural should be hippoipotamus ('horses of the river') or if you like hippoipotamon ('horses of the rivers').

Neuter nouns such as opus and genus and gerbus, though being Latin in origin, also do not conform to rule #2. Their plurals should be opera, genera and gerbera respectively.