Holiday fun

If you're bored during the holidays, why not make your very own model colosseum.

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Balderdash

As an end of term activity with my year nine class today we played a bit of Balderdash. The girls were given a Latin word, for which they had to invent a definition. Then their definitions were pooled together, and they had to try to choose which one was correct. Here are some of the words, and their definitions; can you tell which one is correct?

vermino, are, avi, atus:

• to have worms
• to walk with great pride
• to be truthful, to tell the truth

olfactoriolum, i (nt):

• a factory used for making wine in Roman times
• a lazy person
• a little perfume bottle

mansuetarius, i (m):

• a complex sewerage system made for a large city
• a bull that is used for agricultural purposes
• a tamer of wild beasts

stomachor, ari, atus:

• to be irritated, annoyed
• to put up with a difficult situation
• to make extremely loud sounds, like the trumpeting of an elephant

catillo, nis (m):

• a porch, outdoor patio
• someone who licks plates
• a public place for women to bathe

How to turn a lion into a mouse

Can you change leo to mus in five steps, changing one letter at a time to form a new Latin word?

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What to do when your head's on fire

You might not think it particularly likely that your head will spontaneously catch fire, but it happens more often than you might think- at least in Latin literature. Just look at the following passages:

cum subitum dictuque oritur mirabile monstrum.
namque manus inter maestorumque ora parentum
ecce levis summo de vertice visus Iuli
fundere lumen apex, tactuque innoxia mollis
lambere flamma comas et circum tempora pasci.
nos pavidi trepidare metu crinemque flagrantem
excutere et sanctos restinguere fontibus ignis.


Suddenly there was a great miracle. At the very moment when we were both holding Iulus and he was there between our sorrowing faces, look, a light began to stream from the top of the pointed cap he was wearing and the flame seemed to lick his soft hair and feed round his temples without harming him. We took fright and rushed to beat out his flaming hair and quench the holy fire with water.

Aeneid II.680-686

praeterea, castis adolet dum altaria taedis,

et iuxta genitorem astat Lauinia virgo,

visa (nefas) longis comprendere crinibus ignem

atque omnem ornatum flamma crepitante cremari,

regalisque accensa comas, accensa coronam

insignem gemmis; tum fumida lumine fulvo

involui ac totis Volcanum spargere tectis.

What's more, when Lavinia was standing by her father's side tending the altar with her chaste torches, another fearful sight was seen. Her long hair caught fire and all its adornment was crackling in the flames. The princess's hair was blazing, her crown with all its lovely jewels was blazing, and soon she was wrapped in smoke and yellow glare, and scattering fire all over the palace.

Aeneid VII.71-77

Eo tempore in regia prodigium visu euentuque mirabile fuit. Puero dormienti, cui Servio Tullio fuit nomen, caput arsisse ferunt multorum in conspectu; plurimo igitur clamore inde ad tantae rei miraculum orto excitos reges, et cum quidam familiarium aquam ad restinguendum ferret, ab regina retentum, sedatoque eam tumultu moveri vetuisse puerum donec sua sponte experrectus esset; mox cum somno et flammam abisse.

In the palace about that time there occurred a very odd thing, which was to have remarkable consequences. A little boy named Servius Tullius was lying asleep, when his head burst into flames. Many people saw it happen. The noise and excitement caused by such an extraordinary event came to the ears of the king and queen, and brought them hurrying to the spot. A servant ran for water and was about to throw it on the flames, when the queen stopped him, declaring, as soon as she could make herself heard, that the boy must on no account be disturbed, but allowed to sleep till he awoke of his own accord. A few minutes later he opened his eyes, and the fire went out.

Livy I.39

In fact, having your head catch fire is not so bad (Michael Jackson aside). For Iulus, Lavinia and Servius Tullius it was actually a sign of the gods' favour towards them. Through the sign of fire they confirm Iulus' destiny to grow up to be a great king of Italy, Lavinia's destiny to marry the foreign hero Aeneas and Servius Tullius' destiny to become king of Rome.

Castra Latina MMVIII

Five things we learnt at Latin Camp:

1. We’re allowed to call Mr Morrison ‘Joel’
2. Water pistols get confiscated
3. The food is quite nice
4. A three-headed Cerberus race results in really bad carpet burns
5. The number of cute boys that study Latin is 0

Last Friday evening 160 Latin students from around NSW arrived safely at Elanora Heights conference centre. We were divided into tribes and after some te cognosco (getting-to-know-you) games, we learnt how to rap, Roman style, then we watched some film clips to study their depiction of ancient Rome, including Monty Python and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum… When we were finally sent to bed at 11:00pm we were all too exhausted to hold the parties we’d planned.

The next day included a bushwalk full of Roman and Greek mythology, a presentation on Roman weapons by James Adams, gladiator training at Capua gladiatorial school, lottus (bingo using Roman numbers) and a session of design where we made badges and painted t-shirts with Roman phrases. Some memorable slogans included ‘I’m with Grumio →’, ‘Veni, Vidi, Voravi’ (I came, I saw, I ate), and ‘Hercle! Quid tui vultui accidit?’ (By Hercules! What happened to your face?).

After dinner was the moment we’d all been waiting for… The Roman Concert! This involved everyone dressing up in old white sheets arranged as togas and acting out the myths we’d been rehearsing during the day. The best performances included ‘Zeus Visits Earth’, performed by the gallant Gauls, and ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ by the amazing Amazons.

Once the concert was over and we’d changed back to our 21st century attire we were given supper and watched part of a movie about Odysseus and the Cyclops, Polyphemus. Then we sat back and listened to the lesser known story of Cephalus and Procris. This concluded Saturday’s program and we were sent back to our cabins. However, once again, the busy day (along with the teachers’ patrolling) prevented us from having some really good parties.

Sunday dawned bright, filled with new adventures. But first we had to drag ourselves out of bed (the twelve hours of activities we’d completed the day before were starting to kick in). After breakfast a trivia competition was held to test us on all the things we’d learnt over the weekend. There were 50 questions and the winning tribe happened to be the only tribe in which there were no St Georgians. The next scheduled activity was to be the mini-Olympics, but unfortunately due to bad weather the events had to be abandoned for an indoor competition. We were nevertheless still able to compete in the indoor javelin (with foam tridents replacing the javelins) and plastic-plate-discus (taped together and thrown frisbee-style), the Oedipus hopping relay, the Cerberus three-headed race (like a three-legged race, but with three people crawling) and the Ben Hur chariot race, in which two ‘horses’ dragged a hessian sack up and down the hall with someone sitting on it.

So, Castra Latina MMVIII was lots of fun, and a big gratias maximas goes to Mr Morrison for organising it for us, and helping with transport.

All in all, Latin camp was truly optime!

Yr 8 Discipulae Latinae

tenebrarum cor

As I head off to Latin camp with 26 year 8 students, I thought I would leave with a passage from the Heart of Darkness (no connection, honestly), which I finished reading recently.

'I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here [England], nineteen hundred years ago - the other day... Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine - what d'ye call 'em? - trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries - a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been too - used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here - the very end of the world, a sea the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina - and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages - precious little to eat fit for a civilised man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay - cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death - death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh yes - he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had done through his time perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by, or if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga - perhaps too much dice, you know - coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him - all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination - you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.'

books

Some books that caught my eye in the latest Abbeys Catalogue:

The Penguin Book of Classical Myths
The figures and events of classical myths underpin our culture; the constellations named after them fill the night sky. Whether it's the raging Minotaur trapped in the Cretan labyrinth or the 12 labours of Hercules, Aphrodite's birth from the waves or Zeus visiting Danae as a shower of gold, the mythology of Greece and Rome is full of unforgettable stories. The Greek tragedies - Oedipus, Medea, Antigone - are also included, as well as the Trojan wars, Odysseus' and Aeneas' epic journeys and the founding of Athens and Rome. These are the strangest tales of love, war, betrayal and heroism ever told and, while brilliantly retelling them, this book shows how they echo through the works of much later writers, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Camus and Ted Hughes.

The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel
The Greek and Roman novels of Petronius, Apuleius, Longus, Heliodorus and others have been cherished for millennia, but never more so than now. This Companion contains 19 original essays by an international cast of experts in the field. The emphasis is upon the critical interpretation of the texts within historical settings, both in antiquity and in the later generations that have been, and continue to be, inspired by them. All the central issues of current scholarship are addressed: sexuality, cultural identity, class, religion, politics, narrative, style, readership and much more. Four sections cover the cultural context of the novels, their contents, literary form and their reception in classical antiquity and beyond.

grex

My Latin word for the weekend is grex, gregis (m), meaning 'flock, herd, crowd'. It's a pretty unremarkable word in and of itself, but it's got a number of interesting (at least to me) English derivations.

• gregarious, meaning 'fond of the company of others; sociable' is obvious enough- it describes someone who likes being part of a grex.
• a congregation is a 'gathered or assembled body' (particularly in a religious context); i.e. a grex that's come together (con).
• segregate means 'to separate or set apart from others', i.e. from the grex.
• egregious, once meant 'distinguished or eminent', but has now come to mean the opposite 'extraordinary in some bad way'. The idea that goes along with both these meanings is that an egregious person (for example) stands out of (e) the grex in some way.

Theoi

I came across a good-looking site dedicated to Greek Mythology the other day (thanks to rogueclassicum). It's called Theoi (Greek for 'gods') and has lots of good stuff on all kinds of gods, heroes and mythological creatures, beautifully illustrated from ancient pottery, mosaics and statuary. I've added it as a link on the right, and if you click on the links below you can check out some of the more interesting articles for yourself.

• Hera (also known as Juno)
• Heracles (aka Hercules)
• Nike (goddess of victory)
• Hygeia (goddess of hygeine)
• Hippocampi (half horse, half fish)

It even has an article on the bizarrely fearsome Hippalektryon - half horse, half chicken.

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Politics- Roman Style

"The National Budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must learn to work instead of living on public assistance."

This quote, which appeared in Column 8 recently, sounds like it could have been written yesterday, but in fact comes from the works of Cicero- the Roman lawyer, politician and philosopher- written in 55BC. I'm not sure which speech but I'll try and track down the Latin in the next few days.

mummies

My year nine class has recenlty been exploring Alexandria, it's culture and history around the first century A.D. One of the really interesting sources to survive from Alexandria are a series of portraits attached to mummies which (supposedly) show us what the person used to look like. Some of these appear on pages 116-7 of their textbook, but they (and many others) can also be found in this on-line gallery.

I love these pictures, because they show the diversity of peoples present in Alexandria at the time- Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Africans, Jews and more. I also find them really expressive, particularly looking into their eyes- you feel they have a story to tell.

My task for my year nine class then is this: choose one of the portraits either from your textbook or from the on-line gallery, and write a short (50-100 words) biography for them in Latin. Think about what we've read about the culture and history of Alexandria, and use the expressions on the portraits to help you imagine what their lives may have been like. To start off, you might like to think about the following:

• What race is your chosen person?


• Is s/he rich or poor?


• Is s/he young or old?


• What kind of emotions can you see on her/his face?

You might also like to look at the British Museum site which has some more faces, with a bit more information as well. William Whitakers Words can help you with any Latin vocab you need.