How to Take Intelligent Vacations

I’m off on holidays for two weeks, so I don’t think I’ll be posting much over the next fortnight. I’ll be spending my holidays on all those things teachers do- marking, setting exams, writing programs, and I hope to get stuck into a few good books too. If you’re looking for something good to read over the holidays, here are a few tips from Umberto Eco.

"For vacationers who will be spending long hours on the beach I would recommend the Ars magna lucis et umbrae of Athanasius Kircher fascinating for anyone who, lying under the infrared solar rays, wants to reflect on the wonders of light and mirrors. TheRoman edition of 1645 can still be acquired through antiquarians for sums undoubtedly inferior to those that our former leaders exported into Switzerland…

For young people who are recovering from (or disappointed by) political activity, but are still anxious to keep an eye on the problems of the Third World, I would suggest some little masterpieces of Muslim wisdom. Adelphi has recently published The Book of Advice by Kay Ka’us ibn Iskander, but unfortunately without the original Iranian; the translation does not convey the flavour of the text. I would suggest instead the delightful (Kitab) al-sa’adah wa-al-is’ad by Abu al-Hasan al-‘Amiri, available in Tehran in the critical edition of 1957.

But not every reader is fluent in Middle Eastern languages, of course. For the patristically-oriented motorist, less burdened by constraints on bulk or weight of luggage, the complete collection of Migne’s Patrologia is always an excellent choice. I would advise against the Greek Fathers before the Council of Florence of 1440, which would require packing both the 160 volumes of the Graeco-Latin edition and the 81 of the Latin edition, whereas the Latin Fathers prior to 1216 are squeezed into 218 volumes…

Finally, for those whose Hebrew is rusty, there is always the Corpus Hermeticum and the Gnostic writings (Valentinus is best; Basil is not infrequently prolix and irritating). All this (and much more) will make for an intelligent vacation."

[Umberto Eco, How to Take Intelligent Vacations, from How to Travel with a Salmon and other Essays, 1994]

Amphitryo

Earlier this term my year 8 class spent a bit of time looking at some Greek and Roman drama. I gave them a brief summary of a few different plays, and asked them to come up with their own 5-minute version. One group did a particularly good job with Plautus’ Amphitryo. In the play Jupiter disguises himself as Amphitryo in order to sleep with his wife, Alcmene. Mercury stands guard outside the house, disguised as Amphitryo’s slave, Sosia. Much of the the humour of the play revolves around mistaken identities, and the confusion of the real Amphitryo and Sosia. It’s hard to convey in words alone, but here are a few extracts:

M. Cuius es? S. Amphitruonis, inquam, Sosia. M. Ergo istoc magis,
quia vaniloquo's, vapulabis: ego sum, non tu, Sosia.
SOS. Ita di faciant, ut tu potius sis atque ego te ut verberem.

[lines 378-80]

Mercury: Whose slave are you?
Sosia: I’m Sosia, Amphitryo’s slave.
Mercury: Lies again…. Take that… I tell you I am Sosia.
Sosia: I wish you were, by all the gods, then you’d be getting the beating.

MERC. Ego sum Sosia ille quem tu dudum esse aiebas mihi.
SOS. Obsecro ut per pacem liceat te alloqui, ut ne vapulem.

[lines 387-8]

Mercury: [punching him] You said you were Sosia, and I tell you I’m Sosia.
Sosia: Look, mister, could I have a few minutes’ peace to speak to you, and no more beating?

MERC. Dic si quid vis, non nocebo. SOS. Tuae fide credo? MERC. Meae.
SOS. Quid si falles? MERC. Tum Mercurius Sosiae iratus siet.
SOS. Animum advorte. nunc licet mihi libere quidvis loqui.
Amphitruonis ego sum servos Sosia.

[lines 391-4]

Mercury: Say what you want to say. I won’t hurt you.
Sosia: Promise?
Mercury: Promise.
Sosia: And if you break it?
Mercury: Then may all the wrath of Mercury fall upon Sosia.
Sosia: Well now, listen. Now can I get a word in- the fact is, I am Amphitryo’s slave, Sosia.

MERC. Quid nunc? vincon argumentis, te non esse Sosiam?
SOS. Tu negas med esse? MERC. Quid ego ni negem, qui egomet siem?
SOS. Per Iovem iuro med esse neque me falsum dicere.
MERC. At ego per Mercurium iuro, tibi Iovem non credere;
nam iniurato scio plus credet mihi quam iurato tibi.
SOS. Quis ego sum saltem, si non sum Sosia? te interrogo.
MERC. Vbi ego Sosia nolim esse, tu esto sane Sosia;
nunc, quando ego sum, vapulabis, ni hinc abis, ignobilis.

[lines 433-440]

Mercury: Are you convinced now that you’re not Sosia?
Sosia: You think I’m not?
Mercury: Well of course you’re not, since I am.
Sosia: But I swear by Jupiter I am not Lying.
Mercury: And I swear by Mercury Jupiter doesn’t believe you. He’d take my bare word against your oath, for that matter.
Sosia: Well for Jupiter’s sake, who am I, if I’m not Sosia?
Mercury: You can be Sosia as much as you like, when I don’t want to be. At the moment I am Sosia, and you can pack off, or take another thrashing- scum!

And here's some of what my year 8 class came up with:

Sosia: Quis es tu?
Mercury: Who are you?
Sosia: I’m Sosia
Mercury: I’m Sosia
Sosia: No, I’m Sosia
Mercury: No, I’m Sosia, you must be someone else.
Sosia: Well, I’m Sosia, Amphitryo’s friend.
Mercury: No, I’m Sosia, Amphitryo’s friend.
Sosia: Then who am I?
Mercury: You are an impostor. You are not Sosia, I am.
Sosia: But I’m sure I’m Sosia, see [waves Amphitryo’s letter in front of Mercury’s face]. I was sent by Amphitryo to tell Alcmene he is coming back home.
Mercury: [takes the letter] No, Amphitryo sent me with this letter to Alcmene- You are an impostor and you stole the letter off me!
Sosia: You are confusing me.
Mercury: Nooo. You are confusing me.
Sosia: I am?
Mercury: You are.
Sosia: How?
Mercury: Well, you are telling me I am not someone, but I am, and you are saying that you are me and I am you, but I am not you at all, just as you are not me, so what you are saying is wrong, because I am not you, and you are not me, therefore I am right that I am me, and you are not me but yourself. See?
Sosia: [nodding] No!
Mercury: [smirks] You sir, are an impostor. Off you go, back to your master.

latin syllabus vocab lists

for my year 12 class:

You need to know the vocab on pages 16-24 of the Latin Continuers Syllabus, which you can download here.

You also need to know the vocab on pages 47-51 of the K-10 Syllabus, which you can download here.

According to the syllabus you are also meant to:

• know prefixes, suffixes and compounds, and common types of word formation
• recognise in context the vocabulary of the prescribed Latin texts

While you're on the board of studies website, you can also download last year's HSC exam papers, or those from previous years if you're really keen. Only last year's paper will have any relevance to the texts we're studying this year, but you may like to look at some past unseens (many of these we've done already anyway).

Enjoy your holidays!

cats and dogs

The English words feline and canine (meaning 'like a cat' and 'like a dog' respectively) come from the Latin words for cat (feles) and dog (canis). The following fifteen English words all follow the same pattern- what do they mean, and on what Latin words are they based?

• aquiline
• asinine
• bovine
• elephantine
• feminine
• leonine
• lupine
• ovine
• pavonine
• piscine
• porcine
• serpentine
• ursine
• vespine
• vulpine

Related post: onomatopoiea

rain, rain, go away...

All the rain we've had lately made me think of the flood described in Ovid's Metamorphoses:

Protinus Aeoliis Aquilonem claudit in antris
et quaecumque fugant inductas flamina nubes
emittitque Notum. madidis Notus evolat alis,
terribilem picea tectus caligine vultum;
barba gravis nimbis, canis fluit unda capillis;
fronte sedent nebulae, rorant pennaeque sinusque.
utque manu lata pendentia nubila pressit,
fit fragor: hinc densi funduntur ab aethere nimbi.

Jupiter wastes no time, but shuts up the North wind in Aeolus' caves, together with all the gusts which scatter the gathering clouds; and he lets loose the South wind. On dripping wings the South wind flies, his terrible features shrouded in pitch-black darkness; his beard is heavy with clouds, water streams from his snowy locks, mist wreathes his brow, his robes and feathers dripped with moisture. When he crushes the hanging clouds in his broad hand, there is a crash; then the thick clouds are poured down from heaven.

[Metamorphoses, I.262-269]

C.S. Lewis, Time and the Aeneid

One of the most helpful things I've ever read on the Aeneid comes from a strange source- C.S. Lewis in his preface to Paradise Lost. Here's what he has to say about time in the Aeneid:

'...so true an artist as Virgil could not be content with the clumsiness and monotony of a mere chronicle. His solution to the problem- one of the most important revolutions in the history of poetry- was to take one single national legend and treat it in such a way that we feel the vaster theme to be somehow implicit in it. He has to tell a comparatively short story and give us the illusion of having lived through a great space of time. He has to deal with a limited number of personages and make us feel as if national, or almost cosmic, issues are involved. He must locate his action in a legendary past and yet make us feel the present, and the intervening centuries, already foreshadowed...

'The more obvious instances of this enlargement of Virgil's subject have, no doubt, often been noticed- the glimpses of the future in Jove's prophecy in Book I, or in the vision of Anchises, or in the shield, or again the connexion of the whole of the fourth Book with the Punic Wars. Perhaps the most moving of all these forward links is the visit of Aeneas to the future site of Rome in Book VIII.

'The backward links [in time] are of equal importance... If I am not mistaken it is almost the first poem which carries a real sense of the "abysm of time". Priscus, vetus and antiquus are key-words in Virgil. In Books VI to VIII- the true heart of the poem- we are never allowed to forget that Latium- Lurkwood, the hiding place of aged Saturn- has been waiting for the Trojans from the beginning of the world.'

[C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost pp. 33 ff.]

Rome, the past and future

As my year 12 class has studied Aeneid VIII this year, we've been looking at how Virgil represents Rome's past and future (ie the future from Aeneas' point of view. For Virgil it was the present, for us it's the past.). It's easy to spot references to the Rome of Virgil's day as you read Aeneid VIII, but it's more difficult to explain Virgil's purpose in doing so. I recently read an article which, I thought, expressed it well. Talking about the "interweaving of present, past and future" it says:

‘One of the themes of the book is the union of different peoples. The Trojans, the past inhabitants of Italy, fuse with her present inhabitants into a future people, the Italians. The fact that Evander anticipates this development and thus speaks of “we Italians” (VIII, 331 f.) is not one of Virgil’s “inconsistencies”, but serves to underscore this theme explicitly. A last example of this interplay of the various time levels may be taken from the Hercules-Cacus episode itself. Evander speaks of Hercules’ adventure as if he and his men had been present (200-1):

attulit et nobis aliquando optantibus aetas
auxilium adventumque dei.
It would seem, then, that Evander, Hercules and Aeneas were contemporaries. This was chronologically untenable, and thus the event, represented first as contemporary, is later projected into the mythical past (268-9):

ex illo celebratus honos laetique minores
servavere diem.
On a different level, the et nobis may well refer to Vergil’s contemporaries, the god whose advent is being celebrated being Augustus. Thus the line between past and present is again blurred, and the “Augustan future” is superimposed on the original time level.’

[Karl Galinsky, "The Hercules-Cacus Episode in Aeneid VIII," AJP 87 (1966) 22 f. Thanks to James for recommending this article.]

desiderium

I’ve come across the Latin word desiderium in a few different contexts recently. If you look it up in a dictionary, you’ll find something like the following:

desiderium, desideri(i) N. desire/longing/want/requirement; desire/grief/regret for dead/absent/loss; favorite, object of desire; pleasure, that desired/needed; petition, request;

You can see from the different definitions it’s a bit of a tricky word to translate. It’s often translated simply as ‘desire’, but I think it’s real sense is hard to get at, because we don’t really have an English equivalent for the feeling this word describes. Here’s the word in a few different contexts so you can see what I mean.

Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
tam cari capitis? Praecipe lububris
cantus, Melpomene, cui liquidam pater
vocem cum cithara dedit.

What moderation or limit can there be to our regret for the loss
of so dear a life? Direct our mournful
songs, Melpomene, to whom our Father
has given a clear voice along with the lyre.

[Horace, Odes I.24]

Quae ubi omnia foras versa vidit nec in partem aliam ferre, confusus atque incertus animi ex loco infesto agere porro armentum occepit. Inde cum actae boves quaedam ad desiderium, ut fit, relictarum mugissent, reddita inclusarum ex spelunca boum vox Herculem convertit.

When Hercules saw that all the footprints were turned away from the cave, and led to no particular place, confused and uncertain in his mind, he began to drive the herd onward from that hostile place. Then, when some of the cows, being driven away, out of longing for those left behind, as often happens, mooed, the answering call of the imprisoned cows from out of the cave attracted Hercules attention.

[Livy, Ab urbe condita I.7]

nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requiret,
cum pariter mens et corpus sopita quiescunt;
nam licet aeternum per nos sic esse soporem,
nec desiderium nostri nos adficit ullum…

For no one misses either himself or his life
at the time when the sleepy mind and body rest equally;
indeed, if we could sleep like this forever,
no feeling of loss for ourselves would touch us…

[Lucretius, De rerum natura III. 919ff]

[Interestingly I couldn’t find a citation from Virgil]

From these contexts I would suggest the meaning of the word comes closest to "the feeling you have when you miss someone ", kind of like homesickness for a person. Horace misses his dead friend, Hercules' cattle miss the cows which Cacus has stolen, and Lucretius' point is that (since the soul cannot survive death) you don't miss yourself when you're dead.

salve!

Here's a photo I took some time ago while on holidays. 10 points belong to anyone who can tell me the country in which it was taken.