magister bonus

Sumat igitur ante omnia parentis erga discipulos suos animum, ac succedere se in eorum locum a quibus sibi liberi tradantur existimet. Ipse nec habeat vitia nec ferat. Non austeritas eius tristis, non dissoluta sit comitas, ne inde odium, hinc contemptus oriatur.

And so the teacher should adopt before all things the attitude of a parent towards his pupils, and he should judge that he is acting in the place of those from whom the children were handed over to him. He himself should not have faults, nor allow them. He should be strict but not harsh, courteous but not lax, lest the former breed hatred, the latter contempt.

Plurimus ei de honesto ac bono sermo sit: nam quo saepius monuerit, hoc rarius castigabit; minime iracundus, nec tamen eorum quae emendanda erunt dissimulator, simplex in docendo, patiens laboris, adsiduus potius quam inmodicus.

He should have much to say about honesty and goodness: for one who is often warned is rarely scolded. He should be slow to anger, but neither should he ignore things which require correction. He should be clear in his teaching, patient in his work, consistent, rather than extreme.

Interrogantibus libenter respondeat, non interrogantes percontetur ultro. In laudandis discipulorum dictionibus nec malignus nec effusus, quia res altera taedium laboris, altera securitatem parit.

He should answer questions freely, he should ask questions of those who are silent. When praising the speeches of his pupils, he should be neither grudging nor effusive, for the one will lead to weariness of the work, the other produces over-confidence.

In emendando quae corrigenda erunt non acerbus minimeque contumeliosus; nam id quidem multos a proposito studendi fugat, quod quidam sic obiurgant quasi oderint... quem discipuli, si modo recte sunt instituti, et amant et verentur. Vix autem dici potest quanto libentius imitemur eos quibus favemus.

In marking the things which are to be corrected he should not be bitter or abusive, for those who scold in such a way as to imply hatred, drive many from the objective of their study... If his pupils are rightly instructed, he should be the object of their affection and respect. And it is scarcely possible to say how much more gladly we imitate those whom we like.

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria II.4-8

An impossible task

'And what did you speak about?' I asked, as we stood by the roadside in the humming silence.
'Well, my paper was on just one of Sappho's poems, possibly her last, we can't be sure. It's one of the most beautiful poems ever written. Almost Chinese!' And she laughed.
'Would I know it?'
'Do you know Greek?'
'No.'
'Then you don't know it!' It wasn't said mockingly, but was deeply meant.
'Well, tell me about it.' I felt quite enlivened.
She glanced at the watch on her slim, brown arm. 'Tell you what: let's sit on the beach for half an hour and look at the sea. Does that sound good to you? I have to leave at four, and I can't think of a nicer way to end my stay. The sea and Sappho.'
So, while I stared at the red and blue caiques bobbing on the horizon - a scene Sappho herself would have found utterly familiar - my still nameless friend from Massachussetts, after collecting her thoughts, began to tell me about Sappho's perfect poem.
'Deduke men a seldna,' she began softly, sifting pebbles through her fingers,
'kedi Pleiiades mesaide
nuktes para derket ora
ego de mona katevdo.'
'It sounds beautiful,' I said.
'Do you think so? What do you hear?'
I was stumped. was this a test? 'Perhaps you should let me hear it again.' So again I listened to the trickle of simple syllables. Deduke men a seldna...
'Well,' I said, wishing I'd said nothing, 'it sounds liquid, like water trickling over stones. What does it mean?'
'That's the problem, isn't it. That's what I meant when I said that if you don't speak Greek, you don't know the poem. And that's what I was talking about at the conference. Oh, I can give you a version of it in English, if you'd like me to, but it partly means what you just said: it's partly about trickling away. All those vowels, so few consonants. Yet, as soon as I try to tell you what the poem says, you'll hear my mouth fill up with lumpy English consonants, you'll lose the sense of something flowing.'
'I wish you'd have a go.'
'Gone is the moon, gone
the Pleiades, it's past midnight,
and time's flashing by, yet
I lie alone here.'
Was that all? It sounded so ordinary. Moon, stars, midnight, time passing - hadn't I heard it all before?
'You're disappointed, aren't you?'
'A little.'
She laughed. 'I'm not surprised. You see what's miraculous about these lines in Greek is that they're at once so limpid - even you could hear it - yet so tightly, so seamlessly knit. Let me put it differently: they're like a drop of water on a leaf. Now, that's something you've seen many thousands of times, and, if you paid attention in your physics class, you know that a droplet on a leaf has the shape and colour it has for a myriad of complex reasons - all sorts of tensions are at play on the waxy surface, and there are angles to the sun to consider as well. Yet what could be simpler, more familiar than a drop of water on a leaf? Well, when you speak Greek, and read this poem of Sappho, it's like becoming instantly aware of all those angles and tensions, as well as the everyday beauty of the leaf - simultaneously. So it's a wonder - there's no other word.'
We sat there in silence for a moment or two. I felt touched by an unexpected melancholy.
'There's more to it than that, of course. Somehow, in just sixteen words and thirty-two syllables (eight a line), Sappho has been able to make a distillation of sadness sound almost like the jaunty plucking of a lyre. It's about stillness - lying alone in contemplation - as well as about movement - towards old age and death, presumably, but also, from the wider world's perspective, a new day. It's about desire, clearly, and waiting - it's drenched with the anguish of hopeless waiting - yet only one tiny, insignificant word, mona, 'alone', hints at this. Sappho has taken plain, worn-out old mona and somehow, by uttering it at just the right instant, perfectly angled to the poem, she's turned it into a knife in the heart.
'It's pitiless and tender at the same time, this poem... So when I recited those lines to you in English... Gone is the moon, gone the Pleiades, it's past midnight... and so on, I knew I wasn't reciting Sappho's poem for you.'
'Still it was worth doing.'
'Oh, yes. Absolutely. An impossible task, but none the less worth doing.'

[Corfu, Robert Dessaix, 2001. pp203-7]

Lysistrata

I missed this stunt when it first came out, but I came across it in a copy of the Green Voice which I found on the train last week, and thought it was worth putting up here.

On the Sunday of the APEC weekend, Greens MP Ian Cohen took to the seas off Bondi in an action directed at APEC spouses, asking them to withhold sex until their husbands or wives stop all war and commit to binding greenhouse targets. Ian paddled out surrounded by police (on jet skis this time) to reveal a novel but historically proven message.

In keeping with the universal concept of survival ‘Make Love Not War’- Ian painted one word onto his surfboard and paddled through the waves.

The APEC spouses having lunch at the Bondi Icebergs were invited to consider a simple but potent word displayed by Ian from the water: ‘LYSISTRATA’

“Aristophanes wrote this tale about women who had grown weary of war. Led by Lysistrata, they succeeded where other aspirational strategies had failed,” Ian explained to waiting media. “My goal today was to place firmly in the minds of the political partners this ancient Greek play, which features the women of Greece going on a sex strike to prevent their husbands going to war.”

“It worked in Ancient Greece. It can work today. Spouses withholding sexual favours can change the world for the better.”

Lyric Poetry

The prescribed genre for Latin extension next year is Lyric Poetry. I was a bit unsure what qualified as Lyric poetry, so I checked the article in my trusty Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, and this is what it said:

Lyric Poetry

1. Greek Lyric Poetry

Lyric poetry, meaning 'poetry sung to the lyre', is a term applied originally to songs accompanied by music; at first to Scolia or drinking songs, and to light songs of love; but always to to songs as expressing the untrammelled and personal sentiments of the poets, as distinguished from epic and dramatic poetry. Lyric poetry had its origin in the Aeolian island of Lesbos, with Terpander, Sappho, and Alcaeus, and in Ionia with Anacreon. It was accompanied at first on some kind of lyre. It employed a great variety of meters, of which the most characteristic were combinations of dactyls and trochees. It was chiefly developed among the Dorians, where Terpander, who migrated to Sparta, is said to have established it. It there took the more solemn and elaborate form of the Choral Lyric, accompanied by the flute as well as the lyre. This reached its greatest perfection with Pindar. The age of the great lyric poets ended about 452 B.C. when Pindar and Bacchylides wrote their last known odes. But by this time lyric poetry had found a new field in the choruses of the Greek drama. Greek tragedy was at first essentially lyric in character. The early tragedian Phrynicus was famous for the sweetness of his lyrics; and although as tragedy developed the chorus was more and more relegated to a subordinate position, the lyrical element continued a source of delight to the end of the period of the great tragedians. Lyrics are an important feature likewise in the comedy of Aristophanes, and there is often in his choruses 'a rush of real feeling and beauty, quickly apologised for and turned off with a laugh' (Murray).

2. Roman Lyric Poetry

The adoption in Latin of the Greek Lyric meters presented great difficulty, especially with the restrictions that the Romans introduced, and the number of great Roman lyric poets is small. Livius Andronicus composed a national hymn to be sung by a choir of maidens; and Laevius was another early writer of lyrics, but only fragments of his work have survived. The two chief Roman lyric poets were Catullus and Horace, and they had no important successors (except perhaps Statius). Seneca uses a variety of lyric meters in the choruses of his tragedies, Sapphics, Glyconics, Asclepiads; but without the metrical skill of the great Greek tragedians and without the variety of the strophic arrangement.

(Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. Sir Paul Harvey, 1962)

HSC Latin exam

Well, I've had a look at today's HSC paper, and I'm pretty happy. It was a pretty good paper, in that there weren't really any surprising or tricky questions; everything was clearly related to the prescribed study areas, and the passages chosen were of obvious importance, with lots that could be said about them. Here are a couple of the questions:

Brutus illis luctu occupatis cultrum ex vulnere Lucretiae extractum, manantem cruore prae se tenens, "Per hunc" inquit "castissimum ante regiam iniuriam sanguinem iuro, vosque, di, testes facio me L. Tarquinium Superbum cum scelerata coniuge et omni liberorum stirpe ferro igni quacumque dehinc vi possim exsecuturum, nec illos nec alium quemquam regnare Romae passurum." Cultrum deinde Collatino tradit, inde Lucretio ac Valerio, stupentibus miraculo rei, unde novum in Bruti pectore ingenium. Ut praeceptum erat iurant; totique ab luctu versi in iram, Brutum iam inde ad expugnandum regnum vocantem sequuntur ducem.

(AUC I.59.1-2)

Analyse the dramatic presentation of Brutus in this extract, with reference to Livy's aims. (8 marks)

The questions worth the most marks have tended to be double barrelled ones in the last few years, which gives you plenty to write about. In terms of drama in this passage, there's the direct speech Livy gives to Brutus with its formal tone and rhetorical devices. Livy also describes Brutus' actions in quite a dramatic way, emphasising the dagger throughout as Brutus first pulls it out of Lucretia's wound, then holds it up for all to see, then passes it to his companions to swear upon. It's all a bit melodramatic.

The drama of the passage allows you to talk about Livy's aims in two ways; firstly he is holding Brutus up as a moral exemplar, someone whose example in standing up to tyranny he wants his readers to follow. Livy intended above all his history to be one which provided a moral message. But Livy also aimed to entertain his readers, and we see that in his dramatic portrayal of Brutus- he presents the story with a certain creativity, which perhaps detracts from the accuracy of his narrative, but adds to its power to engage and entertain.


hinc procul addit
Tartareas etiam sedes, alta ostia Ditis,
et scelerum poenas, et te, Catilina, minaci
pendentem scopulo Furiarumque ora trementem,
secretosque pios, his dantem iura Catonem.

hinc Augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar
cum patribus populoque, penatibus et magnis dis,
stans celsa in puppi, geminas cui tempora flammas
laeta vomunt patriumque aperitur vertice sidus.
parte alia ventis et dis Agrippa secundis
arduus agmen agens, cui, belli insigne superbum,
tempora navali fulgent rostrata corona.
hinc ope barbarica variisque Antonius armis,
victor ab Aurorae populis et litore rubro,
Aegyptum virisque Orientis et ultima secum
Bactra vehit, sequiturque (nefas) Aegyptia coniunx.

(Aeneid VIII.666-70, 678-88)

Analyse Virgil's use of characterisation and contrast to reveal heroic attributes in this extract. (7 marks)

Another double-barrelled question! This passage is the climax to Virgil's descrition of Aeneas' shield, and I would have been surprised if it wasn't in the exam. There's lots to talk about in terms of characterisation and contrast. Augustus is shown alongside the senate, the people and the gods of Rome, in fact he is even portrayed as a god himself, with images of light and fire, whereas Antony is foreign- barbaric even- and sacrilegous, and in contrast to Augustus who stands high on the prow of his ship, he slinks along behind a foreign woman!

This strong contrast shows us what Virgil considers true heroism- it involves both courage in leading, and a deep respect and reverence for the gods (pietas). These are the qualities we see in Aeneas throughout book VIII, and these are the qualities Virgil also assigns to Augustus, and shows to be lacking in Antony.

Good Luck...

Good luck to my year 12 class, who sit their HSC Latin continuers exam this morning. Not that they need luck- they've worked hard all year, and by this stage should be fabulously well-prepared. I'll probably post some thoughts on the exam paper later this afternoon when I've had a chance to look at it.

Ankles

Today was the first day of a new term at the school where I teach, and to start off the term on the right foot (so to speak) the students were given a stern reminder of the school’s uniform policy. Of particular emphasis were socks, which must be white and cover the ankle completely. This is taken very seriously by the school hierarchy, and is a constant source of amusement and irritation to the students.

Of course, ankles are one of the most sensual parts of the body, and must be covered up to ensure decency, and to avoid driving men wild with desire. The Roman poet Ovid for one couldn’t resist a nice ankle. In his Ars Amatoria he expresses his frustration over long skirts:

Este procul, vittae tenues, insigne pudoris,
Quaeque tegis medios, instita longa, pedes.

Far away from here, you badges of modesty,
the thin headband, the ankle-covering dress.

(Ars Amatoria, I.31-2)

And later on, he instructs his reader how to steal a glimpse of a girl's ankle while flirting at the races:

Pallia si terra nimium demissa iacebunt,
Collige, et inmunda sedulus effer humo;
Protinus, officii pretium, patiente puella
Contingent oculis crura videnda tuis.

If her skirt is trailing too near the ground,
lift it, and raise it carefully from the dusty earth:
Straightaway, the prize for service, if she allows it,
is that your eyes catch a glimpse of her legs.

(Ars Amatoria, I.153-6)

back home again

If there's anyone still reading, my apologies for the recent lack of posts. I've been on holidays overseas (Germany, Austria, Italy). I had a great time, and will no doubt post something more about it later. But for the time being, I will offer five points to anyone who can tell me the proper name of the building in this photo.