Friday, April 04, 2008

Senior Classics Dinner


I took a group of my year 11 students to the Senior Classics Dinner, at Trinity Grammar School last night. The dinner is organised by the CLTA every year and is always lots of fun. For me it's good to see my Latin teaching colleagues, and for the students it's good to meet other like-minded students from around Sydney, to dress up, to have a nice meal and to play a bit of trivia. The trivia is always fiendishly difficult, here are a few of the questions that I had trouble answering myself*:


What is the literal translation of the names of the following pieces of equipment?

  • stethoscope
  • microphone
  • camera
  • seismograph
  • television
  • hypodermic
With which particular bodies of water were the following types of Naiads associated?

  • Crinaeae
  • Limnades (or Limnatides)
  • Pegaeae
  • Potameides
  • Eleionomae
Which modern day public holidays in Australia fall very close to, or on, the following Roman festivals?

  • Quinquatria (in honour of Minerva)
  • Robigalia (in honour of Robigus)
  • Vestalia (in honour of Vesta)
  • Ieiunium Cereris (Fast of Ceres)
  • Dies Natalis Invicti Solis (Festival of the Invincible Sun god)
I'll give the answers in the comments next week.


[*this may say more about me than the questions]

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here are the answers:

Question 1

stethoscope: from the Gk words for 'chest' and 'examination'

microphone: from the Gk words for 'small' and 'sound'

camera: latin for 'vault' or 'chamber'

seismograph: from the Gk words for 'earthquake' and 'write'

television: from the Gk word for 'far' and the Latin 'to see'

hypodermic: from the Gk words for 'under' and 'skin'

Anonymous said...

Question 2

Crinaeae are associated with fountains

Limnades are associated with lakes

Pegaeae are associated with springs

Potameides are associated with rivers

Eleionomae are associated with marshes

Anonymous said...

Question 3

Quinquatria was held from 19-23 March (Easter)

Robigalia was held on 25 April (Anzac Day)

Vestalia was held from 7-15 June (Queen's Birthday weekend)

Ieiunium Cereris was held on October 4 (close enough to Labour Day)

Dies Natalis Invicti Solis was held on December 25 (Christmas Day)

Anonymous said...

Salt in the wounds, Sir. Salt in the wounds.

Anonymous said...

i was going to say that!

Mike Salter said...

Nice montage JM!

Good to see you there as always. That quiz was certainly the hardest in a long time...those Roman festivals, oy veh. How many did they have, the lazy sods?

Anonymous said...

When he gave me the Trivia and answers before the dinner, Mr. Dixon asked me what I thought of it, and when I told him I thought it was good, hard and that there was a lot I couldn't answer, he seemed surprised. He was especially surprised, though, of my inability to answer question 5 ["corvus"]. ... have we ever even SEEN a corvus before, Sir?

Anyway, I was just stopping by to grab the link to William Whitaker. Because I'm totally doing XIIB. And it's not even midnight. Seriously, this is a major achievement for me. Now, excuse me while I go and hunt around my box of tissues. How dare they hide from me...!!!

Anonymous said...

i wouldn't have expected you to have seen a corvus before. i had, but only because i did a history subject on the Punic Wars (where they were used by the Romans against the Carthaginian navy) at uni. corvus literally means 'crow'.

Anonymous said...

I figured we hadn't, but yeah. We were expected to have, apparently.

Anyway - about me re-writing my extension essay - are there any particular guidelines you'd like to set me for it? Because I have the distinct feeling you'd rather not mark a 5-page essay (without me attaching a literal brick for you to throw at me), and... yeah.

Also, would it be alright to e-mail it to you over the holidays? Because I only just got home from the recital evening and I'm too tired to do anything now. Except read my book about Ancient Greek/Latin/Classics students who murder people.